Laudate Dominum - W.A. Mozart Lyrics - Sublimity Defined

Recently, I came upon this solo and choral piece, composed in 1780 by Mozart, designed for liturgical use in the Salzburg Cathedral. The the work was intended for vespers held on a specific day on the liturgical calendar.  This was Mozart's final choral work composed for the cathedral.  I cannot stop listening to this, it has become my Advent devotional.  I play it as I drive home from work, as I drive to instruct classes at UCLA, and as I drive home, giving thanks for my class and the opportunity to be out in the world.

The first part of the text is the entire Psalm 117, and the second part is the standard Doxology which appears at the conclusion of many texts, including all the psalm chants.

Can we just pause for a moment in the midst of this annual insanity of Christmas rush to reflect on the profound mystery of the immaculate conception, the embarrassment and shame that followed that young couple who were both awakened in the night by visions of angels, and then the small, seemingly insignificant birth of a little baby boy in a barn.  

Events that put together, still conspire to change the course of history, even today.  It is enough to make me weep.

The translation goes like this:

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, Praise the Lord, all the nations,
laudate eum omnes populi. praise him, all the people.
Quoniam confirmata est For his loving kindness
super nos misericordia ejus, has been bestowed upon us,
et veritas Domini manet and the truth of the Lord endures
in aeternum. for eternity.

Gloria patri et filio Glory to the Father, Son,
et spiritui sancto, and to the Holy Spirit;
sicut erat in principio as it was in the beginning,
et nunc et semper is now, and ever shall be,
et in saecula saeculorum. world without end.
Amen. Amen.

Amen, indeed.  Merry Christmas to all.

Norris Family Christmas Update - 2013

Christmas Cheer from our family to you!

This has been quite a busy year for us Norris folk. Exhibit A: a sampling of the places we four, separately and together, have been in the past 12 months. New York, Minneapolis, Tuolumne Meadows, Oakhurst, Quito (Ecuador!), Chicago (twice), Austin, San Diego, Santa Rosa, the Ecuadorian Amazon, Maui, Toronto, Yosemite Valley, Amsterdam, San Francisco (twice), Brussels, Seattle (thrice!), and Copenhagen. The three trips to Seattle were due to 1) Husky season football tickets, 2) oh yes, we have a daughter in school there. I am tired just thinking about it all!

A Graduate! Huzaah!
Kelly Norris is a proud graduate of DePaul University, with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Elementary Education! Kelly’s graduation ceremony was one for the record books, with her dearest friends; Joni, Emma, and Whitney (from College of Charleston, Tulane, and Loyola New Orleans respectively) all in attendance. Another graduation gift was the presence of dear family friend, Jill Williams, from Austin. Add to that pomp and circumstance, one eager grad ready to tackle life, and two very proud parents. Mix in some outstanding gourmet dinners full of celebration and laughter. Kelly is now working hard almost full time at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, tutoring kids part time, and coaching the special needs swim team. It is such a joy to hear Kelly tell stories of the children she patiently works with each day; some of the tales are hysterical, and the twinkle in her eye when she tells them is priceless. In her spare time, she gets credit for the European and Ecuadorian visits noted above. Up next, she plans to teach English abroad, prospective locations include Ecuador, Thailand, and Chile. Right now, Kelly is loving having time to do as she pleases, especially after 16 years of school and constant structure. Ah, to be young again!

From the Rainy Pacific Northwest
Heather is now a sophomore at the University of Washington. It’s safe to say that this past year has been the hardest, busiest, and richest year of her life. Heather spent 10 weeks this past summer as a counselor at Yosemite Sierra Summer Camp, where she was stretched in many ways leading a different cabin of girls every two weeks. Her camp experience solidified her desire to pursue early childhood psychology in the coming years at the UW. She also has a nanny job for a family of FOUR girls all under age 7, which gives her great joy. Classes are hard, but she is studying subjects she cares about deeply. She is living in Christian community, has solid friendships, and is learning to love the Pacific Northwest, in spite of the gloom and fall cold/wetness. Heather is planning on returning to camp next summer, where she will continue to fall in love with the beautiful back-country of Yosemite, and pursue with joy an investment in the lives of kids. She wants all to know she feels continuously blessed by all the Lord has given her. Come to think of it, we all do.

