And Heaven and Nature Sing... If we can get our tongues around it

Me again!  Today, I’m substituting for a member who is unable to post this month.

As all More Than Writers bloggers will testify, coming up with ideas for a post every month is often challenging, especially after only four days since your previous post, so please forgive me is this one is a little eclectic.  Tracy Williamson, who has been blogging on the 27th of every month since I’ve been around (bless you and thank you, Tracy), recommends that bloggers look to the Bible for inspiration.  What a great idea!

I didn’t have to look much further than the reading I read in church last week, Acts, Chapter 2, verses 1-21, the account of Pentecost, which contains these lovely verses:

8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
11 Cretans and Arabs - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’

You may wonder why I’m quoting this because the wording is actually quite clumsy and difficult to roll off the tongue.  ‘…residents of Mesopotamia…’ and ‘…the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene…’  Yet, for me, the clumsiness has its own charm, taking the Bible-reader into the New Testament world, Judaea under Roman rule, when these placenames would be bandied about every day.  I love the vagueness… ‘You know… those areas in… Libya, is it… you know, those bits which belong to Cyrene.’ 

The Bible, the Prayer Book and hymns, are, of course, wonderful sources of inspiration and solace, but also occasionally clunky.  Think of the Christmas hymn, ‘Joy to the World’, the words based upon Psalm 98 with the tune by George Frederick Handel.  The first three lines start very well, with one syllable per note, but then something went wrong.  How many of us have gabbled and stumbled as we try to sing the words the fourth and fifth lines: ‘…and heaven and nature sing’?  But isn’t this the bit we enjoy singing most?

Then there are inappropriate pauses.  Handel - again - in ‘Unto Us a Child is Born’ in The Messiah, has his chorus singing… ‘And His name shall be call-ed…wonderful…’  der der der der der derrr… ‘Counsellor’…  and only now do we get into the nitty-gritty with ‘…the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.’

And equally inappropriate… absence of pauses.  Think yourself forward seven months to Christmas Eve and imagine yourself listening on the radio to the traditional Nine Lessons and Carols service from King’s College, Cambridge.  You’re hearing the end of the lesson from Luke chapter 2 verse 7 and a lugubrious voice is intoning, without even pausing for breath ‘…and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.  Thanks be to God.’

 

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, CafeLit, Scribble, Friday Flash Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Fiction on the Web and Paragraph Planet.  She has also contributed to Together magazine and Christian Writer.  Her historical novel, Wodka or Tea with Milk, which is set during the Solidarity years in Poland, is… deep breath… due to be published soon.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband.