"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Monday, December 28, 2020

Miley Cyrus - The War Is Over


✩🎄★Happy Xmas (War Is Over)★🎄✩
Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
Dec 12, 2019


Miley Cyrus & Mark Ronson feat. Sean Ono Lennon
- Happy Xmas (War Is Over)



Lyrics ★🎄★

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young


A very merry Christmas
and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
For rich and for poor ones (war is over)
The world is so wrong (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
For black and for white (if you want it)
For left and for right ones (war is over)
Let's stop all the fight (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Oh, let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
And a new one just begun (now...)

And so happy Christmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear one (war is over)
The old and the young (now...)


A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

War is over, if you want it
War is over now!

Happy Christmas everybody!
★🎄★




New Years Require Better Resolutions

by R.E. Slater
December 29, 2020

I have been enjoying Miley Cyrus a lot lately. I love her voice, how she thinks and envision's life, her need to speak out against civil and human injustice, and for the beauty she sees all around her. Miley is sounding better to me the older she gets and the more she discovers who she is and what she wants to speak to. And though she's very good at capturing cover songs like the one here, I am more interested in her edginess and how she sees humanity in all its vices and colours.

With the onset of a new year coming in three days I'm asking that we commit ourselves to healing. To the healing of our hearts, our friendships, our community, our country, and our world.

To redirecting all our nervous, sometimes exasperating, sometimes agitating, energy, into goodness and wellbeing for all things human and earthly. Mere wishing for, or singing of, "Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men" are but empty words if we don't actually practice these qualities at all times through all our seasons of life.

Over the last several years we've seen the ugliness of hatred and division and what it does to leaderless people who follow those dark souls who are destroyers of present goodness. They have vexed our hearts and our relationships with one another. They are a scourge to be remonstrated against and removed.

Let us today, this coming year, take up the challenge of our destroyers to rebuild a truer equality and justice for all around us. For each other as well as for nature. So often rebuilding cannot come without deconstructing our past and present. Black Lives Matter has challenged us to do just that. And we will. These are the fundamental challenges we must step up to. Let me share an all too frequent example of expectations versus reality.

The Challenges of Loss

Several years ago I naively bought a house thinking it needed remodeling. I had met the builder and the owner, sent an inspection company out to confirm the site, and read what was written in the contracts. But I couldn't have been more wrong. The house was fundamentally built wrong, found akilter with itself upon it's several elevations, and with a craftsmanship absently confounding. It all was hidden from view innocently enough but the structure was fundamently flawed behind its rustic beauty. The words on the contract which I needed for clarification weren't written down but kept off and hidden (as keeping to the letter of the law of the county but not its spirit of full disclosure). And the inspecting agency counted the nails on the roof, the missing electrical safety features but missed the foundations which were rotting and sagging. These were drywalled over from the inside and packed with gravel around the perimeter making it seem aesthetic when it was actually functional fifteen feet all the way down. A simple tapping of an iron rod through the gravel would've confirmed further discovery. Or a screwdriver through the furnace walls would've told of a wooden foundation. But none of this was disclosed or confirmed. The result? It was all on me. Everything. It was not a good place to be.

An older man, my neighbor, whom I came to know, spoke wisdom confirming what my own heart was saying, against all the others who spoke contrary. I took it as a word from God and proceeded to destroy-and-rebuild and never looked back. It would be another loss in life. Unexpected. Injurious. But something to be overcome. I told my neighbor the house needed a deep renovation - including a completely new, and much stronger foundation, and not the rotting foundation it was lying upon which I had perchance discovered midway through remodeling the lower floor as a front end loader removed the dirt from the buried walls so we could add an extra bedroom and bath to the end of the house. I remember that weekend as being grievous. We were facing a total loss.

Bottom line... I would have to deconstruct the house before reconstructing it properly. It would cost a good deal of money, personal time I didn't have, and the labor of many talented trade workers to overcome the obstacles and oppositions I was facing. And I would have to live with my decisions good or bad. However, the Lord has gifted me with the ability to create investments out of loss. It has been true with lay ministries as it has been true in my life. My gifts it seems is to take challenges and create beauty. Which also means I've had a lot of experience with losses. Or with shoddy envisioning of what beauty means. Or with people or institutions content with the trauma they are living out.

