the week
Now and then, to enjoy an especially appealing lower case "g" with an elegantly twisting tail and a cap like a California quail, I like to use a different typeface, font, but not this morning.
Right now I'm sticking to good old Helvetica while thinking on various things, including Sean Dietrich's blog this morning about his Uncle John, which opened with reminiscence about "crying songs" that Hillbilly Music, later called "country and western", used to be. Pretty much all of it was either how much you miss your old mama or your broken heart that your girlfriend cheated with another guy. I gave it up more than thirty, less than forty years ago when I realized it always made me sad and I prefer happy. But yes, crying songs with a half-empty glass of beer and tears dripping into it. When they's crying songs on the jukebox, don't never sip from nobody else's beer else it taste salty.
An unusual spate of deaths this week, folks from my history and memories. One we'd been friends since when, and she still called me Bubba. One a Bay High classmate, we were in the band together, and I was at their wedding. One was my cabin counselor my first year at summer camp when I was ten and he was fifteen. See what happens to life? When it happens to us we are fine, but people are left behind remembering. Grieving and remembering.
The week, anniversary of Joseph being struck by lightning. Impossible to let go especially when looking out into the Gulf a thunderstorm is approaching. My father's birthday 1911 and my parents' wedding anniversary 1934.
Tomorrow's lectionary Propers, I love the psalm, which is classic Hebrew poetry. No, it isn't an acrostic, the first hint of an acrostic psalm is if it has 22 verses, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, this is not an acrostic. But, at least in English translation, the parallelism is perfect, the way the second half of each verse responds to the first half. This psalm would be best sung, chanted, especially chanted back and forth between cantor and congregation, or between choir and congregation; or maybe chanted antiphonally, back and forth left and right sides of the congregation. I've had all of those ways done in my parishes, it really enriched our Anglican worship. In the past two generations or so, since the mid to late twentieth century liturgical reform, worship in the Episcopal Church has pretty much faded off to Protestant vanilla, an experience not a criticism, I think that was the intent, maybe so we didn't seem peculiar to guests. There was a Time when Anglicanism could be defined as "a sound in worship". I miss it, though less and less with Time and have almost forgotten. No matter.
Anyway, read the psalm below. It's obviously a psalm extolling David; but notice its perfection as if presented to the Lord like an unblemished lamb.
T+
Psalm 20
Exaudiat te Dominus
1 May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble, *
the Name of the God of Jacob defend you;
2 Send you help from his holy place *
and strengthen you out of Zion;
3 Remember all your offerings *
and accept your burnt sacrifice;
4 Grant you your heart's desire *
and prosper all your plans.
5 We will shout for joy at your victory
and triumph in the Name of our God; *
may the Lord grant all your requests.
6 Now I know that the Lord gives victory to his anointed; *
he will answer him out of his holy heaven,
with the victorious strength of his right hand.
7 Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, *
but we will call upon the Name of the Lord our God.
8 They collapse and fall down, *
but we will arise and stand upright.
9 O Lord, give victory to the king *
and answer us when we call.