in re: thinning

Perhaps of interest.
I just learned in our childbirth class that in preparing for birth, the cervix not only dilates (which is what you usually hear about), but also thins prior to that.
In combination with the idea of veiling , the birth imagery here is very rich.

I find the grammar a trifle immature in places, but I like the spark of ideas here.

Adam says he finds

the grammar a trifle immature in places,

Well, Adam's grammar wears combat boots. (purple!)

I don't know if this is what he means, but I'm not a fan of omitted articles in hymns. It should be the earth, a seed, a or the diamond brilliance.

Some people are particular about meter, while I feel almost any two-syllabled foot can fall at the beginning of a line. Personally I am particular about this. It makes the text more vigorous and intelligible to include standard rules for articles. Verse 2, lines 3 and 4, are otherwise rather hard to read. Who says a hymn can't be pretty and grammatical at the same time?

by "Christ to spring from Jesse's stem."
Hymn's a done deal, got it.

But I like the assignation fully realized in verse four, while even in three it could have been reserved.s
In 1 I would enjoy knowing if "God's own Son" had ever been considered, thus not dealing with "Christ" as title, as opposed to Logos or Emmanuel, and a possible misinderstanding of "springing" (verb or allegorical reference.)
I also would have considered delaying the annointing of Him as Christ by using the formal pronoun "He" in verse three.
Otherwise I'm on the page with Adam and Kathy.

Some good comments, all.

Kathy, to one of your points, Bringle really knows what she is doing with her rhymes. I did not work with her on this collection, In Wind and Wonder, but I had hundreds of e-mail discussions with her about her 50 or so Spanish-to-English translations she did for the upcoming Oramos Cantando / We Pray in Song hymnal.

At times Bringle wants to avoid feminine rhymes, especially perfect ones, not because she is incapable of achieving them, but because she thinks they often produce a sing-song effect. She'd rather have slant rhymes or no rhyme at all, resorting instead to another poetic device, such as assonance or alliteration. I feel fairly confident in saying that this is what she is doing in lines 1 and 3, and 5 and 7 (except 5 and 7 in stanza 3).

A question I have is how this text would sing to JEFFERSON, instead of SUO GAN. The latter tune has a musical pause after each fourth syllable, which I think works wonderfully with this rather meditative text. At first I had reservations about the several "to" prepositions falling on these musical pauses, but I soon got used to them. I'm not sure JEFFERSON provides the space for thoughtful reflection on the text.

SUO GAN is not very well known; Bryn Terfel's rendition has done much to popularize it. GIA did not have to be concerned about introducing a new tune for this text. The text is not one of the "hymns for the gospel," which the editors had determined would have well-known tunes.

Fr. Krisman,

I probably wasn't clear. The funny thing here is that Bringle changed her own pattern, just in the last four lines. Generally that's not done. You pick one pattern and stick to it.

No, Kathy, you were very clear. And I understood you. I meant to address that concern, but overlooked it.

I think that, as you mentioned in your previous post, Bringle did purposely want to change the pattern in the the last four lines of the final stanza. Perhaps she thought that would bring a greater sense of completion. I cannot say. All I know is that she would not have introduced the perfect rhyme of stranger/manger because she somehow overlooked the pattern she followed everywhere else.

Might it be helpful if someone were to contact Mel Bringle and ask her to respond to some of these questions about the text and its construction?

Yes, exactly. And then at the very end , rejoicing/King. It's a majestic device.

I mean the comparison as a compliment. I'm trying to find a good reason for the irregularity in Bringle's text.

I find the grammar a trifle immature in places

I take it back.

It struck me on a first quick reading as being a succession of non-sentence poetic phrases. Upon having time to come back and read it, I see that is not the case at all.

In fact, if I had to fault it for anything related to grammar, it's that it is too complicated. (But not really.)

I always wonder if those sorts of things are justifications after the fact.

Maybe I'm suspicious because I would never use an imperfect rhyme if I could find a way not to. Of all the things I'm not particularly dogmatic about, I take rhyming very seriously. Probably too seriously.

