tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post2984773164909580813..comments2024-02-19T07:24:42.397-08:00Comments on Anglican Curmudgeon: Happy New Year! Praise the Lord!A. S. Haleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05108498446058643166noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-47194363363608676402011-01-01T16:12:21.881-08:002011-01-01T16:12:21.881-08:00This Mozart piece is not joyful or triumphant prai...This Mozart piece is not joyful or triumphant praise, but rather the poignant heartwrenching kind of praise that Mozart might have offered at the time he wrote Laudate Dominum. Nothing was going right for him. He had suffered several losses and humiliations.<br /><br />It was a <b>sacrifice of praise, </b>one of the three intangible sacrifices mentioned in Scripture: praise, thanksgiving (gratitude) and joy. The latter is hard to achieve when one is hurting unless we do the first two exercises first and work up to taking joy in God and receiving His joy. In offering all three of these sacrifices, we must be focused on God and on our love for God and His for us, not our circumstances. We can make these sacrifices even when there is no consolation left in our lives - when all we have is God Himself. <br /><br />I became acquainted with Laudate Dominum through Christopher Parkening's guitar arrangement during a time when my own life mirrored Mozart's. It was one of only two pieces of music I could bear to hear. The other was Virgil Fox's powerful rendering of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D, with the volume turned up all the way until it felt like the thunder on Mt. Sinai or Judgment Day!<br /><br />A couple of years later, I presented the guitar version as a tone poem to a Poetry Therapy class and for fun, had the participants try to guess the composer, describe the mood, message or story behind the music. No one guessed the composer, but everyone guessed the pain and loss the composer was going through at the time. Of course, the class was full of kind and sympathetic listeners - each one was a future mental health professional from several disciplines at the university.<br /><br />Here is a link to Christopher Parkening's Laudate Dominum:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAfMBf_I7VQ<br /><br />And, here's Virgil Fox thundering out Bach's Fugue:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjGmcmkXxcIAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-759178030677978044.post-68072383988713263372010-12-31T11:42:13.572-08:002010-12-31T11:42:13.572-08:00Not a deep thought - but just for fun it is worth ...Not a deep thought - but just for fun it is worth noting that the word translated "nations" in the first line is <i>goyim</i>, the plural form of the oft vocalized "goy" (Gentile, non-Jew).<br /><br />Happy New Year!TLF+https://www.blogger.com/profile/01650010433581488888noreply@blogger.com