Songs to Die For--Angel Band

My generous husband bought me a new Gospel music CD the other evening at Cracker Barrel--a bunch of hymns hand-picked by Bill Gaither. It contained a country song I'd never heard before called "Angel Band." (I know, I've been living in a cave.)

The particular performance on the CD doesn't appear to be on-line, but it does feature the immortal Vestal Goodman. So here's the nearest thing I could find: Vestal singing it with country legend George Jones. The video has a great story at the beginning about how Vestal "ran off the devil" when Jones was sunk into a severe depression:

Songs to Die For--No need to grieve for this old place

"This Old Place"--Ernie Haase and Signature Sound

"So," said Peter, "night falls on Narnia. What, Lucy! You're not crying? With Aslan ahead, and all of us here?"

"Don't try to stop me, Peter," said Lucy, "I am sure Aslan would not. I am sure it is not wrong to mourn for Narnia. Think of all that lies dead and frozen behind that door."

"Yes and I did hope," said Jill, "that it might go on for ever. I knew our world couldn't. I did think Narnia might."

"I saw it begin," said the Lord Digory. "I did not think I would live to see it die."

"Sirs," said Tirian. "The ladies do well to weep. See, I do so myself. I have seen my mother's death. What world but Narnia have I ever known? It were no virtue, but great discourtesy, if we did not mourn."

[snip]

It still seemed to be early, and the morning freshness was in the air. They kept on stopping to look round and to look behind them, partly because it was so beautiful but partly also because there was something about it which they could not understand.

"Peter," said Lucy, "where is this, do you suppose?"

"I don't know," said the High King. "It reminds me of somewhere but I can't give it a name. Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small?"

"It would have to have been a jolly good holiday," said Eustace. "I bet there isn't a country like this anywhere in our world. Look at the colours! You couldn't get a blue like the blue on those mountains in our world."

"Is it not Aslan's country?" said Tirian.

"Not like Aslan's country on top of that mountain beyond the Eastern end of the world," said Jill. "I've been there."

"If you ask me," said Edmund, "it's like somewhere in the Narnian world. Look at those mountains ahead - and the big ice-mountains beyond them. Surely they're rather like the mountains we used to see from Narnia, the ones up Westward beyond the Waterfall?"

"Yes, so they are," said Peter. "Only these are bigger."

"I don't think those ones are so very like anything in Narnia," said Lucy. "But look there." She pointed Southward to their left, and everyone stopped and turned to look. "Those hills," said Lucy, "the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind - aren't they very like the Southern border of Narnia?"

"Like!" cried Edmund after a moment's silence. "Why, they're exactly like. Look, there's Mount Pire with his forked head, and there's the pass into Archenland and everything!"

"And yet they're not like," said Lucy. "They're different. They have more colours on them and they look further away than I remembered and they're more .. . more . . . oh, I don't know..."

"More like the real thing," said the Lord Digory softly.

Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground.

"Kings and Queens," he cried, "we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all - Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia."

"But how can it be?" said Peter. "For Aslan told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are."

"Yes," said Eustace. "And we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out."

"And it's all so different," said Lucy.

"The Eagle is right," said the Lord Digory. "Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream." His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath "It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden. He knew why they were laughing and joined in the laugh himself. But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a lookingglass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Songs to Die For: "Wake Up Dancin'"

Just encountered this wonderful country song (not even gospel, just country) yesterday, courtesy of Eldest Daughter.

The artist is Gordon Mote, the blind pianist for the Gaither Vocal Band, but as you can see, a singer in his own right.

Strangers and Pilgrims

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country....But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

That passage from Hebrews is one of my favorite Scripture passages of all, and it seems to mean more with every year that passes. I realize that the people to whom the author of Hebrews is referring are the Old Testament saints. That is why he says that they died without having received the promises. They died before the coming of Jesus Christ. But he is also offering them to us as an example of faith, and their confession that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth and their desire for a heavenly country are surely meant to be examples to us. We must confess that we are strangers and pilgrims here and that we seek a better country in order that God shall not be ashamed to be called our God. For He has prepared for us a city.

And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are thy which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell amopng them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 7:13-17)

The following song is another of those that I had forgotten until reminded of it by my daughter. Beautifully done by the Gaither Vocal Band together with Signature Sound. When the crowd comes to its feet during Guy Penrod's solo, I'm much inclined to do the same.

