Christmastide, 2012

Frankly, this year has worn me out.  

It wasn’t so much all the blather, codswallop, and bumpf of mean-spirited political campaigns, as it is the apparent shocking increase in violent episodes across the country.  A pro football player in Kansas City kills his girl friend and then himself; a four year old in Minneapolis finds a handgun in his home and inadvertently slays his two year old sibling; in New York the result of a verbal disagreement is a shove, and a man is hit by a subway train and dies.

As our social fabric seems to unravel, I am reminded of Durkheim's anomie, translated as normlessness. Themes which divide us seem to dominate themes which seek to unite us. To paraphrase Yeats, the center is not holding, and we seem to be increasingly estranged from one another.

The approach of Christmas provides us with an opportunity to consider what changes we might make in our own world-view, the words we use in dealing with others, the actions we take to address a problem, even an attempt to improve an aspect of our own neighborhood or community.

Some decades ago, I was in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, a few days before Christmas.  The then Dean happened to be in the building, and I said I was surprised that the Chapel looked pretty much as it did when I had seen it in a previous autumn.

He asked what American churches were like at Christmas, and I described pine trees, poinsettias, wreaths, and special lights.

He paused and then observed, “At King’s, we believe Christmas is best celebrated in the heart.”

That comment - and my subsequent embarrassment - still resonates in me after all these years.  Of course, he was quite right, and since that moment,  my views about all the decoration we strew about us in “celebration” of the season have changed.  I’m not against it, mind you, I just think of it  as an obstacle keeping us from the heart of the story - that story which should be in our hearts.

Take time this Christmastide to be quiet and to reflect on what really, really matters. Go back and reread the telling of the birth in Bethlehem.  Find a new way to make someone else’s life better - a kind word, a contribution, the gift of time.  

The light show on the house tends to obscure the real meaning of Christmas; maybe it’s enough if  we just try to light up the lives of others.

A Happy Christmas To You and Yours,

Nick

Coda: The horror in Connecticut on Friday makes clear the need for us to focus on gun safety, identification and treatment of those likely to hurt themselves or others, and the lowering of the violent stimuli which are found, well, everywhere these days. If you need to add another resolution to your list for 2013, well, here's your opportunity....ndn

Thank Heaven For The Olympic Games

OK, so I'm really a Winter Olympics guy - ice hockey, downhill racing, curling, cross country, but not the skateboard thing (I'm just in the wrong demographic).  Snow and ice....great stuff!

But this summer - for the very first time -  I've become a Summer Olympics guy, and the reason is very simple:

I will watch damn near anything which does not include a political windbag saying nasty things about opponents real or imagined.   Idiot gymnastics  judges I can abide;  political gasbags on two legs  complaining about the deficits of an opponent, I cannot.  And won't.

The Olympics and presidential elections occur every four years:  One involves honest competition, the joys of both individual and team achievement, and the proverbial agony of defeat.  The other is any election in our country.

We have become a nation of not-very-productive sourpusses, kvetching about every aspect of public life - not that there isn't a good reason too, but like an athlete, we should be trying to make ourselves and our country better  - that would be enough.

Watching an Olympic event is almost a cleansing experience.  Whether individual or team, here are athletes who have trained and competed endlessly with little expectation that their skills will fund the rest of their lives.  They do their best, and sometimes they win, but more often they do not.

Yes, there are the occasional rotten apples in the barrel of sport, but if you get upset about that, you must be really steamed at  the U.S. Congress, funded as it is by every special interest with money to "invest."

So for the next ten days or so, enjoy the competition from the United Kingdom.  Immediately thereafter we will be washed away by a tsunami of clichés, negative advertising, and little real discussion of the issues that face the country.

Put more succinctly, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi ain't on my awards platform. Not now, not ever.

Only a year and a half until the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

I can't wait.

Get Up Early

When I was a kid, the only time we could listen to the radio in the morning was on those days when SCHOOL MIGHT BE CLOSED!!!! and we would tune into WCCO radio - the gigantic AMer in this market since before I was born - to hope and pray that Bob DeHaven would read the name of our school.

When television came around, well, we didn't have one...not for years until Alastair Cooke arrived with "Omnibus, and the old man relented...but never, ever, in the morning.

In recent years, I've found that my morning conversation with Islay the Scottish terrier has become repetitive:
I want to go out...
I want to have breakfast....
I want to go out....
l have to go out...
I want to play....
I want to go out.....

Et cetera.

To my surprise, I discovered a program on MSNBC called "Morning Joe," led by thoughtful conservative Joe Scarborough, ably assisted by Mika Brzezinski, daughter to Zbig, and Willie Geist, son of Bill Geist, along with a revolving panel of liberal and conservative cranks, especially Mike Barnicle of Boston.  All of them brighten my morning, and they never need to be let out or brought back in.

But then.....

Then I discovered "Up with Chris Hayes," also on MSNBC early on Saturday and Sunday mornings (check your local listings).  Hayes is the "really smart kid," you remember not quite liking from your childhood -  intense, supremely well-informed, excellent sense of humor, and each weekend morning he puts together a panel of "bright young things," to meander through stories of the day, emerging issues, and newly published books.  It is a veritable feast for an old crank like me.

If you doubt the future of our country, if you feel you cannot trust those under thirty-five, take hope.  A couple of weekends watching "Up" will put the spring back in your step, lift your expectations about the future, and put you into a world of ideas and information worth being put into.

It's a new show, and if the powers-that-be at MSNBC have any brains, they will leave it alone and let the guy find his way unaided by focus groups, committees, or any sort of "group think."

I thought about recording the program so I could watch it at my leisure, but I concluded, oh,what the hell, "you know who" likes to get up before dawn and go out to confirm her world view so how could I start a weekend morning any better than with "UP with Chris Hayes," a steaming cup of coffee...with real cream, and a contented scotty dog...?

Once Upon A Time, Hockey Was A Game....

Growing up in Minnesota, I put on my first pair of skates when I was three or four. I was given a chair to lean on and started my life on a rink at my Uncle Fred's house. A few years later, I was skating on the nearby lake, and eventually took up the game of hockey.

The only teams in my youth were school teams - none of this getting up at 4:00 am for an hour's practice, no traveling team, no leagues, no endless tournaments. The season began when it got cold enough to flood the rink - generally after Thanksgiving - and was done in early March.

By the time I got to high school, I loved the game as a below average athlete, played occasionally, and couldn't wait for the school day to end to get out on the ice.

