We’re halfway through November already! Time always seems to speed up when we hit this time of the year. Thanksgiving is just eleven days away and a month after that it will be Christmas and a week after that, the New Year. I love celebrating the holidays. I don’t know what the holidays will be like this year, but like just about everything else in 2020, I know they won’t be normal. With all the health restrictions and political anxiousness, getting together will be a bit more complicated. To start building the festive feeling at our house, we began listing to Christmas music on Thursday. We started, as we always do, with the Celtic Christmas albums and over the weeks ahead we’ll add in the Winter Solstice albums and then the pop Christmas songs, and then the carols. Miriam has been practicing Christmas music on the piano for two weeks already. Music is one of the most important parts of celebrating at our house.
Speaking of music. The human mind is a strange and complex thing. I often wake up in the morning with a song, hymn, or other piece of music playing in my head. Sometimes it sticks there for an hour or a day. Sometimes it persists for days or even weeks. Sometimes it’s music that I listen to often or have heard recently. Sometimes it’s something more obscure and surprising. One time I had Zombie by the Cranberries stuck in my head for a month. Last week I woke up every morning with the hymn Ye Simple Souls That Stray stuck in my head. I learned that hymn sometime back in the early 1970's when I was a boy soprano and sang in the choir in our ward in Rootstown, Ohio. I don’t remember ever singing it again in church except once in the early 80's when I was the choir director in our ward in Sylmar, California, and I had the choir sing it. It’s not a hymn that our congregations usually sing. So it has been at least 40 years since I last heard it. And yet, there it was, in my head, playing on repeat. It’s a great hymn. The words were written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the brother of John Wesley. They were the founders of Methodism. Charles wrote over 6,000 hymns, six of which are in our present hymnal including a much shortened version of Ye Simple Souls. I prefer the long version from the old 1948 hymnal over the short version in the 1985 hymnal. The music for it in our hymnal was written by Evan Stephens (1854-1930), a member of our church who was born in Wales and immigrated with his family to Utah. He was the director of the Tabernacle Choir for 26 years (1890–1916). Nineteen of the hymns in our hymnal were written by him. The words to Ye Simple Souls are powerful.
Ye simple souls, that stray
Far from the path of peace,
That lonely, unfrequented way
To life and happiness,
Why will ye folly love,
And throng the downward road,
And hate the wisdom from above,
And mock the sons of God?
Madness and misery
Ye count our life beneath,
And nothing great or good can see
Or glorious in our death:
As only born to grieve
Beneath your feet we lie,
And utterly contemn’d we live,
And unlamented die.
So wretched, and obscure,
The man whom ye despise,
So foolish, impotent, and poor,
Above your scorn we rise;
We through the Holy Ghost
Can witness better things,
For he, whose blood is all our boast,
Has made us priests and kings.
Riches unsearchable
In Jesus’ love we know,
And pleasures springing from the well
Of life our souls o’erflow:
The Spirit we receive
Of wisdom, grace, and pow’r,
And though through scenes of woe we live
Rejoicing evermore.
Angels our servants are,
And keep in all our ways,
And in their watchful hands they bear
The sacred sons of grace;
Unto that heav’nly bliss
They all our steps attend,
And God himself our Father is,
And Jesus is our friend.
With him we walk in white,
We in his image shine,
Our robes are robes of glorious light,
Our righteousness divine:
On all the kings of earth
With pity we look down,
And claim, in virtue of our birth,
A never-fading crown.
 |
| Charles Wesley and Evan Stephans. |
Later in the week, when Ye Simple Souls finally stopped playing in my head, it was replaced by Blue Christmas. That’s because I was the substitute for the music teacher at the high school last week and the students are practicing that song. I’ve tried to get it out of my head, but so far nothing has worked.
Even though the garden is dormant right now, I still walk through it every day. I do that to keep the memory of it and my plans for it fresh in my mind. And sometimes on my walks I find happy surprises. One of the stalwart flowers in my garden are the little Johnny-Jump-Ups (Viola tricolor) that pop up here and there all year long. They are the first flowers to appear in the spring, long before the snowdrops and crocuses. They bloom through the spring and summer. I’ve even discovered them blooming under snow. I found some blooming now – the only flowers in my garden. They are small and completely charming. They self-seed and spread, but I don’t mind. I just pull up the ones that are growing where I don’t want them. The rest can bloom wherever they will.
