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“They sought him by a star:” A Hymn for Epiphany

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They sought him by a star

They sought him by a star
they followed from the East.
We know him in his Word
and eucharistic feast.
For those who look to him for bread
will find their souls are daily fed.

The nations need his light
against the darkened hour.
Their hate and fear and might
betray his gentle power.
But those who seek by word and deed
will find he meets them in their need.

We walk on paths unknown
through days of doubt and fear.
We face each day and frown,
we struggle each new year.
But those who follow in his way
will find his light for each new day.

And when he comes at last
his glory will shine forth.
The world that moved so fast
will stop to mark his worth.
And finally see the great “I Am”
and join the Supper of the Lamb.

© 2001 Richard L. Floyd

Suggested tune: Darwall’s 148th.

They Sought Him By A Star

(Photo: R. L. Floyd, “Wise Men from Ecuadorian Creche”)

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My Most Popular Blogposts of 2009

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As 2009 wanes I took advantage of Google Analytics to find the ten most popular posts of the year.  I learned that Retired Pastor Ruminates, which was launched on March 23, has 10,467 page-views, of which 6,928 were unique page-views, and the average time spent on the page was 3:19. They came from 53 countries, with the US being first, and all but two of its states represented. The other countries with the most visitors are in order of visits: the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, India, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore.

Here are the most visited posts:

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Funny poem: “’Twas the Day after Christmas”

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This piece of seasonal light verse comes from the keyboard of Janet Batchler, the creative gal behind the now famous Church History in Four Minutes video.  Janet’s terrific blog is Quoth the Maven (Now sadly gone.)  Her poem, with only slight exaggeration  (we no longer have a dog), describes my house about now.  How about yours?

‘TWAS THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house
All the fam’ly was sleeping, yes, even my spouse.
The stockings were tossed by the chimney with flair
Some turned inside out, to make sure nothing’s there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Nintendo DSes tucked under their heads;
And I in my bathrobe, MacBook on my lap,
Was happy to know there were no gifts to wrap.

When out from the kitchen there rose such a clatter,
I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter.
I waded my way ‘cross a floor filled with trash
To a kitchen heaped high from our Christmas Eve bash.

The sun through the window, it gave quite a glow:
(Los Angeles Christmas: We never have snow),
It shone on the remains of the Christmas day cheer,
The leftover cheese ball, the dregs of the beer.
The un-put-away brownies as hard as a fossil,
And o’er on the stove, it shone down on the wassail.

I blinked as the sun blasted straight to my eye
And just in time glimpsed a brown streak passing by.
Four-footed and furry and dragging a ham,
Dodging around me and trying to scram.
And as he ran off with a peppermint cluster
I knew in a moment, it was my dog Buster.

More rapid than eagles he streaked ‘cross the floor
Buster grabbed what he wanted, and came back for more:
More cheesecake, more truffles, more bagels and lox,
More chocolate chip cookies, more scotch on the rocks.
He smashed and he scrambled, bumped into the wall,
Then dashed away, dashed away, dashed away all.

“I should have cleaned up when the guests said good-bye,”
I moaned to myself with a pretty big sigh.
After two days of feasting, the kitchen looked grubby
I scrounged in the sink, tried to dig up the scrubby–

I searched quite in vain for a halfway clean towel
When out from the living room came quite a howl.
I set down the saucepan all caked thick with goo,
The glaze for the ham which had now turned to glue.

I skipped to the living room, limber of foot
And inched past the fireplace, dripping with soot.
Unraveling ribbons clung fast to my shin
As I looked round the post-Christmas scene with chagrin.

A mountain of presents all covered the floor
They looked so appealing when bought at the store.
Now gift wrap was ripped and the tissue was crumpled,
The new shoes abandoned, the new tank tops rumpled.

I picked my way round all the presents caloric,
The baskets of chocolate to make me euphoric,
Strange foods so exotic that no one would try it
(And don’t my friends know, New Year’s Day starts the diet?)

And just then I heard from the top of the spruce
The pitiful cry of a dog on the loose
I lifted my eyes from amidst the debris —
Old Buster had climbed to the top of the tree.

The angel crashed down as the Christmas tree swayed,
The ornaments flew in a sparkling cascade–
The puppy leapt on me, I felt his claws rip,
And then right behind, the tree started to tip–

The lights all exploded as down the tree crashed–
The pine needles shredded, the presents were smashed–
And I said as I landed on top of the pup,
“Happy Christmas to all– Someone else can clean up!”

(Janet Batchler, Quoth the Maven, December 26, 2009)

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Favorite Christmas Music: My Top Ten lists

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‘Tis the season of top ten-ten lists, so I thought I would offer one on my favorite Christmas music. I have way more Christmas music than anybody should rightfully have, and the more stuffy side of me doesn’t quite approve of a lot of it. Nonetheless for most of my adult life I have been collecting it and playing it, changing with the technologies over the years.

The first Christmas album I really knew was Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, still one of the best selling albums of all time. I knew my mom liked Bing Crosby, so one day when I was maybe ten I cajoled my father into buying it during a grocery shopping trip to the Safeway.