"These Are They":

Gaither vocal band reunion music I

Back to music. I hope my readers who aren't into the same kind of music I'm into don't mind the gospel and Christian contemp. too much. (But look below. There's a hymn in this post.) I've just discovered a bit of a treasure trove through Eldest Daughter in the form of a whole bunch of Youtube videos from a 2008 (I'm told) reunion of the Gaither vocal band. There are quite a few that I want to post here, just so those who do enjoy these kinds of things can have their attention drawn to them. I'll just start with a couple and put them up one or two at a time.

The reunion is star-studded--Larnelle Harris, Steve Green, Russ Taff, etc. I'm not as familiar with all these as Eldest Daughter, and she keeps having to tell me who's who. Guy Penrod I had never seen before. He looks, unfortunately, like a failed try-out for the part of Gandalf, but he can sing.

So first of all, fun--"He Came Down To My Level."



I love the spirit in these videos. You feel like you're really there. It's like getting together with friends and singing for fun. And there's kind of a neat masculine atmosphere, too. The band is a men's group. The wives are there, but in the background. The men are having a good time singing together.

Now here's an unlikely one. Neither gospel nor Christian contemporary. A hymn. Moreover, a hymn they even have in my 1940 Anglican hymnal. Even a "song to die for"--that is, a song about life and death and the meaning of all of life for a Christian. Done a capella--bit of a Glad sound. Very, very classy. Listen to it even if you don't like CCM.

"Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go."



More in other posts.

Update: Singin' in the shower. Includes "Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go" and also--even better, in this recording, IMO--"That Great Gettin' Up Morning" and "Good News, the Chariot's Comin'."

Songs to Die for--"Go the Distance"

Indulge me. I'd never heard this song before until my friend Rich posted a clip here of a short version of it by a capella group Return 2 Zero. (Well worth listening to if you like a capella male ensembles at all.)

So, yes, I know (because Eldest Daughter told me) that it came from the Disney movie Hercules, which I'm not at all interested in seeing. And I know it's a bit sentimental. But I like it a lot. For one thing, it appeals to my love of an 80's sound, even though it wasn't written in the 80's. (Very fun electric guitar solo in the middle, and wonderful synthesizer trumpets at the beginning.) Looked all around to find a complete version of it. So here it is: "Go the Distance," sung by Michael Bolton. Try not to be too distracted by the missing apostrophes in the lyrics. It's useful to have the lyrics running in front of you as you listen. Discussion follows.



Note to Bill Luse: You did that great video of "You Raise Me Up" for Easter this year. New assignment--a similarly moving video to go with this one. I suggest images of military homecomings and perhaps a picture or two of Mr. Schindler, who recently went Home to his hero's welcome and was much on my mind while listening to this.

The lyrics are really awfully good. They have an interesting dual quality--an interplay between what E.D. Hirsch calls "meaning" and "significance." It's pretty clear to me that the authors didn't intend a Christian meaning. Probably something more like general inspiration with a hint of a love song. But Christian, and even Greco-Christian tropes (the marathon race) are simply part of Western consciousness, and they couldn't get away from them. The song resembles "You Raise Me Up" in that it can be thought of either as secular or as Christian, and it resembles it as well in expressing some deep human longings that are most satisfied by a Christian world view and by what Christianity promises.

Begin at the beginning:

I have often dreamed of a far-off place
Where a hero's welcome would be waiting for me.
And the crowd will cheer when it sees my face,
And a voice keeps saying, "This is where I ought to be."

Here is C.S. Lewis in "The Weight of Glory," on heaven:

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness....I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you--the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence;...We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience....The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged; to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory...becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

Lewis would have said that the song writer was speaking far more truly and of something far more important than he could possibly understand.

The song also tells us, "I won't look back" and "I know every mile will be worth my while," and it evokes throughout the metaphor of life as a race with an on-looking crowd.

Here is the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let ue lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith...

And here is the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians:

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

...and to the Corinthians:

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.

...and to the Romans:

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

There is, however, one respect in which the song will not bear a Christian interpretation: It treats one's attainment of the goal--coming to that place where you belong--as entirely a matter of one's own effort. And the Apostle Paul also reminds us,

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

Ultimately, it is not within our power, unaided, to "stay on track" and to go the distance. We will fail, every one of us, alone. That is why we need the Author and Finisher of our faith, the One who is able to keep us from falling. Let us look unto Him and go the distance for the crown of life with His help.

I'll Fly Away

A blessed Trinity Sunday to everyone. I don't know if my Catholic readers have Trinity Sunday. If not, it's a shame. Comes right after Pentecost, which makes sense. Then this whole next six months or so is the "Sundays after Trinity."

