No Christmas hymns submitted for the contest this morning–where did everybody go? So let me see if I can start the ball rolling with this, one of my favorites: The Sussex Carol, performed by Maddy Priot and the Carnival Band, the old-fashioned way. Is that somebody playing a sackbut in the background? Wow!
I’ve never had a pet rabbit, although I’ve always loved them. Something tells me our two cats would be afraid of a bunny.
Anyway, here are cats and bunnies playing and cuddling together. Don’t worry about the bunnies: none of them seems the least bit afraid. And it’s not always the cat chasing the rabbit: just as often, it’s the other way around.
“Now that the story makes sense,” writes Violet Crepuscular, introducing Chapter CCXXXV of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, “we can proceed with the thorny business of annulling Lady Margo Cargo’s accidental marriage to Constable Chumley.” Meanwhile, her editor has failed to inform her that she has entirely skipped Chapter CCXXXIV. This omission will surely come back to haunt her.
The problem is not the constable, who has forgotten all about the marriage, but Lady Margo herself, who believes she is with child by the constable–which the doctor insists is medically impossible, the marriage never having been consummated. There is doubt that Chumley knows what “consummated” means.”I gae frather in a fairn!” he asserts.
Johnno the Merry Minstrel thinks he has the solution.
“That fool of an assistant justice of the peace, Master Roger Addlepate, my lord, who brainlessly performed the marriage, must be persuaded to un-perform it.”
“How is he to do that?” Lord Jeremy wonders. He needs to marry wealthy Lady Margo to save his ancestral home, Coldsore Hall, from a growing army of creditors.
“We must re-stage the ceremony,” Johnno explains, “and do the whole thing backwards. All the words must be spoken backwards, in reverse order from that in which they were originally spoken. So we start at ‘I do,’ which must be spoken as ‘do I,’ and work our way, backwards, all the way back to the beginning, when the A.J.P. will say, ‘God of sight the in together gathered are we.’ And then you declare the whole business undone and annulled!”
“Dontcha think that’ll be kinda complicated for the poor idjit who has to do it?” asks Lord Jeremy’s friend, the American adventurer Willis Twombley. “Might be a far sight easier if I jist shoot him.”
“Let’s try the sane way first, old boy,” says Lord Jeremy. Happily, Lady Margo gives her consent to the procedure.
There is some trouble getting Chumley to participate, but a few tankards of rich brown ale do the trick. “He never said anything the first time out, anyhow,” Lord Jeremy remarks.
The backwards ceremony takes all day, owing to the participants getting confused about the word order, and Twombley suffers from an increasingly itchy trigger finger. Finally Addlepate is able to utter the words, ‘Wife wedded lawful your for woman this take do you?’, and the business is concluded. Imagine how much easier it would have been, had rewind buttons been invented in the 19th century.
Lady Margo jumps up and cheers, which causes her upholstered wooden leg to fall off. She doesn’t care. “I’m not with child by the constable anymore!” she exults. “Thank you, Johnno!” But Johnno already has his harmonica out, playing and singing (at the same time) “My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.”
Ms. Crepuscular concludes with a gentle reminder that the movie rights to Oy, Rodney are still for sale.
I asked Joshua if he could find us any Christmas hymns in Japanese, and he came up with this: Silent Night (“Kiyoshi, Kono Yoru”), sung by Ashley Serena. Thanks, brother!
“A house of prayer for all nations…” If wonder if any of the apostles during Pentacost, when they spoke in tongues (Acts 2), spoke in Japanese. Betcha someone did.
I pray this every Christmas. Please join in!
O Lord Our God–bless this Christmas season of 2018, and give it extraordinary power to turn our hearts to Jesus Christ, our Savior and our rightful, natural Lord. Make it mighty to convert unbelief to faith: turn loose your Holy Spirit to speak directly to the heart and gather souls into The Good Shepherd’s sheepfold. Make this stronger than past Christmases, and Christmases to come, make mightier yet. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
My regular round of Bible reading has brought me to John 11, in which Our Lord Jesus Christ raises his friend, Lazarus, from the dead–after he has been four days in the tomb and by now, says his sister, Martha, “he stinketh.”
In John 12 we find the last mention of Lazarus in the Bible: “But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus to death; because by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus” (verses 10-11).
That’s the last we hear of Lazarus. Did they put him to death, or did they decide to let him be? Did Lazarus have to flee to another country? In various church traditions, many centuries old, Lazarus winds up as a bishop in Cyprus… or, at the other end of the Mediterranean, in Marseilles. I have no way of knowing which, if any, of those traditions is factually true.
But I do believe the Biblical account: God’s Word is always factually true. Lazarus died. He was dead for four days. Jesus Our Lord raised him from the dead, and a few days after that, he was eating dinner with his family, with Jesus as their guest. And the authorities in Jerusalem were trying to decide whether to murder him.
I believe they decided not to kill him. I don’t think they could have stifled the uproar that would have then ensued. Nor do I think the apostles would have failed to mention it.
And why did Jesus weep, when he arrived in Bethany and was shown Lazarus’ tomb? He knew in advance that he would restore Lazarus’ life–so why was He so sad?
Jesus had many, many things on His mind that could have made Him sad, with the sight of the tomb only serving as a catalyst.
But this we know: Our Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, after four days in the tomb, and by this mighty work demonstrated who He was. The testimony has stood for nigh on two thousand years, and will stand forever.
Do you believe it? Six years go by, we change presidents… and libs are still squawking for “free college” for everyone, courtesy of the defenseless taxpayer. It sounded then exactly as it sounds now.
https://leeduigon.com/2012/04/25/the-fantasy-or-should-i-say-hallucination-of-universal-college/
Somehow burdening ourselves with several million more angry, ignorant, unemployable, bunco victims with useless degrees in Gender Studies, Beyonce Studies, and Oakum Picking is supposed to give our country “the world’s smartest work force” (translation: See that guy sweeping the floor? He has a master’s degree in Superhero Studies!) and make us “more competitive” with the other countries. What would we be competing for? A national bankruptcy award?
I don’t think anybody else will ask for this, so I will: Pat-a-Pan, an old Burgundian Christmas carol whose like is rarely met with anymore. This rousing performance is by the Zamar Students’ Choir at Harrisburg Baptist Church, in the Northern Mississippi Christmas Festival.
Erlene requested this, wanted to be sure we didn’t leave it out–The First Noel, sung by the Kings College Choir at Cambridge, England. “Born is the King of Israel…” And He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Yet another cold, grey, rainy day around here… Ah, to be a dog in snow! Don’t you find their merriment infectious? Dig the creative way one dog finds to get down a flight of chilly, icy stairs. Not to mention the dog who volunteers to shovel the walk.