For Others, with Love
Nancy continues in her role as the President of the Board of Club21 – a learning and resource center for families of children with Down syndrome. This Fall the Club21 Annual Walkathon was a smashing success, with over 700 people in attendance and nearly $100,000 raised in a single day! She is also serving as an Elder at Hollywood Pres, our church of 25+ years, serving with Steve on the Young Life Area Committee, and also working with teen moms. This summer, Nancy also took a week to help her parents, Cliff and Ruth, move from their Toronto house of 42 years into a nearby city-view apartment. All reports are that they are greatly enjoying their new digs! Nancy celebrated a significant birthday this summer with a lovely candlelight backyard dinner gathering. Present were of some of those that she dearly loves; and both girls made it home from hither and yon for the Big Event.

25 Years!
This past September the four of us paused just long enough from all the busy-ness of life to escape. Completely. This Fall marked our 25th wedding anniversary, and a celebration was called for! We four all piled onboard a west bound plane headed for Hawaii. Thus followed nine days of gentle Maui trade winds, snorkeling with turtles off a catamaran, paddling a real outrigger with a genuine descendent of King Kamehameha, zip lining 1,000 feet above the forest, laughing, watching the sunrise at the top of a volcano (Dad slept in, thank you), swimming in the surf, laughing harder, lounging by the pool, a road trip to Hana and the grave of Charles Lindbergh, breathtaking sunsets, and so many stars in the night sky you could cry. Did I mention that we laughed a lot? And I will admit, I teared up several times at the gentle beauty of those countless tropic stars, mindful of their Maker - we are so blessed to have been given the gift of the relationships in our family for all these years, and I am graced beyond measure to be married to my lifelong companion on this amazing journey, Nancy.

As for me, this fall I began a new chapter, teaching a real estate analysis class with UCLA Extension. I love the classroom, and after 30 years of experience in the field, am honored that others might think I have something to share. I also continue my involvement with Fuller Seminary, serving on the Advisory Panel to the School of Intercultural Studies.

In past years here, I have attempted to say something of modest theological significance concerning the impending Christmas season. This year, I’ve decided it’s high time to let someone with far more wisdom and writing skill do the honors. So, below, you will find a mediation on Christmas from Frederick Buechner, a pastor and writer, that reflects upon the Christmas miracle in quite exquisite language. Please know that your friendship is part of our Christmas miracle and thankfulness.

Christmas Peace, Joy, Laughter, and Love to all from our home to yours!

Frederick Buechner - Christmas

Without any prior warning, this past Sunday marked the first Sunday of Advent.  Is anyone ready for the Christmas Season to be thrust upon them again?  There were Christmas decorations in Costco starting before Halloween.  Each year, it seems we are less prepared, less ready, and perhaps even less accepting that Advent, the Season of Hope, is upon us. 

Given this, it seems fitting to share here a Christmas meditation by Frederick Buechner, a pastor and writer.  I have never read anything that comes closer to summing up my emotions, wonder, and sometime distant sadness mixed with hope at this time of year.

Christmas

The lovely old carols played and replayed till their effect is like a dentist's drill or a jackhammer, the bathetic banalities of the pulpit and the chilling commercialism of almost everything else, people spending money they can't afford on presents you neither need nor want, "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the plastic tree, the cornball crèche, the Hallmark Virgin. Yet for all our efforts, we've never quite managed to ruin it. That in itself is part of the miracle, a part you can see. Most of the miracle you can't see, or don't.

The young clergyman and his wife do all the things you do on Christmas Eve. They string the lights and hang the ornaments. They supervise the hanging of the stockings. They tuck in the children. They lug the presents down out of hiding and pile them under the tree. Just as they're about to fall exhausted into bed, the husband remembers his neighbor's sheep. The man asked him to feed them for him while he was away, and in the press of other matters that night he forgot all about them. So down the hill he goes through knee-deep snow. He gets two bales of hay from the barn and carries them out to the shed. There's a forty-watt bulb hanging by its cord from the low roof, and he turns it on. The sheep huddle in a corner watching as he snaps the baling twine, shakes the squares of hay apart, and starts scattering it. Then they come bumbling and shoving to get at it with their foolish, mild faces, the puffs of their breath showing in the air. He is reaching to turn off the bulb and leave when suddenly he realizes where he is. The winter darkness. The glimmer of light. The smell of the hay and the sound of the animals eating. Where he is, of course, is the manger.

