O Emmanuel - Bernadette Farrell

 

St. Martin's Voices

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour, come and save us O Lord our God.  

__________________

Commentary on the above in the form of a rant

I've written here before about how, as an egalitarian democrat I always felt a little queasy about praying "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven," because "no kings."   That was until I realized what was wrong with human monarchs was that they were all too human.  If nothing the revelations about how good queen Elizabeth II had an absurd blind spot for her criminally horrible favorite child,  Andrew, and his crimes and corruption as well as his rotten character from the time he was a little brat - not to mention the likes of that predecessor of the clients of Jeffrey Epstein,  Lord Mountbatten* and so many others she certainly knew about.  

The Kingdom of God won't be one of inequality.  That is it will not be one of greed, cruelty, evil and corruption.  All systems that tolerate, never mind being based in inequality as ours is, will ever be anything but those.  American history even before the Roberts Court's legalistic corruption  shows perfectly well those can be as characteristic of a deputed and even real republic as it can be of a hereditary monarchy.   The problem with the absurd and corrupted from the start scheme of John Adams for a balance of powers was that it depended on the fallibility of men, in the case of the early Republic many of them rotten from the start and bent on corrupting even that scheme to their own gain.**

The Hebrew Scripture from the time of Moses and, later, Jesus aspired to more than that for humanity and the world, they aspire to equality beyond the rule of the corrupt, they aspire to nothing short of our salvation.   It was in large part the consequences of human governance under man made laws that this antiphon prays we will be saved.   In the United States, right now, it is to the consequences of an American election, one governed by the lies of the mass media and a party catering to the worst things about us, greed, racism, misogyny, a desire to be freed of social restraints against being the worst we figure we can get away with, the love of cruelty encouraged by American macho culture and Hollywood - we are living with the media campaign of popularizing cruelty that started in the 1970s with the rise of such things as shock jock radio and cruel, often racist "comedy."   I've mentioned here before that a carpenter I knew then told me he thought that the promotion of cruelty in things like Garbage Pail Kids was a promotion of just that, he mentioned Nazism in his discussion and he predicted that things in the United States would get disastrously worse as a consequence of that trend in pop culture.   Well, that pop cultural trend continued and things have gotten worse.    Secularism will never aspire to more than what leads there.   But so much of American "christianity," "christian-nationalism" the kind of "americanism" espoused by conservative Protestants and Catholics like Timothy Cardinal Dolan and Robert Barron is as thoroughly if not even more secular than much of non-religion these days. 

American "christianity" was also taken down a similar path with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the media campaign to turn the meaning of "Christian" into an anti-Christian deformity that can be spouted by the neo-Nazi shock jocks of now and the white supremacist, Republican-fascists in Congress in the presidency and on the Supreme Court.   I'll have a lot more to say about that in the coming year.   I think either those who try to follow Jesus will have to really fight against the Mammonist parody of Christianity or Christianity will be discredited for the rest of the lives of everyone alive right now.   The law as exposited by Jesus is what this prayer asks for, its real implementation - which here, on Earth will depend on all too fallible human beings and which won't just naturally come about under a libertarian regime of "liberal democracy."   It is the law to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, treat the ill, humane treatment for the prisoner.   It will include the humane provisions of the Mosaic Law and the prophesy of the Prophets.   It won't be the pipedream of "enlightenment" (I'll have more to say about that after Christmas, too) that has been what has gotten us here, too, the framers of the American Constitution were far better proponents of the ideas of the heroes of the "enlightenment" than they're credited with - that is what those false gods really advocated, not what a lefty prof or their all too close allies in "classical political economics" at the best universities trim those into being. 

So, as can be seen in this last of the O Antiphons of Advent, Christmas is inescapably political and economic, to ignore that is to ignore why the birth of Jesus is something worthy of celebrating.   We ask nothing less of him than our salvation from our economic and political bungling and corruption.  

* It being so near to Christmas and he being safely dead,  I'll forego more about him for now.  

** Everything that has happened for the worse which the laws and Constitutional system invented by John Adams has permitted the most horrible of crimes from the start and even official, legal emancipation of slaves, what should have been the revolutionary and egalitarian consequences of the Civil War amendments and the hard struggled for progress won by civil rights and Womens' rights movements, the labor movement, has proven to be vulnerable to the very Constitutional system set up by the slave-holder-corrupt-financier founders.   John Adams may have been the least corrupt of them but he was one of them.  I wish his cousin Samuel Adams hadn't so diligently burned his papers because I'd like to know a lot more about his anti-federalism than can be known.  I have found reading the best of the anti-federalists entirely relevant to our situation and showing how we can't depend on any of it, especially the Supreme Court to save us because those are fundamentally corrupt.  Especially under the legal theories concocted in elite law schools by the members of that most fundamentally lying of professions, lawyers.   If honest lawyers don't like that, it's not my fault.   They know full well that their colleagues not only are dominated by liars, lying on behalf of even the most corrupt of their clients is held to be a professional obligation.  Almost as sacred a professional practice as billing by the hour.   The secular law will always prove to be corrupt. 

