Vonnahme family blog

On priorities:

— George Herbert, The Temple

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As part of doing the family musical number on Christmas Eve, I typeset our own sheet music for the first time ever, using the cool free tool GNU Lilypond.

So, without further ado, here is the sheet music, including lyrics and guitar chords, in PDF format and in the Lilypond markup language, in case anyone out there has a use for it.

I should also give credit to Sufjan Stevens for recording the song on a weird kids album from Paper Bag Records and thereby introducing me to it.

I love the lyrics. In the middle of a setting where humans in Rome and Jerusalem were acting like the human-devouring empire-beasts of Daniel’s prophecies, we have beasts of the stable, receiving the (later traditional) gift of speech on Christmas Eve and becoming more humanlike in worship around the newborn Jesus. The Messiah’s birth is the beginning of the New Creation, in which the first creation will eventually be fully redeemed and restored.

I noticed rather later that my friend Erin posted some interesting thoughts about my Epiphany/Raven article on her blog.

Check Erin’s response out here.

In other news, it’s -51° this morning.

Merry Epiphany! I wrote an article about the magi for my friend Micheal’s new online journal for Christianity in North American culture. I hope everyone reads and enjoys it!

What started out as a freeform contextual translation of the Lord’s Prayer has become an oral tradition. Beren has learned by heart and Lily is not far behind:

Our Father, who is in heaven,
May your name be holy.
May you be King over everything and everyone.
May everything you want be done here on earth just like it is in heaven.

Please give us today our daily bread,
And everything else we need.
And please forgive us for the bad things we’ve done,
Just as we forgive those who’ve done bad things against us.
And lead us away from trouble,*
And rescue us from the Bad King.†

Because the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory are yours forever and ever.

Amen.

* Greek πειρασμός connotes both temptation ( “getting in trouble” ) and trying circumstances ( “car trouble” )
† Pharoah