Sunday poem and pics

My favorite hymn is "Jesu, joy of man's desiring." The original words were written in German by Martin Janus and Bach wrote the music. The most popular English translation is that of Robert Bridges.

My second favorite hymn is "Sheep may safely graze." The music (Cantata #208) was also composed by Bach. You can hear it here.

Right now I won't get into my third favorite hymn, "A New Jerusalem," a musical setting of William Blake's ecstatic poem.

But hands down my favorite is "Jesu." It is the acme of Christian faith and devotion both in the words and the music. (I have a MIDI of "Jesu" but I don't know to upload audio files to blogger. Okay I'm a 'puter-dumbo.)

It is a song of God-praising. God-praising evokes ecstasy. Ecstasy elicits gratitude. Gratitude reveals "the Kingdom of God within." How lucky we are; or should I say graced, blessed and adored by God. At least that's what I've seen - that God adores his creation and that his creatures adore Him and need to sing his praises. The most natural thing in the world is to praise our Creator and to long to know, love and serve Him. In practical terms of course we have to keep it secret - if you go around singing God's praises all day long, you'll be labelled nuts. But I can say this on a blog - thank Goodness.

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.

Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.

Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.

Not even the pics of flowers which follow can match that. The longing for earthly beauty can never come close to the yearning to know God.

These are pics of gladiolus which is a native South African plant. Did you now that one quarter of all garden ornamental plants come from South Africa?

The gladiolus was originally cultivated and hybridized by the Dutch 250 years ago. It is a member of the iris family and therefore extremely genetically malleable and there are as many hybrids of the gladiolus as there are of the iris.

I have so many pics of glads that I have decided to just post the small ones. From top to bottom: the hybrid which everyone in Europe and the US knows as gladiolus followed by a pic of the simple white wildflower from which all modern garden hybrids originate and nine other pics of the hundreds of original South African wildflowers/weeds from which the hybrids arose. The last ten pics are of highly developed hybrids.

The wild glads have small flowers - usually only about an inch across. I used to have one little glad that had insignificant little green flowers but had the perfume of divine nectar.

The hybrids sometimes have flowers which are as big as my hand. I am not a great devotee of glad hybrids probably because I grew up with the wild ones. The wild glads are small and often easily overlooked growing among the grass and weeds on the veld but once you have stopped to study a wild gladiolus, you will find that the hybrids have a fluffy and superficial beauty - a man-made beauty - whereas the wild glads are an embodiment of God's ecstatic bountifulness and unpredictability.


















Wild glads:

































































































































































Hybrid glads: