From My Nature Journal: "Hark How All the Welkin Rings!"

Say what?  What in the world is a welkin? When I was very young, my folks and sibs used to watch The Lawrence Welk Show every Saturday night together, my older brothers likely just to see the Lennon Sisters. One might hear at some point throughout those Saturdays, “Are we Welkin’ tonight?” But that’s not what I’m talking about. Still, the phrase sure has a familiar ‘ring’ to it, or at least a recognizable rhythm…

Some time ago, welkin was what showed up on my Merriam-Webster Word of the Day app. An old word, I was not familiar with it, defined as A) the vault of the sky, B) the celestial abode of God or the gods, and C) the upper atmosphere. And as a card-carrying member of both the ISC (the Inveterate Skywatchers Club) and the CES (the Chronic Etymologists Society), welkin looked like a word I ought to know better.

One of the things I love about good dictionaries is their practice, after their definition, of then using the word in a sentence, not just a random and made-up sentence, but one in published literature. These quotes can be obtuse or complicated, and all are well-written, but some can also be quite lovely, and that day’s sentences were of the latter sort. My favorite was from an 1848 tome with both a great title -- Harold, The Last of the Saxon Kings -- and a great name for the author, Edward Bulwer Lytton. His sentence: "The night was dim, but not dark; no moon shone, but the stars, wan though frequent, gleamed pale, as from the farthest deeps of the heaven; clouds grey and fleecy rolled slowly across the welkin, veiling and disclosing, by turns, the melancholy orbs." 

Beautiful! Doesn’t that sentence just transport you to the place? I’m not sure what all that had to do with old King Harold, but I still wish I could write like that. 

M-W’s Word of the Day went on to say that, though welkin has seen English usage since the 1200’s in reference to the once mysterious firmament, coming from the Old English and Old High German words for cloud, in current usage it is often paired with the verb to ring, expressing a loud noise or exuberance of emotion, sometimes even associated with the skies. Thunder? The sound of an explosion? 

Or the sound of an angelic choir, mayhap? After all, the Bible does say of God, “Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds! (Psalm 36:5)” But it’s the angelic choir thing that catches me and that I thought fun to share today, for Hark how all the welkin rings are Charles Wesley’s original opening words of the Christmas carol sung today as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! 

Who knew? I’m not sure when the words got changed, but here’s a photo of the original text in a hymnal dated 1739. I will print it as large as I can so you may look closely. You may be able to click on the photo to enlarge it a bit.

Many of our modern lyrics are intact, but note that Wesley’s stanzas are half the size of our carol’s. That is because the text was not paired with its common tune until over a hundred years later, a tune of German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Note also the complexity of Wesley’s theology in his last four stanzas, omitted from hymnals long ago. I particularly love the line in stanza eight, Now display thy saving power; ruined nature now restore. That is surely a prayer that all of us who are committed to Biblical earth stewardship take to heart and work toward.

Hark! The herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!” What a welkin display THAT must have been for the shepherds that first Christmas night!

~~ Blessed Christmas, 

RGM, December 18, 2021

From My Nature Journal: A Nature Hymn in a Surprising Place…

Happy Christmas to all!

It is another of the truly great songs of faith of all time – Joy to the World – with music and lyrics by two of the greatest musicians of all time, Georg Fredrik Handel (of Messiah fame) and Isaac Watts. JttW is perhaps the most well known Christmas carol in the English language, and verifiably the most published. My favorite rendition of it happens to be by The Canadian Brass in a recording given to me years ago by my friend Lowell; but since I cannot find that on YouTube, press here to listen to the classic version by the Percy Faith Orchestra. If you’re half asleep, it’ll wake you up. And you have my permission to ignore the cheesy picture.

It is only in recent years, however, that I have appreciated the nature verses. 

The nature verses? Yes. Perhaps something was lost to me in the song’s familiarity, or in the simple joy of singing something so magnificent at such a wonderful time of the year. But the more I ponder the nature verses the more astounding the song seems to me, brilliant lyrics. Enjoy the whole prayer of praise, but note especially the lyrics highlighted:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room

And heaven and nature sing!

 

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!

Let all their songs employ,

While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains

Repeat the sounding joy!

 

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground:

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found!

 

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness

And wonders of his love!

