"For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies.
Christ our God to Thee we raise,
This our hymn of grateful praise.
For the wonder of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale and tree and flower,
sun and moon and stars of light.
For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth, and friends above,
for all gentle thoughts and mild.
For Thyself, best gift divine,
to the world so freely given,
agent of God's grand design: peace on earth and joy in heaven."
~ Folliet S. Pierpoint
A gift of love a gift of beauty,
Given fully, granted freely,
Life of living, joy of pleasure,
Overflowing without measure,
God's great kindness towards us all
Compels us on His name to call
With our deep, unbroken praise.
Breezes from another world,
Flashing standards all unfurled,
Tokens of eternity
Sent from vast infinity
By God Himself who does not cease
To send us beauty, love, and peace,
And joy amongst the saddest folds;
Our fortunes in His palms He holds,
For this, our deep, unbroken praise.
Melodies that make us sing
E'en when death's somber hearse bells ring,
Echoes of a distant song
That puts to right our lists of wrong,
And should we hearken still to tell
Of angel choirs the earth would swell
Proclaiming glory to the King
To whom Thanksgiving we must bring
With all our deep, unbroken praise.
With glory let our praises sound
And with a hymn our lives resound,
Of grateful voices lifted up,
To Him who overflows our cup,
A light un-quenched, a standard staid,
For this purpose we were made,
With one accord our anthems raise,
Great tunes of deep, unbroken praise.
Happy Thanksgiving day, friends. For those of you who may ask. The first poem is not mine...I'm sure you all know it quite well. The following one is mine, not quite so beautiful or polished, but passable, I hope. May we spend this day in joyful thanksgiving to the One from whom all blessings flow.
I'll leave you with one of my favourite choral renditions of "For The Beauty of The Earth" courtesy of John Rutter.
"Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be." I tried to type up some sort of blog post about the wedding. I thought that might be the thing to do. However, I discovered that I hated everything I wrote. It simply wasn't capturing the fullness of all I wanted to say. Thus, I have put it out in poetry rather than prose. After all, sometimes I think my life is a poem; sometimes idyllic, sometimes tragic, and sometimes a steady mix of both along with something else inexplicable, but all the same, I think it rhymes...and it definitely has metre. Beyond that, I'll let these beautiful pictures do their work. After all, it is true that in many cases a picture is worth a thousand words. ~~~~~ You asked me if I'd marry you---I hesitated, Not because I wasn't sure, but for the years I'd waited... Waited for you, prayed for you, Longed for you and wondered why--- You delayed so long. I knew then it was God who was prepa...
Have you ever felt like the world is a burden you are honored to bear upon your shoulders in full? Has it ever seemed like you are the genius just waiting to be discovered? Who will save a billion lives through your ingenuity? Who will touch a thousand hearts with your wisdom and boundless love? Have you ever felt that every failure, every road block is a disappointment to the expectant world? That you are failing people and potential with every misstep and every hesitation? Welcome to my world, dear readers, this is what I combat every single waking moment. We can put it into a simpler format here: Hubris. I use Hubris here because the word tends to encompass a little more than Pride does to modern ears. Hubris is the embodiment of things we call the Hero Complex, the Savior Complex, or the God Complex. To a degree, everyone of us struggle with some hubris in our lives...
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are back. We hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving and are looking forward to an equally merry Christmas. And now, can you guess what our lucky winner, for this season's song is? "CATalunia!" No, do not applaud. My dear audience, we are sorry to say that there was a sorry lack of interest in our poll, so much so that our music expert (switched now to 'music lover') is one tiny bit discouraged. However, we hope to see more activity in future. For now, we did get a winner and we shall philosophize on that. Unfortuantely, for all the digging our music lover did, she could only come up with a little bit about this piece. But that is simply because there isn't much to tell. CATalunia, a French peice by the name of "Duetto Buffo di Due Gatti" (Humorous Duet for Two Cats) is often attributed to French composer Gioachino Rossini. However, it was most likely written as a compilation in 1825 which draws principally...
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