Questions On Today's Readings

WHAT I HANNAH HADN'T?

(I Samuel)

What if Hannah hand't prayed for a son
and wouldn't have had one?

If Samuel, then,

would not have been,

he wouldn't have left his mother's knee

at three, obviously

and move to the temple for room and board

with ancient Eli and the Lord,

and Eli would have slept all night, 

undisturbed by the threefold sound and sight

of persistent young Sam

and his "He I am."

If Hannah hadn't prayed for a son,

would she have had one?

How much does God depend

on the prayers we send? 

Sr.  Irene Zimmerman SSF

The High Overhead Low Market Whorey Beiss

has effectively killed CBS News.   What they do now is See BS "news."   Her position in the alleged profession of journalism has been one of sheer self interest and hypocrisy.   Not that I had much of any use for CBS for about the last 20 years,  I'm not sorry to see it go though I'm sure the habitual treatment of it as a credible source of information will continue for a while into the future.   I'm sure Whorey will go on to the next thing, probably backed with billionaire money instead of any credible work in journalism.   I hope her next "town hall" can do no better than shifty vinyl siding companies and whatever is the equivalent of Chia Pet is the rest of the year.   She's trash.   I'm sure the NYT ownership is proud of its protogee.  

O King Of The Nations - David Ogden

 

St Martin's Voices 

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025

O King of the nations and their desire, the cornerstone making both one:  come and save the human race which you fashioned from clay.  

Concentrating on "the cornerstone making both one"  here is Paul in Ephesian's 2

11 So remember that once you were Gentiles by physical descent, who were called “uncircumcised” by Jews who are physically circumcised. 12 At that time you were without Christ. You were aliens rather than citizens of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of God’s promise. In this world you had no hope and no God. 13 But now, thanks to Christ Jesus, you who once were so far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us. 15 He canceled the detailed rules of the Law so that he could create one new person out of the two groups, making peace. 16 He reconciled them both as one body to God by the cross, which ended the hostility to God.

17 When he came, he announced the good news of peace to you who were far away from God and to those who were near. 18 We both have access to the Father through Christ by the one Spirit. 19 So now you are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household. 20 As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord. 22 Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.

Only Paul wasn't only talking about Ephesians and Israel.  "Gentiles," the nations is everyone.   

Needless to say, those in the United States who are yelling "Christianity" the loudest don't welcome this message because the last thing they want is unity, they don't want two to be one, they don't want to be one with anyone, even at the cost of the unity of them as well as all in God.  

And about which, here is a rather strange Christmas story.   I won't comment on it. 

Carla bley - Jesus Maria

 

Jesus Maria · Johan Farjot · Johan Farjot & Friends · Ensemble Saxo Voce · Rosemary Standley · Carla Bley · Carla Bley

You can read more about this recording here.  

I had never heard anyone sing the words to this song before finding this recording,  it works very well as a delivery of the lyrics.   The first one I heard was an early trio performance by Jimmy Giufree with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow from 1961,  I don't know if she had set the words to it then,  the lead sheet with words linked to yesterday dates from five years later.   Here's an especially moving solo performance by Gary Burton. 

It's Not Christmas To Me

until I hear Callie Crossley and Mike Wilkens go over his annual collection of wacky Christmas songs. 

Mike’s Merry Mix 2025: A year of wacky and wonderful holiday music

Every year since 1989, Mike Wilkins has been digging through archives, compilations, vinyls, B-sides, cassettes, CDs and the world of digital music to put together his annual collection of underground holiday tunes.

Then Wilkins, engineer for PRX and GBH’s The World, puts together his “mixtape” — now a playlist. It features new takes on beloved classics, quirky original songs and some selections listeners would deem bizarre at best. But Wilkins said when it comes to holiday music, some artists take big swings to see what could be the next “All I Want For Christmas Is You” or, perhaps more likely, “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”

“There are some people who are just like, ‘How wacky can we make it? Let’s veer from the norm a little bit.’ While others still take traditional routes. But I think — when you’re a creative, when you are a songwriter — you probably want to push the envelope a little,” Wilkins told Callie Crossley on GBH’s Under the Radar.