My website, Relevancy22, is a postmodern Christian testament to recreating, or reimagining, a Christianity I was deeply blessed and trained in to maintain its traditional structures. It's classic forms. It's unmitigating foundations. But those structures and foundations needed demolishing - keeping the good as I could while trashing all that withheld seeing God's love truly through the biblical passages and churchly histories and otherwise actions of its people. I had to go through dark days to get there. But the Lord sent me His Holy Spirit to guide through a challenging wilderness to find a way to His light and beauty. It was done by learning to unlearn so that I might re-learn.

So too it is with our lives. We need the Lord's guidance and the discerning grit of hard decisions to be made when we do not know which way to go amid the cacophony of voices telling us what we should do. And for that God had brought to me the help of gifted craftsmen and trades people, a blessed general contractor of generosity and talent, and a small window of purchasing opportunity to buy discounted materials during America's worst times of hurricanes and wildfires. As I labored with the labourers I blessed God many times over during those long 14 months. From beginning to end it was fraught with difficulty personally, financially, health-wise, and emotionally. It was a hard time.

As another example of rebuilding out of neglect let's look at societal structures in their many ways of casual callousness to the suffering and neglect of people living with rot and difficulty on a daily basis. The dispensing of Covid-19 vaccines readily shows to us the struggles we are challenged with in a society when naively promoting our ideals over aiding those truly in need of the miracle vaccine. Rather than serving the homeless, ghettos, the essential, and enfeebled, our dispensatory systems have been prejudiced towards those who have the resources, class, wealth, standing, or perception to receive them. Yet, any nurse, social worker, school administrator, city mayor, priest, pastor, or even private industry boss will learn on their first day whether to choose for equality and fairness or to overlook it in their occupations. Let us chose the path less travelled. The one promising fuller resolve than capitulate to the norm such as profit over care, income over restitution, greed over generosity.

To Serve rather than be Served

Let us at all times be mindful in all things to serve those around us rather than be served ourselves. This is the mindset of Jesus. The challenges in Jesus' day were no different from ours today. So much of our best intentions get usurped by the politician, the greedy, the proud, the corrupt of heart. Their kind of world is dark and odious. But let us be of the light and not of their mindset of self-serving oblivion.

Even those words, or worlds, which might sound "Christian" or "righteous" to our ears can be anything be loving or divine. More like broadbills for waylaid sheep lost and looking for a shepherd but finding crooks and thieves of their souls. And yet, the Lord God has shown His real Self through His Incarnation in the Trinitarian personage of Jesus who opposed the wicked, granted release from bondage to the suffering, and ministered God's love until His death and resurrection into glory while renewing His Covenant of Love double-stamped by His Spirit that He abides with us moment-by-moment in this life and the next.

Those leaderless churches of another gospel are not God's churches of love and welcoming embrace. They are the churches of men who worship the idols of their cultural inheritance and the lies of their future. They protect their past to live as dead people to God in their present. They fear the challenge of change and run from its necessity to moderate, or minister, to the unfortunates in life. Such words, creeds, structures, societies of darkness we would remove, demolish, overcome and replace with love, truth, goodness, and light by leaning into God's continually evolving process of death for renewal, wreckage for reclamation, atonement for redemption, denial of self for resurrection, fear for transformation, and beauty for revival by His Spirit at all times.

Jesus is the benchmark for all humanity. He is the goal and perfector of one's faith. Not the church, not the unenlightened mobs which come and go to the distress of the world of God and man. But Jesus. He is the One we look to for example, truth, and love. Upon Jesus' uplifted Cross we can see the God of Love in full display.

Now this Christmas has come and gone. It's short season is over. Yet Christ has come to us in wintry celebration of His Incarnational Advental Coming. Let us then ask the Lord that Christ's "panpsychic being and becomingness" enters all the way into the deepest parts of our hearts, minds, and souls, as we approach new challenges in this coming new year. Let it be a year of healing. Of atonement. Of redemption. Perhaps, even, a year of hope becoming realized in the work of our hands and feet and lips. Amen and Amen.

And as Ms. Cyrus has well said, "The War is Over." But stop and think... it really is - if... we really want it to be. Thank you Miley.

R.E. Slater
December 28, 2020










Christmas Bells
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)


I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."