I think this is really a very nice hymn. Any solid contribution to Advent repertoire is always very welcome. I'll just throw out a few points:

NOW: The word "now" is, I think, grossly overused in hymns. Typically it seems to be used to fill up a syllable in the meter, or else as a sort of throat-clearing that provides a vague sense of immediacy. But to me, "The heavens starts to whisper" is actually more immediate than "Now the heavens start to whisper." Starting a sentence with "Well, ahem, so anyway..." always blunts the impact.


LIKE THE SOIL BENEATH THE FROST-LINE: What a wonderful phrase. I really like that it concretely sets the action within winter, without falling back on overused imagery like snow.


DIAMOND BRILLIANCE THROUGH THE DARKNESS: If I had one major quibble with the hymn, it would be this line, which I think moves too far, too fast. Heretofore we've had images of whispers, veiling, clouds; now it sounds like the world is flooded with brilliant light. Perhaps the idea intended was one of the glint of a small diamond beaming through a world that is otherwise still slumbering in the dark. If so, I would have written something like "As a diamond in the darkness / Gleams the hope of coming day." (I realize "gleams" is used two lines later.)

Then again, let's look at three consecutive pairs of couplets here: "Diamond brilliance," "the morning star," "heaven's ember." We may not have here a true case of mixed metaphor, but what we do have, I think, are too many unrelated and competing metaphors piled one on top of the next. I would have picked the best ("heaven's ember"; best because it is original and conjures thoughts of a toasty fire in the ingle that work well with the winter imagery that has gone before) and run with it, or at least dropped the worst ("diamond brilliance"; worst because diamonds are cold, not warm, and also because they reflect light but do not emit their own). (As to "the morning star" -- which is Venus, by the way -- it is solid and nicely reminiscent of the O Antiphons, but let's not forget that only four lines later, in another conflicting metaphor, Christ becomes the "sun of justice").


FANS TO FULLNESS: Unlike a commenter above, I do not have a problem with the use of the active voice in place of the passive. This is not at all uncommon in English, especially in more colloquial usages: "This soup eats easily," "These negatives will enlarge nicely." I'm no philologist, but as I understand it this sort of use is close to the middle voice that exists in other languages like Greek. It is more agentive than strictly passive. Here, we don't want to say that "heaven's ember" fans itself to fullness; nor do we quite want to imagine that the Ember is a completely passive subject and somebody else is doing the fanning.


SUN OF JUSTICE: Another nice phrase, but I'm not sure how the concept of "justice" connects to anything else in the hymn. If it is supposed to relate to the "social justice" theme that is touched upon in the final four lines, I think the connection falls flat, since "sun of justice" evokes more of a judgment-seat, return-in-glory-to-judge-the-living-and-the-dead kind of justice.


HOURS OF YEARNING, HURT, AND NEED: I think I see what the author was trying to do here, but "hours" just sounds too brief to do it. "Years" or "ages" would sound right. The idea that Christ is coming to heal four or five hours of need or hurt just doesn't strike me as exactly what Ms. Bringle was trying to convey.


All in all, though, really a nice hymn. The above are quibbles, mostly.

Christ, the morning star of splendor,
Gleams within a world grown dim.
Heaven’s ember fans to fullness;
Hearts grow warm to welcome him.

Kathy, isn't this just a problem of punctuation? SUO GAN encourages me read it as "Christ...fans", but maybe hearts do welcome embers.

.

re: Thin place.

This language seems very trendy right now, and also lacking in Christian precedent.
I don't know that it is bad or heretical or anything else inherently. But I have a feeling that in a decade or two it will seem very dated.

Also, if it leads to a further exploration on the part of some into neo-pagan/new-age spirituality, I would think that would be distressing.

I should note: I don't have any problem with Christians learning from other traditions and cultures. Besides the general good of knowing other people better (which promotes peace and understanding), there are worthwhile things scattered around the honest spiritual strivings of various people.

But neo-pagansim is hardly a legitimate and ancient spiritual tradition. It an amorphous blob of silliness, founded on a series of gross misunderstandings of actual pagan culture, mutated to fit the needs of the anti-Christian moderns who first championed it, and simplified so that it could be more easily sold in paperback form at Chataquas and (for reasons that confound my sense of tautology) Renaissance festivals.

Neo-paganism is a wasteland of selfishness and vague spirituality. If it's effects on modern Christianity weren't so horrifying and insidious, it would be worthy only of laughter and ridicule.

MHI,

If you haven't already, please write hymns.

.