Our equipment was primitive - headgear, thigh pads, knee pads, groin protection, and that was about it. We didn't "lift" the puck, and the slap shot was still to be invented by Bobby Hull of the Chicago Blackhawks when I reached college. In fact at our games, the goal judges stood, unprotected, behind each net, and body checking was fairly primitive and tended not to result in injury.

In my years of competition, I had two hockey injuries: my collarbone fractured when I was checked by a teammate in a practice, and during a scrimmage with another school, one of the opposition held his stick like an axe and managed to hit me between the knee and shin pads, and pieces of cartilage floated in my knee, until age wore them away some years ago.

These days, I watch my favorite game with considerable dismay. Here in Minnesota in the last week, we've had two high school players who were checked from behind into the boards, and they've suffered spinal injuries. The boy will not walk again and may not have the use of his hands; the future of the injured high school girl remains to be determined.

Players have more protection and better equipment; in my view, this leads to increased aggressiveness and heightens the chance of injury. Checking is now central to the game from the early years when young bodies are still growing to the professional leagues, where hockey seems to have become some sort of martial art, and fighting is seen by the "hockey powers that be" as "essential to the game."

I remember when the Russians came to play in the USA back in the 1950s. They didn't check much, but my they could pass the puck and skate like the wind. It was like ballet on ice, and it took us a while to catch up.

Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL, claims that the evidence linking concussion, brain injury, and early dementia has not been proven. The National Football League seems to be approaching the opposite conclusion with a certain studied reluctance.

No matter your views, what we can all agree on is that high school players should not spend their adulthoods in wheelchairs as the result of an unnecessary check. That goes for college and professional players, too.

Hockey is a worthy game without all the tangential violence. With it, it is almost unwatchable. It's time we took the nonsense out of the game and returned to a fuller appreciation of artistry and skill.

Or else....

Update as of 1/26/12
High school hockey officials in Minnesota have imposed several rules changes which will make the game safer for all players. Miscreants will receive far heavier punishment (major penalties, ejection, and suspension; no doubt this will increase the pressure on those who manage college hockey. That written, one wonders whether professional hockey will ever put its goons back in the cave and let us appreciate the beauty of the game without all the miscellaneous physical - forgive me - crap.
Nick

Christmastide 2011

It's been a long time since I've written, mainly due to some teaching responsibilities which occupied me from last summer through late autumn and a quite busy stretch in my business - curious given the perceived state of the economy.

If you've read some of these entries over the years, you may remember that back in my radio days in the late 1970s, I began the live broadcast on Christmas Eve morning (9:00 am to be exact here in midwestern America) of "A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols" from the late medieval chapel of King's College at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England.

And, in fact the course I taught was about that Service...me and several dozen age mates exploring medieval history, kings, craftsmen, musicians, priests...and the service.

The class seemed to go down pretty well with the enrollees, and I had to put in two to three long days each week to manage the eight hour and a half sessions.

But oh, what I learned! And oh, what the members of the class taught me!

Over those months, I became interested in the young Dean of the Chapel who initiated this Christmas Eve event at King's. It was something outside the liturgical boundaries of the Church at that time, but the initial impetus had come from the Bishop of Truro some three decades earlier. He was named Archbishop of Canterbury shortly thereafter and so was in a position to push the idea of this new service forward.

Eventually, the idea fell into the hands of Eric Milner-White. He had attended King's College, taken holy orders, and after working in a school and a poor London parish, he returned to King's as Chaplain in 1912- the number two position with an important responsibility to connect and to serve the students, there being a Dean to oversee the administrative and liturgical aspects of the Chapel.

When World War I began in 1914, Milner-White joined the British Army as a chaplain, and in the next four years he served the men of the Seventh Division in Italy and France...or tried to. This was the era of trench warfare - wet, full of muck, attacks and retreats, blood, illness, and death everywhere. In the "Great War," Britain lost nearly 900,000 men, and an additional 1,666,000 were wounded - in a country of 45 million.

The chaplain general of the time was a very conservative cleric, and Milner-White became something of a trial for him: Milner, as many called him, insisted on climbing into "no man's land" with the troops to rescue the wounded.

As a non-combatant, chaplains were not to engage in such activities. Several times Milner-White was "mentioned in dispatches" and ultimately received the Distinguished Service Order (DSO)...very rare for a chaplain.

In addition, Milner-White prayed for the dead, something of which the chaplain-general did not approve although the men of his unit did.

Finally, in one battle, the officers of the unit were either killed or wounded, and the men asked Milner-White to take command. He did, and this must have been the final straw for Milner's superiors.

In January, 1918 he resigned from the Army and returned to King's resuming his position as Chaplain. In midsummer he was promoted to Dean.

Somewhere along the line, and no one knows where, the idea of holding a Christmas Eve service as a gift from his College to the city of Cambridge came to him. Maybe he knew about the service from Truro, maybe someone else did and put the idea in front of him. We don't know, and he destroyed most of his papers relating to those early post-war years, so we may never know.

What we do know is that in early November of 1918, he held a memorial service for the nearly 200 men of King's who had been killed in the war (two of them fought for Germany). Nine days later the Armistice was signed, and six weeks after that arrived the very first "Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols." It has been repeated every year since, and the dominant theme of the biblical readings is the fall and redemption of us all.

After what Milner had witnessed during his years in the War, the concept of redemption must have been at the front of his mind, what with "the War to End All Wars" just behind him but very much on his mind as it was and is for any veteran who has stared into the face of conflict.

The service has not changed very much since 1918, 'though the world has - and has not.

Strife abounds, thousands upon thousands have died. As I write this, American troops are coming home from Iraq; whatever they have experienced with be with us and our descendants for decades.
The situation in Afghanistan is murky, and its end-game not fully known.

Our country's military has a presence in over 100 countries nowadays; yet peace seems more elusive than ever. Economic distress depresses our mood, and many of us feel broadly drawn sense of insecurity, anxiety, anomie...whatever term you prefer.

Perhaps this Christmas, we might reflect yet again on the possibility of redemption and on what each of us might do in coming days to help us all find "peace on earth, goodwill toward men," and women, and children, and all innocent creatures with whom or which we share this world.

Find a public radio station carrying the live broadcast on Christmas Eve morning; gather your friends and neighbors to hear the lessons and to listen to the great choir of men and boys which has been a part of King's College since the mid 1440s (no typo there, believe me!)

The story of Christmas is a simple one; it may take some effort to open yourself to those ancient words, but give it a try, make a start. It will be worth your effort.

A blessed and happy Christmas to us all.

And Now For Something Completely Different....

