Monday, December 01, 2008

Advent obsessions

I've been thinking about The Advent Prose today. Actually, I've been obsessed with the images in it since yesterday, when it was the first piece sung at the Eucharist, reinforced by the OT lesson for the day. Recently I've grown impatient with archaic language in worship, but the imagery of "we all do fade as a leaf" and "our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" is compelling stuff. And I realised in conversation that the very familiarity of the words in their plainsong setting removes the sense of the archaic, and that I am free to take them to myself.

As a result, I think I've written my first post for Love Blooms Bright, the Advent blog. It will appear on Sunday, but in the meantime I commend the blog to you for a fascinating series of meditations and insights into the season of Advent. And I shall try not to rant about not anticipating Christmas - except to say that it is much more meaningful to keep Advent first!

2 comments:

  1. Chris, it is funny, but in reading the Bible, I enjoy the King James the best. Although the ancient language is sometimes awkward, if not confusing, there is also a certain "validity" to it...our modern language seems so "lax" and almost "lame", comparatively speaking.

    Christmas is going to be so much more special this year, with the arrival of little Alan. I remember listening to Christmas carols and looking down at my baby Michelle (born 5 November) and feeling more "connected" to Christmas...the presence of a new baby adds such an element of joy to the holiday, but makes the work of Messiah almost more meaningful, gazing into baby eyes, and thinking about what lie ahead for our Dear Savior as his young mother gazed into His precious eyes...

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  2. Indeed. Though I was taken up short when I came to the ambiguous "Be not very angry" in the version you link to, in place of the more familiar "Be not wroth very sore".

    As a result, I thought I'd check out the original and made the interesting discovery that the translator into English has replaced the third verse with an entirely different one, and changed a line of the last verse. The changes seem to me to result in a huge improvement, though I've been unable to discover who I should thank for it.

    Robin

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