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A Lullaby & The Introduction to My Book, The Light Gatherers {New Music Monday}
This is a very special New Music Monday, and I appreciate that you’re here, visiting my website. I’ve been working on a book for a little over a year, called The Light Gatherers. (You can read the Prologue to the book here, which I wrote as a writing exercise as part of The Habit.) I don’t feel like any book is complete without a poem or a song; most of my favorite books include at least one or the other. The Hobbit includes the songs in which the dwarves sing about helping Bilbo with the dishes and the Lonely Mountain. The Princess and the Goblin includes Curdie’s rhymes, which scare…
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An Ode to High School Study Hall: “Quiet”
Quiet, all is quiet,Except for the turning of pages,We sit and study quietlyFrom the halls of the knowledge of ages. Cars drone past outside,The heat from the furnace hums,A pencil scratches then stops,Feet tap the floor like drums. Students with heads in handsLook up from their quiet reprieve,Like a herd of bustling cattleThey close their books, pack up, and leave.
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Let All the Nations Praise the Lord {New Music Monday}
Our spring program at school is coming up in a little less than a month. The students have been learning and practicing their songs since late in January. They did such an excellent job for the Christmas program that we’ve been working on some fun extra things as well. The theme of the program is “Let All the Nations Praise the Lord.” Here’s a summary of what my students will be performing for the spring program this year. Dona Nobis Pachem We’re beginning the program with “Dona Nobis Pachem,” a lovely canon, or round, meaning “grant us peace.” This song fits the theme of the program because it’s written in…
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Strawberry Cake and Cultivating a Biblical Worldview
Imagine you are making your friend a birthday cake. Your friend happens to love strawberries, so you decide that you are going to make her the most strawberry strawberry cake you can imagine. You go to the grocery store and buy strawberries to decorate the top of the cake, strawberry jelly to put between the cake layers, and strawberry extract to flavor the frosting and the cake. You even buy strawberry ice cream so you can offer your friend strawberry cake a la mode. Strawberry, strawberry, and more strawberry. Now, imagine that instead of making cake layers that taste like strawberry, you make chocolate cake layers instead. Chocolate is your…
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Taking Captive to Christ the Everyday Moments of Motherhood
I just finished reading the book Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns by T. David Gordon. I enjoyed this book for so many reasons. It spawned some great discussions between me and my Rhetoric students, reinforced my love for hymns, and helped me see some areas in which I could improve my own songwriting. Despite all these excellent reasons, what I gained the most from Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns is practical advice about living life in a contemporary world and, of all things, motherhood. I have two young children. I love them very much, and I delight in being their mother. I enjoy making them meals (tonight we ate corn…