This year’s edition includes plenty of off-the-wall songs, like the promotional track “Charlie, The Christmas Chimpanzee” by Alice Martin, “Lucifer’s Christmas” by Glasgow artist Dale McPhail and “Zoomah, The Santa Claus From Mars” by Brookline’s own Barry Gordon. Gordon, a child star who already had a Christmas hit with his 6-year-old vocals on “Nuttin’ For Christmas,” went on to become an actor and the longest-serving president of the Screen Actors Guild.

For me it's not listening to the atrocities that he finds or rediscovers on the B-sides of his extensive collection, it's the enormous pleasure of listening to Callie Crossley and him going over it.  Most of them play about as much of them as I care to hear.  Though some of them are so bad that they're worth hearing the entirety of, especially the ones that don't seem to have been created tongue in cheek.  

O Morning Star - Esther Bersweden

 

St Martin's Voices

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025

O morning star splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness, come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. 

Another translation of the Latin is:

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Which reminds me of this passage from the end of the Exultet from the Easter Vigil 

May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star:

the one Morning Star who never sets,

Christ your Son, who, coming back from death's domain,

has shed his peaceful light on humanity,

and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Which never fails to move me.  

Carla Bley - Jesus Maria

Carla Bley - piano, composer

Steve Swallow - bass, chimes

Tobias Weidinger - trumpet, flugelhorn (lead), glockenspiel

Axel Schlosser - trumpet, flugelhorn (soloist), chimes

Christine Chapman - horn

Adrian Mears - trombone

Ed Partyka - bass trombone, tuba

Lead sheet with words

A little boy, recently relocated in the United States,  whose name was Jesus Maria, came home from school crying.  Some children made fun of his name.  His mother tried to explain why the second part of his first name was Maria.  This is what she said. 

Lyrics:

Jesus was a baby in a far off land. 

Mary was his mother she took care of him till he grew to be a full grown man.

His destiny to be a savior who was soon to die.

Jesus don't you cry that's the reason why you have a girl's name

cause we named you after both of them,  

Mary and her baby never cease to be in our memory.  

Gerald Clayton performs Horace Silver · Peace, recorded at ConcertLab.

 

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Old Time Radio Christmas

 Old Time Radio Christmas 

I don't do much "golden age" stuff, generally preferring more current plays.   But a lot of people like the old stuff and there is nothing if not a surfeit of old Christmas radio shows.  So here's a link to a place that collected a large number in one place.   I hope you find something you like. 

Those With Nothing To Lose Saw It All

UNTO HIS OWN

(Luke 2:7-16)

Homeless that first night --
one more statistic
to add to the census,
one more mouth to feed.

Only the shepherds,
with nothing to lose
except a little sleep,
came to see. 

Sr. Irene Zimmerman, SSF

OF THE TWO CANONICAL BIRTH NARRATIVES I prefer Luke's though I have nothing against Matthew's,  as RMJ points out, they had different reasons for focusing on what they did.     I'm enough of a thought criminal I don't see any reason that some version of both couldn't have happened and been reported on in some version.   Which, by the way, has little to do with whether or not both of them are truly true.   None of the authors of the New Testament canon were writing history,  the truth they were writing surpasses that pedestrian standard of judgement of what's true.  

There's nothing in Matthew's that would lead anyone to suspect they happened on the same night or even day or even week.  The shepherds' story is the one tied to that specific night.  Here's Luke:

7 She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.

8 Nearby shepherds were living in the fields, guarding their sheep at night. 9 The Lord’s angel stood before them, the Lord’s glory shone around them, and they were terrified.

10 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you—wonderful, joyous news for all people. 11 Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord. 12 This is a sign for you: you will find a newborn baby wrapped snugly and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great assembly of the heavenly forces was with the angel praising God. They said, 14 “Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”

15 When the angels returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go right now to Bethlehem and see what’s happened. Let’s confirm what the Lord has revealed to us.” 16 They went quickly and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger.

Common English Bible 

You can compare the account in Matthew 2, which has only the time component of what the Magi asked Herod.

2 They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”

After consulting his court theologians as to the place the Messiah was to be born, Herod figured he needed to know when they first saw the star to figure out when it happened. 

7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. 

If I had to guess,  I would think that Matthew implied that Herod, at least, believed the star came into sight when Jesus was born.  Considering the time it probably took the magi* to get to Herod on foot or by camel I don't think Matthew was implying they'd have run into the shepherds the night he was born despite what a 20th century super-deluxe manger scene includes.  The shepherds were working People, not tourists.   Their sheep needed tending.   

