These past two years

I'm sure this will be a surprise in your rss readers, assuming kirchenlieder is still in them. I've been considering the things that have happened in my life over the past two years, and have decided to blog about them. I'll probably do a weekly post until I get it all processed. These past two years my wife Amy has been a post-doctoral fellow at the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University, and I have been teaching as an adjunct. We will be moving to Wheaton this summer, where Amy has accepted a tenure-track position teaching New Testament, so our time here has been and is ever growing short.

These two years were a wonderful, formative time in our lives. Probably not as formative as living in  Princeton for eight years, but a good followup to our time there. Over the next few weeks I'm going to blog about (in no particular order) teaching worship, teaching fine arts along with aesthetics, being in the John Wesley Honors College community, learning about community in general, being in a holiness context, having a second child, having two professors along with two children in a house, buying an old house, being confirmed into the Episcopal church, having no regular church position, living in a small town, and probably a few more things. It will be helpful for me to process our time here, plus some things will raise issues that I'm sure some of you might have some comments to add to.

Entering the Cloisters

Entering the Cloisters
Originally uploaded by lapeeler.

This is one of the chapels at the Cloisters art museum in New York.

I other news, I have a dissertation defense coming up on March 29—Monday of Holy Week. You should see more things here once that is all done with.

Colloquium on Baptist Church Music

I had the privilege of presenting a paper at a recent conference at Baylor University. You can read it here, along with several of the other papers. My paper, "More Than Half a Fool," used some dissertation research, as well as some additional research regarding Anglican chants in Baptist hymnals. It was a good conference, in which most of the major scholars who are currently doing Baptist hymnology presented. It was nice to meet them all, as well as hear their presentations.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life

In my dissertation work, I've come across a hymn that has been missing from Baptist hymnals since the New Baptist Hymnal of 1926, to our detriment. It's a hymn by George Washington Doane, who was the Episcopal bishop of New Jersey in the early nineteenth century (there's a memorial to him at St. Peter's Morristown, although he's buried in Burlington, NJ).

It's still a well-known hymn in Anglican circles, and has continued to be published in some Presbyterian and Lutheran hymnals, as well. It takes Jesus' statement "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" as its basis, and builds its poetic structure around that text.

1. Thou art the Way,—to thee alone
     From sin and death we flee:
And he who would the Father seek,
     Must seek him, Lord, by thee.

2. Thou art the Truth,—thy word alone
     True wisdom can impart;
Thou only canst instruct the mind,
     And purify the heart.

3. Thou art the Life,—the rending tomb
     Proclaims thy conquering arm;
And those who put their trust in thee,
     Nor death nor hell shall harm.

4. Thou art the Way, the Truth, the Life;
     Grant us that way to know,
That truth to keep, that life to win,
     Whose joys eternal flow.

Wordless Wednesday

God has ascended with a shout, the Lord, with the sound of a Trumpet!
Originally uploaded by lapeeler.