Faith, Family, and Work

Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day last Friday caught my attention:  according to Rasmussen, 49% of voters say their highest loyalty is to their families.  Another 22% identified their faith as their highest loyalty.

That’s certainly encouraging.  In theory, my faith to Christ is my highest priority, although like many Christians, that’s not always the case in practice.  In practice—and in a practical, day-to-day sense—my family is my top priority, even if they’re an hour or two away.

The two, however, seem inextricably tied.  Some years ago I heard someone (probably Dennis Prager) say that the three keys to happiness are faith, family, and work (most likely in that order).  Faith in God gives us purpose (indeed, God gives us our Creation—our very existence).  Family gives us people who love us, those we support and those who support us in turn.  Work gives us a sense of accomplishment—the satisfaction of a job well done.

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TBT: Warrior for Life

South Carolina has a reputation for orneriness—we were the first State to secede from the Union in 1860, after all, and threatened to do it nearly thirty years earlier, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33—and it seems our Catholic priests are particularly prone to use their pulpits to prescribe some red-pillsPriest Jeffrey Kirby delivered a fiery homily warning that with Biden’s election, the Church faces real persecution in the days ahead, and scolded parishioners who cast their votes for Biden as betraying their Catholic faith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL3zikTnGzw&feature=emb_logo

Priests and preachers usually shy away from overtly political sermons, but we’re overdue for some Truth.  We’re not discussing Democrats versus Republicans anymore; we’re talking about electing Evil—those that flaunt their desire to slay the unborn—and even the recently born!—and celebrate every opportunity they can force us to accept another progressive indignity.  Trannies reading storybooks to four-year olds isn’t a “blessing of liberty,” per wincing, politically-correct, noodle-wristed, mainstream Evangelical David French—it’s an assault on our values and our culture.  If they can make us accept something so ridiculous and patently unnatural—wicked!—then it puts that wedge in the door to pry it open to all manner of government-sanctioned evil.

Father Kirby’s bold sermon reminded me of another great warrior for Christ—and for Life:  Father Robert “Bob” Morey.  Father Bob is less bombastic in his denunciation of evil, but he is nonetheless a true warrior for his Faith.  In October 2019, Father Bob declined to give Joe Biden Holy Communion due to Biden’s pro-abortion—pro-infanticide, I should write—stance.

As such, I thought it would be a good time to look at Father Bob’s bold stance for life in this week’s TBT.  Here is October 2019’s “Warrior for Life“:

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Lazy Sunday XCV: The Best of Lazy Sunday

When I began writing this post, I thought it was the 100th edition of Lazy Sunday.  However, I double-checked the long list of “Other Lazy Sunday Installments” that I put at the end of each of these posts, and after applying the “Numbered list” option, realized I was off by five!

I traced the error back to the seventy-fifth Lazy Sunday post, “Forgotten Posts, Volume IV.”  I mislabeled it as the eightieth post.  So I’ve gone through and corrected the Roman numerals in the list following this post.  I won’t go back and change it in every post, but at some point I’m going to correct the titles of those posts, though the URLs will remain unchanged.

That will be a tedious task, but one worth doing for the benefit of accuracy (and to placate my own desire for fastidious organization).  I was excited to celebrate 100 Lazy Sundays, but it’ll be able to wait another five weeks.

But what won’t wait was my original plan—to look back at the “best” of Lazy Sunday based on pageviews.  It is Lazy Sunday, after all—why put forth the extra effort?

In addition to the best Lazy Sundays based on pageview, I’ll also highlight a couple of “Honorable Mention” posts.

I’ve enjoyed putting together Lazy Sunday posts, which give me a bit of a break on Sundays from writing full-fledged posts, but also allows me to organize some favorite posts thematically.  I’ve written so much over the past couple of years—over half-a-million words—that it’s easy to forget about posts.  Indeed, I routinely stumble upon posts I have no recollection of writing; Lazy Sunday gives me an opportunity to catch up with my literary red-headed stepchildren.

