26 August is the anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams, thought by some the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell. Vaughan Williams, who lived 1872-1958 and whose ashes are interred near Purcell's tomb in Westminster Abbey, in his long and productive life made a major contribution to our musical heritage not only in his own noble compositions, but also in the immense labor he performed in collecting and preserving folk melodies, carols and musical idioms and in his settings for some of our finest hymns.



Vaughan Williams was the musical editor of the great and influential work The English Hymnal 1906 and composed or arranged, among other works, Down Ampney (the music for Come Down, O Love Divine), King's Lynn (for Chesterton's O God of Earth and Altar), Sine Nomine (William How's For All The Saints) and Monks Gate (Percy Dearmer's version of John Bunyan's words He Who Would Valiant Be).



Thought of that last hymn is particularly fitting, since the influence of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress on Vaughan Williams was profound and his fascination with its language and message lasted through his life. In fact, a very fine program of his music could be put together with the work as an organising theme.



Bertrand Russell spoke of him as "the most frightful atheist" when he was at Cambridge, and others have spoken of his agnosticism, but Vaughan Williams inherited a deep love of Christian imagery and tradition from his Evangelical ancestors and it's difficult, hearing his music and thinking of his work, to believe that the Truth that lies behind those images and traditions was not real to him. We can certainly hope that the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.



He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,

Let him in constancy follow the Master.

There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.



Who so beset him round with dismal stories

Do but themselves confound—his strength the more is.

No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,

He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.



Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,

We know we at the end, shall life inherit.

Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,

I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

There's a good deal of foolishness about on the subject of angels, some of it pernicious, much of it sentimental nonsense. Not for the first time, it's good to give thanks for the clear thinking of the physicist Dr. David Heddle, whose blog has shed light on many questions. He gave an impromptu Sunday school lesson on the subject of angels and shares the main points of his presentation at He Lives.

But the believing soul longs and faints for God; she rests sweetly in the contemplation of Him. She glories in the reproach of the Cross, until the glory of His face shall be revealed. Like the Bride, the dove of Christ, that is covered with silver wings (Ps. 68.13), white with innocence and purity, she reposes in the thought of Thine abundant kindness, Lord Jesus; and above all she longs for that day when in the joyful splendor of Thy saints, gleaming with the radiance of the Beatific Vision, her feathers shall be like gold, resplendent with the joy of Thy countenance.



Rightly then may she exult, 'His left hand is under my head and His right hand doth embrace me.' The left hand signifies the memory of that matchless love, which moved Him to lay down His life for His friends; and the right hand is the Beatific Vision which He hath promised to His own, and the delight they have in His presence.



Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in Chapter IV of On Loving God. Today is the memorial and feast day of the great monk and abbot, the 850th anniversary of the death of this illustrious Doctor of the Church.

Fr. Jim Tucker at Dappled Things has posted the results of his Myers-Briggs analysis. He's INFP. My score was identical to his on I and N, and nearly so (73 to his 82) on P. But I scored INTP, with 55-45 Thinking-Feeling, a marked divergence from his score.



An interesting few minutes in answering the questions on this abbreviated version of the test, and Fr. Jim also has some good explanatory links.



UPDATE - 8/19: Fr. Jim, drawing also on an earlier survey at the site of Kathy the Carmelite, -- who linked to the Jung Typology Test -- posts a roundup of scores from a sampling of St. Blogs. And what a group of introverts we are. Not a gladhander in the group.

Above all, the World Trade Center Memorial must be lapidary, a useful term that literally means the terseness appropriate to carving on stone. It would be wrong to communicate anything other than the simplest of declaratives: We mourn, we persevere, we continue.



Michael J. Lewis, chairman of the art department at Williams College, writing in OpinionJournal today. And noted at Armavirumque.



Professor Lewis, whose scholarly work on Philadelphia architect Frank Furness has been widely praised, also wrote Glass Walls to Bunkers: The New Look of U.S. Embassies, an essay published in the New York Times on 27 July.

We have familiar experience of the order, the constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, never-ceasing as are its changes, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, it is set up in unity; and, though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dissolution does but give birth to fresh modes of organization, and one death is the parent of a thousand lives. Each hour, as it comes, is but a testimony, how fleeting, yet how secure, how certain, is the great whole. It is like an image on the waters, which is ever the same, though the waters ever flow. Change upon change,--yet one change cries out to another, like the alternate Seraphim, in praise and in glory of their Maker. The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of the night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched. Spring passes into summer, and through summer and autumn into winter, only the more surely, by its own ultimate return, to triumph over that grave, towards which it resolutely hastened from its first hour. We mourn over the blossoms of May, because they are to wither; but we know, withal, that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops,--which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.



The opening paragraph of The Second Spring, the sermon of John Henry Newman at the First Provincial Synod of Westminster, preached on July 13, 1852, in St. Mary's College, Oscott.



Cardinal Newman, now Venerable, died on this date in 1890 and is well included in the litany of intercession proposed in these sad and difficult, perhaps even sundering, days for the Anglican Communion.

Last week I quoted the following from Richard Llewellyn's How Green was My Valley:

There is no fence or hedge around time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.



Here's a thought from the same topical family, and even better expressed: The past has incredible patience, waiting for us to return to it. It is we who run out of time.



And the author of the second, William Luse, writes almost every day, always to our profit, and to a deeper understanding and fellowship. You owe it to yourself to be reading his work.

I'm not really much of a cola man but there's a soda that's always been a treat to me: Black Cherry Wishniak. With quarts of orange soda and of ginger ale, it was one of the flavors in the twelve-bottle wooden crate that was occasionally delivered to our house when I was a boy, or that could be picked up from the beer distributor. Frank's was the brand then, and sweetened with cane sugar instead of the now-ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup.



Well, I discovered on my way home last evening that Canada Dry now makes a Black Cherry Wishniak and I bought some. I'm looking forward to a frosty glass. Really. But the bottlers want to make it clear that it's a hardy -- perhaps foolhardy -- soul that will run the risks that are entailed.



Beside an exclamation point in a universal sign triangle is the word WARNING in bold-faced caps. And below is the legend: "Contents under pressure. Cap may blow off causing eye or other serious injury. Point away from face and people, especially while opening."



I won't be deterred. Some treats are worth it.

Emeth and Davey took over each other's blogs to announce their courtship. Not an easy thing, with half a world of distance between the pair. But enormous talent, and the love of God, uniting them. Prayer for their growth and happiness, and best wishes.