Nate and Kim Would Rather Play than Pose

Back in August, I mentioned that Nate and Kim got engaged in Chicago. Last week they went with a friend to take some pictures in the park. Looks like fun! I think these photos are for a "hold the date" card for close friends and family. Plans are set for June 10.

(The poem below has nothing to do with this joyous occasion.)

Only Then

How sad the news came on a day

that was a drizzle of sky and gray

with barely the breeze to move a leaf

just as summer lost its breath

and autumn brought its hint of death

to withered vines of garden grief.

Strange that it was then I learned

the corner we had turned
led not to a path but a wall
and on it, written plain as day,
what no voice dared to say.
Yet only then I heard you call.
© Copyright 2010 Tom Kapanka/ Patterns of Ink
5923

O Lord, Where is the Lyre

[David plays his lyre for King Saul.
Double-click to enlarge]

O Lord, where is the lyre

David played for Saul

that took his feet to higher

ground and assuaged all

the anguish of a daunting day?

Too heedless are the drums

of hardened hide at play,

too shrill the sound that comes

from strands, wired to the mind
but not the soul.
Such strident jangling cannot find
the harmony or words to fill the hole
His parting left on earth.
O send again the psalmist chord
to lift Your Word and proclaim the birth,
the cross, the rising and return…
of our Lord.
© Copyright  2010 Tom Kapanka/ Patterns of Ink

In the previous post, I mentioned that my parents enjoyed the great old hymns of the faith. Through many years of singing along side Mom and Dad in church and around our piano at home, we children grew to love the old hymns, too.

The hymns I speak of are not "good" because they are old, they are now old because they were good--because they put Truth to music and help focus the minds of those who sang upon that truth. That is why they were sung for more than a hundred years. I could list the scores of hymns that meet this test--and explain why not all of the old church songs measure up--but my purpose here is simply to say that I'm glad young Christians are once again breathing new life into old hymns.  This past week around a campfire, I heard a young worship leader explain the word ebenezer to a group of teens as they sang "Come Thou Fount." The exchange between him and the young people reminded me of Still Waters Chapter Seven, which I'm pretty sure the leader had never read.  [Good job, Jer.]

I'm equally pleased that in recent years some great new hymns have been written that rise above the 7-11 choruses that peppered the turn of the 21st Century. (By 7-11, I mean those congregational songs that seemed like seven words repeated eleven times. Such songs were fine, I suppose, to season the Praise meal, but they lacked the meat to be a meal themselves.)

The new songs I'm referring to have been called "modern hymns" in that they reflect the substance of the great hymns that stood the test of time through centuries of congregational worship across many post-Reformation Christian denominations.

One of these modern hymns will be ten years old next year and I hope churches will be singing if for decades to come:  In Christ Alone, by Keith & Kristyn Getty and Stuart Townend.



Here is another written by the same trio: The Power of the Cross.


5608

I've Had a Waltz in My Head for Years

Thoughts on a song my father used to whistle.

No. This photo is not of my father. Nor is that bearded man a relative. But he wrote something 140 years ago, and a portion of it has been lodged in my brain for decades.

I've written of my mother’s fondness of music, her years in the church choir and lark-like hours at her treasured piano. My father liked music, too, especially hymns, but he was not particularly musical himself with one exception. He was a fine whistler.

In all the years of working outdoors with him on the property, I do not recall him whistling, not when we surveyed the boundary lines, cleared the land, built the barn, spanned the creek , dug the well—I don’t recall him whistling during any of those long tasks. Perhaps he did, and I just couldn’t hear it. Song whistling doesn’t carry well outdoors.

But when we finally had a roof on the house and the sheetrock on the walls, back in the days before there was carpet or curtains or any soft surface to dampen the resonance of the empty halls and rooms, Dad whistled his heart out while he worked. It was perfect-pitch concert whistling with trills and glissades up and down at least two full octaves. The empty unpainted rooms were a wonderful concert hall.

I am a whistler, too, especially when I find myself in a room or hallway with great resonance, but my skill and range falls short of the man’s from whom I inherited the ability and inclination.