 

It is really good creation theology. The last line of the first verse reminds us that all of heaven and all of nature join in the celebration. In other words we sing and, somehow, all creation sings with us. On the day that we call his Triumphal Entry, celebrated on Palm Sunday, Jesus said that if the people failed to praise him the very rocks would not be able to hold back (Luke 19:40); prophet Isaiah said that the trees of the field would clap their hands as God led us forth with such joy (Isaiah 55:12); and the Apostle Paul said that all of creation even waits as on tiptoe to see the marvelous coming of the King of Kings (Romans 8:19)! 

And what’s that in verse three about a curse? You have to go all the way back to Genesis 3 for that one: the curse is the woe to the world that came with Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden. But the stanza goes on to assure us of the salvation of the promised Messiah, and the breaking of the curse as ‘far as the curse is found.’ Add to all this the fact that Watts was said to have had Psalm 98 in mind when he wrote it, and it is no wonder that the lyrics have lost nothing of their richness over the three centuries since their writing.

I don’t know about you but I sing this song lustily each season, thrilled with these thoughts. It is one of the songs I find myself most looking forward to every year. As you sing it, too, imagine all of creation joined in praise with you, and you’ll have the theology down pat!

Blessed Christmas!

~~RGM, December 25, 2020

From My Nature Journal: Solstice and its Illogical Contradiction

(Today's blogpost is a repeat of one I've done in the past, as things are quite busy right now with work responsibilities and family gatherings. But I do think a lot about this concept this time of year, and it gives me joy. Merry Christmas!)

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Though the day officially launches the season we call winter, it curiously also marks a seemingly contradictory turning point: as of this day in the earth’s annual trek around the sun, the Northern Hemisphere increases its direct angle toward the sun’s rays. Consequently, here in the north, daylight will begin to lengthen starting this very day, as will our hemisphere’s warming, and these two phenomena will continue for the next six months until the summer solstice in June similarly heralds a return to winter. Of course, the opposite of these are true in the Southern Hemisphere: today is their longest day of the year.

It is curious to me that the first day of winter is also the first day of winter’s expiration, its demise. One would think winter’s opening day would portend more of the same with nothing to contradict it, nothing but cold, dark barrenness, bleakness, or as the poet says, earth standing “…cold as iron, water like a stone.” We don’t call it the ‘dead of winter’ for nothing.

But there it is, the illogical and illuminating contradiction: light. Its return mocks winter, scoffs at the cold, derides the bleakness. Each day that follows, the sun rises just a little earlier and sets just a little later. Winter anticipates spring, death foresees life, dark predestines light, cold envisages warmth: these are the paradoxes of the seasonal change we call the winter solstice.

So it is no coincidence that the early church chose to recognize the solstice as the most appropriate time to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, in actual fact, Jesus’ birth likely took place some time during what we call October. I am not certain how that is surmised, but it has something to do with the timing of Jewish festivals and the typical season a census would have been called by Rome (see Luke 2:1-4), not likely the dead of winter.

But no. Indian Summer, beautiful as it is, just won’t do. To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation a time is needed that makes a statement, a time that belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst of its bleak midwinter and long underwear. Solstice. Now there is an appropriate time to celebrate the Light of the world.

To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation, a

time is needed that makes a statement, a time that

belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls

out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst

of its bleak midwinter and long underwear.

And so we do. We know there is no life without light. Light begets being, a commonly known biological fact.

The same is true in the spirit world. St. John the Evangelist puts it this way: In him (Jesus) was life, and that life was the light for humanity. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:4-5). Or later, sharing the very words of Jesus himself, he writes, And Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).” Or take it all the way back to the prophet hundreds of years before Christ. Anticipating the coming Messiah, Isaiah foretold: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned (Isaiah 9:2).

Light dispels darkness, not the other way 'round. Open a door into a dark closet and what happens? Does the darkness come creeping into the room in which you stand? No the opposite holds, and always will. Light outmaneuvers darkness.

So, solstice is here. I look forward to it not only because of Christmas but because it heralds the return of summer. Celebrate the light with me. Proclaim the truth of the Christmas carol:

          Light and life to all he brings,

          Ris'n with healing in His wings.

That's from Hark the Herald Angels Sing, by Charles Wesley, written in 1739. Or, if you prefer, fast forward to Bing Crosby (1963):

          The Child, the child, sleeping in the night,

          He will bring us goodness and light.