He only just saw it. He whose business it is above everything else to have an eye for such things is all but blind in that eye. He who on his best days believes that everything that is most precious anywhere comes from that manger might easily have gone home to bed never knowing that he had himself just been in the manger. The world is the manger. It is only by grace that he happens to see this other part of the miracle.

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it in and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed—as a matter of cold, hard fact—all it's cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space/time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God . . . who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

"The Great Remember" - Steve Martin

I may have posted this before.  I can't remember; I'm getting old.  It doesn't matter, the Internet is free, and this song is simply gorgeous.

The highlight film of my life (which would be short and excruciatingly boring) should be scored to this.

Peace to you all.  And, Great Remember.

This is my life...to one extent

Mr. Wright, Physics, And Why We Exist

Jeffery Wright has figured it all out.

And in doing so, Mr. Wright has formed a life that looks to me just like real, genuine, Christ-like love.  This life is acted out daily, both at home, and at work.  I want to be like Mr. Wright when I grow up.

Jeffery Wright is well known around Louisville Male high school in Louisville, Kentucky, for his antics as a physics teacher, which include exploding pumpkins, hallway hovercraft, massive fireballs exploding from his hands, and a scary experiment that involves a bed of nails, a cinder block and a sledgehammer.

But it is a simple annual lecture — one without props or fireballs — that leaves the greatest impression on his students each year. The talk is about Mr. Wright’s son and the meaning of life, love and family.

Each year, Mr. Wright gives a lecture on his experiences as a parent of a child with special needs. His son, Adam, now 12, has a rare disorder called Joubert syndrome, in which the part of the brain related to balance and movement fails to develop properly. Visually impaired and unable to control his movements, Adam breathes rapidly, doesn’t speak, and is wheelchair bound. 

Mr. Wright said he decided to share his son’s story when his physics lessons led students to start asking him “the big questions.”  Those questions we all end up asking about life, meaning, and real purpose.  Mr. Wright, a Catholic, says:  “When you start talking about physics, you start to wonder, ‘What is the purpose of it all?  Kids started coming to me and asking me those ultimate questions. I wanted them to look at their life in a little different way — as opposed to just through the laws of physics — and give themselves more purpose in life.”

Mr. Wright starts his lecture by talking about the hopes and dreams he had for Adam and his daughter, Abbie, now 15. He recalls the day Adam was born, and the sadness he felt when he learned of his condition.  “All those dreams about ever watching my son knock a home run over the fence went away,” he tells the class. “The whole thing about where the universe came from? I didn’t care. … I started asking myself not how, but why, what was the point of it?”

All that changed one day when Mr. Wright saw Abbie, about 4 at the time, playing with dolls on the floor next to Adam. At that moment he realized that his son could see and play — that the little boy had an inner life. He and his wife, Nancy, began teaching Adam simple sign language. One day, his son signed “I love you.”

In the lecture, Mr. Wright signs it for the class: “Daddy, I love you.” “There is nothing more incredible than the day you see this,” he says, and continues:

“There is something a lot greater than energy. There’s something a lot greater than entropy. What’s the greatest thing?”  At first, there is silence in the classroom.  Then....

“Love,” his students whisper.

“That’s what makes the ‘why’ we exist,” Mr. Wright tells the spellbound students. “In this great big universe, we have all those stars. Who cares? Well, somebody cares. Somebody cares about you a lot! As long as we care about each other, that’s where we go from here.”

As the students file out of class, some wipe away tears and hug their teacher.  Mr. Wright says it can be emotionally draining to share his story with his class. But that is part of his role as a physics teacher.

“When you look at physics, it’s all about laws and how the world works,” he told me. “But if you don’t tie those laws into a much bigger purpose, the purpose in your heart, then they are going to sit there and ask the question ‘Who cares?’

“Kids are very spiritual — they want a bigger purpose. I think that’s where this story gives them something to think about.”

For Jeffery Wright to love his students enough to share the most intimate and painful moments of his journey with Adam, and to help illuminate the purpose of life to his students; this is what love looks like.  And to head home each night to the challenges of caring for all the needs of a very special child.  Every night.  That is what love looks like.  Really.

The challenge for us together at Hollywood Pres is to lead lives that consistently, daily, faithfully proclaim the ultimate love that Mr. Wright is conveying to his students.  The love of Christ for a needy world. 

We are in this challenge together, friends.  God is our guide.

Below is an award winning short film on Jeffery Wright, produced by one of his former students.