Akdamut – A Pentecost Poem

Translated from the Aramaic and Source of the hymn: "O Love of God"
Source: http://www.edhaor.org/

Akdamut-First Day Of Shavuot ("Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book" edited by Morris Silverman with Robert Gordis, 1946. USCJ and RA, 185-88.)


Were the sky of parchment made,
A quill each reed, each twig and blade,
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,

The marvelous story
Of God's great glory
Would still remain untold;
For He, Most High,
The earth and sky
Created alone of old.

Without fatigue or weary hand,
He spoke the word, He breathed command;
The world and all that therein dwell,
Field and meadow, fen and fell,

Mount and sea,
In six days He
With life did then inspire;
The work when ended,
His glory ascended
Upon His throne of fire.

Before Him myriads angels flash,
To do His Will they run and dash;
Each day new hosts gleam forth to praise
The Mighty One, Ancient of Days;

Six-winged hosts
Stand at their posts -
The flaming Seraphim -
In hushed awe
Together draw
To chant their morning hymn.

The angels, together, without delay,
Call one to another in rapturous lay:

"Thrice holy He
Whose majesty
Fills earth from end to end."
The Cherubim soar,
Like the Oceans's roar,
On celestial spheres ascend,

To gaze upon the Light on high,
Which, like the bow in cloudy sky,
Is iris-colored, silver-lined;
While hasting on their task assigned,

In every tongue
They utter song
And bless and praise the Lord,
Whose secret and source,
Whose light and force
Can ne'er he fully explored.

The heavenly hosts in awe reply:
"His Kingdom be blessed for e'er and aye."
Their song being hushed, they vanish away:
They may ne'er again offer rapturous lay.

But Israel,
Therein excel -
Fixed times they set aside,
With praise and prayer,
Him One declare,
At morn and eventide.

His portion them He made, that they
His praise declare by night and day:
A Torah, precious more than gold,
He bade them study, fast to hold;

That He may be near,
Their prayer to hear,
For always wear will He
As diadem fair
His people's prayer
In His phylactery,

Wherein is told of Israel's fame
Who oft God's unity proclaim.
'Tis also meet God's praise to sing
In presence of both prince and king.

Memorial Day 2009

How Sleep The Brave

HOW sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!

William Taylor Collins

From Greek Class to the Gallows

I collect quotes about (among other things) classical education in literature. Here's a classic from William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis, chapter 2:

Miserable trifler! A boy who construes δε and instead of δε but, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate.

It reminds me a bit of my Greek Prose Composition class in college. Read the entire scene, it's hilarious. Notice the progression from mistakes in construing Greek to the gallows… (Thanks to laudatortemporisacti for the reference.)

It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had made a sad blunder or two when the awful Chief broke out upon him.

'Pendennis, sir,' he said, 'your idleness is incorrigible and your stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy who construes δε and instead of δε but, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity (for he will be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and heart-broken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of the rod. Who's that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh?' shouted the Doctor.

No wonder classical education has a bad rep!

15 Books: A Meme

I received this on Facebook. It was hard to narrow the list to fifteen but here they are:

Instructions: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me.

1. The Bible (I became a different person after I started reading the Bible when I was sixteen yrs. old)
   
2. How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (Reading this book a few years ago made me realize that I had lost a part of my identity by losing my childhood insatiable appetite for reading and changing it to thinking of reading as something to be done only for a specific purpose. Reading is part of who I am as a person, and I had lost part of myself by denying it. )
   
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (IMHO quite possibly the best book ever written. As many times as I read it I always come away a better person for having read it again.)
   
4. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Wolfe (Helped me realize the importance of setting aside a space (and time) for writing.) Still working on that one.
   
5. Appointment in Jerusalem by Derek Prince (Amazing (true) story of a woman's journey of faith.
   
6. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte (Another one that I never get tired of rereading.)
   
7. Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, Life by Jeremy Campbell (Great book on information theory and language, the main topic of my Ph.D. dissertation.)
   
8. John Adams by David Mccullough (My favorite biography)
   
9. The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer (Schaeffer was a prophetic voice to his generation.)
   
10. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (The best conspiracy theory novel I've read. I love The Name of the Rose too, but had to narrow the list to 15.)
    
11. The Way of Holiness by Andrew Murray (My favorite devotional book by my favorite devotional author.)
    
12. Thank You Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (Really any Jeeves book. Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are my two favorite fictional characters. I can't read Wodehouse without cracking up. He makes me smile.)
    
13. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein ( I can get lost in his prose.)
    
14. Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward (Ward discovers a hidden structure in the Lewis' Narnia novels based on the 7 planets of medieval cosmology. Incredibly well written and convincing.)
    
15. Kite Runner by Khaled
    Hosseini (This book put a human face on the struggle in Afghanistan for me.)

May 15, 1618

I just finished reading a book about Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, Tycho and Kepler by Kitty Ferguson. According to the book it was on this date, May 15, in 1618that Kepler discovered the 3rd law of planetary motion.

The 3rd law is the harmonic law which states that “there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits.” Kepler was so excited by the discovery that he wanted to give way to a “sacred frenzy”, as he put it:

I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker.