I'll point out that the church calendar would tend to emphasize that point of view because while the lectionary has the story of the shepherds at Christmas,  the Magi have to wait till January 6th to get focused on.  We didn't do "petite Noel" on the 6th of January but I heard rumors that some French Canadian families did and we knew our Greek Orthodox cousins' Greek grandparents had a party around then - we weren't ever invited.  

Here's what I get from my thinking about the poem, above. 

Despite the absence of the census for taxation given by Luke as the reason that Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem in the surviving accounts of the reign of Tiberius,**  as in Sr. Irene Zimmerman's poem it sets up two radically opposed views of life.   Luke shows that the official, secular, legal view of the near destitute who could be taxed was as numbers to be used in a scheme of valuation as certainly as the Nazis turned those they meant to kill immediately due to their not being worth working to death as well as those they intended to work to death, extracting the most value from them that they could.   They did the same to those who their propaganda encouraged the German People to think of as "useless eaters" before they turned their mass murders into their pilot program of genocide.   And that is how the modern, secular, disenchanted world sees life.   That is how sociology and the rest of the social sciences tend to see human beings, as data in the form of numbers.   

Our worship of "the data" has reached new heights of unawareness of what that was alleged to show to start with,  it was never a view of reality, it was just a convenient way to make generalizations about reality.    For all of its general value, it has never shown anyone anything about something broader than can be fit into numbers and no living organism, let alone any person has ever been quantifiable.  Modernism, materialist scientism has made Tiberiuses of all of us.   And you can't see the whole thing when you do that. 

*  Three of them in the west, a dozen in the Orthodox tradition.  I wonder how that would figure into the casting of the Sunday School Christmas play.   And there aren't any camels mentioned in Matthew, though I'd guess they'd have wanted someone to carry their treasure chests.   That they were ye three kings seems to be European medieval or later embroidery.   I'd have guessed they'd have a donkey to do that.  They weren't carrying Fort Knox with them. 

** Anyone who thinks we have any such detailed view of any of the Roman emperors and their official actions is silly in the extreme.  We have nothing like that of even the major figures who show up in what were regarded as "histories."   That goes many times over for someone like Herod and his family.   Both the census and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents could be accurate reportage and there is no reason to expect that any corroborating evidence would have survived.  In the case of Herod commanding the slaughter of peasant babies,  there's no reason to believe the command would have even been written down at the time.   We tend to imagine that time and those people and places through our modern bureaucratic concepts.   That any modern scholar or academic or even popular debunker wouldn't realize that should discredit them. 

O Key of David - Tasmin Jones

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent, 2025

St Martin's Voices

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;  you open and no one can shut;  you shut and no one can open:  Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,  those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. 

The Scriptures referenced here are from Isaiah and Psalm 102 and 106.

Here is an interesting blog post from 2013 about some anonymous Anglo-Saxon poetic meditations on the O Antiphons and this one in particular.  I'll tempt any Tolkien fans out there to read it with this:

This poem takes its main inspiration from the final line of the antiphon: 'those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death'. Its interest is in light and darkness, and in the language of secrecy and hidden things - especially geryne, 'mystery'. (Not to make the Advent Lyrics all about Tolkien - since tomorrow is 'O Earendel' - but I particularly noted the line þæt degol wæs, dryhtnes geryne, 'that was a secret, the Lord's mystery', because degol is the origin of the name Déagol, who was secretly murdered by Sméagol.) The Key of David is to unlock not only the road to heaven, but the secrets concealed on earth. He will give us strength in mode, 'mind, spirit', and tydre gewitt tire bewinde, 'enfold our frail wits in splendour', as if limited human understanding is to be entirely wrapped and wound within limitless divine wisdom. Another Old English poem (Exodus), counselling on the interpretation of the scriptures, uses comparable language in its metaphor of the keys of the spirit:

I'm not all that big on Tolkien, myself.   I'd have gone on and on about an earlier passage in the post but I did that yesterday.  

There is an edition of the Exeter Book available online which contains the poems referred to online,  with an edition of the original and a translation into modern English (my one course in Anglo-Saxon poetry ended close to sixty years ago).  It's a bit of work to find what I assume the writer of the post refers to, they seem to be embedded into longer meditations on the Nativity.  Those start at page 26 in the pdf, the modern translation more or less on what I'd guess are the facing pages in the printed book .    

"As you must have guessed by now, it's quite more complicated than that, and it rests on a massive jump to conclusions with no direct support in any of the primary sources. And it’s not as if Old Norse texts never said anything about exactly when the yuletide sacrifices should commence, because they totally do, and it coincides with the astronomical winter solstice in exactly no source whatsoever. "

ONE OF RMJ's FINE ADVENT POSTS reminds me of this piece I did a while back.  I checked the link and it is still active. 

