Organs and Marching

I’m a sucker for both marches and organ music.

Check out this broadcast from Pipe Dreams (NPR). One of the last pieces played is John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. A husband and wife play this piece together. Wonderful!

Happy E-Week

Happy Engineer’s Week!

Engineer’s Week has also held a special place in my heart. My mom has worked with engineers during all of her time at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She started at the research reactor (the largest university owned reactor in the country) and now works for the dean of engineering. Needless to say… I’ve spent a lot of time around engineers and considered engineering as a vocation at one point in high school. Being around campus for engineer’s week was always fun. The pranks were the best, sheep being let out in the ag school, giant walls being built randomly around campus, towers being erected, green snakes being hung in the law school… all in good fun of course.

Here is a great pic from campus. The reason MU has so much Thomas Jefferson stuff is because MU was the first land grant college west of the Mississippi, land that came to belong to the United States via the Louisiana Purchase.

Paul Gerhardt – Meyer Minute

Posted from the “Meyer Minute” that Pres. Dale Meyer sends out daily:

Today is the 400th anniversary of the birth of hymn writer Paul Gerhardt. Born March 12, 1607 , Gerhardt experienced terrible suffering. His childhood home was destroyed in the Thirty Years War, a war that killed over 20% of Germany ’s population. Gerhardt’s wife and four of his five children died from disease. Struggles between the government and church cost him his job. So when this hymn writer wrote about troubles in life, he knew whereof he spoke.

“Entrust your days and burdens / to God’s most loving hand; / He cares for you while ruling / the sky, the sea, the land. / For He who guides the tempest / along their thunderous ways / will find for you a pathway / and guide you all your days.” Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto contrasts that Gerhardt verse to the following contemporary Christian ditty: “He is able more than able / To accomplish what concerns me today/ He is able more than able / To handle anything that comes my way.” Which song offers more substance to support you in times of trouble?

Christian Moeller says Gerhardt belonged to an era “which was attentive to doctrinal clarity, and therefore sang with clarity. I do wish the days of doctrinal clarity came back…leading to more clarity in people’s lives and song.” (“The Lutheran Witness,” March, 2007; pp. 24-25).

Copyright (c) Dale A Meyer 2007
http://www.daleameyer.com