Susan asked for this one: I’d never heard of either the artist or the song: Gather Round, Ye Children, Come by Andrew Peterson.
Very nice! Full of Scriptural allusions, too; if you know your Bible, you will spot them quickly. Thanks, Susan.
Year: 2016
Sanity Break: Kittens on the Run
Our two cats, Robbie and Peep, have never outgrown chasing one another. You should hear them zoom up the stairs. Peep also chases herself from time to time, complete with sound effects. Cats do know how to have fun.
Note the litter-box leap executed by one of these kittens. Too bad they don’t have that in the Olympics.
‘Gesu Bambino’ (with Pavarotti)
First published in 1917, this beautiful Italian Christmas carol, Gesu Bambino, needs no translation into English: just lean back and listen. We’ve got Luciano Pavarotti singing, with backup by the Vienna Boys Choir. Let the music draw you into Christmas.
P.S.–I’m all caught up on your Christmas music requests, everybody, so now I’d like to take some more. Don’t leave it all up to me and the same little handful of readers–everybody pitch in.
The Liberals’ Book of Lamentations
Liberals don’t believe in God, but that doesn’t stop them from believing. Left-wing politics is their religion, and it mimics Christianity. It has a Supreme Being: the government. It has priests: the teacher unions. It has sacraments: abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and Sunday nooze shows.
And it has a kind of pseudo-Bible, too, with Darwin in the place of Moses, and major prophets like Marx, John Dewey, Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, etc.
What we are seeing unfold before our eyes is the creation of a liberal Book of Lamentations.
They still can’t believe they lost the election. Open borders, transgender bathrooms, Common Core, globalism, an Attorney General empowered to investigate “Climate Change Denial”–it simply isn’t possible that the American people could have rejected all those blessings!
So now they’ve identified the cause of this calamity. The Russians hacked our voting machines and swung the election to Donald Trump! It never could’ve happened otherwise! And they put out all that fake news about poor Hillary!
Just you watch: this will all go down in liberal history as sacred narrative, rock-solid truth–and this from people who are always babbling about “your truth” and “my truth,” only somehow their truth is always supposed to win. It will all be written down, and passed on to posterity. Their children and grandchildren, the ones that haven’t been aborted, will inherit it. And anyone who questions it had better duck.
It’ll be fun to see what they wind up writing about Anthony Weiner. That ought to be a hoot.
Global Warming, the Lie That Will Not Die
So now it’s the reindeer. Yup–according to a report by a “global news agency” called AFP, Global Warming’s gonna wipe out all the reindeer ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/reindeer-shrinking-warming-threatens-xmas-icon-000845791.html ).
Now get this. In the same article, they say the poor reindeer are getting smaller and smaller as the Arctic gets warmer and warmer, they are any day now gonna suffer “a catastrophic die-off”–and yet at the same time, reindeer “numbers have increased over the past two decades.”
Neat trick, eh? Starving to death and steadily increasing their numbers at the same time.
And this tragic business is all gonna stop, once we encumber ourselves with a whopping big “carbon tax”? While Kerry and Obama and Gore and the rest of ’em go on living in mansions and zooming all over the world in private jets? Big Government and Big Science are gonna step in and control the natural processes of the earth?
It only takes two words to explain this whole Climate Change business.
Power grab.
Stand Up and Sing
This is the Idaho Falls Symphony Orchestra, plus the local high school choir, really, really going to town on Ding Dong Merrily on High–you gotta love it!
I’m still a bit off-color after freezing my marrow during my bike ride yesterday, but this is music that can get you going.
And remember–the villains of this age don’t like it.
Cats vs. Snowflakes
Cats can have fun with just about anything, including snow. You can grab snowflakes on their way down, or try to catch them in your mouth before they hit the ground, or pounce on them after they hit. They call it joie de vivre. Or they would call it that, if cats spoke French.
The Church of Global Warming
The Red Pope is at it again. Now, he says, new Roman Catholic priests are to be instructed to preach that “Climate Change”–called Global Warming when it isn’t snowing–is “real” and “caused by human activity.” After all, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences says so ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4020344/New-Catholic-priests-learn-climate-change-studies-drive-church-cut-global-warming.html ).
That deserves a raspberry.
Confession ought to be a trip, from now on. “I have sinned… I used half a dozen pieces of toilet paper in one trip to the loo.” Why does this enterprise remind me of Starbuck’s abortive scheme, not too long ago, to nag customers about “racism” when they bought a cup of coffee?
Mr. Pope–when you and your globalist buddies start acting like you believe in man-made Climate Change, and give up your private jets and mansions in order to Save The Planet, then maybe some of us will believe it, too. For the time being, it still looks like just another way to grow the government.
What Do Unbelievers Worship?
So the movie reviewer comes on the air, and the first words out of his mouth: “I’m not a Christian, I’m not a believer…”
Maybe it’s the time I grew up in, or the neighborhood–but I can never get used to the casual, unashamed declaration of disbelief in God. Why the guy had to introduce his movie review (it was supposed to be a Christian-themed movie) with this non-faith statement, I don’t know. Did he expect us to stand up and cheer?
I don’t believe there are all that many more atheists now than there always were. It’s just that now they expect to be applauded for it. But the real question I have for them is, “If not God, then who or what do you believe in?” And if he answers, “Nothing,” I don’t believe him because nobody believes in nothing.
But what do professed unbelievers believe in? If they answer “The state,” we are incredulous–I mean, who’s that big a butterball? If they answer “Science,” we wonder, “What science? Yesterday’s, today’s, or tomorrow’s–they’re all different. One generation’s science is another’s superstitition.” And if they come up with “The innate goodness and ultimate perfectibility of man”–well, you don’t know whether to guffaw or sigh for pity.
Those things require much more faith than does belief in God. There isn’t enough faith available in the universe to get anyone but a fool to believe in any of them.
But somehow it got to be chic to claim non-belief in God, or at least non-belief in Christianity. If you believe in many gods at once, Hollywood will still love you almost as much as it would if you believed in no god at all.
This was not so of the America that I was born and raised in.
Are we a better nation for our embrace of non-belief?
Now there’s a notion to laugh at!
‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’
Turn up the volume on this one–Ding Dong Merrily on High, sung by the Kings College Choir at Cambridge, Class of 1983.
I wonder if I can find this with a harpsichord. I love this carol played on a harpsichord!
Hey, everybody–I’m all caught up on your hymn requests, so I need some more. Let’s proclaim Christmas!