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

The Idea The Mean Old Christians Stole the Yule From Those Nice Nature Loving Vikings May Be Even More Crap Than I'd Thought Before

 I JUST LOST the long post I was writing updating my semi-annual poke at the accusation that those mean old Christians stole Yule from those poor, gentle, nature-loving folk, the pagans of Northern Europe.  You know, the ones who practiced human, especially, female slave sacrifice as documented in at least one eye-witness account and in excavations of chieftain burials.  I lost it in the electricity flickering during the awful ice storm we're having - thank you global warming - so I'll keep this short.

Looking for new material to add to the picture of that Osburg tapestry showing a pagan ceremonial sacrifice, including humans and animals, I found a fascinating paper by Eirik Storesund, a scholar of Old Norse and its literature that says that the modern myth that the Norse Yule had anything to do with the winter solstice is totally unsupported in the Saga and other literature and so the whole modern conception of it - a conception shared with those big fat lovers of Norse paganism, the Nazis - is a big fat lie. 

Take a moment to take a long, hard stare at the sun (proverbially of course). Is it not radiant? The tempting assumption that the solstices (and equinoxes) formed the basis of pre-Christian Scandinavian religious feasts, is prevalent not only in modern Heathenry and Ásatrú, but is also reproduced in countless popular media articles on the ancient origins (no pun intended) of Yule in Northern Europe. This view was also widely held by scholars of the field up until the turn of the last century, and though fewer think so today, it has somehow stuck. Even if many have changed their opinion in recent years, this has hardly seeped into the public consciousness.

It doesn't seem too idiotic at face value: The Nordic area can be a dang cold and harsh place. It's not exactly the fertile crescent. We'll take all the sunshine we can have. The old idea that Viking Age Scandinavians celebrated jól on the winter solstice as a sort of solar adoration, is among the most prevalent yuletide claims you'll see presented on the internet (or wherever) this year. It would seem intuitive that Viking Age Scandinavians greatly missed the sun at winter, and if jól was celebrated around the solstice, close to Christmas, it seems to explain how Christianity could simply just walk into Scandinavia and appropriate the heck out of our gluttonous solar feast.

As you must have guessed by now, it's quite more complicated than that, and it rests on a massive jump to conclusions with no direct support in any of the primary sources. And it’s not as if Old Norse texts never said anything about exactly when the yuletide sacrifices should commence, because they totally do, and it coincides with the astronomical winter solstice in exactly no source whatsoever. But that’s good news, because if you are like me, that’s a good excuse to celebrate the season not one or two, but three times properly.

None the less, you will find no shortage people who insist that the opposite is true, refusing to let the evidence speak for itself. To paraphrase the Swedish archaeologist Andreas Nordberg (cf. 2006: 102): Those who insist on referring to jól as the solstice, must be more interested in the solstice itself, than they are in sources for Norse religion.

Do go read it and look at the higher resolution picture of the sacrifice tapestry than I've had access to post in the past.   I might write more about this later if the electricity doesn't go again. Modern life has a lot to answer for, too.

Update 2025: I don't know if we'll lose electricity but it's incredibly foggy out, global warming. When it goes below freezing I'll probably break my neck or something falling on the ice. I've got to get crampons that fit my new boots. I'm way too short to be wearing 14 double E. It looks ridiculous. If my feet keep growing (one of those great pleasures of ageing I've found out about since trying my old boots on). I'm going to look like Little Tich.

I haven't seen the lastest bunch

 of photos released by House Democrats last night but I'm hoping they have kept some of the most shocking ones for use when Bondi doesn't release the full Epstein files.  Because she won't, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, under her, some of the worst of it has been destroyed.   If it soon becomes clear that is the case I will have even more to say about the epic malfeasance by nonfeasence of Merrick Garland who single-handedly chose his own integrity and so handed the country and world over to Trump II.   I would not say he did it "unwillingly" because while I'm sure he would not have wanted that to be the result of his non-action, he is certainly not so stupid as to not understand that would be the likely result.  He let the petty scruples of the legal racket and the stupidities of lawyers before him at the so-called Department of Justice govern his actions instead of his reasonably informed sense of morals.   Scruples are so often at odds with morality, especially in determining the outcome, which is what morality is all about or it is nothing.   The ends he got certainly determine the justice of his means. 

This could have been done as soon as the cowardly Merrick Garland knew he wasn't going to seriously investigate or bring to trial the many powerful men in those files and pictures.   If he had done that investigation,  we would have heard about it so we know he didn't and didn't intend to.  He could be certain that Trump II wouldn't do that.  