It was cold this morning, so I took a little extra time to have another caffeine energizer and happened upon the President speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast. Whenever I have thought about that event over the years - attended by most Presidents since its inception - I wonder things like...well, who goes, is the invocation so long that the eggs and coffee get cold, and who is networking with whom and in what sphere.

Anyway, I lingered long enough to hear the President's speech and was so impressed that I thought you should have a chance to read it. No matter what your political preference, there is a good deal to think about in his words.

---

President Barack Obama

I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who’s here. We have been praying for Mark’s wife, Gabby Giffords, for many days now. But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and God is with them for the long haul. (Applause.)

And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy here at home, we're also mindful of the violence that we're now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that the violence in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will dawn over Egypt and throughout the world.

For almost 60 years, going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our President. It’s a tradition that I'm proud to uphold not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church. This may come as a surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a particularly religious family. My father, who I barely knew -- I only met once for a month in my entire life -- was said to be a non-believer throughout his life.

My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas -- sometimes. And yet my mother was also one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew. She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.

And it’s because of her that I came to understand the equal worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs. And it’s because of her example and guidance that despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith leaders of the civil rights movement.

There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been subjugated to make a way out of no way, and transform a nation through the force of love. But there were also Catholic leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg, and Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders. Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith, is what led me just a few years out of college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago. And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior. (Applause.)

Now, that was over 20 years ago. And like all of us, my faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn’t always been a straight line. I have thanked God for the joys of parenthood and Michelle’s willingness to put up with me. (Laughter.) In the wake of failures and disappointments I've questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.

And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith. (Laughter and applause.) The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray. (Laughter.) Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.” (Laughter.)

Fortunately, I'm not alone in my prayers. Pastor friends like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office every once in a while to pray with me and pray for the nation. The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent respite and fellowship. The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership’s office, Joshua DuBois -- young minister himself -- he starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture.

Most of all, I've got friends around the country -- some who I know, some who I don’t know, but I know their friends who are out there praying for me. One of them is an old friend named Kaye Wilson. In our family we call her Momma Kaye. And she happens to be Malia and Sasha’s godmother. And she has organized prayer circles for me all around the country. She started small with her own Bible study group, but once I started running for President and she heard what they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray harder. (Laughter.) By the time I was elected President, she says, “I just couldn’t keep up on my own.” (Laughter.) “I was having to pray eight, nine times a day just for you.” (Laughter.) So she enlisted help from around the country.

It’s also comforting to know that people are praying for you who don’t always agree with you. Tom Coburn, for example, is here. He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time. Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God. And I keep praying that God will show him the light and he will vote with me once in a while. (Laughter.) It’s going to happen, Tom. (Laughter.) A ray of light is going to beam down. (Laughter.)

My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

As I travel across the country folks often ask me what is it that I pray for. And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general: Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they’re specific: Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance -- (laughter) -- where there will be boys. (Laughter.) Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance. (Laughter.)

But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there are a few common themes that do recur. The first category of prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be. But until that day, we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.

We've seen a lot of hardship these past two years. Not a day passes when I don't get a letter from somebody or meet someone who’s out of work or lost their home or without health care. The story Randall told about his father -- that's a story that a whole lot of Americans have gone through over these past couple of years.

Sometimes I can't help right away. Sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the health care system -- sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need. And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed. It’s faith that reminds me that despite being just one very imperfect man, I can still help whoever I can, however I can, wherever I can, for as long as I can, and that somehow God will buttress these efforts.

It also helps to know that none of us are alone in answering this call. It’s being taken up each and every day by so many of you -- back home, your churches, your temples and synagogues, your fellow congregants -- so many faith groups across this great country of ours.

I came upon a group recently called “charity: water,” a group that supports clean water projects overseas. This is a project that was started by a former nightclub promoter named Scott Harrison who grew weary of living only for himself and feeling like he wasn’t following Christ as well as he should.
And because of Scott’s good work, “charity: water” has helped 1.7 million people get access to clean water. And in the next 10 years, he plans to make clean water accessible to a hundred million more. That’s the kind of promoting we need more of, and that’s the kind of faith that moves mountains. And there’s stories like that scattered across this room of people who’ve taken it upon themselves to make a difference.

Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government. And that’s why my administration has taken a fresh look at the way we organize with faith groups, the way we work with faith groups through our Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

And through that office, we’re expanding the way faith groups can partner with our government. We’re helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry. We’re helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children. We’re working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world. And we’re doing it in ways that are aligned with our constitutional principles. And in this work, we intend to expand it in the days ahead, rooted in the notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.

Of course there are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal. There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need -- all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college. There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.
And that's why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

Over the past two years, the nature of these obligations, the proper role of government has obviously been the subject of enormous controversy. And the debates have been fierce as one side’s version of compassion and community may be interpreted by the other side as an oppressive and irresponsible expansion of the state or an unacceptable restriction on individual freedom.

That's why a second recurring theme in my prayers is a prayer for humility. Now, God answered this prayer for me early on by having me marry Michelle. (Laughter and applause.) Because whether it’s reminding me of a chore undone, or questioning the wisdom of watching my third football game in a row on Sunday, she keeps me humble. (Laughter.)

But in this life of politics when debates have become so bitterly polarized, and changes in the media lead so many of us just to listen to those who reinforce our existing biases, it’s useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of has all the answers -- none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.

The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands. And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend. As it’s written in Job, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understandings.”

The challenge I find then is to balance this uncertainty, this humility, with the need to fight for deeply held convictions, to be open to other points of view but firm in our core principles. And I pray for this wisdom every day.

I pray that God will show me and all of us the limits of our understanding, and open our ears and our hearts to our brothers and sisters with different points of view; that such reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God will reveal the way forward that we can travel together.

And the last recurring theme, one that binds all prayers together, is that I might walk closer with God and make that walk my first and most important task.

In our own lives it’s easy to be consumed by our daily worries and our daily concerns. And it is even easier at a time when everybody is busy, everybody is stressed, and everybody -- our culture is obsessed with wealth and power and celebrity. And often it takes a brush with hardship or tragedy to shake us out of that, to remind us of what matters most.

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket -- and we remember how fleeting life can be. And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them. And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God.

So my prayer this morning is that we might seek His face not only in those moments, but each and every day; that every day as we go through the hustle and bustle of our lives, whether it’s in Washington or Hollywood or anywhere in between, that we might every so often rise above the here and now, and kneel before the Eternal; that we might remember, Kaye, the fact that those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint.

When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people. And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will.