Here's a wonderful country version of "I'll Fly Away." I'm sufficiently ignorant of country that I can only say, "I think that's a banjo." Lots of fun. It contains a verse I'd never heard anywhere else: "Oh, how glad and happy when we meet. No more cold, iron shackles on my feet."

Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss--"I'll Fly Away"

Ill Fly Away - Gillian Welch

And as it happens, I am flying away, but not to heaven yet (as far as I know). This week we will be at a conference on Formal Methods in the Epistemology of Religion in Leuven, Belgium.

Songs to Die For--"If Heaven"

I know nothing about country music, but I just heard this song for the first time at Stony Creek Digest, the blog of my cyber-friend Jeff Culbreath. "If Heaven," by Andy Griggs.



I note the allusion to "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes"--"If heaven was a tear, it'd be my last one."

My "Songs to Die For" series started here, with "Poor, Wayfarin' Stranger," almost a year and a half ago now. They don't have their own label. I probably should give them one, but for now they are scattered among the "hymns" and "songs that are not hymns" label. They are (almost) all songs related to death or heaven.

"If Heaven" has several unexpectedly profound things in it. For example, there is the verse that begins, "If Heaven was a pie it would be cherry," which hardly seems like a promising beginning. But then there is this line: "And just one bite would satisfy your hunger/And there'd always be enough for everyone." Which reminded Eldest Daughter, when she heard it, of the following section of Dante:

"It is because your desires are fixed where the part is lessened by sharing that envy blows the bellows to your sighs; but if the love of the highest sphere bent upward your longing, that fear would not be in your breast. For there, the more they are who say ours, the more of good does each possess and the more of charity burns in that cloister....That infinite and unspeakable good which is there above speeds to love as a sunbeam comes to a bright body; so much it gives of itself as it finds of ardour, so that the more charity extends the more does the eternal goodness increase upon it, and the more souls that are enamoured there above the more there are to be rightly loved and the more love there is and like a mirror the one returns it to the other." (Purgatorio, XV, 49ff, Virgil to Dante when they leave the terrace of the purgation of envy)

Or as Augustine says, "Truth ravishes all her lovers, yet is faithful to each."

I've just finished reading The Last Battle to Youngest Daughter, so heaven has been on my mind a good deal. When "If Heaven" connects heaven with earthly joys--finding the people you love alive, your home town, the best memories of childhood--I am reminded of this passage in The Last Battle. Professor Digory is speaking first:

"You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream."...It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed and then cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

Like, and yet unlike, the joys of this earth. As Lewis says in The Great Divorce, everything good that dies will be resurrected, but it must die first.

Oh, and while we're at it, when I put up my post last year on B. J. Thomas's "Home Where I Belong," it was not available on Youtube (or I didn't know how to find it). But it is now. And so as a bonus, here it is, too.



I wish they could play that one at my funeral.

Hebrews 11:13-16, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off...and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country...But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

Hymn of the Week--Saved by Grace

Some readers have mentioned that I should provide links to the music for the hymns I discuss. Unfortunately, many of them appear to be found only in the cyberhymnal, which provides a tinny-sounding and quickly-played version of the tune. This is one. But it's the best I can do if you really don't know the tune at all.

I did discover that the inimitable Ken Medema has recorded it, but unfortunately there is no clip.

It's of course particularly appropriate that Ken Medema should have recorded it, and if you don't know why (being for whatever reason unacquainted with Protestant hymnody and music), it's because both he and Fanny Crosby are blind. Except, of course, Fanny isn't anymore, because she's in heaven.

Fanny Crosby wrote so many hymns I couldn't begin to list them, and nearly all of them allude to her blindness. In this one, it's the chorus: "And I shall see Him face to face, and tell the story, saved by grace." Sometimes the allusion is more subtle, as in "Pass me not, O gentle Savior." There she is comparing herself to Bartimeus who was a blind begger and called to Jesus as He passed by.

But the song (go read the words at the link) raises the interesting question of assurance of salvation. One of my moves away from being a Baptist has been my conclusion that it is possible to fall from grace. This is sometimes identified as a "Catholic" view, but actually I believe it is also standard Lutheran theology and is certainly implied by much Anglican liturgy. Now, Fanny obviously is absolutely convinced that she is going to heaven, which I guess the Catholics would call "presumption."

For myself, I can't see it that way. I'm reminded of a very personal story: My dad had been sick a couple of years ago, and he was home from the hospital and still not doing too well. He told me on the phone about how he passed out one time. He said he thought to himself as everything went dark, "Well, I guess I'm goin' to heaven." "But then," he continued, "I just woke up on the floor with a gash on my head."