I recently said that a whole load of presidential cabinet posts should, by law, be closed to lawyers,  maybe including the Attorney General.   I was only half joking about that last one. At the very least, no Democratic president should ever be as sentimental in their appointment of an Attorney General as Joe Biden was in appointing Garland.   That is something he should have learned from the disastrous appointment of Janet Reno by Bill Clinton.  It probably extends to any lawyer who has gotten the kind of respectability in the legal racket that Garland has.   A Democratic Attorney General should be thoroughly aware of the catastrophic consequences of the failures of such as Reno and Garland, sacrificing the legitimate bases of government including the law, equality and democracy and, to continue with my theme below, TRUTH, to their professional rules and scruples.   To those who self-righteously assert the lawerly scrupulosity of Garland's famed and declared "institutionalism." of putting the welfare, what passes among lawyers as the integrity of the Department of Justice first,  ask yourself how's that workin' out for us all as Bondi covers up for the epic criminality of Trump and the worst presidential crime spree of our history continues without any real legal consequences.   The civil law is an ass.  

O Root of Jesse - Thomas Hewitt Jones

 

St Martin's Voices 

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer: Come and deliver us, and delay no longer. 

Here is a piece from a decade ago, posted by The Episcopal Church, note that a somewhat different translation of the antiphon is used here. 

The third of The Great “O” Antiphons highlights Jesus’ lineage from Jesse, David’s father. The antiphons are seven brief prayers that are traditionally chanted or sung on successive evenings starting on December 17.

O Root of Jesse, you stand as an ensign to the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, and nations bow in worship: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

“A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” ~ Isaiah 11:1-2

A Jesse Tree, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, represents the family tree of Jesus. Beginning on the first day of Advent, a Bible story is read relating to God’s people and Jesus’ family, starting with Creation and ending with the Birth of Christ. An ornament is placed on a Jesse Tree after each day’s story.

Maggy Keet, Manager of Donor Relations and Special Events in the Development Office, shares her remembrances and reflection on her family’s Jesse Tree tradition:

Much to my disappointment, the holidays of my childhood started not with an oversized, light-draped Douglas fir in the living room, but with a lean, bare branch beside our kitchen table. The day after Thanksgiving, while friends were out joyfully selecting O Tannenbaum, my Dad was traipsing into the late autumn woods in search of the barren branch that would become our Jesse Tree. This old Advent tradition, based on the messianic prophecy of Isaiah, “A shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse,” was a sign of hope in small beginnings.

Throughout December, our family had a simple after-dinner ritual. We would light the candles in the Advent wreath and my sister and I would color the minimalist line drawing ornaments of biblical scenes—John the Baptist decked out in camel hair, Elizabeth and Mary sharing pregnancy stories—while Mom or Dad read the scripture passage for the day. We’d recite a short, page-long litany followed by a few verses of “O come, O come Emmanuel” before cutting out our ornaments and hanging them on the tree.

If Advent is about readying ourselves to receive something, we need to be leave space for it to enter. The quiet pause each evening was good for a family with demanding jobs, homework, school projects, piano lessons, youth group, holiday parties, and pageants. There was plenty to keep us busy, but little to slow us down. We had every excuse to scurry off as soon as our plates were clean, but the ritual held us together and kept our evenings calm, even if only for thirty minutes.

Postponing the Christmas commotion wasn’t easy, but the days of waiting weren’t empty. The naked Jesse Tree filled Advent with meaning and purpose: each night a new ornament to color, a new passage to read, which often sparked questions (“What’s a virgin?”) and conversations (“How did two of every animal in the world fit on Noah’s Ark?”). The Bible stories, the songs, the litany all taught us—even as young children—that the birth of Christ was not a sentimental nursery story, but a powerful sign of God’s presence in the midst of suffering and of God’s fierce insistence on universal love, justice and mercy. Each Sunday, as we lit another candle, the room got a little brighter.

Though we didn’t get a tree until days before Christmas, my parents weren’t completely austere. We ended the evening ritual by opening our Advent calendar, not the ‘cardboard with stale chocolate’ variety, but a large quilted tree with twenty-five pockets thoughtfully filled with all sorts of confections—small, sweet breadcrumbs leading us to the big day. These treats, along with our Jesse Tree, taught us that good things come from the thrill of hope—and expectation.

It took a few years for my sister and me to understand why we couldn’t “just deck the halls already!” But once we got it, we looked forward to Advent more than Christmas. We continued that tradition long after we had outgrown it. Each year Dad would copy the ornaments and litany, each year’s photocopy of a photocopy more faded than the last. But we held on to that fading ritual even after we weren’t little girls any more because the Jesse Tree had taught us that there was more joy from the branch than there was from the tree.