Let there be Light!

~~ RGM, From an 

Earlier Blog Entry

From My Nature Journal: Solstice and its Illogical Contradiction

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Though the day officially launches the season we call winter, it curiously also marks a seemingly contradictory turning point: as of this day in the earth’s annual trek around the sun, the Northern Hemisphere increases its direct angle toward the sun’s rays. Consequently, here in the north, daylight will begin to lengthen starting this very day, as will our hemisphere’s warming, and these two phenomena will continue for the next six months until the summer solstice in June similarly heralds a return to winter. Of course, the opposite of these are true in the Southern Hemisphere: today is their longest day of the year.

It is curious to me that the first day of winter is also the first day of winter’s expiration, its demise. One would think winter’s opening day would portend more of the same with nothing to contradict it, nothing but cold, dark barrenness, bleakness, or as the poet says, earth standing “…cold as iron, water like a stone.” We don’t call it the ‘dead of winter’ for nothing.

But there it is, the illogical and illuminating contradiction: light. Its return mocks winter, scoffs at the cold, derides the bleakness. Each day that follows, the sun rises just a little earlier and sets just a little later. Winter anticipates spring, death foresees life, dark predestines light, cold envisages warmth: these are the paradoxes of the seasonal change we call the winter solstice.

So it is no coincidence that the early church chose to recognize the solstice as the most appropriate time to celebrate the birth of Christ. Now, in actual fact, Jesus’ birth likely took place some time during what we call October. I am not certain how that is surmised, but it has something to do with the timing of Jewish festivals and the typical season a census would have been called by Rome (see Luke 2:1-4), not likely the dead of winter.

But no. Indian Summer, beautiful as it is, just won’t do. To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation a time is needed that makes a statement, a time that belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst of its bleak midwinter and long underwear. Solstice. Now there is an appropriate time to celebrate the Light of the world.

To celebrate something as significant as the incarnation, a

time is needed that makes a statement, a time that

belies its context, that refutes the cold, that calls

out the stony spiritual stupor right in the midst

of its bleak midwinter and long underwear.

And so we do. We know there is no life without light. Light begets being, a commonly known biological fact.

The same is true in the spirit world. St. John the Evangelist puts it this way: In him (Jesus) was life, and that life was the light for humanity. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:4-5). Or later, sharing the very words of Jesus himself, he writes, And Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).” Or take it all the way back to the prophet hundreds of years before Christ. Anticipating the coming Messiah, Isaiah foretold: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Isaiah 9:2).

Light dispels darkness, not the other way 'round. Open a door into a dark closet and what happens? Does the darkness come creeping into the room in which you stand? No, the opposite holds, and always will. Light outmaneuvers darkness.

So, solstice is here, one of my favorite times of the year, not only because of Christmas but because it heralds the return of summer. Celebrate the Light with me. Proclaim the truth of the Christmas carol:

          Light and life to all He brings,

          Ris'n with healing in His wings.

That's from Charles Wesley's Hark the Herald Angels Sing, written in 1739. Or, if you prefer, fast forward to Bing Crosby, 1963, in Do You Hear what I Hear?

          The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night:

          He will bring us goodness and light.

Let there be light!

~~ RGM, from an earlier journal and blog

entry I wrote on December 21, 2012

From My Nature Journal: I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Whatever…

If I hear that song once more this season, I may just shut it off. I first started feeling a low-grade sadness about it a week ago while I sat in a concert, and since then it has amazed me how often it is played. Every single radio or Pandora station that features Christmas music, whether secular or sacred, runs it, and often. Yes, it is certainly way preferred to Christmas Shoes and Santa Baby, but since when did I’ll Be Home for Christmas become so popular that absolutely everyone includes it on their holiday album? Is it the one with the least copyright protection? And while I’m at it, who chooses the on-air playlists where it seems to play every tenth song? Or less?

Or is it that it’s just being played to the country’s somber mood these days? Or mine? Is there some kind of nostalgic ‘home’ we all long for?

By contrast, I think that when it comes time for me to Need a Little Christmas, it’s not I’ll be Home that cheers me, but Joy to the World that would truly raise my hopes.

