Messiah

 

December 19, 2020

Suzanne sent me a link to somebody’s (quite good) video of Messiah (with theorbo) on You Tube. Have heard it a hundred and sung it a dozen times, yet this time I was curiously moved. When the baritone let loose with Why do the nations so furiously rage together? I burst into tears. The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed. I wave my little banner, brandish my blunt sword in the army of the righteous, hoping it avails. 

Pulled over at the French Broad overlook, went down the hill and caught the opening of the Shut-In, but it was cold and I wasn’t really in the mood. Did stop for a happy little skunk crossing the path maybe five feet ahead. I swear to God he said “howdy!”  

Picked up OBN and read, re-affirming my odd (is it odd? Maybe it’s common) ability to read my own work as though it were a discovery and I hadn’t written it at all. I enjoyed it. Tolkien and Lewis conspired to write the kind of books they wanted to read; I seem to have happily written books I like to read almost incidentally. Whatever else, sentence to sentence, it’s good writing. I can rest for a moment on that.

Put the new binoculars to use from the front porch: flicker, phoebe, song sparrow, titmouse, brown creeper.