 |
| Some of the Johnny Jump-Ups blooming now. |
We had wonderful weather for the first part of the week. The temperature rose into the 60's and even the 70's during the day and never fell below freezing at night. November usually isn’t like that. I was thankful for the little respite from the usual dismal weather we have this time of year. We took advantage of it on Tuesday after school to burn the meadow. We’ve been wanting to burn it all fall, but one thing or another prevented us – too dry, too wet, too windy. On Tuesday the weather was perfect for it, warm and dry with a soft wind blowing out of the southwest and rain expected in the night. We called 911 and told them what we were doing in case anyone thought it was an emergency. Miriam and I dragged the hose out to the front and filled buckets just in case we needed them. Miriam lit a match in the dry grass at the bottom of the bank by the road and the flames and wind did the rest. The fire burned perfectly, exactly where we wanted. Kurt came over from next door to observe and help. The reason we burned the meadow was to get rid of some of the overgrown grass so that other plants and wild flowers could flourish. It all looks a bit stark right now, but when spring comes it will be renewed and beautiful.
 |
| Burning the upper part of the meadow. |
 |
| Burning the meadow bank. |
 |
| Afterward. |
The rain did come on Wednesday night. I was awakened by the sound of it falling on the new metal porch roof. I like that sound. Sometimes when it’s raining hard, I go down to the barn to listen to the noise of the rain on the barn roof. The rain wetted all the ash from the previous day’s fires. It filled the rain barrel down at the barn to overflowing – maybe for the last time this year as I will soon empty the barrel and store it for the winter.
The piano tuner came on Wednesday afternoon. We have him tune the piano once a year. We have a very nice Schafer and Sons upright that we bought back in 1986. It was a bit embarrassing to have the tuner open it up this time. A few weeks ago we found that a mouse had made a nest in it. The nest was down in the lower case, so it wasn’t difficult to clean it out, but unfortunately, the material it used to make the nest was the felt damper pad. The nest was abandoned and we have no idea when the mouse made it. Our piano is played a lot, so maybe the mouse liked music. Or maybe it made its nest and then the noise was too much and it moved out. The tuner took the whole damper bar home with him to replace all the felts.
 |
| Tuning the piano. |
After Wednesday’s rain, the weather turned cooler, but was still pretty nice. That’s why on Thursday after school and work we decided to put up our outdoor Christmas lights. We put them on the fence by the driveway and across the eaves on the back and front porches. Most years we forget to put them up until it’s freezing cold and snowy. It was nice to get it done before that happens. Of course, we won’t turn them on until after Thanksgiving.
 |
| Some of the Christmas lights. |
Tosh arrived on Friday to spend a week with us while he does some work for the Rigases. We love having him here. He’s good at doing things we are not good at. He always repairs things around the house. Stacey has him working on replacing the faucets in the upstairs bathtub while he’s here. I’m sure there will be other odd jobs accomplished.
Yesterday I finished reading volume two of Winston Churchill’s A History of the English Speaking Peoples. This volume is titled The New World and covers the period from the Tudor Dynasty to the reign of William and Mary. It was fascinating reading. I especially loved the chapters dealing with the establishment of the colonies in North America. It was interesting to see those events from the perspective of Churchill, an Englishman. He wrote of the valor and courage of the colonists who traveled to an unknown land far from their homes seeking freedom from religious persecution and an oppressive government that afforded them little opportunity to prosper. He saw them as the founders of a new approach to self government and individual liberty that has spread through the world to free oppressed humanity. I think we’ve forgotten the hardships they endured and the sacrifices those colonists made in seeking and creating a place for a better life. We have inherited all that they strove and suffered for and, by and large, I don’t believe we as a nation are as grateful as we should be. For decades now the history classes from elementary school to university level have denigrated them. We pay a shallow sort of homage to them at Thanksgiving with cute Pilgrim decorations and a big meal. But we are more and more being taught to doubt their purposes and to see them as intruders, genocidal plunderers, and closed minded religious bigots. I have read much concerning these people. While working on my masters degree in history, my minor was Colonial American History. In reading through the primary source documents, the accounts written by them or by others contemporary to them, I have nothing but deep respect for what they did and what they gave. I honor them. As one of their descendants, I owe my life to them. As a citizen of this great nation, I owe my freedom to them and their patriot descendants.
 |
| My set of Churchill. |
It’s cold, raining, and very windy today. It’s very gray and gloomy outside. It makes me feel a bit gloomy too. Driving to church we saw two bald eagles and several huge flocks of crows. Today in church our Stake President was supposed to come down and speak, but his family had to be quarantined and he couldn’t come. Instead, he sent his talk and someone read it to us. It was a good talk, I wish he could have given it himself. Now that we’re home from church and I’ve changed in to warmer clothes and I’m sitting here by the heater, I feel a little less gloomy. Lunch preparations are underway. I heard someone mention lighting the wood stove. That will be nice. Then I’ll move in there to sit in the warmth and read. I’m starting volume three of A History of the English Speaking Peoples, The Age of Revolution. It spans the time from William and Mary, through the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the War of 1812. I can hardly wait to dive into it.
Next weekend we are going down to the Thayn’s. We won’t be back until Monday, so the Journal will be late.
Good Sabbath!
