Today's hymn echoes the circling of Jericho by Joshua and his men, the blowing of the trumpets, and the crash of the walls as they “come a-tumbling down”!
Thank you Marge, and I did listen to her sing it. Marvelous! I will have to feature her one day in Sometimes a Song. We usually lean toward choirs for the weekly hymn.
Yes, when I found that I thought that some of our readers would appreciate hearing from the arranger what he had in mind. It worked, and well, for choral performances with mixed choirs.
used to sing this song all the time as a kid! and my own kids learned it at their school. i remember the awe-full idea, contemplating that as a child - the walls just crashing down. and *what* a noise!
I recall when my son learned this from his excellent piano teacher, and he loved it even though he usually insisted on only classical pieces. It is sad that children in our time are generally so musically deprived.
it takes a level of intentionality that it never did before, that’s for sure. and when being normal isn’t the norm, it can be hard to find the right balance, i think, at times. i really love the idea of using old movies to show what normal life is. i was really into old movies in high school, and found all sorts of films that i never would have known about if i had been “cool,” haha! but i loved them; still do, and am so enjoying to begin to share them with my kids, who do not seem always to enjoy them as much as i.
we strive so hard for that! most of my kids grew up on a 14-acre farm. when we moved, even to our small town with a solid Catholic presence, there was still so much on the daily local level that was toxic. we moved back out to the country - just a few acres this time, and a very long commute for my husband, but it’s so much more freeing. truly a space for them to be little … although they’re not so very little any more, after all, most of them!
I vote for as rural as possible. Recreating a real community -- even with a good church -- is much harder. On the street where I lived as a young child, there were married families in every house, and from 20 houses there were 64 children on that street alone. That's a lot of security right there, and we kids had the run of the town. In my entire grade school experience, I only recall one child, a girl, who came from what was then called "a broken home," though there may have been some from second marriages. I can't say everyone was just happy-go-lucky and had no problems. But I can say that there was a basic standard of "normal" which most families adhered to. And that made us all freer.
It's worth it, this battle. When we homeschooled out children, we did so to give them a normal childhood, seeing that the schools and culture around us were toxic. We succeeded there, but we couldn't fix the whole world, so now they are grown and living as best they can without all the social and cultural supports that we had as young adults, even though things were fracturing already then. But they HAVE what we passed on to them, and they did have the very necessary and formative "normal" childhood. We turned off the cable when they were small, and purposely had them watch old television from the 1950's and 1960's .. so that they could regularly see what "normal" used to look like .. and great old movies, as well. Even we could not have anticipated the speed of our cultural decline. But if you allow them their childhoods they have at least some degree of immunity to the madness.
Of course I can’t hear this without thinking of It Happened One Night.
Our boys love this story because pretending to be Joshua gives them a good reason to indulge in one of their favorite pastimes: noise making!
I know y’all love Robert Frost, as do I, and I am so thankful for all his poems you feature here… I just wish our leaders would remember that while gentle mockery of fencing between friendly New England farmers might be wise, there can be more usefulness to walls than that, as you write above…
Adrian, you anticipate us again! Frost is on for tomorrow, and he did know the value of the wall for keeping neighbors from becoming unfriendly. We have a new neighbor now who removed a large shrub from our yard while we were away and had the idea that he owned about 20 ft. of our side yard including a whole row of tall trees which he was planning to take down. We put a stop to that but his subsequent behavior shows us now that we will need a survey and an expensive fence to keep him from threatening our property. I wish now that the previous owners had had a fence installed. THEY relied on reason. Frost knew better than to do that.
Both outstanding renditions! The second actually brought tears to my eyes.
And no mention of this Gospel hymn is complete without a nod to Mahalia Jackson.
Thank you Marge, and I did listen to her sing it. Marvelous! I will have to feature her one day in Sometimes a Song. We usually lean toward choirs for the weekly hymn.
They were both magnificent. I appreciated the commentary before the second video’s performance began.
Yes, when I found that I thought that some of our readers would appreciate hearing from the arranger what he had in mind. It worked, and well, for choral performances with mixed choirs.
used to sing this song all the time as a kid! and my own kids learned it at their school. i remember the awe-full idea, contemplating that as a child - the walls just crashing down. and *what* a noise!
I recall when my son learned this from his excellent piano teacher, and he loved it even though he usually insisted on only classical pieces. It is sad that children in our time are generally so musically deprived.
100% agree there. music is the hill i die on, as a parent.
it takes a level of intentionality that it never did before, that’s for sure. and when being normal isn’t the norm, it can be hard to find the right balance, i think, at times. i really love the idea of using old movies to show what normal life is. i was really into old movies in high school, and found all sorts of films that i never would have known about if i had been “cool,” haha! but i loved them; still do, and am so enjoying to begin to share them with my kids, who do not seem always to enjoy them as much as i.
we strive so hard for that! most of my kids grew up on a 14-acre farm. when we moved, even to our small town with a solid Catholic presence, there was still so much on the daily local level that was toxic. we moved back out to the country - just a few acres this time, and a very long commute for my husband, but it’s so much more freeing. truly a space for them to be little … although they’re not so very little any more, after all, most of them!
I vote for as rural as possible. Recreating a real community -- even with a good church -- is much harder. On the street where I lived as a young child, there were married families in every house, and from 20 houses there were 64 children on that street alone. That's a lot of security right there, and we kids had the run of the town. In my entire grade school experience, I only recall one child, a girl, who came from what was then called "a broken home," though there may have been some from second marriages. I can't say everyone was just happy-go-lucky and had no problems. But I can say that there was a basic standard of "normal" which most families adhered to. And that made us all freer.
It's worth it, this battle. When we homeschooled out children, we did so to give them a normal childhood, seeing that the schools and culture around us were toxic. We succeeded there, but we couldn't fix the whole world, so now they are grown and living as best they can without all the social and cultural supports that we had as young adults, even though things were fracturing already then. But they HAVE what we passed on to them, and they did have the very necessary and formative "normal" childhood. We turned off the cable when they were small, and purposely had them watch old television from the 1950's and 1960's .. so that they could regularly see what "normal" used to look like .. and great old movies, as well. Even we could not have anticipated the speed of our cultural decline. But if you allow them their childhoods they have at least some degree of immunity to the madness.
Of course I can’t hear this without thinking of It Happened One Night.
Our boys love this story because pretending to be Joshua gives them a good reason to indulge in one of their favorite pastimes: noise making!
I know y’all love Robert Frost, as do I, and I am so thankful for all his poems you feature here… I just wish our leaders would remember that while gentle mockery of fencing between friendly New England farmers might be wise, there can be more usefulness to walls than that, as you write above…
Adrian, you anticipate us again! Frost is on for tomorrow, and he did know the value of the wall for keeping neighbors from becoming unfriendly. We have a new neighbor now who removed a large shrub from our yard while we were away and had the idea that he owned about 20 ft. of our side yard including a whole row of tall trees which he was planning to take down. We put a stop to that but his subsequent behavior shows us now that we will need a survey and an expensive fence to keep him from threatening our property. I wish now that the previous owners had had a fence installed. THEY relied on reason. Frost knew better than to do that.
Best. Movie. EVER.