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The hymn’s lyrics to “What Wondrous Love is This” were first published in Lynchburg, Virginia in the c. 1811 camp meeting songbook A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use. In most early printings, the hymn’s text was attributed to an anonymous author, though the 1848 hymnal…

Fugue in E minor (BWV 548), “The Wedge” In many ways I think Lent is when the rubber meets the road, spiritually speaking. That is, religion and spirituality are all well and good when things are going well. But it can be challenging to feel their necessity in sunny times. However, when we face adversity,…

Prelude in Fm            J.S. Bach (1685-1750)   [PIANO] This week’s Gospel contains the enigmatic and impossible “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel’s sake will save it.” (Mark 8:35) Like “Zen masters” everywhere, Jesus is superb at blowing…

“Vision”                                      W. Zeitler [ORGAN] Order of Chivalry: Truth & the Knight’s Lance     W. Zeitler   In former Music Boxes I’ve discussed the idea of ‘spiritual alchemy’. This is an idea pioneered by Carl Jung (1875-1961) —…

“A Leaf in the Wind”     W. Zeitler Improvisation In the last Music Box I discussed the difference between two Greek words for ‘knowledge’: EPISTĒMĒ and GNŌSIS. (Greek has many more words for knowledge than just these two.) EPISTĒMĒ is knowing all about something, while GNŌSIS is direct personal experience. If EPISTĒMĒ is about knowing…

‘Knowledge’ is yet another English word where Greek has many words making distinctions we too easily gloss over in English. Two words for ‘knowledge’ I’d like to talk about are EPISTĒMĒ and GNŌSIS. The simplest way to explain the difference is with an example: You can study all about swimming, the hydrodynamics of water, the…

“The Dance of Life and Death”                            W. Zeitler Improvisation   Translation is tricky business, and none trickier than translating Holy Writ — trying to bridge the gap between very disparate cultures. Yet another example of this is translating ‘man’ from 1st century…

As I’m sure you’re aware, there are four gospels in the New Testament, a “gospel” being a story of the life and ministry of Jesus. The standard understanding is that each of these gospels has a different “target audience”. Matthew’s target audience is the Jews — and consequently is concerned with showing how Jesus is…

Last week I mentioned Sepphoris — a city about 4 miles from Nazareth which was a major urban-renewal and pet project of Herod. The excavated areas at Sepphoris have so far yielded public buildings and baths, residential areas, an amphitheater, market building, industrial installations, cisterns, and a complex drainage system. Sepphoris was built on a…

One feature of Judaism is that the name of God is so holy that it shouldn’t even be spoken — ‘YHWH’ in particular. The Hebrew alphabet only has consonants (with a few sort-of exceptions) and you ‘just know’ from knowing the language which vowels to use. Modern Hebrew still works this way. (A system that…