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As a political blogger during the despotism of Trump,  I have to point out that this presents Jesus as someone who will shut up kings, of the kind that the United States now has, by Roberts Court made law, for the first time in its history.  But we have to understand how we got here during this most libertarian of all periods since the supposed end of legal slavery. 

I think if the nation had bowed down to worship, honoring the commandments given by Jesus, not least of all to honor the truth over lies, we would never have gotten to this place in our history.   That is the sign to the People that will either determine our future or we will never get out of this.  The importance of the truth in this is that we will either stop the lies and favor the truth over them or that sign is ignored and we will continue on the wrong way.  And it's clear that the civil law of the United States,  yes, even the idol of the First Amendment is inadequate to that.  The exact same thing can be said of Britain which is being led, right now, by the same kind of "civil rights lawyer" of the kind who did so much to destroy the truth in the United States, going so far as to invent a "right to lie" in the mass media.  

Christianity is THAT KIND of political religion not what the word generally is used for today.   And Christianity, if it is to mean anything in life is inescapably political in the highest sense of that word. 

Anything proclaimed to be Christianity that points us away from the signs of Jesus, among the foremost of those ample provision for the least among us,  the alien among us, those who are in prison, those who are sick and telling the truth  is not Christianity and is a call to ignore the sign that Jesus is.  We have that from the Gospel which such false Christians claim to hold as the Word of God.   Here in Luke 7:

18 When John's disciples told him about all these things, he called two of them 19 and sent them to the Lord to ask him, “Are you the one John said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?”

20 When they came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to ask if you are the one he said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?”

21 At that very time Jesus healed many people from their sicknesses, diseases, and evil spirits, and gave sight to many blind people. 22 He answered John's messengers, “Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind can see, the lame can walk, those who suffer from dreaded skin diseases are made clean, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is preached to the poor. 23 How happy are those who have no doubts about me!”

24 After John's messengers had left, Jesus began to speak about him to the crowds: “When you went out to John in the desert, what did you expect to see? A blade of grass bending in the wind? 25 What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in fancy clothes? People who dress like that and live in luxury are found in palaces! 26 Tell me, what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes indeed, but you saw much more than a prophet. 27 For John is the one of whom the scripture says: ‘God said, I will send my messenger ahead of you to open the way for you.’ 28 I tell you,” Jesus added, “John is greater than anyone who has ever lived. But the one who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than John.”

29 All the people heard him; they and especially the tax collectors were the ones who had obeyed God's righteous demands and had been baptized by John. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law rejected God's purpose for themselves and refused to be baptized by John.

Notice what Jesus gave as the sign he was to the disciples of John.   Notice who listened and who didn't.  Who listens now and who doesn't. 

O Adonai - Sarah Cattley

 

St Martins Voices

Commissioned by the Church of England for Advent 2025

O Adonai, and leader of the house of Israel, who appeared in the bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gave him the law in Sinai, come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

I've gone from the conventional 20th century academic attitude of looking askance at Christians using the messianic verses of the Jewish Scripture (most generally the Jewish interpretation of those found in the Septuagint, this time of year generally Isaiah and the Psalms), interpreting those as referring to the life and mission of Jesus and the Living Jesus who Christians believe in. . .  I've gone from being slightly scandalized by that use of the Jewish Scriptures to thinking why shouldn't Christians use those ancient prophecies they believe were fulfilled in Jesus. 

The earliest Christians and many who came after, especially in the early days were Jews who believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of those prophesies, that other Jews and gentiles didn't agree with that belief is no reason for them to not  have believed what we still do.  Who decided that those who believed the Jewish Scriptures were Scripture suddenly lost the use of them?   And why do they get to decide that any more than those who did believe in Jesus?  I don't have any problem with those who don't believe it having access to those Scriptures to support their belief, they have a right to have it.  Why should I give up my access because someone else doesn't like it? 

We Know Susie Wiles Is A Stinking Liar

a privileged,  white supremacist, asshole and lifelong Republican operative (to put all of the previous description into two words) or she wouldn't have the CV she had even before she signed onto the Trump campaign.  His criminality, his crimes against humanity, against democracy and even against the U.S. Constitution would ensure that anyone who who chose to be part of Trump II would be all those things and far worse.   