That was the only Christmas album my family owned, and I can still sing every song on it from memory, including the exotic ones like “Christmas in Killarney”and “Mele Kalikimaka.” And you’ve got to love the Andrew’s Sisters!

Later my own tastes evolved more to classical, and my personal first album was Handel’s Messiah, on vinyl. The version was by the Robert Shaw Chorale, and it was just selections rather than the whole work. From a lifetime of choral singing I now know every phrase of this grand piece, and Christmas is not complete without listening to the Advent and Christmas portions of it. I have two more great recordings, an early-instrument one with John Eliot Gardner on Philips, also on vinyl, and a CD with George Solti and the Chicago Symphony on the London label with Kiri te Kanawa. I love them all.

I have quite of lot of early and Reniassance Christmas music, with lots of Gabrielli horn concerti.  I have American folk Christmas albums and German Christmas albums.

J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is right up there in the pantheon, and I have a terrific vinyl version on Angel with the King’s College Choir, St Martin’s in the Fields, with Philip Ledger, conducting and a stellar lineup of soloists: Elling Ameling, Janet Baker, Robert Tear, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. That one gets a seasonal hearing, too.

A little later in my ministry I started collecting more popular seasonal music. First there was George Winston’s December for solo piano.  Then, we were given the original A Winter’s Solstice from Windham Hill by good friends, and that was the beginning of a long collection of pretty much everything Windham Hill has come out with, including the haunting Celtic Christmas series. This was also about when I started putting together atmospheric compilations to listen to while sitting by the fire.

But I enjoy choral music as well. I have the normal anglophile’s love for the sound of choristers, and this makes me nostalgic for my time in Oxford and Cambridge. So the choir of King’s College has to be on the list, although St John’s at Cambridge, and the choirs of the colleges at Christ Church, New College and Magdalen at Oxford would do just as well.

So here is my somewhat arbitrary top ten albums and top ten singles:

My Top Ten Albums (in no particular order)

  • Yo Yo Ma, Songs of Joy and Peace
  • Handel’s Messiah
  • J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
  • Sara McLaughlin, Wintersong
  • Chris Botti, December
  • Emmy Lou Harris, Light of the Stable
  • James Taylor at Christmas
  • Diane Krall, Christmas Songs
  • Choir of King’s College Cambridge, O Come all ye Faithful (This is under-volumned, sadly)
  • Bing Crosby, White Christmas
(Honorable mention, Liz Story, Liona Boyd, George Winston, Paul Hillier, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Amy Grant, Sting)

Top Ten Singles (in no particular order)

  • Bing Crosby, “White Christmas”
  • Sara McLaughlin, “River” ( a great cover of a Joni Mitchell classic.)
  • John Gorka, “I heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
  • Diana Krall, “Count Your Blessings”
  • James Taylor, “Some Children See Him” (an Andy Williams’ favorite from my childhood)
  • Yo-Yo Ma with Alison Kraus, “The Wexford Carol”
  • Turtle Island Band, “Veni Emmanuel”
  • William Ackerman, “Yazala Abanbuti”
  • Liz Story, “Il es ne le divin enfant/Immaculate Mary”
  • George Winston, “Walking in the Air” (from the film “the Snowman” and the album Forest)
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“So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”

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“Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”

(William Shakespeare,  Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1)
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“He Came to Earth that Winter Night” A Hymn for Christmas

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The Miracle of Christmas
C.M.

He came to earth that winter night
to share our human frame.
A choir of angels took to flight
to glorify his name.

Some shepherds in a field nearby
were summoned to his birth,
And heard the angels raise the cry
of peace upon the earth.

They went to where the babe did lay,
and found a manger bare.
Some sheep and oxen in the hay,
and Mary, Joseph, there.

O mysteries no eye has seen,
no human ear has heard,
That God should come to such a scene,
and we should call him Lord.

The world’s vast empires rise and fall,
great Caesar lost his claim,
But Mary’s babe is all in all,
and Jesus is his name.

© 2001 Richard L. Floyd

Suggested tune: “Winchester Old”

(Photo:  “Adoration of the Shepherds” by Gerard van Honthorst)

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Garrison Keillor on “The Season of Letter-Perfect Families”

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A year ago the first draft of my annual family Christmas letter that I sent out to my kids for vetting was so grumpy that they all quickly answered my e-mail and suggested that not everybody getting the letter might be able to appreciate my dry and sardonic (and apparently melancholic) wit.  The final result was much more presentable, but I felt regret that some measure of truthfulness was sacrificed in the process

The whole genre of Christmas newsletters is shot through with pitfalls. I found this great little piece by Garrison Keillor in Caroline Kennedy’s delightful anthology A Family Christmas.  My only disagreement with the following is his assertion of the universal modesty of Minnesotans.  After all, Prince is from the Twin Cities, but perhaps he is the exception that proves the rule.  In any case  I think Keillor has done as good a job as anybody in capturing the perils of the annual family letter:

“I love reading Christmas newsletters in which the writer bursts the bounds of modesty and comes forth with one gilt-edge paragraph after another: ‘Tara was top scorer on the Lady Cougars soccer team and won the lead role in the college production of Antigone, which by the way they are performing in the original Greek. Her essay on chaos theory as an investment strategy will be in the next issue of Forbes magazine, the same week she will appear as a model in Vogue. How she does what she does and still makes Phi Beta Kappa is a wonderment to us all. And, yes, she is still volunteering at the homeless shelter.’