Peace and Goodwill

Since Adam ate from off that tree,
Earth spins without tranquility.
No golden age of ancient Greece
Nor Pax Romana gave us peace.
The Son of God and Mary brought
The hope that midnight angels taught.

If you’d find peace from Heaven’s King,
Then join the song the angels sing:
“To God the highest glory be!”
That’s goodwill’s faithful melody.
All sinners, willing to believe,
Alone that Prince of Peace receive.

-- David L. Hatton, 12/7/2018




Peter Drucker quote from President Abraham Lincoln




Peace and Goodwill

True peace on earth will never be, without The Lord of Eternity,
And goodwill towards all men, truly begins as we’re Born-Again.
Men sing that Christ has come, but they must embrace the Son,
God’s Son who came to earth, so all man could have New Birth.

That little baby born in a stall, isn’t a babe, but He’s King over all,
As songs about a baby man sings, Christ reigns as King of kings,
The Only True Prince of Peace, with a reign that shall not cease,
And while a babe, nations adore, The Savior, men simply ignore.

Christ came to grant all salvation, but they ignore His Revelation,
Being born of God from above, brings the peace songs speak of,
Born Again by the Spirit of God, while living upon this earthly sod,
Becoming part of God’s Family, with a Peace that lasts Eternally.

Christ did not come for Christmas, but, to redeem sinners like us,
Starting with lost sheep in Israel, then the Gentiles, per God’s will,
To bring the message of Salvation, not to some, but every nation,
A message lost in festive fray, as men sing about Christmas Day.

Jesus is why Christmas came, but songs seldom utter His Name,
In many songs what’s not heard, are those Truths in God’s Word,
Sadly many, enjoying the song, even observe this holiday wrong,
And without embracing the Truth, instead of joy shall see reproof.

Bob Gotti
(Copyright ©01/2011)








Sunday, December 27, 2020

Winter Poems




‘Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth,
for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the
fire: it is the time for a home.’ - Edith Sitwell


Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?


* * * * * * *



‘Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.’ 
- Pietro Aretino



Winter-Time

by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, 
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake
.


* * * * * * *



‘While I relish our warm months, winter
forms our character and brings out our best.’
- Tom Allen


The cold earth slept below
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The cold earth slept below;
         Above the cold sky shone;
                And all around,
                With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
                Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;
         The green grass was not seen;
                The birds did rest
                On the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
                Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
         Of the moon’s dying light;
                As a fen-fire’s beam
                On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,
And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
                That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
         The wind made thy bosom chill;
                The night did shed
                On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
                Might visit thee at will.


* * * * * * *



‘In seed time learn,
in harvest teach,
in winter enjoy.’
- William Blake


In the bleak midwinter
by Christina Rossetti


In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.


* * * * * * *



‘Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.’
- Anamika Mishra


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   
His house is in the village though;   
He will not see me stopping here   
To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   
To stop without a farmhouse near   
Between the woods and frozen lake   
The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.


* * * * * * *



‘What good is the warmth of summer,
without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?’
 - John Steinbeck


The Snow Man 
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.


* * * * * * *



‘One kind word can warm three winter months.’
- Japanese Proverb


The World
by Jennifer Chang


One winter I lived north, alone
and effortless, dreaming myself
into the past. Perhaps, I thought,
words could replenish privacy.
Outside, a red bicycle froze
into form, made the world falser
in its white austerity. So much
happens after harvest: the moon
performing novelty: slaughter,
snow. One hour the same
as the next, I held my hands
or held the snow. I was like sculpture,
forgetting or, perhaps, remembering
everything. Red wings in the snow,
red thoughts ablaze in the war
I was having with myself again.
Everything I hate about the world
I hate about myself, even now
writing as if this were a law
of nature. Say there were deer
fleet in the snow, walking out
the cold, and more gingkoes
bare in the beggar’s grove. Say
I was not the only one who saw
or heard the trees, their diffidence
greater than my noise. Perhaps
the future is a tiny flame
I’ll nick from a candle. First, I’m burning.
Then, numb. Why must every winter
grow colder, and more sure?


* * * * * * *



‘No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.’
- Hal Borland


Song: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind”

by William Shakespeare


Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

   Thou art not so unkind

      As man’s ingratitude;

   Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

      Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

   Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

      This life is most jolly.


   Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

   That dost not bite so nigh

      As benefits forgot:

   Though thou the waters warp,

      Thy sting is not so sharp

      As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly...



* * * * * * *



‘When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong, Just
remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snow, Lies the
seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the rose.’
- Bette Midler, The Rose


An Old Man's Winter Night

by Robert Frost


All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off—and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon—such as she was,

So late-arising—to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man—one man—can’t keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It’s thus he does it of a winter night.


If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’

- Percy Bysshe Shelley





Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Promise of Christmas Solstice

 



"Close the door of hate
and open the door of love
all over the world."

- Robert Louis Stevenson


"There's much more to Christmas
than candlelight and cheer;
It's the spirit of sweet friendship
that brightens all the year."

- Anon


"A Star shines brightly
from above,
Church bells ring of
peace and love,
For on this glorious
Christmas Day,
Christ the King
was born this day!"

- Anon









A Christmas Prayer
for Our Children

by R.E. Slater


Bright and beautiful
our precious child --
Take dear Lord our loved Ones dear.
And hold them close Thy loving breast
all the while our holy trust.

Where in your Love 
protects and cares
by sustaining songs
of renewing life, amidst
twinkling stars of the night.

Bless your children dear --
upon your holy breast of tears
Hear our longings
that there they stay
warm and safe all their days.


R.E. Slater
December 23, 2020

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved





Christmastime Solstice

by Cmk


It’s so dark and so cold and yet,
after the longest night of the year,
the sun still rises, 
the days get longer,
dare we hope again
the warming days ahead.

Look up into the night sky --
it's wonderments and praise!
🌙💫🪐
#HOPE


Cmk
December 23, 2020







Is there a moment quite as keen
or memory as bright
as light and fire and music sweet
to warm the winter's night?

- Adam Christianson




Winter Solstice heralds the symbolic rebirth of the Sun, the lengthening of days, and the promise of renewing life. On the Christian Calendar it is preceded by Christ's Advent Coming at the nativity of Bethlehem promising spiritual death to the old way of life in exchange for the birth of new life. Christmas films, novels, poems, and songs, speak to the sustaining promise of God in Christ that what once was in Eden's fellowship with God, has come again at Jesus Christ's birth. Sealed by Christ's atoning redemption at the Cross of Calvary, to become forever new in resurrection glory, truth, and hope, and sustaining divine love. It is because of the Christian story that the phrase, "Love Wins," succinctly captures God's promise to man and creation of redeeming renewal upon the human heart and beast wherein all the old worlds of sin and death be renewed in Jesus' forgiving love of Christmas Day. - re slater

 


Wikipedia

The winter solstice, hiemal solstice or hibernal solstice, occurs when one of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt away from the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky. At the pole, there is continuous darkness or twilight around the winter solstice. Its opposite is the summer solstice. Also the Tropic of Cancer or Tropic of Capricorn depending on the hemispheres winter solstice the sun goes 90 degrees below the horizon at solar midnight to the nadir.

The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere's winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (usually December 21 or 22) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (usually June 20 or 21). Although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment, the term sometimes refers to the day on which it occurs. Other names are the "extreme of winter" (Dongzhi), or the "shortest day". Since the 18th century, the term "midwinter" has sometimes been used synonymously with the winter solstice, although it carries other meanings as well. Traditionally, in many temperate regions, the winter solstice is seen as the middle of winter, but today in some countries and calendars, it is seen as the beginning of winter.

Since prehistory, the winter solstice has been seen as a significant time of year in many cultures, and has been marked by festivals and rituals. It marked the symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun. The seasonal significance of the winter solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days.


Winter’s Cloak
by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr


This year I do not want
the dark to leave me.
I need its wrap
of silent stillness,
its cloak
of long lasting embrace.
Too much light
has pulled me away
from the chamber
of gestation.


Let the dawns
come late,
let the sunsets
arrive early,
let the evenings
extend themselves
while I lean into
the abyss of my being.


Let me lie in the cave
of my soul,
for too much light
blinds me,
steals the source
of revelation.


Let me seek solace
in the empty places
of winter’s passage,
those vast dark nights
that never fail to shelter me.