She's clearly playing some kind of sleazy game,  her talking to Chris Whipple that many times for that many months knowing full well that he's recording and can reproduce what you say when you lie about having not said it means that she's got some scheme going - no doubt part of that is to try to deny she's been thick as thieves with the crimes of the Trump II crime spree.   And I'm sure she figured there was something in it for her,  NO ONE GETS INVOLVED WITH TRUMP WITHOUT EXPECTING TO GET RICH OFF OF IT.   One thing that is certain is that she wouldn't be doing all of this, from the time she signed on till this morning when she issued her absurd tweet about the accomplishments of Trump II.   Though someone like her,  a privileged white supremacist asshole with her life history would probably think that they've done great things.   It's not all cynical self-service,  there are those who love evil, hatred, cruelty,  she must at least like it if not love it or some sense of decency would have kept her from signing onto Trump II.   ANYONE WHO IS A LIFE LONG REPUBLICAN AFTER 1964 has to be a white supremacist, racist who favors suppressing the vote of Black People, other People of Color and for the exact same reason that the delegations from the hard-slave states,  and  most of them were, adopted the 3/5th provision, to give the white supremacists more power in the government through stealing representation from those they intended would never be able to vote.    And make no mistake about it,  the Republican Party has been dedicated to white supremacy since the Goldwater campaign that year.   The year that the Dixiecrats left to join onto the Goldwater bandwagon when Johnson tried to turn the United States into a real democracy. 

I would like to know what the timing of the article was based in,  did they agree that it would come out now or was that Whipple's and his editor's timing.   Before I heard about the eleven months of incubation I figured she was trying to be the first rat down the ratline before the Epstein file drop (I'm not holding my breath or waiting up nights that that's coming on Friday) because she must know that if those get out Trump will be about as popular as Epstein is and she might never wipe that shit off of her.  Nor should she.  No one who has been part of Trump II and the Republican-fascists who put him back into office, the Roberts Court should be defined by their work to crown him King Donald which they actually did.   And the entire body of corporate whore house whores who participated in that or belatedly contributed to it should ever escape that.   Nor should any media organization who were a part of it,  from the New York Times down to CNN to the sub-FOX Lies sub bottom feeders.    

Susie Wiles is just part of the foam on the top of the cesspool that is America in the age of Trump.  Long ago I remember the Wampanoag Elder Slow Turtle, when someone asked him why his tribe didn't just join in the "melting pot" he noted that's what always rises to the top of a melting pot.  Scum.   She's scum or she wouldn't be where she is now.  Her and the media figures who figure there's something respectable about her. 

There may be some such thing as a decent Republican but they'd have had to be ex and now anti-Republicans by now.  I believe in the possibility of redemption but not while remaining in such an evil association.   The Republican Party is beyond redemption.  

O wisdom - Phillip Moore

 

St Martin's Voices 

Commissioned By the Church of England for Advent 2025

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Trump Is Selling Pardons To Serial White Collar Criminals And They're Reoffending

BLOOMBERG ISN'T coming right out and saying that Trump is pardoning the rich and criminal for money but anyone who can follow just this one example of those who have bought them from him who believes he isn't selling pardons, probably through his son-in-law as well as through others, is too stupid to be handling their own money.   And this crook is going to buy himself another one. 

This is why we need the most serious of Constitutional change around both the second and third articles - especially the Roberts Court creation of a Republican-fascist presidential monarchy and around the pardon power.    I don't blame Biden for pardoning his son considering the clear fact that he was being railroaded by Republicans and the corrupt judiciary but no president should ever have the kind of pardon power that the idiot framers gave the presidents. 

The Roberts Court, proven to be the most corrupt Court in American history,  has to be the last straw in Constitutional change in that body.   Central to that reform has to be the explicit abolition of the Marbury power grab that Court has operated under since 1803 and which has led to the worst Court decisions starting with the Dred Scott decision,  the first time in history the Court dared to use that power for overturning an important and duly adopted federal law.   The Roberts Court attacks on Democracy are all done under the same stolen power and for the same reason that the Taney Court issued that atrocity.  

Little Movie To Celebrate Zamenhof Day

I DON'T DO ENOUGH to promote Esperanto on this blog so I thought I should today, since it's Zamenhof day,  a day when traditionally one gifts books in Esperanto to others.  Clearly, I can't do that tonight but I can share a recent art work in the language, one of the recent films in the 7th Good Film Festival of short Esperanto movies.  

Saluton, Belulino! - Hi, Pretty Girl!

[For those who don't speak Eo.  Two dudes stopped at a traffic light hit on the pretty young woman in the car next to theirs.   She has come prepared and starts flipping through messages written on a pad of paper,  asking if they have five bucks because she's soiled her pants and needs to buy new panties.   I think you can figure out the rest of it, yourself.]

Callie Johnson wrote and directed  this Esperanto film for the American Good Film Festival.The auteur who is also 2/3rds of the cast makes movies with the idea that Women should be paid for their time when guys annoy them.   I loved this one.