I say these prayers hoping they will be answered, and I say these prayers knowing that I must work and must sacrifice and must serve to see them answered. But I also say these prayers knowing that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength. It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this country that we love. (Applause.)

Christmastide 2010

One hundred and thirty years ago this Christmas Eve, several hundred people gathered at 10 p.m. in a wooden church to welcome Christmas, as the new cathedral was not yet finished in Truro, Cornwall, England.

The idea for this service was put forward by the Reverend G H S Walpole, and the newish Bishop of Truro, the Reverend Edward White Benson, took up the idea and developed what he called "A Festal Service of Lessons and Carols." And that's exactly what it was - lessons from the Old and New Testaments and music, mainly from Handel's "Messiah."

Three years later, Benson was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and during his thirteen year tenure spread the word about this service, and very slowly it began to find its way into other churches, even though it fell outside of the liturgical conventions of that time.

And as it does, time passed...quite a lot of time, it turned out.

In 1912, Eric Milner White, a graduate of King’s College, was appointed Chaplain of the college; when war broke out two years later, he joined the Army as a chaplain and served in France and Italy. Toward the end of the war, his unit was heavily engaged, and all the officers were either killed or wounded. The men asked Milner White to take command. He did, and by doing so, violated the role of non-combatant required of clergy in combat. He left the army - or perhaps it was the army which left him - and returned to his previous position at King’s College, and just a few months later was appointed Dean of the Chapel, a position of considerable importance.

In the autumn of the first year of his Deanship, he proposed a "new" service for Christmas Eve - its roots were in Truro, but under Milner White it was transformed; he saw it as part of a new approach to liturgy in the Church and brought three key elements from the service in Truro - a mixture of lessons read and carols sung, readers from a chorister (boy singer) to the Provost of the college (where at Truro the readers were members of the community and clergy), and the idea that the service was a gift from the college to the community. He changed some of the lessons, re-positioned some, and broadened the musical choices, with the somewhat reluctant help of the Director of Music, Dr A. H. Mann (who served at King's in that role for fifty-four years).

And then....and then, Milner White wrote the great bidding prayer; it comes early in the service and includeds these wonderful words: “Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.”

So on Christmas Eve, 1918, six weeks after the Armistice was declared on November 11th, ending World War I, a congregation gathered in King’s College Chapel, that amazing gothic stone structure begun by Henry VI and completed by Henry VIII, for the first “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols."

One can only speculate on the feelings of those in attendance as they heard the words of the bidding prayer, mindful as they were of the great sacrifices made by all who took part in the "war to end all wars" but especially by friends - students, staff and professors at King's and all the other Cambridge colleges. Even today, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh month, the memory of all those lost in World War I is honored throughout the United Kingdom.

Nine decades later, we can participate in that same service by listening to public radio... and nine decades later, we should take time to appreciate the poignancy and meaning of that first service and perhaps find relevant links to events in our own time.

The lineage of this service from Truro to listeners around the world is a reminder that small ideas, well, thoughtfully, and sometimes accidentally nurtured, often find their way into our lives - if we lower our defenses and permit them entry. Some of them will survive and become recurring elements in the lives of a few; a smaller number will grow, change, and be meaningful to untold numbers of people in many different parts of our world.

You, faithful reader, have your own ideas about the greater good. To grow them, all one need to is, well, to begin....

In spite of the turmoil which surrounds us these days, the blessings of the season upon you....

Nick Nash

Looking Towards Our Silent Night

We need silence now more than ever before. Surrounded as we are by the persistent and loud beating of the drums of politics and commerce, as well as the beeps and tones from the electronic devices which live in our kitchens, game rooms, pockets, purses, and briefcases, we need a break, and this is the perfect time of year to permit yourself to do just that.

Just before I sat down to write this, I went out to shovel the snow off the front steps. It was cold, probably about 12 degrees Fahrenheit; the sun was bright, and no wind...a perfect winter day. (The calendar may suggest late autumn, but it's winter, no doubt about it.

The shovel scraped under the snow on each step, and once in a while, I would have to punch the blade into the packed stuff to break it up so that I could clear it away.

From time to time, I would pause to look around to check on Islay, the beloved Scotty. She seemed to be enjoying the silence as she moved around studying the yard.

After a week involving the loss of heat and hot water in the house when the boiler committed hari-kiri - I found my bit of shoveling in the silence quite restorative.

These few minutes were an excellent reminder that for my own good, I need to time to be outside in the quiet and refreshing (cold better outside than in, I've learned yet again), especially when Islay and go out for the last time before bed and frequently view the array of stars in the black sky, our own silent night, in anticipation of the season of joy to come.

Islay, Beloved Dog

Today I celebrate Islay the beloved Scottish terrier's birthday and calling it her sixth. Because she came from the Humane Society, we're not sure of the details, so I decided to make them up.

When she arrived in my life, I hadn't had a dog in the house for several years - the last one died just as a hip started its decline, and I felt it would be unfair to have a dog I couldn't exercise properly. After the hip replacement adventure, I began to think about another dog. About that time I got a call about a scotty at the humane society and made the delicious mistake of following up promptly (somewhat unlike me), and Islay arrived in my life.

And nothing has been the same since. After a rambunctious, even wild start, she began to calm, to develop confidence, and - as one would expect from a terrier - manage me from morning 'til night.

This began with a studied shake of her head which caused her id tags and dog license to jingle brightly, and shortly that signal became the sign that it was

time to get up
time to go out
time for breakfast
time to go out again
time for a walk
time for a snack
time to go out
time to go out again
time for another walk,
time for dinner
time to go out
time to go out again
time for a bed time snack.

If the head shake doesn't do the trick, then she leaps up and puts her paws on a knee, and she will do this recurrently until there is an appropriate response. And once I start moving toward the front door, for example, she pushes her cold wet nose into the backs of my ankles. With bare feet in the morning, that strategem still comes as a surprise.

On our walks together, Islay sets the pace, and it is I who tries to catch up. Fortunately we frequent nearby trails used by other dogs and their owners, so Islay has to stop regularly to receive and respond to p-mail. Turns out there is quite a lot of that, but I try not to notice.

When Islay is joyful, generally just before the food bowl is put down for her, she leaps into the air and manages to get several feet of air underneath her, a sort of canine geländesprung, with no intervening obstacle. She amazes me every time she does it.

There was a point when I wasn't too thrilled about the level of skill Islay had achieved in managing me, but I've "moved on," as we say nowadays, and I rather enjoy it. She gets more done, and I have a happy dog.