I have noticed that my whistling is perhaps the truest expression of my inner peace and joy. I often whistle down the hall at school—many times I don’t even know I’m doing it. I whistle in the school kitchen (a room with great resonance) when I’m getting a cup of coffee, and people come in and say things like “Someone’s in a good mood.” Then I realize I’m whistling, and without exception, it does reflect my spirit at the time. I’m not sure it has much to do with moods, because I’m pretty even-tempered and not prone to mood swings, but I am prone to feeling the weight of burdens—both personal and professional—and whenever that load is lightened or when I have turned it over to God… I am far more likely to whistle songs without even knowing I’m doing it.

But on my best whistling day, with limber lips and full range, I cannot hold a candle to Dad’s whistling (and I suppose if I did hold a candle to it, the candle would go out—forgive my poor choice of idiom.)

Often, when Dad and I were working together in the empty echoing main level of our house in progress, he would be whistling a waltz. I did not know its name, but he would whistle it all day, faint and fluid, until each sweeping, watercolor note was painted on my mind. Of all the songs Dad whistled in my presence, this is the one I distinctly remember. To this day, decades later, I whistled it myself, always mindful that it was the waltz Dad whistled in those empty rooms.

I also remember wondering how my father could possibly know a piece of classical music so well. It was not a song on any album in our home; he did not listen to NPR on the radio; and not one of the many dimensions I knew of my father placed him in a concert hall listening to such music. I wondered how that tune had gotten in his head. It was etched in my mind from hearing Dad whistle it, but where had he learned it?

About thirty-five years after the house was done, as I was writing these chapters, I tried to whistle it to my brother Dave to see if he remembered it. He remembered the melody but not the name of the song. He suggested it might be the tune Mom’s music box played. She had a pot-metal music box a little larger than a tuna can with a shallow dish inside and a lid with a painted cameo-like-thing on top. In it, Mom kept rings and bobby pins—and the little things that turned up in her hand at bedtime.  It played a pretty song but hasn't worked since way before we moved from Roseville to the house. I have that old music box. Maybe it can be fixed, and maybe it does play the waltz. Dave has an uncanny memory for such things.

Another time I asked my sister Kathy if she had ever heard Dad whistling the waltz. She hadn’t, but she reminded me that Mom and Dad had taken ballroom dance classes before we kids came along. I knew they were excellent dancers, and had seen the remnants of that set-aside pastime whenever they ice skated together. There is no way for me to know for sure, but I have concluded—and the thought gives me great pleasure—that that waltz is the one Dad and Mom had learned to waltz to, that they heard it played on a scratchy record in whatever room they and their friends took those classes together. That not only the notes, but the count and steps and rhythm and the feel of Mom’s hand and soft back were in Dad’s mind as he whistled that song during those days of endless progress on the house.

Through the years the waltz has flitted in and out of my memory like a welcome ghost.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a movie with my daughters, and I heard Dad’s Waltz in the background of a scene. I sat up in my seat, and said, “That’s it! That’s the song Dad used to whistle.” The girls had not noticed the song. It was background. They were engrossed in the plot and dialogue. My comment was a complete non-sequitur. I had never shared with them any of these thoughts. And in truth—even for me—it was a strange thing to say out loud because it had been nearly a year since the song had been in my thoughts. Back in the fall of 2009, when we were painting the rooms and re-carpeting the house for its sale, I had written about it. So to hear it in this movie, was a great surprise. I watched the credits carefully to the very end where all music used in the film is listed…and jotted down the name of the waltz: Léo Delibes Waltz from Coppelia.

I know a fair amount of classical music from college and personal listening, but I must admit I did not recall the name Léo Delibes or the title of this waltz that has been in my head for all these years.
Now with the help of Youtube, I’ll share it with you. Beautiful as it may sound performed by an orchestra, I can tell you that it is most beautifully performed by a happy whistler doing trim work in an empty, unfinished house that will someday be his family's home.

The part Dad whistled is the first main theme heard in the first 45 seconds with the ending that comes after minute 1:15. (He simplified the boisterous part in between).



Here is a man playing it on a ukulele, which is surprisingly enchanting if you close your eyes. Here is a man playing it on an accordion—sort of the street café version. If there were ever a musical score for the screenplay of The Settling Years, it would have to include some subtle, simple echo of this song.
85431