Doxology

I found myself Sunday afternoon wondering about the origins of the familiar short hymn we sing at the end of worship service and the people who wrote it.

Praise God from whom all blessing flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

My brief search at brittanica.com led me to the following.

The words come from Thomas Ken, who was Anglican Bishop of Bath and Wells from about 1685 to about 1691 and served as royal chaplain to King Charles II. He had a falling out with Charles’ successor, James II — long story short, over religious differences — that led to Ken spending some time in the Tower Of London and put on trial for sedition along with six other bishops. They were subsequently acquitted.

Despite that ordeal, Ken remained loyal to James and, when the king fled the country and William and Mary were crowned monarchs, Ken refused to swear allegiance to the new regime and was deprived of his office. “He spent the remaining 20 years of his life in retirement.”

The music is from the Genevan Psalter, a hymnal initiated by John Calvin in 1539 and published in a complete edition in 1562. The 150 Psalms were translated into French and set to music by Loys Bourgeois, Calude Goudimel and others. Bourgeois gets top billing because he’s responsible for about 85 of the melodies.

Bourgeois spent a day in jail, charged with the horrendous crime of tampering with the accepted Psalm tunes without authorization. Calvin got him out, and the alterations were eventually approved.

What struck me, besides the fact that the melody is more than 450 years old and the Doxology has been sung for more than 300 years, is that both of the men spent time behind bars for the manner in which they chose to praise God. It’s a reminder why the Founders of the new nation forbade Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion as the first tenet in the First Amendment to their Constitution.

To give, to receive

Zig Ziglar often said, “You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

It’s tricky mindset, this servant attitude. If you give for the sake of giving — to add value to the other person’s life — you will be rewarded. But if you give with that reward in the back of your mind, it doesn’t work. You have to totally and sincerely give with no expectation of reward, but it’s human nature to want to be at least recognized if not compensated.

How do you help other people get what they want because you want to help them, not because you hope to get what you want in return? How do you abandon all expectation of being rewarded and, in doing so, begin to reap the rewards?

“I’m just happy to help,” you say, but do you really mean it? Don’t you, just a teensy bit, hope that the other person says, “No, I insist that you take this compensation?”

Still, when you pull it off — when you really just want to help and manage to do so — it really does feel good, and it feels like getting compensated is unnecessary. Getting a reward almost feels like cheating.

It’s so hard to strike that balance that seeking divine, supernatural assistance is probably the only way to succeed.

Come from behind the screen

Once upon a time, a screen was a partition that blocked a corner of the room so someone could change their clothes with some measure of privacy. That’s right — the purpose of a screen was to block the view.

As time has proceeded, screen has become the name of the glowing portion of a device that carries images, sounds and words from throughout the world, first into our living rooms on television sets and eventually into our pockets.

I suggest that these electronic screens serve to block the view as efficiently as the old room partitions.

I first noticed this a few years ago, when important and even historic events were accompanied by dozens of people lifting their screens to capture the image instead of experiencing the moment in real life. The moments in all their brilliance — sights, smells and sounds all about us — were reduced to what could be absorbed by a tiny camera with a tiny microphone.

Oh, that means you could relive the moment over and over again, at least that fraction of the moment that the tiny device recorded, but the moment itself was lost in the effort to manipulate the device. The electronic toy screened us from the full reality of the moment.

So much of what we know anymore is filtered by our view from behind the screen.

It behooves us to come out and look reality in the eye from time to time — especially in these times when so many people hide behind a political screen, so much that is real is being missed.

Set down your screen, smile on your brother and get to know him as he really is, not as he appears through the screen.

A window screen is designed to let fresh air into the room. That feels like a healthier model.