Some dogs are companions, and that's well and good. Terriers don't put up with that kind of limitation, and they are relentless in being part of the family. Islay sits on the furniture (the better to see what's going on outside), she checks out the neighbor's big dog to make sure that he's OK, and if she comes in wet from the rain, she rolls on her back, stretches out, and does everything but advertise in full color that a towel plus a drying session had damn well better be close at hand. And yes, the dinner plates end up on the floor for Islay to clean up.

She comes to my office in order to greet visitors, observe the local fauna, and water the local flora at every opportunity, and when K and I drive up to the North Shore of Lake Superior, Islay comes with us, sitting on K's knees, her head resting on the top of the glove compartment, or she chooses to sit on the console, sometimes facing forward, sometimes facing backwards.

Islay is the most recent scot in a long line of them stretching back over four decades. I enjoyed them all for their enthusiasm, energy, and sense of humor.

But she is different, and each day I am grateful for her presence in my life, for the laughter she creates, the crankiness she jollies me out of, and the love she shows continuously.

And I hope she feels the same way about me.

A Thought About Concussions

As a society with what I think is an excessive interest in "violent sports," we are finally getting around to confronting the issue of the effects of violence on the brains of the participants...not just at the professional levels but all the way down to school boy football and hockey (among others).

Evidence continues to accumulate that there is more damage to brains than we might ever have thought, and just this week the NFL emerged from its dark cave to assess fines and suspensions against some perfectly terrifying hits in the weekend's games.

The long term impact of the mayhem emerges in depression, forgetfulness, and early onset dementia, among other problems. Lives are shortened, families impacted, and at the pro level, insurance does not apparently support the darkling end of live's journey.

There are those who contend that violence is "part of the game," "why people go to the games," and that mayhem has a long and noble history in our country. Cynically, one might say that those who take that point of view probably played too much football, baseball, rugby, soccer, and hockey themselves.

On the constructive side, we're seeing some improvements in the technology of protection, a more generous view towards those who have been hurt and who are very slowly returning to normal (Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins is one recent and local example), and stricter rules governing what is acceptable contact.

A sportswriter recently observed that the way to reduce violence in football is to take away the helmets (think rugby here, friends, with some ear protection and nothing else). Think about it...perhaps we have provided too much protection for athletes and so they take too many risks thinking that it's the other athlete who will be injured.

I have a simpler idea. Let's stop using the word "concussion" and start using the phrase "brain injury." Concussion sounds too benign, but "brain injury" tends to get one's attention.

About a decade ago, I slipped on winter ice and fell backwards on my head. I was probably out for a few seconds, but when I came to I couldn't get up, so I crawled into the building and made it down the hall to the tea room where I found some help - but only after they realized that I was not trying to be amusing on a Friday morning

I called my doctor who asked me lots of questions, then told me to go home and to take the weekend off and - especially - not to make any important decisions until the following Monday. I was a bit surprised by that, but he explained that I would be "goofy," to use his word, for several days.

He was absolutely correct about the goofy part, and I resolved to make every effort to avoid a similar event in future and now try to fall on my butt and not my head.

When I imagine athletes getting smacked in the head a couple of hundred times a season (at any level of competition), I wonder why the hell it's taken us so long to get a grip on the problem of voluntary brain injury. And please don't get me started on those who suffer similar difficulties in places like, oh, Afghanistan and Iraq.

This dreadful harvest of brain injury will be with us for decades unless we work quickly to find better solutions.

All Blogged Down

Since the beginning of this blog, its title has been "Hobbling Through The Zeitgeist," but I'm beginning to think that was a bit too optimistic.

It's not about me you understand - I'm still hobbling around reasonably well, thanks to regular doses of ibuprofen and scotch. What it is about is the feeling I have that for the last little while in our country, we're barely able to crawl through the zeitgeist, much less hobble.

No doubt the weight of financial distress and of its multitudinous ramifications has slowed all of us down as we try to manage our lives, lives which have not proceeded along the pathways about which we had hoped and dreamed.

On top of it all, we have a bunch of prancing politicians for whom truth is no longer a virtue and who demonstrate few of the characteristics of being adults. Assertion is the new substitute for fact, and fact - you may recall - is one of the essential building blocks of knowledge. Knowledge, as well as informed and thoughtful speculation, is what adults use. Knowledge is not much in fashion these days, and so we are slouching toward a new "dark age," where the loudest voices will shut out the informed and knowledgeable ones.

You would do well to read Richard Hofstadters "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," his Pulitzer Prize winning attempt to understand why so many of us believe that ignorance really is bliss, most notably in the fields of politics, religion, and education. His ideas continue to resonate today.

Our infrastructure decays, our schools struggle, local, state and federal governments rob Peter to pay Paul, and the media pushes assertions and not necessarily facts, we believe that we can pay off the national debt by standing on the sidelines and bitching.

Some of us are old enough to remember the words of Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo. "We has met the enemy," he said, "and they is us."

That will still be true until the day arrives when we can agree on the facts and find a bunch of grown-ups who will go to Washington and worry a bit less about their own skins and a hell of a lot more about the future of the country. If we're lucky, we may be able to avoid the darkness, out there, waiting. Like me, I think you can sense it.

An Easy Way To Improve Your Driving

During our recent trip to the UK, we rented a car for our time in Scotland, about three weeks, in other words. The most significant challenge for me in driving in the UK is not the shift to driving on the left but in getting out of the "Roundabout Hell" at Glasgow Airport and across the Erskine Bridge.

Last year I took my GPS, and there was not one curse word heard in the car that first day. So I used the same strategy, and in general the GPS worked well, once we had departed the rental car parking lot. "Jane" as we call her wanted us to exit the lot against the one way traffic; Karen was right, but after that Jane was close to perfect.

So while the GPS took a lot of the pressure off and improved our daily stints in the car, the best thing we did was to leave the radio off...even with the delights of BBC Radios 2 and 3 so easily at hand.

Conversation was easier, of course, but what I discovered was that I could concentrate more easily on the driving - and I could sneak a few more looks at the gorgeous landscapes through which we were passing. I began to enjoy a new sense of calm, so I slowed down a bit and found myself enjoying the sometimes collaborative process of being part of the vehicle flow.

Back home, I've been a bit surprised to find that I was using the radio considerably less, mainly to keep up with the Minnesota Twins baseball game of the day and to find out the weather forecast.

Public radio continues to be something of a distraction, but thus far I'm still more or less in control of sound in the car, except for Islay the Scottish Terrier, the observations and opinions of whom are regularly and forcefully expressed under any circumstance she deems appropriate.

