Music to Begin Advent

Advent begins this Sunday, so here is three hours of Advent music to kick off the liturgical season.

Quote for the Week

It is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitted to gather them all into unity, and generally to do whatsoever serves to strengthen friendship.  But for this there is need of skill and watchfulness. For men are diverse (seeing that those who live under the guidance of reason are few), yet are they generally envious and more prone to revenge than to sympathy. No small force of character is therefore required to take everyone as he is, and to restrain one’s self from imitating the emotions of others. But those who carp at mankind, and are more skilled in railing at vice than in instilling virtue, and who break rather than strengthen men’s dispositions, are hurtful both to themselves and others.

–Baruch Spinoza, Ethics; courtesy of Wikiquote

Some Smooth Jazz for Thanksgiving Weekend

For those who are still stuffed from Thanksgiving dinner yesterday and just need some calming music as they vegetate in the recliner.  Happy Thanksgiving weekend, and try to stay away from the craziness this Black Friday!

Quote for the Week

I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation— that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice.

–Alan Moore; courtesy of Wikiquote

Queen Live at Live Aid for the Weekend

With the resurgence of interest in Queen with the release of the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, it seems appropriate to post what is widely considered one of the Queen’s all-time best performances.  Enjoy this blast from the past, and R.I.P. Freddie Mercury!

Quote for the Week

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “A Memorable Fancy”; courtesy of Wikiquote.

Gershwin for the Weekend

Quote for the Week

I believe this thought, of the possibility of death — if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, ‘that last infirmity of noble minds’ — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

 

–Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Preface; courtesy of Wikiquote.  November is dedicated to prayers for the dead in the Catholic Church, and so the first Quote for the Week of November is appropriately about death.

Mozart’s Requiem

 

In keeping with today’s theme–prayers for the dead–I’m posting Mozart’s masterpiece, the Requiem in D Minor as this weekend’s musical selection.

A Prayer for All Souls Day

Merciful Father,

On this day, we are called to remember those who have died,
Particularly those who have died in the past year,
And pray for their joyful reunion with you, their loving creator.
As your son taught us to call the stranger
neighbor, our fallen are many—

Names we will never know,
Voices we have never heard,
In lands we may never visit,
Yet brothers and sisters all.
And so we pray.

For victims of war, caught in the crossfires of
conflicts we could not quell,
for soldiers and civilians,
adults and children, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For those migrants who have died seeking a
haven where they hoped to find safety
and opportunity for themselves and for their families, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of hunger, denied their share in the
bounty you have placed before us, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of AIDS, Malaria, Ebola, and other infectious diseases,
who died before adequate care could reach them, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For those refugees seeking asylum from war,
who died in a land that was not their home, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

For victims of emergencies and calamities everywhere,
who died amid chaos and confusion, we pray …
Grant eternal rest, O Lord.

Lord, as you command, we reach out to the fallen.
We call on you on behalf of those we could not reach this year.
You raised your son from the dead
that all may share in his joyful resurrection.

In Jesus’ name, we pray …

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescant in pace.

Amen

Courtesy of here.  Today is the Feast of All Souls.