With that, here are “The Best of Lazy Sunday“:

  • Lazy Sunday XXX: Trump, Part I” (64 pageviews) – Thirty Lazy Sundays seemed like a pretty good milestone to go bigly with some posts about GEOTUS Trump.  That was late 2019, when things were looking good for Trump and America.  What a glorious age it was.
  • Lazy Sunday XIV: Gay Stuff” (55 pageviews) – The provocative title of this Lazy Sunday surely helps make it one of the more popular installments.  There was a great deal of loafer-lightened hysteria in Summer 2019, with gay Leftists sashaying their way tyrannically through the body politic, trying to get everyone with normal sexuality deplatformed.  Then the progressives came to prefer black destruction in 2020 to booty-shorted hijinks, and the gay mafia doesn’t seem quite as active these days.
  • Lazy Sunday IV: Christianity” (43 pageviews) – One of the earliest Lazy Sundays, looking back at some posts about The One True Faith.
  • Lazy Sunday XI: Walls” (37 pageviews) – I wrote a great deal about walls and border security in the earlier days of the blog.  Read all about these stony securers of national sovereignty here!
  • Lazy Sunday V: Progressivism, Part I” (36 pageviews) – To understand the issues facing the West today, conservatives must understand their opponents—the progressives.  Indeed, I think I write more about them than I do about us.  I have to be careful—if one stares too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back.  Gulp!

Honorable Mention:  “Lazy Sunday XLIX: Family” (35 pageviews) – I’ve always enjoyed writing about the family—which I think is the true basic building block of society, not the individual.  Our obsession with individuality—which, as an eccentric weirdo, I very much prize—has served, in part, to undermine the importance of the family.  It, not the individual, should be the focus of our society.  Anything we can do to support family formation and to keep families intact should be encouraged.

First Lazy Sunday:  “Lazy Sunday: APR Pieces” (30 pageviews) – The very first Lazy Sunday, this one featured some posts I wrote for American Patriot Radio, which I believe is now defunct, but the posts are still there (I just checked).  They were written during those early, exciting days of the Trump Administration in 2017, when every day brought some fresh victory of sanity and conservatism, and when Trump still had a ragtag team of outsiders spitting out policy reforms one after the other.  Talk about a great time to be alive!

That’s it for this not-quite-100 edition of Lazy Sunday.  Now to get all the editions from seventy-five on fixed.  Ugh….

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Sunday Doodles V, 8 December 2019 - Sophisticated Baby

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Flashback Friday: Christmas and its Symbols

It’s Christmas!  Another magical day to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

2020 was a tough year, but Christ is mightier than The Virus.  Thank God—literally!—for sending His Son.

Have a wonderful, safe, loving Christmas Day.  God Bless all of your for your support and generosity, and for being such amazing readers.

Here’s 25 December 2019’s “Christmas and its Symbols“:

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TBT: Christmas Eve

Here we are—another Christmas Eve.  It’s a night full of magic, mysticism, and wonder—the Light and holy version of Halloween, when the tenuous division between our corporeal existence and the supernatural world is thin.

Last year I wrote of my family’s Christmas Eve traditions, which are changing up a bit again this year.  In lieu of the usual evening candlelight service, we’re going to an afternoon service at a church in my younger brother’s neck of the woods.  Afterwards, we’ll be enjoying Chinese food—a newer tradition for us—and some fondue, a tradition from my sister-in-law’s side of the family.  We’re beginning to sound like 1970s Jews on Christmas.

Here’s wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas tomorrow—and some Christmas Eve merriment tonight!  With that, here is 24 December 2019’s “Christmas Eve“:

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Stop Amending the Classics, Bring Back Melody

This time of year, this blog focuses big time on Christmas carolstheir histories, the theory behind them, their compositions, etc.  One of the great joys in my life is playing and singing these carols.  They are sweet but powerful musical retellings of the Birth of Jesus.

One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that churches have taken these classics and, in an attempt to check the “contemporary Christian music” box, added unnecessary and musically-boring codas to them.  This past Sunday, my parents’ church’s praise team was leading the congregation in a stirring singing of “O Come, All Ye Faithful“—and then tacked on a needless extra chorus written in a modern style.  The additional chorus was okay, but it paled in comparison to the majesty and tunefulness of the carol it amended.  The church went from a lusty chorus of socially-distanced congregants to a few people mumbling along to the tuneless new chorus.

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Lazy Sunday XCII: Christmas

It’s almost Christmas!  It’s been a wonderful Christmas season, and I’m looking forward to time with friends and family.