A Prayer For Our Times

Last May found us in the islands and highlands of Scotland, and it was in the highlands that we had one of those unexpected and unforgettable experiences - in a small church near the River Dee, not far from the front gates of the Queen's Estate at Balmoral. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian and is proud of its independence, and when we're in the area, we like to attend the Sunday service.

That particular morning, I was surprised to find a "Prayer Of Confession" which I had never come across before, and at the end of the service, I made sure I departed with a copy of the program. I don't know who wrote it or how long it's been around, but I thought it might be of interest to others who may not have read it.

So from "The Parish of Braemar and Crathie," here is that prayer:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have created a world filled with wonder and abundance, while we make do with dull monotony and self-inflicted shortages.
Forgive us.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have entered into our world with grace and truth, but we have created a culture of judgement and deception.
Have mercy upon is.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have touched our world with power and presence, and yet we live in the midst of despair and loneliness.
Grant us your peace.

AMEN

After saying that in unison - even after reading it silently - I felt and continue to feel its cool truth sink in. Its essence comes to mind regularly and motivates me....

Verily

The iPad, uh, My iPad

There seemed to be an awful lot of sturm und drang over the birth of the iPad. I read most of the articles which guessed that it would be an incredibly well designed brick and good for not very much; I also read most of the ones which predicted that it would make and deliver a hot breakfast and that it would be expensive.

Taking the middle way, I reflected on all this and decided to order one partly, I must confess, I am intrigued by new gadgets, especially anything that Apple creates, and at my age you want to learn about this new stuff before the large hand comes out of the blue and takes you off to the happy hunting ground (call it what you will).

I thought that the iPad would be very good for reading books, magazines, and some newspapers. I also felt that it would be more than adequate to deal with television, via the web, via Sling Mobile, or via Netflix. and finally, I thought that for the under 40s, the prospect of games on the iPad would be of interest. And I figured it would be excellent for showing photos. To that end, I acquired the Wi-Fi only version in the belief that enriching AT&T with yet another data plan wasn't a high priority in my world.

That you could wander the web relatively easily and deal with email on a larger screen seemed a great improvement over the limitations of the iPhone (but it does have a place). Finally, no matter how many apps that the 12 year old geniuses come up with, the iPad will not replace a laptop...well, not yet.

The book on the bookshelf when you start up the iPad is "Winnie The Pooh," and the colorful Ernest Shepard drawings are so much more lively than they would be in black and white. A friend whose vision isn't as good as it once was looked at the large type available on iPad books and pronounced it of greater interest to him the Amazon's Kindle. My sister has a Kindle and has enjoyed it immensely, especially when she travels.

But the point is that digitization of print materials like a tsunami. I now subscribe to four newspapers online, and the paper recycling bags at the end of the driveway on Monday morning are now but one.

And yes, I get that there's nothing like the feel of turning the page of the New York Times or of a book whether old or new. Having thought about it some, I've decided that I'll hold out for the printed editions of The New Yorker and Cook's Illustrated, but that's about it.

I think about getting on a plane to London next month with an iPad which will replace the usual four or five books I usually squeeze into the carry-on, and I smile.

My conclusion is that you'd better get on the stagecoach before you find yourself under it. But now I have to return to the most recent episode of Spartacus, on my iPad courtesy of Netflix, and then find some time to leave the electronic world to admire the daffodils at the end of the drive. Nothing compares, even a nice high density image of them on a small screen, and nothing ever will.

Olympic Afterglow

During the last couple of weeks I found myself in a number of long meetings, and not just Monday through Friday, but on the weekends as well. I'm not complaining, mind you, just describing this last chunk of time.

Yessir, those winter Olympics can eat up a lot of time, what with NBC using a fistful of channels to bring all the delayed action to us. Oh, there were a few things live, but you had to be on the ball to figure that out. But I digress.

Every four years, there is an opportunity to see young athletes at the top of their particular game, and accompanying those performances are stories which are so good, so touching, that i just plop a large box of Kleenex next to my chair and get ready to weep.

This year, a luger from the Republic of Georgie died on the track at Whistler Mountain. It was a terrible tragedy - casting a deep shadow on the judgement and competence of the Canadian engineering. Kleenex.

Joannie Rochette's mother died of a heart attack days before her figure skating competition, but her daughter decided to compete, and was she a wonder, earning the bronze medal with performances of great beauty, skill, and emotion. More Kleenex.

In that same competition, the young Korean skater Yu-Na-KIm took our collective breath away with an incomparable perforance in the long program. She had wonderful lines, enormous grace, and she swept away all her ebullient, enthusiastic, and far less graceful competitiors. It was a night to remember. Kleenex again, just for the beauty of it all.

On the men's side, Evan Lysacek defeated his Russian competition by his careful competence, clear understanding of the judging rules, and a sense of caring which put him ahead of Evgeny Plushenko. Fists in the air but no Kleenex.

The story of the American bobsled driver whose vision had been so poor, he was legally blind and drove by instinct soon came to the fore. Recent daring eye surgery had given him near perfect sight, and in three runs, he took home the gold. The art and science of medicine, plus a patient's courage, made for a very happy ending. Kleenex during the playing of the national anthem at the award ceremony.

But the hockey, both men's and women's games, was a source of considerable delight. Both USA teams ultimately lost to Canada in championship matches, but the games were as intense, competitive, creative, and exhausting as any I've ever seen. Too involved for Kleenex until the end of two men's games against Canada and the women's final contest.

I'm learning about the half-pipe and am amazed by the athleticism of the competitors, and curling is beginning to intrigue me more than ever before, but now I have four years to wait before I can re-evaluate my interest. But speaking of curling, if there is a better play-by-play person for a sport than John Duguid, I don't know who it would be. He treats the audience with respect and understands the game thoroughly so that you feel that you understand what the participants are thinking before making every strategic decision. And Mike Emrick did a terrific job with the hockey play-by-play, but often I felt as though as was sitting under an enthusiastic and endless cascade of words, words, words.

So now Vancouver and Canada begin to recover from what must be the greatest national hangover in decades. I'll bet they don't regret the celebration one damn bit.

Intersections Of A Different Sort

The fun in travel is discovering new intersections – not so much of roads – but of relationships. On our recent Christmas in England, we had several examples of the role serendipity plays in making travel interesting and often amusing.

On the flight to London, I happened to have brief exchange with one of the flight attendants, a jolly middle-aged blonde named Susan. It was about the fact that “cream” in airline lingo does not mean cream at all, but half-and- half. That was all they had on the flight, but then she asked when we were coming back. Upon hearing the date, she said she was assigned to that flight and would sneak some proper cream from the first class cabin so that my coffee would be as I liked it. Uh-huh, thought I.