The dedication prayer of his book, Harmony of the Worlds reads:

I should pray, devout and supplicating, to the Father of lights: O Thou Who dost by the light of nature promote in us the desire for the light of grace, that by its means Thou mayest transport us into the light of glory, I give thanks to Thee, O Lord Creator, Who hast delighted me with Thy makings and in the works of Thy hands have I exulted. Behold! now, I have completed the work of my profession, having employed as much power of mind as Thou didst give to me; to the men who are going to read those demonstrations I have made manifest the glory of Thy works, as much of its infinity as the narrows of my intellect could apprehend. My mind has been given over to philosophizing most correctly: if there is anything unworthy of Thy designs brought forth by me—a worm born and nourished in a wallowing place of sins—breathe into me also that which Thou dost wish men to know, that I may make the correction: If I have been allured into rashness by the wonderful beauty of Thy works, or if I have loved my own glory among men, while I am advancing in the work destined for Thy glory, be gentle and merciful and pardon me; and finally deign graciously to effect that these demonstrations give way to Thy glory and the salvation of souls and nowhere be an obstacle to that.

Interviewing With the Stars

Aimee and I had the privilege of participating in a "meet and greet" with Shawn Johnson, the Olympic gold medalist. Shawn took a day off from her rehearsing for the Dancing with the Stars finals to promote the Lunchables Lunch Your Tummy Right Tour. As part of the promotion, Lunchables is awarding 50 kids with a VIP ticket to Camp Wodward. Lucky winners will find a ticket inside a "specially marked" Lunchable.

My friend and blogging mentor Donna, aka Socalmom, told me that she had given my name as a "blogger" who has an interest in gymnastics (our daughters are on the same gymnastics team). Well I didn't receive the email but she told me Aimee and I were invited anyway. It was being held at a local gym in Burbank. We've been to this gym before and I remember it was really small.

I had no idea what to expect. Actually, I was expecting a huge crowd jammed into this small gym, kind of like the meet we had attended there several years ago. I didn't think we'd actually get close enough to talk to her, let alone sit down and ask her questions one-on-one, well actually four-on-one.

I felt kind of like I should say I was representing Horse and Hound magazine.(Like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill.) There were reporters from the LA Times and other media. Donna and I both were handed a gift bag from Lunchables. I opened it up and my mouth dropped when I saw it contained a Flip VideoCamera. I could get used to this kind of thing.

Another blogging mom, Sweatpantsmom, was there with her two daughters. Her two girls, aged 10 and 13, had their questions for Shawn prepared and neatly written out. They went in first. I said to Aimee, "Think of some questions for Shawn!" Then they ushered us into the gym and introduced us to Shawn. The four of us (Aimee, Donna, her daughter Megan and me) had about ten minutes to interview her.

Shawn was extremely sweet and poised. She seemed genuinely interested in the girls and gave some really great advice on dealing with fears and what it takes to stick with the sport. I was very proud of Aimee and Megan coming up with some great questions. You can watch the entire interview on YouTube here. (Thanks to Donna for posting it.)

After our time with Shawn she spent time with the girls on the team at the Burbank gym. We sat on the side and watched as the girls were allowed into the room. They didn't know that Shawn was going to be there. The reaction on the girls faces as the realized it was Shawn Johnson was priceless. Donna posted it on YouTube here.

Gotta run, I'm on my way to the store to buy some Lunchables.

Writing advice from Nora Roberts

I have to confess that I have never read a book by Nora Roberts. She just doesn't write the kind of books I like to read. But, I admire her because she is a successful author. I read this recent interview with her this morning and appreciated her perspective on reading and her advice on writing. So here are some excerpts from:

There Ain't No Muse: A Conversation with Nora Roberts

Conducted by Clarissa Sansone

What is your writing and revision process like?

Nora Roberts: Well, first: There ain't no muse. If you sit around and wait to channel the muse, you can sit around and wait a long time. It's not effortless. If only. Well, if it was, then everyone would do it, and where would we be then? So I work really hard to make it as fluid as possible, as readable and entertaining as possible.

I'll vomit out the first draft: bare-bones, get-the-story-down. I don't edit and fiddle as I go, because I don't know what's going to happen next. Once I get the discovery draft down, then I'll go back to page one, chapter one, and then I start worrying about how it sounds, where I've made mistakes, where I've gone right, what else I have to add, where's the texture, where's the emotion. I start fixing. And then, after I've done that all the way through again, I'll go back one more time, and that's when I'm really going to worry about the language. And the rhythm, and making sure that I haven't made a mistake, that I've tied up all the loose ends reasonably.

Do you have the time to actually sit down and read books very often?

NR: I think if you don't read, you'd never have the chops to write, and why would you, if you didn't love stories and want to lose yourself in what someone else has sweated over? I love to read, and I really think books are the most important tool in a writer's toolbox.

Are you an omnivorous reader?

NR: Oh yeah. There may be times when, after a really long day at the keyboard, my brain is too tired to read. And that's when I get my stories on TV. Once I start a book I'm a gobbler, so it's very rare that I'll read a couple chapters and put it down.

Read the entire interview at borders.com