Now, it seems to me that there is a certain innocent purity in some people, such that their confidence of this sort is itself evidence. In both of these cases, my strong inclination is to say, "That's not someone whose eternal destiny I have to worry about. That's someone close to Jesus. That's someone who is ready."

Anyway, enjoy "Saved by Grace," and if you already know it, go around humming it this week.

Songs to Die For III

C.S. Lewis said various things to the effect that we will actually love the things of this world more when we learn not to grasp at them. I have always found this hard to understand, but I think he is almost certainly quite right.

Which brings me to the song, "Home Where I Belong" by 70's country singer B. J. Thomas. (Very short clip of the recording available here.) My long-suffering immediate family is rather tired of this one ever since I found the chords and can play it for myself on the piano. But my sister-in-law says maybe someone could sing it at her funeral. And she's not much older than I am!

It's a rather surprising song for being so light and popular. It seems to me that the first verse of this song gets just the right balance between love of this world and love of heaven. This world is beautiful, but if we have to choose, we should choose heaven. The chorus is a perhaps unconscious echo of St. Paul's statement in Philippians 1 that he would like to die and be with Christ but that it is necessary for him to remain for the sake of others.

Verse 1
They say that heaven's pretty, and livin' here is too.
But if they said that I would have to choose between the two,
I'd go home. Goin' home, where I belong.

Verse 2
Sometimes when I'm dreamin' it comes as no surprise
That if you look you'll find that homesick feeling in my eyes.
I'm headed home. Goin' home, where I belong.

Chorus
But while I'm here I'll serve Him gladly, sing Him all these songs.
I'm here, but not for long.

Verse 3
One day I'll be sleepin' when death knocks on my door,
And I'll awake to find that I'm not homesick anymore.
I'll be home. Goin' home, where I belong.

Songs to Die for--Post II

William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper") was a late 18th century Christian poet who suffered from madness at recurrent intervals. He tried to commit suicide, imagined that people were trying to poison him, and decided that he was doomed to hell. He was a Calvinist, and it's interesting to me to see that Calvinism was a very upsetting doctrine at the time. The Baptist Calvinism with which I was raised (and I'm not even that much of a Calvinist anymore) was a modified version: The idea there was that if you had, on a certain nameable date, accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you could know that you were one of the elect. But if you were a Calvinist in Cowper's time, you were always worrying that maybe you'd been predestined to damnation and just weren't going to find that out for sure until you died.

John Newton, of "Amazing Grace" fame, was a great friend of Cowper's and one of the most unfortunate friends poor, mad Cowper could have had. Newton would write Cowper letters saying that he doubted that Cowper was one of the elect after Newton heard that Cowper had been hob-nobbing with neighbors of whom Newton disapproved. I seem to recall that they were Catholics. Newton seems to have considered them "worldly." This is not the sort of thing you should be saying to a person who goes mad periodically thinking he's damned. Cowper's letters, which I've read with great profit, make sometimes lovely reading and sometimes terribly sad reading, because at the end of his life he was on the seashore and thought that the ships he saw coming were coming to take him away to hell.

Anyway, one of the most famous hymns with lyrics by Cowper is "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood," and two verses of it fit well into my series on songs about heaven. They are joyful verses to sing if you know Cowper's story, because you can think to yourself that now he knows the assurance he felt only temporarily when he wrote these verses. Now he doesn't have to be afraid anymore.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more.
Be saved to sin no more, be saved to sin no more.
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more.

When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave
Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing thy power to save.
I'll sing thy power to save, I'll sing thy power to save.
Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing thy power to save.

Songs to Die For--Post I

I was once told about a man who would go to the hospital and sit with anyone he knew who was dying. While he sat there, he would sing all the songs he could think of about heaven.
This got me to thinking about all the songs I know about heaven, that I sing around the house pretty frequently. There are so many. Even if they were in the 1940 Hymnal (which none or almost none of them are), they couldn't all be sung at my far-distant funeral. Probably none of them will be. But I'd like to list them somewhere, sometimes a bunch at once, sometimes one at a time.

Here's one: The old spiritual "Poor Wayfarin' Stranger." This one makes a great lullaby. Babies love it. I hope it's burned into my girls' brains from being sung to them in a rocker at ungodly hours of the night, in illness, and during the day to comfort scraped knees. It alludes to Hebrews 11, "They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth... But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

I'm just a poor wayfarin' stranger
A-travelin' through this world of woe,
But there's no sickness, no toil or danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I'm goin' there to see my Savior
I'm goin' there no more to roam.
I'm just a-goin' over Jordan.
I'm just a-goin' over home.