So, I confess: this is a strange Christmas for us. We are feeling somewhat homeless. Yes, I admit, in a very, very western affluent sort of way, but still, homeless. We’ve relocated to the Pacific Northwest to pursue a new season in life, but it came up quickly enough, and a new ministry call among wonderful people has demanded enough, that we have not yet been able to put a home under our feet. Oh, we’re not ungrateful, by any means: we’re living under the generous and plentiful graces of dear friends who had some lovely space available, and our daughter’s family, time with whom we treasure immensely. But this region has just not yet seemed like home. The culture is yet to be learned, the strangeness of the place has not yet subsided. And then there’s just this gnawing and seeming inhospitality and unwelcomeness caused by the weather.

We’ve been in the Pacific Northwest going on three months now, and I think it has rained for all but about thirty minutes since we arrived. Yes, I exaggerate. But imagine my giddy delight a week or so ago when the weak sun shone so brightly upon my early morning commute that I actually had to put on my sunglasses for what I realized was the very first time!

Have you ever noticed how people in different regions of the country have these key, local phrases that make light of their absolutely horrible weather? Think about it. In Phoenix, they say, “Oh, but it’s DRY heat.” By contrast, in Atlanta they say, “Oh, but I LOVE the humidity!” In New England, “Oh, nevermind the weather, just wait three (or ten, or sixty) minutes and it will change.” (Chicago says the same thing. Of course, Chicago also says, “Yes, but we have the CUBS!”) In Minneapolis, it’s “Oh, but the SUMMERS are so wonderful.” (Apparently no one here is taking the mosquitos into consideration.) Denverites say, “Oh, but the snow is always GONE in three days.” (We even said that a lot ourselves while we lived there.) But here in Seattle, the key phrase of weather denial is, “Oh, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear.”

Again, whatever…

As if good gear can substitute for the good feel of God’s good sunshine on one’s good, bare skin. Yes, one is outside. No, one cannot hear the birds due to the layers and the Gore-tex over one’s ears. Latent in all these regional phrases is the need a person has to make peace with the things about home that one does not like, or that actually may even be quite miserable, but must be lived with anyway.

I’m sorry. The weather here is Bad with a capital B. It’s absolutely gorgeous in some other ways. And we adore the people we are working and living with. But the climate has caused us to ask occasionally why people would want to live here! Perry Como’s local booster tune says, “The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.” I think I would beg to differ. Maybe they’re thinking of the cobalt blue from hiking up near magnificent Mount Rainier fifty miles away. Or maybe the skies just seem the bluest to Seattleites because the hue so rarely presents itself. Along the way this fall, many have told us it has been an unusually cloudy, wet and dark winter. Curiously, they started saying that to us in mid-October, so perhaps we should have taken that as a clue.

So I’m overstating my case, to be sure. (Overstatement IS a communication form, you know. Truly.) But the rain is getting old. Commuting is getting old. Living out of suitcases is getting old. And in spite of the  fact that Gail and I are pretty positive people, we both have been feeling a bit melancholy, not yet sensing like we’ve come home in the way we would like by now. Which brings me back to the overplayed Christmas song that a lot of other people may be enjoying this year more than me.

Today I woke long before dawn, walked to the farmhouse living room window and surveyed the advent of the last day of Advent. Disappointedly, I found that the sight matched my homeless mood. It was wet, cold and foggy, and I could barely see the road sixty feet away. Where am I? Why again am I here? I slipped on my feeble non-Gore-tex raincoat and took a long, long walk. By the time I was finished, the sun was beginning to burn through the fog, and as the fog lifted so did my spirit, just a bit. But it was also something else that happened, something timely for my need today. While walking through the dense fog, I had the chance to hear (but not see) great throngs of migrating, homeless trumpeter swans off feeding in a field to my left. And then to hear (but not see) even greater, more massive throngs of migrating, homeless snow geese off feeding in another field to my right. Lifting fog and contemplations of migrations brought some semblance of peace to my restless and homeless soul.

Maybe, in the grander scheme, we’re all still just migrating. Maybe that’s all we can do this side of things. The writer of the Bible passage puts it profoundly:

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed to go out to a place… in complete ignorance of his destination. It was faith that kept him journeying… For his eyes were looking forward to that city with solid foundations of which God Himself is designer and builder. (Hebrews 11:8-10)

I guess Abraham never made it home for Christmas either.