Seeing as Christmas is just five days away, I thought I’d dedicate this week’s Lazy Sunday to posts related to this most joyous of holidays:

  • Napoleonic Christmas” – As featured in “Lazy Sunday XCIV: 100 Week Review,” this post improbably became my second most popular post thanks to WhatFinger News sharing it on their main page last December.  The post examines an interesting revisionist take on Napoleon from a PragerU video, and the Prager connection is why WFN shared the post.  Napoleon is a fascinating figure, a man Beethoven admired—then reviled—and someone who completely changed the trajectory of modern European history—for better or for worse.
  • Christmas Eve” – My brief riff on Christmas Eve, which I characterized as “the most magical, mystical part of Christmas time,” this post explores that mysticism—that sense of ancient legacy and tradition—inherit in the night Christ was born.
  • Christmas and Its Symbols” – This post features analysis of a daily devotional from Daily Encouraging Word, which discussed the symbols of Christmas.  We Protestants tend to be practical, literal folks, but we lost some of the magic and mystery of the season—and of our faith more generally—when we abandoned symbolism for literalism.  Christ and Christianity took old pagan symbols and repurposed them to tell the Good News of the Gospels.  Talk about meeting potential converts where they are.
  • Singing Christmas Carols with Kids” – I’m blessed to teach music for a living, and a substantial portion of my side income comes from teaching private lessons.  This post celebrates the fun and joy of singing Christmas carols with young people, an activity which links us to our ancestors and our faith.

That’s it for this pre-Christmas Sunday.  Stay warm, have fun, and have a Merry Christmas!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

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Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Last December I dedicated several posts to reviewing and analyzing some of my favorite Christmas carols.  It’s the season for playing and singing them, and the more I dive into their histories, the more I appreciate them.

One carol that escaped my notice last year was “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  It’s one of my favorites, so I’m surprised I didn’t write about it (although it did enjoy the spotlight in my Christmas Day post).

Apparently, my pastor noticed—not that I didn’t write about it on this blog, which I’m certain he doesn’t know exists, but that I didn’t play it at church.  In one of his sermons, he said, “One of my favorite carols is ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’ I didn’t hear it this Christmas season.  I don’t know why they didn’t play it, but…” and then he went on to make whatever point he wanted to make.  Of course, all he had to do was ask, and I would have played it!

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Memorable Monday: Away in a Manger

Yesterday marked the first December church service of the year, so I was finally able to whip out some Christmas carols for morning service.  My pastor’s personal favorite carol is “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” so that was our first congregational singing.  But he requested an interesting pick for the second singing:  “Away in a Manger.”

“Away in a Manger” is not always top-of-mind for me when it comes to Christmas carols, but it possesses the same sweet simplicity (and triple feel) of “Silent Night.”  It’s also very easy to play, which makes it nice to crack open when practice time is short (“Hark!,” by contrast, is a bit more complicated, especially with its profusion of secondary dominants and moving to minor in the last couple of phrases).  The melody is very sweet, and easily harmonized in thirds.

I’ll be writing about more Christmas carols this season.  I hit most of the high-profile ones last year, so it’s going to be fun to dig into some of the more obscure carols over the coming weeks.  But to ease into Monday, I figured I’d look back to last year’s post on “Away in a Manger” [note:  I’ve cut out the lengthy preamble about the pending impeachment at the beginning of the original post, so as to focus exclusively on the hymn itself]:

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Singing Christmas Carols with Kids

Today is Bandcamp Friday, which means if you purchase my music on Bandcamp, Bandcamp doesn’t take their usual 15% commission.  You can pick up my entire discography for $15.75—seven total releases, including the popular Contest Winner – EP.  If you want to enjoy some good tunes and support an independent musician, today is a great day to do so.  You can also support me directly with a tip.

It’s that time of year when Christmas music dominates the airwaves and our collective consciousness.  It’s always a tad irksome to me how folks will complain about Christmas music during the Christmas season.  Of course you’re going to hear Mariah Carey every fifteen minutes—it comes with the territory.  Naturally, let’s at least get through Halloween (and, preferably, Thanksgiving Day), but at least make an attempt at getting into the Christmas spirit.

Last year I wrote extensively about Christmas carols.  Indeed, one of my many unfinished projects is to compile a small book containing the stories of some of our most cherished carols (I want to write a similar book about hymns, too).  I play and sing a lot of carols this time of year:  I’m a music teacher.  Perennial favorites—and the selections my classes are currently playing—are “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World,” and “O Holy Night.”

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