In the Cathedral

The Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine put on an exceptional carol service Monday night. Every year my family tries to go up and hear at least one of the carol services. We've often tried to go to the Christmas Eve service, but this year it worked out better to go on Monday, which I have no problem with because it seems that the Madeleine Choir is incredible any time they perform.

The choir entered singing "O Come, O Come Emanuel", which the audience is invited to sing along with during the fourth, fifth, and seventh verses. A couple behind us failed to note this detail and began belting out the first verse at full volume. I felt momentarily annoyed because "O Come, O Come Emanuel" is one of my favorite carols and the choir's performance is always about the most overwhelmingly gorgeous thing in music. But I couldn't be annoyed with this couple, even if they weren't the best singers and certainly couldn't harmonize with each other, because they were so happy to be there and singing and you could tell they loved that song and the opportunity to sing it in the Cathedral of the Madeleine with the choir. So it was still a lovely experience.

This service included several songs I hadn't heard the choir perform before, like the "Coventry Carol", "Myn Lyking", and "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree". Beautiful, all of them. "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" was particularly wonderful to me and I wanted to share the text with you here.

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all: but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

- poem set to music by Elizabeth Poston (1905-1987)

If you haven't yet been to the Cathedral of the Madeleine, I'd recommend visiting. It's a lovely place; one of my favorite in Salt Lake.

The Hurry of the Spirits, in a Fever and Nervous Disorders

My frame of nature is a ruffled sea,
And my disease the tempest. Nature feels
A strange commotion to her inmost center;
The throne of reason shakes. "Be still, my thoughts;
Peace and be still." In vain my reason gives
The peaceful word, my spirit strives in vain
To calm the tumult and command my thoughts.
This flesh, this circling blood, these brutal powers
Made to obey, turn rebels to the mind,
Nor hear its laws. The engine rules the man.
Unhappy change! When nature's meaner springs,
Fired to impetuous ferments, break all order;
When little restless atoms rise and reign
Tyrants in sovereign uproar, and impose
Ideas on the mind; confused ideas
Of non-existents and impossibilities,
Who can describe them? Fragments of old dreams,
Borrowed from midnight, torn from fairy fields
And fairy skies, and regions of the dead,
Abrupt, ill-sorted. O 'tis all confusion!
If I but close my eyes, strange images
In thousand forms and thousand colors rise,
Stars, rainbows, moons, green dragons, bears and ghosts,
An endless medley rush upon the stage
And dance and riot wild in reason's court
Above control. I'm in a raging storm,
Where seas and skies are blended, while my soul
Like some light worthless chip of floating cork
Is tossed from wave to wave: now overwhelmed
With breaking floods, I drown, and seem to lose
All being; now high-mounted on the ridge
Of tall foaming surge, I'm all at once
Caught up into the storm, and ride the wind,
The whistling wind; unmanageable steed,
And feeble rider! Hurried many a league
Over the rising hills of roaring brine,
Through airy wilds unknown, with dreadful speed
And infinite surprise, till some few minutes
Have spent the blast, and then perhaps I drop
Near to the peaceful coast. Some friendly billow
Lodges me on the beach, and I find rest.
Short rest I find; for the next rolling wave
Snatches me back again; then ebbing far
Sets me adrift, and I am borne off to sea,
Helpless, amidst the bluster of the winds,
Beyond the ken of shore.

Ah, when will these tumultuous scenes be gone?
When shall this weary spirit, tossed with the tempests,
Harassed and broken, reach the ports of rest,
And hold it firm? When shall this wayward flesh
With all th' irregular springs of vital movement
Ungovernable, return to sacred order,
And pay their duties to the ruling mind?

- Isaac Watts

Never Land

"I had this vision. You know in the summer if you lay on the grass and stare at the sky, you can almost see beyond the stars, but cannot quite get a grip on what's there? Well, sometimes it's very difficult to work out exactly what it is that keeps you pressed between the earth and the sky and why you don't whoosh off into oblivion." - Andrew Eldritch

Douglas & Bon

Douglas McCarthy