Hmmm....

I'm going to start picking up the phone when telemarketers call.

I'll answer, "Oxford Sewage!"

Fall Quarter Home Stretch

I have my conducting final exam tomorrow morning. Had I realized sooner what a valuable tool the video camera was, my quarter would have been less angst-filled. As it is, my confidence has increased significantly, and I hope my grade reflects how much I've improved.

Still, any prayers you have to spare would be appreciated, Dear Readers!

Organ juries went well; I played the Vierne Adagio the best I'd ever done, but the Bach Prelude could've gone better. My hands were shaking pretty severely, and that's NOT good for note accuracy on a very fast piece. The most frustrating thing is that I KNOW I can play it perfectly, and it just doesn't happen in front of people! Bah!! Someday I'll get over this extreme nervousness thing......

A Study in Valor

US Marine Corps Sergeant Rafael Peralta was born on April 7, 1979 in Mexico City. He was the oldest of four siblings born to Rafael and Rosa Peralta, and immigrated to the United States with his family. He joined the USMC as soon as he had a green card, and became an American citizen while serving.

SGT Peralta served the United States with patriotism, enthusiasm and valor. In his parents' home, his bedroom walls were adorned with three items--a copy of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and his graduation certificate from boot camp. Before being deployed to Fallujah, he wrote to his 14-year old brother, "Be proud of me, bro...and be proud of being an American."

On November 15 of 2004, Peralta, while deployed as a scout team leader, was ordered with his team to clear houses in Operation Phantom Fury. Peralta was not assigned to enter the buildings, but chose to do so anyway.

He led his team through a series of house clearings before charging into the fourth house. He found two empty rooms on the ground floor, and upon opening a third door was hit multiple times with AK-47 fire. He dropped to the floor and rolled aside to allow his Marines behind him to return fire.

The insurgents threw a grenade at the Marines. The two Marines with Sgt. Peralta attempted to leave, but could not. Peralta was still conscious on the floor and his teammates report that despite his extensive injuries, he reached for the grenade and pulled it under his body--absorbing the majority of the lethal blast, which killed him instantly but saved the lives of his fellow Marines.

Sergeant Peralta was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but the testimony of doctors stated that he could not have possibly have been conscious enough to have done the heroic action in question, though his teammates swear by it. He received the Navy Cross instead--the Navy's second-highest honor.

Sergeant Rafael Peralta served his country with honor and valor unto death, and is an example for us all.

Semper Fi.

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King - November 22, 2009 - UPDATED

Processional: All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name (BB 742)
Offertory: If the choir can pull it together: Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life. On an emergency basis only: At the Name of Jesus (BB 749)
Communion: Antiphon: Sedebit, then probably something instrumental
Recessional: Alleluia! Sing to Jesus (BB 748)

Happy Birthday, Claus!

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944

Loyalty

And, well, I don't know WHAT this is:

Happy Veteran's Day!

"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." --Winston Churchill

God bless you all.

Thank you, God...

...Thank you to all the saints to whom I desperately prayed during those harrowing hours of The Test Of Doom (also known as the ACT, and the very reason I asked for your prayers way-back-then). Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you, blogreaders, as well, for your prayers.




And thank you to this young man, who I'm convinced had a hand in helping me out of this wretched mess of a test.

With God as my witness--I love life.

Now, I just have to survive the PT.

28, people. I got a 28.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - November 15, 2009

Prelude: O Mensch Bewein Dein Sunde Gross
Processional: The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns (BB 48)
Offertory: Tunes 3 and 4 from Archbishop Parker's Psalter (Thomas Tallis)
Communion: Amen Dico Vobis QuidQuid; What Wondrous Love Is This (BB 431)
Recessional: To Jesus Christ, Our Sovereign King (BB 740)
Postlude: something by Bach

Carissa will be Conductor for the Tallis.

This is our last choir Sunday of Fall Quarter. Great job everyone! May God bless you and protect you during Winter Break, and I'll see you in January.

UPDATE: It would seem I'm getting a little ahead of myself. NEXT weekend will be the last weekend we sing together. This is a sign of how much I want the quarter to be over. :)

By the Babe Unborn

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,


If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.


In dark I lie: dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.


Let storm-clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.


I think that if they gave me leave
Within that world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.


They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

--G.K Chesterton

Mythopoeia

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgment, and a laugh
response of those that felt a stir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! 'wish-fulfillment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfillment we devise -- for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

--J.R.R Tolkien, Mythopoeia, a rebuttal to C.S Lewis

A Healthy Dose of Chesterton a Day...

The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.

The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.

But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?

--G.K Chesterton, Ballad of the White Horse, book I

This is poetry week, or so I've decided. I will post random snippets of (mostly British) poetry during this week. And maybe next week. And the week after. Expect Chesterton.

Dear God....

If you really want me to conduct choirs for Your glory, will you please give me a little talent for the job? Thank you.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - November 8, 2009

Processional: Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow (BB 573)
Offertory: Lord of All Hopefulness (BB 393)
Communion: Dominus Regit Me; The Living God My Shepherd Is (BB 485)
Recessional: Holy God, We Praise Thy Name (BB 202)

Happy Feast of All Saints!

On this Feast of All Saints, I ask all of my five (or so) readers to please pray and ask the saints' prayers for my sister Jeanie, who is undergoing a double mastectomy tomorrow. Thank you, and may God's richest blessings be upon you all.