At the cabin door ten days later, she greeted me as the “cream man,” and before take-off, we had a fine chat. Turns out she hadn’t been home much at Christmas, home being Salt Lake City, but she and her husband were coming to London early in the new year for a few days “without the kids.”

We did not know that our first intersection would be in the air enroute to England, but we shall treasure it, because she made us feel like good acquaintances and not like sheep in a pen heading for the abbatoir.

In fact her generosity of spirit was the first of several presents we received along the way.

Oh, and the cream was deeeeeeelish! Many thanks, Susan. Happy New Year to you and yours, and many smooth flights in the years ahead. You were delightful.

One day, we were coming out of the tube and near the top of the stairs we saw a young woman struggling to get her bright yellow suitcase up that last step. “Old guy ready to help,” I shouted and manged to assist her in getting her case to the top and level ground. She was quite young and smiled in relief. “I have taken the train all the way from Switzerland today,” she exclaimed, “and I live just over there,” she added with a pointed finger in exclamation.” She thanked us and added “Happy New Year” with a great big smile and crossed the street on the way to her 2010.

The last morning, we were finishing breakfast at Carluccio’s just across from the South Kensington tube station (both highly recommended). In getting up, I inadvertently knocked over my chair which hit the floor with a tremendous crack and thus frightening the woman at the table behind. I apologized and noticed her son had an iPhone. So do I, so I asked him how many apps he had. “Too many,” interrupted his father.

I asked the lad if he had “Lumosity,” and when he said he did not, I encouraged him to get it so that he could beat his father and so get even more apps. Turns out the father attended the choir school at King’s College, Cambridge, an institution with which I have had a long relationship. More Happy New Years wishes and several variations of “Have a safe trip.”

Getting off the tube at Heathrow, we took a lift with a young woman who seemed very concerned. Once off the elevator, she started looking around for her flight. Karen sensed her concern and stopped to help. Her flight for home in Athens left several hours later and - like the rest of us - a new language and new airline procedures left her anxious and fearful. So Karen went to work, calmed her down, and as we had a flight to catch shortly, we headed off, but the young woman we left was now calmer, and the last thing she said to us was, "God bless you." Another gift happily received.

We have several friends in London, Cambridge, and Norfolk, and every one we saw during our adventure made a special effort to help us celebrate Christmas – not always an easy task so far from home. From leaving home in the suburbs to join us for a meal and events in London, to adding us to a Christmas celebration and preparing meals which were memorable. One of these included the following libations – sparkling white wine, aquavit, red wine, and whisky. That no one suffered a hangover after this was something of a minor miracle.

And the friends we travelled with were positive, supporting, curious, independent, kind, generous, and tolerant. While this Christmas had few of what most would describe as presents, we were surrounded by gifts from friends and strangers, and the result was a Christmas which will live in our memories forever.

Riding on waves of kindness from friends and strangers -there could be no better to slip into January.

Happy New Year to you and yours!

When I began blogging some years ago, I was always surprised and delighted when a reaction to something I'd written arrived on the electronic doorstep. Seven years ago, I received a response from Terry Riley, this year's guest Christmas screedist. Terry remained hard to find, but each year he would send along his reaction to what I'd written, and I've always liked what he thought and his way of expressing his ideas.

My schedule this year made it difficult for me to think about writing something, but - for the first time - Terry beat me to it. I asked his permission to reproduce his message, and he generously gave it. I look forward to providing him with my reaction when I come up for air. All good wishes of the season to you and yours.

Nick Nash

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16th December 2009

Dear Nick,

As you are closing early for Christmas this year I wasn’t sure if you were going to be able to squeeze in a 2009 Christmas Screed. And as it is my tradition to read and offer a (hopefully) thoughtful response I figured I better fire off a pre-emptive Christmas Screed note.

You may be wondering why I write once a year. To be honest I’ve always had intentions of writing more frequently. But I guess you know what they say about good intentions. But I think my motivation for writing comes from my interest in and desire to talk about Christmas and its meanings. Add to that the phenomena of changing attitudes to how we embrace (or not) the holiday season as we get older. I guess it’s a time for reflection, not just on Christmas itself but on our lives, relationships and ways in which we interact with the world.

I also write because I met you once. I actually interviewed for a job with your company back in the early 90s. I’ve since gone on to work at a variety of companies in the Twin Cities, and am currently doing market research-related work in White Bear Lake. I found you to be an interesting, thoughtful person, in addition to being brave enough to launch your own business.

At any rate, the first time I read one of your essays -- Christmas of 2002 I believe – I had a strong emotional reaction. You seemed to hit the nail on the head in terms of how I approach Christmas conceptually, but for which I am usually not articulate enough to express. I just had to say, in the form of a response, how much I appreciated your thoughtful words.

To me Christmas is a many-splendored, bittersweet, lovely and melancholy time, incorporating a variety of elements and emotions. Although I was raised as a Catholic, I’m by no means devout in the practice of that particular flavor. I’m in the believer camp, however, and certainly the Nativity and all its glories comprise a rather large chunk of my personal holiday hodge-podge. There are other elements as well, many of which date back to pagan times and which we still incorporate in our celebrating. And of course the feelings of warmth, generosity and general good will that seem to bubble up at this time of year. There seems to be a strong need to reconnect with friends and family at Christmastide that is not as strong at other times of the year.

And I usually have no trouble conjuring up a decent dose of Christmas spirit and pride myself on being able to cut through the commercialism and extraneous clutter to keep Christmas in a personal way. This year, however, I’m experiencing extreme CSD – Christmas Spirit Dysfunction. I just can’t seem to get it going. I need to, however, as I have two small children who are still in the wonderment stages of their lives with respect to Christmas. But maybe my age (50) is working against me. Mid-life angst could be a drag on the whole thing I suppose.

I’m sorry if I’m telling you things you may have already experienced in your own life, like I’m the first one to experience them. I will say, however, that I’m not giving up yet, and will do my best to keep Christmas, if any man alive possesses the knowledge (to borrow from Dickens).

I'd like to close with a few of the words from what has recently become one of my favorite English carols -- "See Amid the Winter Snow."

Teach o teach us holy Child,
By thy face so meek and mild,
Teach us to resemble thee,
In thy sweet humility

I think we all would do well to consider these words this Christmastide and in the coming new year.

