Month: December 2020

Every Christmas Eve day, at 10:00 in the morning, I faithfully listen to the live BBC broadcast from King’s College Chapel, Cambridge of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. There’s just something about the solemnity and grandeur they manage to bring to the occasion.

To say nothing of the music. I absolutely love it, particularly the congregational singing, more so even than the stellar choral anthems. 

I love the earthy resonance and sheer weightiness of the organ, together with the slow, measured, yet always spirited tempo of hundreds of voices seamlessly joined together, topped off by an arrangement for the sopranos that soars impossibly and resplendently above the entire proceedings, all worthily contained within the improbable acoustics of the old, majestic chapel. 

Continue reading “Passing Through Providence”

In many respects, WWI is the defining moment in modern Western history. As the 19^th century ended, incipient tensions had come to the fore, casting cautionary shadows over a new century’s overweening confidence and sense of optimism.

The technological progress of the era had been extraordinary. Science and industry were ascendent. Yet economic disparities grew, industrial workers were exploited, and the fabric of traditional society began to fray. Many felt uncertain, adrift, vulnerable.

Thus, when war came, some saw it as a referendum on Western Civilization itself. For a new challenge had arisen, one that had effectively questioned the supremacy of settled tradition. German Idealism, that is, promised a new man and a new future, mercifully detached from the past and its myriad sins and imperfections.

Continue reading “But the Earth Abideth Forever…”