"O Happy Day" - the origins

 How did we get from this staid English hymn writer

Philip Doddridge (1702-1751)
Hymn writer & Congregationalist minister

to "O Happy Day" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers,

 international hit in 1969?

Listen, my children, and you shall hear.

Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), an English

Nonconformist minister and hymnwriter, 

composed a hymn

titled "O happy day that fixed my choice" 

based on Acts 8:26-40, in which a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, 

hears the good news of Jesus from the apostle Philip.

The South African Youth Choir in 2010

In 1755 Doddridge's words were set to a 1704 melody by J.A. Freylinghausen, a German priest and director of orphanages, who wrote 44 hymns and published hymn books.  His most popular collection, known as Freylinghausen's Songbook, included "O happy day that fixed my choice."

A century and a half later, an English organist of French Huguenot descent Edward F. Rimbault, wrote a new melody for the song and added a chorus. His version published in 1854 became popular, especially at baptisms and confirmations.

In 1967 the gospel musician Edwin Hawkins recorded a new gospel-style arrangement of "Oh Happy Day," which with lead singer Dorothy Morrison became an international hit in 1969.

And that, my children, is how an English hymn from 1755 came to be introduced as "an American traditional song" when sung by 27,000 people in Riga, Latvia, in 2014 at the World Choir Games, the world's largest choir competition.

 

the

Amazing Comet NEOWISE

NEOWISE Comet - Photo by Tim Eggebroten, Seattle WA July 2020

Here is Comet NEOWISE moving through the northwest sky above Seattle, taken by my nephew Tim Eggebroten using a DSLR, 200 mm lens, with a tripod at Golden Gardens Park.

Even from the light-polluted sky of Los Angeles, I was able to spot the comet using binoculars on July 17 in the northwest sky beneath the Big Dipper (aka Ursa Major).  It formed a triangle with the two stars of the bear's front foot... and the next night it had moved on.

3-D Animation by Phoenix7777

What a humbling experience to see debris from the formation of our solar system.  It was the most ancient rock I have ever seen.

I stood before it in awe saying "Hi!  I'm witnessing you as you move past my planet.  In my very short life, what a wonder to witness you, who have been circling the sun for 4.6 billion years!"

This ice from the deep deep freeze of our outer solar system is like a moth circling a flame.  As the comet nears the sun, hydrogen fire melts and burns some of its icy gas and dirt, producing the brilliant tail (well, two streams for a while--the dust tail and the ion tail).


To the right is an animation of NEOWISE moving from beneath the plane of the solar system, up through the plane as it passes the sun and then moving away to exit the inner solar system for another 6,800 years. 


NASA says at Space.com:
We now know that comets are leftovers from the dawn of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago, and consist mostly of ice coated with dark organic material. They have been referred to as "dirty snowballs." They may yield important clues about the formation of our solar system.

Comets orbit the sun, but most are believed to inhabit in an area known as the Oort Cloud, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. 

This animation and more information and photos can be found on Wikipedia. 

The 3-D animation is by Phoenix7777 - Own work Data source: HORIZONS System, JPL, NASA, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92399243.

If a cat needs love...

Clio wants to be outside with us if we're all outside.

If a cat needs love, why shouldn't the Creator need love?

So many animals have evolved to need each other for survival.

Some travel in herds or schools, some just by twos and threes.

If there is a mind behind the Universe or Multiverse...

It seems reasonable that the Knowing beyond all knowing

Needs to be known, though need is indeed a strange verb

To follow the Great Noun, the Name, HaShem.

If God is

And if God is love, perhaps it's true that God needs love, 

Needs us. 


“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Rocks echo joy

Summit Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada, between Skagway AK and Fraser, Yukon, September 13, 2019

"While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy." 

 
Rocks do a great job of echoing..

💙💙💙💙💙💙.

"...Nor thorns infest the ground"

Church yard of St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Anchorage, Alaska

"No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground."    

         --- Joy to the World

Doing my best to pull out invasive non-native thistles and leave only plants that are native.

👌

Earth is Heavenly

Dog sledding above the Arctic Circle in Norway. Jim Lovell says it’s not that you go to heaven when you die, but “you go to heaven when you’re born.” Earth is the best planet in our solar system. We go to space to save the Earth. @BlueOrigin #NoPlanB #GradatimFerociter #EarthDay

0:22

391K views

566 replies1,289 retweets8,382 likes

 

 

 

I love this tweet by Jeff Bezos on Earth Day 2018 !

It’s not that you go to heaven when you die, but “you go to heaven when you’re born.”

Bezos is quoting US astronaut Jim Lovell.

Blessy

Today I hereby coin a new word: blessy.

A friend emailed me describing the last six months of her life as "the whole blessed/messy process."

Difficult tasks got done, slowly, or fairly quickly, depending on one's point of view.  Godspeed.

The sadness of letting go of two family members was balanced by the contentment of having cared for them as well as possible in their last years.

It was a blessed time; it was a difficult and messy time.

Blessy.  

Thank you to a different friend, Barbra Graber for finding and sending me this photo.