Light On Dark Water

Greene: Lord, Let Me Know Mine End

Because my wife and I are chronically and apparently incorrigibly late almost everywhere we go, we did not go to our usual Ordinariate Mass yesterday morning. It's on the west side of Mobile, and we live twenty miles to the east. It takes us most of an hour to get there. The Mass is at 9:30, and at approximately 9:25 we had just reached downtown, with ten to fifteen minutes yet to go. So we decided to just stop where we were and wait until 10:30 for the Mass at the cathedral. And I'm glad we did, because I heard this music for the first time.

I like the music, but I really like the text, which is from Psalm 39:

Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live. Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee; and verily every man living is altogether vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in thee.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling; hold not thy peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.

If you're at all familiar with the Coverdale translation of the Psalms, you may have guessed (if you didn't already know) that this is one of his. Reportedly he is less accurate but he is very often a better poet than the King James translators, who have, for instance, that last sentence as:

O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.

Not nearly as poignant, to my ear.

I thought I was fairly literate about classical music, but can't remember ever having heard Maurice Greene's name before. He was an English contemporary of Bach and Handel and according to Wikipedia this piece is "his acknowledged masterpiece." He's probably well-known to church musicians in the Anglican tradition and to those particularly interested in choral music.

The Intellect Cannot Cope

The intellect cannot cope with such paradoxes, though it somehow senses the reality beyond all reality, the truth beyond all truth. Precisely here lies the danger. The mind must never allow itself to be misled into seeming 'comprehension,' into facile sensations or phrases with nothing solid behind them. The whole problem is a mystery, the sacred mystery of the relationship of the triune God to his incarnate Son. We can never penetrate it, and knowledge of this incapacity must dominate our every thought and statement concerning Jesus' life.

--Romano Guardini, The Lord

I think this basic idea is itself almost a commonplace now, so much so that it can become another means of evasion, of "seeming 'comprehension'".  So that stern "must dominate" is still needed, and always will be. 

What Rules Me?

People, mainly. Those who speak to me, whose words I read; those with whom I associate or would like to associate; the people who give or withhold, who help or hinder me; people I love or influence or to whom I am bound by duty--these rule in me. God counts only when people permit him to, when they and their demands leave me time for him.... Things also rule in me: things I desire, by the power of that desire; things that bother me, by their bothersomeness; things I encounter wherever I go.... No, God certainly does not dominate my life. Any tree in my path seems to have more power than he, if only because it forces me to walk around it. What would life be like if God did rule in me?

--Romano Guardini, The Lord

He didn't mention animals. Animals also rule me.

Shtisel

Someone recommended this Israeli TV series a week or two ago. I've now seen most of the first series (there are two). It's really good. Very much recommended. It can be compared in a very broad way to Detectorists, in that it's a quiet, low-key story, warm and generous but not sentimental, devoid of cheap spectacle. The comparison doesn't go much further than that. Shtisel doesn't have much outright comedy, though it has its moments of humor. And the milieu presented in Shtisel is, obviously, vastly different: a very Orthodox ("haredi") Jewish community/subculture in the midst of modern Jerusalem. But if you like Detectorists I think there's a pretty good chance that you'd like this.

Here's the only trailer I can find. It's misleading in a couple of ways, mainly in the music. The series actually has a very beautiful, quiet, effective soundtrack. Whatever that is playing in the background of the trailer is not in the series. And that voiceover intro is a little obtuse.

There's just one thing that bothers me about it: those hats. What's the deal with those? The way they sit so high on the man's head always strikes me as discomfiting, distorting the figure's proportions, and slightly ridiculous, as if the hat is too small and might fall off. I don't know whether there is some significance to them or they just happened to be what was worn at the time when the group's dress code was formalized.