Terry Riley

Remembering Elisabeth Söderström

I first fell in love with the Swedish soprano Elisabeth Söderström as a teenager listening to a long playing record which my father played frequently. She sounded convincing and exquisite, but at that age, I was unable to learn much about her.

Decades later, I was working in public radio and on a trip to London discovered the BBC had made some spoken word programs with her, and I asked to listen to a couple of them. I did and fell in love with several quite different aspects of her voice - her intelligence, her sensitivity, her sense of humor, and her commitment to the art of singing.

In an instant, I decided that I needed to make a radio program with her...something to help people better understand both the art of song and the art song. Because I knew nothing about music, who better to open my eyes and ears than Elisabeth?

In her recitals, she often spoke about the next song to give the audience a perspective on it and to help deepen their understanding; I believe that she thought very carefully about what she was going to say, and the words were essential to the full appreciation of the performance. Her way of doing this helped the audience appreciate not just the voice and the performance but also the warm, funny, and intelligent person behind the notes.

About the same time, I met the Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård; he was intrigued with the idea of working with Elisabeth, and then the American accompanist Warren Jones joined our group. I had developed some contacts with Swedish Radio, and they were intrigued and agreed to participate as the lead producer.

And so I fell in love with Elisabeth yet again. We made the programs in western Sweden, in Håkan's local church, and our time together was one of the highlights of my life - to work with highly talented performers, producers, and technicians was such a great privilege. Three one hour programs in both English and Swedish, culminating in a recital at Berwald Hall in Stockholm. I wanted to call the programs "Take Me To Your Lieder," but the Swedes preferred "Sing Me A Song," and they prevailed. (I still prefer my idea [naturally].

Our lunch break was not in the church but in a hostel across the road. The wife cooked, and the husband served, and at the end of the meal every day, Elisabeth would head into the kitchen. After a couple of days, I asked her why she did that. "To thank the cook," she said, adding, "It takes so little, and it seems to mean something."

Elisabeth was a consummate artist who could handle the great gestures of grand opera, but she provided all the little gestures, too. Her eyes were on the stars, but her feet were solidly on the ground. Always.

Hard to believe it was twenty two years ago because the memories are still so fresh. After the series was broadcast, I saw Elisabeth in Stockholm, London, and New York. Eventually she retired after a turn at running the Drottiningholm Court Theatre where she made her debut, and I heard that she had been having some major health problems.

She slipped off life's stage earlier this week, leaving many of us deeply saddened. If you saw her in performance you never forgot her; if you heard her tell a story, it remained indelibly told. No one's eyes sparkled like hers, no one had a laugh like hers. Just being around her made the day special.

She was one of a kind, and I feel triply blessed to have known her a little bit and to have been one of the multitudes of people who loved her for her art, heart, and, more importantly, for her humanity.

Something Old, Something New

Having reached my three score and seven, I have pretty much given up on contemporary music. Hell, with the exception of Carly Simon, I gave up on contemporary music something over four decades ago. I have always thought that decision to have been a good one...until last week.

I was listening to Wake Up With Wogan on BBC's Radio Two. He's probably the best I've ever heard in morning radio (and I've heard and know some great ones), but next month he's retiring, even though he is clearly still at the top of his game. The Beeb is giving him some sort of weekly show, so that the next young bucko can come into the morning and try to hold onto Wogan's very large audience.

But I digress.

Last week, I was in my office working on some orders while I listened to Wogan, and he played a song called "Story." I couldn't quite figure out the lyrics, but the performance and arrangement knocked me over. I couldn't quite get the name of the artist, so I checked the play list on the BBC's web-site (thank you, thank you), and I found that the artist is Leddra Chapman (aka Anna Leddra-Chapman in some places), and she writes her own material. Based on what I've heard, she's off to a great start.

Her first album comes out later this month in the UK, and so, after all these years, I've succumbed - again - to the blandishments of the music of the young and talented and happily so.

Have a look-see and a listen....

Postscript: I downloaded a couple of tracks from her MySpace web-site, burned them to a CD, and I have found great pleasure in listening to them over and over as I drive around. Either some element of my own youth has been reawakened, or I am losing it sooner than I thought I would. But I'm reasonably certain it's the former.

I said reasonably.

Bottom line is that her CD will be out in the states next month, and when I'm across the pond for Christmas, guess what CD I'll be looking for....and hoping for printed copies of her lyrics to be included?

.

I'd be interested in hearing your reactions....

And if you think I've slipped my moorings, I'd like to hear that, too.

Persistence Is All

You don't know Roberta Scherf, but you should.

I came to know Roberta when she worked for me in a large non-profit in Saint Paul...this was back in the Dark Ages. Anyway, I decided to hire her after I blabbered about the job description and asked her what she knew about the organization. She told me what she had learned about from her visits to the public library, so she was the only logical choice for the job. A decision I have never regretted.

Well, decades have gone by, and for the last few years she's been developing a product to help kids. As it turns out it helps kids and oldsters, and seems especially well-suited for those with ADD, autism, and related problems.

The product, called "MeMoves" came out of Roberta's experience with a daughter who appeared to be headed for a special education program. Roberta was convinced that this would be a mistake, so she began working with her child doing physical and musical games and such. One day, not long after she began this work, her daughter began to put letters into words, and shortly thereafter she was reading books. (The daughter has grown into the kind of child any parent would want - bright, funny, with dimensions to her thinking and creativity that entrance all who know her.)

With this success Roberta began to teach herself about the relationships between the kind of thing she was doing with her daughter and the results of research into this area of learning and doing. She has gotten to know many of the researchers in the field, and the program she has developed derives from scholarship going on in schools, school systems, treatment centers, geriatric programs, colleges, and universities.

What does this program do? Decreases stress, improves mood, and enhances cognitive focus.

But here's the thing - we live in a world where everything has to be fast, loud, and colorful for adults to be convinced that kids will like it. Yeah, well look at how a cardboard box engages a nine year old.

This program is not fast, not loud, and is thoughtfully colorful. What matters is that it just works - this combination of hand movements and music (great music by the way).

Let me repeat that - it just works. One of my friends described it as a moving meditation, and I think that's about right.

MeMoves is not very expensive and can be used by nearly everyone who needs a break from the breakneck pace of life.

So if you know someone like that, whether they're nine, nineteen, or ninety, please go visit and have a look.

Talk about a present that could last a lifetime...even extend it.

To have a look at MeMoves, click here. If you're intrigued with what you see and hear (and do), then think of a friend with a child who might be having some difficulty in school or a parent who could use an easy-to-do mental "boost," and pass along the web address.

You won't be sorry, and they might well be grateful.