Jewel Wins! (Or loses...)

On Sunday eve, Jewel, my 9 year old daughter, managed to crack/break both the bones in her left forearm. In all our 65 years worth of children in our house, she is the first to break any bones.

Val took her to emergency at the hospital at 5:30 PM, where they waited. And waited. Emergency was full of emergencies. So full, in fact, that when our second emergency of the night (Joseph got a deep cut in his eyebrow at about 7 PM) came into emergency, Val and Jewel and Zion were still waiting. She had been taken for xrays and her injuries were determined, now she was waiting for them to be dealt with. So we checked in 2 year old Joseph. About 9:30 Val came home with Joseph (Zion stayed with Jewel), who had three stitches in his eyebrow, and told me they were still waiting... At 12:40 AM, I got tired of waiting at home, so I went down to emergency and found that Jewel had just been casted at about midnight, and was waiting for it to dry enough that she could come home. I took Zion home at about 1:20 AM, and Val got home with Jewel at 1:40 AM.

It is a good thing that emergency is only 4 minutes from my house...

Had I been thinking at the start of this process, I could have had Val take Jewel to Beaverlodge, 30 minutes to the west of G.P.. It is a longer drive, but almost invariably a shorter wait time. Oh well...

Homeschool Conventions

I attended the OCHEC (Ontario Christian Home Educators Conference) conference in Hamilton when I was there last week, and it seemed to be well received. I played songs and chatted with passers-by, and sold a pile of CDs.

The response to this suggested to me that I should be doing more of it. So; tell me about the homeschool conferences, and particularly Christian ones, that happen in your state of province. Do lots of folks come out to them? When do they happen? I may try doing "the circuit" next year, if there is one...

If any of you have some good ideas on how to get my music out there, let me know. I know that I have gifts in the making of music; I do not have them in the administration of this enterprise.

Ontario reprise

It was a delight to sing in Ontario again. What a hoot, to sing loud with a whole crowd of kids.

"Ascending" seemed to be the preferred album, I sold everything that I took along of that CD.

I thank God for people with administrative gifts. What an enormous blessing they are for wingnut artists like me!

Concerts in Ontario

I am packing up to get on a plane to Hamilton on the 27th. On the 28th and 29th I will be sitting at a booth at the OCHEC (Ontario Christian Home Educators Convention), playing my guitar and chatting with people. It's good work, if you can get it... :-)

On May 1 I have a school assembly to take part in, then a concert in Jordan Station in the eve. On May 3rd, there will be a concert in Burlington at the Canadian Reformed Church. I love doing concerts, especially when I can have a whole wack of kids involved as backup singers. It is a hoot!

Then home again on May 4, back to the best backup singers in the world.

Christ Covenant Church Grande Prairie

Our first service was Easter Sunday, and it was a delightful service. All of our council was involved in some way. The liturgical responses were done with vigour and enthusiasm, the songs were appropriate, the sermon was very good, the Supper was served. And what a delight for the half of our congregation who have never before been invited to the Lord's table! May all their days be filled with the assurance that Christ's sacrifice was for them, too. Thanks be to God!

Oddities

What an odd bunch I live with! My wife is odd, almost all my children are odd... The only ones in my house who are not odd are me and Joseph, although in another year Joseph and I will be odd too. Perhaps the others will have ceased being odd by then...

Not only that, but my kids are old, too. They are older than me, and they are older than Val, but they are not older than both of us.

Psalm puzzles

I aspire to writing good songs for all the psalms. In order to succeed, I am going to need to become a better musician than I am, on several levels.
1) I have generally been able to write word-for-word songs on the shorter psalms, and some of them are actually singable by a congregation, But what do I do with the longer ones? How do you write a song from a long psalm which a: avoids missing parts of the psalm, b: avoids twisting the psalm to fit one's rhyme scheme, c: avoids being tedious. I have been singing from metrical psalm books for some years now (The Psalter Hymnal, the Book Of Praise, the Book Of Psalms For Singing), and all of them fail on all three accounts listed above, more often than not.

2) I have a word-for-word (ESV) song written on the first 17 verses of Psalm 69, which seems to me to capture the sense and feel of the psalm. One day I hope to record it.

But it raises a question in my mind about the singing of psalms. Even though I feel I have musically captured the psalm fairly well, there is no congregation on earth that could sing it. How do you do angst and despair in congregational song without either obliterating the text on the one hand, or failing to match music to the words on the other? And how do you sing the whole psalm without it becoming tedious?

I believe the psalms need to be sung, with feeling, by the church. But I need to do a better job of figuring out how. I am not convinced that chanting is the final answer, though it may be part of it.

Looking Forward

Last night I and the other consistory members at Covenant Reformed Church handed in our resignations and our requests for release. These were accepted, and we were released with God's blessings spoken, to go and begin a new work in Grande Prairie. We will be called Christ Covenant Church, and we are organizing under the auspices of Christ Covenant Church in Langley, B.C. . The CREC has been our long-expected home, federationally speaking, and now here we are, on the doorstep. Praise God!

Calling concert organizers...

If there are any of my readers who are gifted at administration and organizing things, and who are also sold on my music, and who think it worthy of sharing with a larger audience, could you please contact me? I'm interested in doing more concerts, if the Lord should open the doors.

Raining...

It's raining outside! It's only April 2!

I live too far north...

Here is a haiku a north dweller may be able to appreciate.

Rain is falling, falling
Treachery
The frigid town glistens

Memorials

We have been listening thru the songs for the next kids album, and it is a common consensus... Memorials will be the best one yet. I hope it won't be the best one ever, since I would like to do more. I just got a look at the album cover, and I quite like it, too.
I am hoping to have it in my possession by late April, but my hopes have been dashed many times in my life...

And now, for the fifth time...

I am reading through the Lord Of The Rings trilogy with my kids. The littler ones haven't heard them yet, since it has been about 4 years since the last pass through, but now some of them are grown up enough to sit for long periods at a time. The older ones are all making comparisons/contrasts to the LOTR movies, and having a great time. In fact, one of them is pestering me to read just now...

Later.

Good lyrics

Frightened by a world which they will never understand
The masses ride their passions with the throttle in their hands

Mark Heard - "I'm Crying Again"

He really knew how to settle a score
Mercy knocks on the devil's door
When I pray for peace and revel in war
I always wanted a shirt like Mark wore...

The Choir - "The Rifleman"

Bethel

I have been working on some more Bible story songs. Someone suggested to me the story of Elisha and the two bears. Now, this is surely going to be better than Goldilocks and the three bears...

Here it is;

Bethel
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
To bear the news that bad news comes in twos
Two bad news bears are giving you the blues
Bethel
The boys were out engaging in their play
Now forty-two of them have gone away
Your sons are dead, your calf is here to stay
Bethel
The mocking of a godly man is learned
Your golden idol wins, but you get burned
Consider this the wages you have earned
Bethel
If boys are being boys it's so extreme
If not, then give a thought what this could mean
When idols paint the color of their dreams
Then boys will be boys will be boys will be...
Lunch

mike check

Testing, testing, is this thing on?