Monday, March 28, 2011

Nursing Students' Purgatory, Cookware, and Hymns


When that day comes when we are all judged before God for what we did or did not do, I firmly believe that North Park nursing majors will have to answer for the number of PowerPoints they print out, usually single-sided with four slides or less per page. If there is a purgatory, many will face decades of planting trees or programming printers to automatically print two-sided. There are consequences to our actions. Years may be added if they hit print seven times because something didn't print automatically, took one copy, and left the other six copies on hand hygiene to print while others wait for time-sensitive material.

4 days until the Twins opener! The Twins will be in Toronto beating up on the Blue Jays on Friday. Start time: 6:07.

One of the disconcerting things about living at a place that also serves as a warming center is never being quite sure which pots and pans are yours and which were left here by someone. One day people will come to claim all their cookware, and I will realize that I have one small sauce pan and a dinged-up cookie sheet. One thing I do know, none of this good pyrex is mine.

I have now waded up to the #600's in my study of hymn alterations. It's interesting to see why and how hymns are changed. Most are changed to update what is thought of as archaic language or to be more gender inclusive for humanity. However, I've been surprised that there are a few changes made to make God-talk more gender inclusive. Most interesting to me is alterations that reflect different/changing theology. For instance, here's an original verse of "Faith of Our Fathers" (written obviously by a Catholic) and how the red hymnal changed it:

(original)
Faith of our fathers, Mary's prayers
Shall win our country back to thee.
And through the truth that comes from God,
England shall then indeed be free.

(red hymnal)
Faith of our fathers, God's great power
shall win all nations unto thee,
and through the truth that comes from God,
Mankind shall then indeed be free.

Then, in the blue hymnal this verse is totally removed. Furthermore, the blue hymnal has two of the verses start with "Faith of our mothers" and "Faith of the martyrs" instead of always "Faith of our fathers," as the red hymnal and the original version begin each verse. It's interesting (and shows a changing missiology perhaps) that the song went from winning England to God, to winning all nations to God, to then getting rid of the language of "winning nations" altogether. Furthermore, the blue hymnal states that if we are going to profess any faith, mothers must be included. I find this all very interesting.

In other news, the Bjorlin family is taking a family vacation for the first time in many, many years. Destination: Dolan Springs, AZ (near the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas). While we will all be flying in separately, I hope there will still be some quality time spent jammed in a mini-van. Hopefully our fights will have matured with age, although I still am as convinced of the superiority of The Beatles to Mariah Carey (a fight my brother and I used to rage over in the mini-van many years ago). Anyway, I need to wrap this up. Later.

2 comments:

  1. Keep bringing more of those hymn alterations... very interesting!

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  2. That fight still makes me laugh now and then.

    ReplyDelete