I get a couple dozen Christmas letters a year, and I sit and read them in my old bathrobe as I chow down Hostess Twinkies. Everyone in the letters is busy as beavers, piling up honors hand over fist, volunteering up a storm, traveling to Beijing, Abu Dhabi and Antarctica; nobody is in treatment or depressed or flunking out of school, though occasionally there is a child who gets shorter shrift. ‘Chad is adjusting well to his new school and making friends. He especially enjoys handicrafts.’ How sad for Chad. There he is in reform school learning to get along with other little felons and making belts and birdhouses, but he can’t possibly measure up to the goddess Tara. Or Lindsey or Meghan or Madison, each of whom is stupendous.

This is rough on us whose children are not paragons. Most children aren’t. A great many teenage children go through periods when they loath you and go around slamming doors and playing psychotic music and saying things like ‘I wish I had never been born,’ which is a red-hot needle stuck under your fingernail. One must be very selective, writing about them for the annual newsletter. ‘Sean is becoming very much his own person and is unafraid to express himself. He is a lively presence in our family and his love of music is a thing to behold.’

I come from Minnesota where it is considered shameful to be shameless, where modesty is always in fashion, where self-promotion is looked at askance. Give us a gold trophy and we will have it bronzed so you won’t think that we think we’re special. There are no Donald Trumps in Minnesota. We strangle them all in their cribs. A football player who does a special dance after scoring a touchdown is something of a freak.

The basis of modesty is winter. When it is ten below zero and the wind is whipping across the tundra, there is no such thing as stylish and smart, and everybody’s nose runs. And the irony is, if you’re smart and stylish, nobody will tell you about your nose. You look in the rearview mirror and you see a gob of green snot hanging from your left nostril and you wonder, ‘How long have I been walking around like that? Is that why all those people were smiling at me?’

Yes it is.

So we don’t toot our own horns. We can be rather ostentatious in our modesty and can deprecate faster than you can compliment us. We are averse to flattery. We just try to focus on keeping our noses clean.

So here is my Christmas letter:

Dear friends. We are getting older but are in pretty good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think this war is an unmitigated disaster that will end up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It’s winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all.”

(Garrison Keillor, “The Old Scout: The Season of Letter Perfect Families,” December 12, 2006, in A Family Christmas selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy, Hyperion, 2007)

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“Why Mary?” C. S. Lewis on the Scandal of Particularity

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One of the curious features of the Christian faith is what theologians call “the scandal of particularity.”  Rather than put forth a general philosophy of religious truth or a set of axioms the Christian faith tells a story, and that story invites questions: Why the election of the people of Israel to carry the promise?  Why is Mary chosen to bear Jesus?  Why Jesus himself as the incarnate One?

C. S. Lewis tells us that God’s peculiar way of choosing particular people for his purposes is an offense to our modern sensibilities.

 “To be quite frank, we do not at all like the idea of a “chosen people.” Democrats by birth and education, we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true. It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concessions to this point of view. It does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree. After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who are to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers. All humanity (so far as concerns its redemption) has narrowed to that.” (From Miracles, Chapter 14)

(Picture:  Da Vinci, sketch of a woman’s head)
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Jesus had a Mother

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The simplest fact of the Christmas story is that Jesus had a mother. Mary is the guarantee of the true humanity of Jesus Christ. That Jesus had a mother indicates that he doesn’t merely resemble us; he is the same as us.

In the Creed Jesus’ human life is bracketed by two people: “He was born of the Virgin Mary, and he suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

“Born of the Virgin Mary.” Jesus begins his life, as we all do, with his mother. I was born in the former Women’s Hospital in New York City, now part of the great St Luke’s complex. The tired Floyd family joke was that as a male I came to be born in a women’s hospital, “because I wanted to be with my mother.”

But if in his human nature he is just the same as us, he is at the same time truly divine, and this is where the paradox of the virgin birth helps communicate the mystery of the incarnation. Mary herself carries some of the paradoxes of the story. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan calls her “Our Lady of the Paradoxes: Virgin but Mother, Human Mother but Mother of God.”

The title for Mary, “Mother of God,” comes from the story of the Visitation in Luke, which many Christians will be hearing this week in the Gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It is her cousin Elizabeth who is the first person to recognize Mary’s unique role in the drama of salvation. She says, “Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

As the Mother of God, or the “God bearer,” as the Eastern Orthodox put it, Mary is instrumental to the story. An ordinary humble young women who find herself in an extraordinary situation, Mary, like John the Baptist, points beyond herself to Christ. Since her role is to insure the humanity of Jesus, all attempts to turn her into something more than a human mother undermine her proper place in the story. It is helpful to keep in mind St. Ambrose’s dictum, that “Mary was the temple of God, not the God of the Temple.”