*“Winter’s Cloak” is from The Circle of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons by sisters Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr in which “using reflections, poems, prayers, and meditations, they explore the relationship between the seasons of the earth and the seasons of our lives.”






While everything was
Wrapped in a gentle silence
And night in its swift course
Was now half gone...

Your All-Powerful Word
Leaped from heaven...
Into the midst of our needy and lonely world...

The whole of creation in its nature
Was fashioned anew -

Protected by your hand - 
And gazing on marvelous wonders.

Wisdom 18:14-16, 19:6-9





The Bells of Christmas
by Eugene Field


Why do the bells of Christmas ring?
Why do little children sing?

Once a lovely shining star, 
Seen by shepherds from afar,
Gently moved until its light,
Made a manger's cradle bright.

There a darling baby lay,
Pillowed soft upon the hay,
And it's mother sung and smiled:
"This is Christ, the holy Child!"

Therefore bells for Christmas ring,
Therefore little children sing.





New Choral Music for 2020

https://global.oup.com/academic/category/arts-and-humanities/sheet-music/choral/new-cds/?cc=us&lang=en&

Sacred

1. O sing unto the Lord - Cecilia McDowall - SATB (with divisions) & organ

2. Angel voices ever singing - Bob Chilcott - SATB (with Alto solo) & organ

3. Come, my Way - David Bednall - SATB & organ

4. Solitude - James Whitbourn - SATB & guitar/piano

5. Locus iste - Will Todd - SATB (with divisions) & piano

6. O splendor of God's glory bright (That Easter day with joy was bright) - Mack Wilberg - SATB & organ/orchestra

7. This little light of mine - Mack Wilberg - SATB & organ/orchestra

8. Glory - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Terry Price - SATB & organ/brass

Secular

9. Yes, I am your angel - Gabriel Jackson - SATB unaccompanied

10. Swept Away - Sarah Quartel - SSATBarB unaccompanied

11. The Lover's Ghost - Oliver Tarney - SATB & piano

12. When I am laid in earth - Henry Purcell, arr. Stanley Hofman - Soprano solo & SATB unaccompanied

13. Poems of Love and War – Howard Skempton – SATB unaccompanied

14. See the light – Sarah Quartel – SA & piano

15. Slow Down – Ian Assersohn – TTBB & piano

16. Piping down the valleys wild – Bob Chilcott – SATB & piano with optional bass & drum kit

Christmas

17. Come and dance – Toby Young – SATB unaccompanied

18. Cradle Song – Bob Chilcott – SATB unaccompanied with optional congregation

19. The Angel Gabriel – Michael Higgins – SSSSAATBB unaccompanied

20. A Carol of Mary – Malcolm Archer – SATB (with divisions) & organ

21. Christ our Emmanuel – John Rutter – SATB & piano/organ/trio

22  Hail, heavenly beam – David Bednall – SATB unaccompanied

23. Christmas Welcome – James Whitbourn – SATB & organ

24. A spotless Rose – Becky McGlade – SATB (with divisions) unaccompanied

25. Brightest Star – Cecilia McDowall – SSATB unaccompanied

26. Gabriel's Message – Benedict Sheehan – SATB & organ/piano

27. Lo! He slumbers in his manger – Cecilia McDowall – SATB unaccompanied

28. Child of Light – Mack Wilberg – SATB & piano four-hands/chamber orchestra

29. Ring the bells – Alan Bullard – SATB & piano

30. I saw three ships – Andy Brooke – SATB & piano

31. His Praises We'll Sing – David Blackwell – SATB (with divisions) & piano

32. A little child there is yborn – Malcolm Archer – SATB & organ

33. Silent night – Bob Chilcott – SATB & organ

Liturgical

34. Kyrie from 'St Martin's Mass' – David Bednall – SATB & organ, with opt. congregation

35. Gloria from 'St Martin's Mass' – David Bednall – SATB & organ, with opt. congregation

36. Sanctus from 'St Martin's Mass' – David Bednall – SATB & organ, with opt. congregation

37. Benedictus from 'St Martin's Mass' – David Bednall – SATB & organ, with opt. congregation

38. Agnus Dei from 'St Martin's Mass' – David Bednall – SATB & organ, with opt. congregation