So, on we go. We all want a true home. This isn’t it.

~~ Migrating Heavenward, Weather Notwithstanding,

RGM, Christmas Eve 2016

From My Nature Journal: A Nature Hymn in an Unlikely Place

It is another of the truly great Christian songs of all time – Joy to the World – with music and lyrics written by two of the greatest composers of all time, George Fredrik Handel (of Messiah fame) and Isaac Watts. Joy to the World is perhaps the most well known Christmas carol in the English language, but is verifiably the most published. My favorite rendition of it happens to be by The Canadian Brass in a recording given to me years ago by my friend Lowell; but since I cannot find that on YouTube, press here to listen to the classic version by the Percy Faith Orchestra. You have my permission to ignore the cheesy picture.

It is only in recent years, however, that I have appreciated the nature verses.

The nature verses? Yes. It’s a nature hymn in an unlikely place – the Christmas section of the hymnal. Perhaps something was lost to me in the song’s familiarity, or in the simple joy of singing something so magnificent at such a wonderful time of the year. But the more I ponder the nature verses the more astounding the song seems to me, absolutely brilliant lyrics. Enjoy the whole prayer of praise, but note especially the lyrics highlighted:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room

And heaven and nature sing!

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!

Let all their songs employ,

While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains

Repeat the sounding joy!

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground:

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found!

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness

And wonders of his love!

It is really good theology, actually. The last line of the first verse and all of verse two remind us that all heaven and all nature join in the celebration. In other words, we sing, and, somehow, all creation sings with us: Jesus said that if the people failed to praise him, the very rocks would not be able to hold back (Luke 19:40); Isaiah said that the trees of the field would clap their hands as God led us forth with such joy (Isaiah 55:12); and Paul said that all of creation even waits as on tiptoe to see the marvelous coming of the King of Kings (Romans 8:19)!

And what’s that in verse three about a curse? You have to go all the way back to Genesis 3 for that one: the curse is the woe to the world that came with Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, and the salvation of the promised Messiah is the curse’s breaking as ‘far as the curse is found.’ Add to all this the fact that Watts was said to have had Psalm 98 in mind when he wrote the lyrics, and it is no wonder that they have lost nothing of their richness over the three centuries since their writing.

I don’t know about you but I will sing this song lustily this season, thrilled with these thoughts. As you sing it, too, imagine all of creation joined in praise along with you!

Blessed Advent!

~~RGM, December 14 2016,
Reprinting an earlier post

Blowin' in the Wind: Let Heaven and Nature Sing

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a regular feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I may not have written but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

I’ve written in the past on Isaac Watts’ great Christmas carol, Joy to the World, emphasizing the text’s nature strophes. (Click here for that post.) My favorite lines?

No more let sin and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground:

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found!

As I mentioned in that earlier blogpost, the ‘curse’ is a reference back to Genesis 3 and the punishments Adam and Eve received in consequence of their sin; it is said there that the ground to be tilled by them would be cursed with thorns and weeds as they did so. That curse is now tempered by the Incarnation, where blessings now flow in more than commensurate degree to the struggle. Indeed, let heaven and nature sing!

Though Watts seems to have based his hymn text on Psalm 93, a genre with frequent references to a singing creation, I’ve been studying Isaiah recently and have also found there several references to a heavens and nature that sing. Take for example Isaiah 44:23 -- Sing, you heavens, for the Lord has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth! Break out into singing, O forest, all of your trees, for the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel. Or consider Isaiah 55:12, one of my favorites – For you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.

G.E. Wright, the great Harvard Old Testament scholar and archeologist, goes so far in his little commentary on Isaiah as to say that one of the prophet’s key themes is his emphasis upon God as sovereign Creator, but it is simply “…the preface to the proclamation of God as sovereign Redeemer. He who has the power to create is Lord and Savior. The creation by God is not set forth as a matter of speculation… It is a means of proclaiming… his mighty acts in history whereby men [sic] may see and know his sovereignty.”

So what do heaven and nature sing? That God’s power and sovereignty have been manifested in a holy birth that makes possible the salvation of absolutely everything – every body, every soul and all of creation.

And that’s something worth singing about.

~~Blessed Christmastide,

RGM, December 25, 2015