Ayn Rand called her novella Anthem a "hymn to man's ego. " My approach to Anthem the play was to provide the story a further dimension through music and sound. The work is now larger than a hymn. It's really "spoken opera. "
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.
Well, I don't look back and celebrate. I just always worry about the next one.
And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.
In the immense cathedral which is the universe of God, each person, whether scholar or manual laborer, is called to act as the priest of his whole life--to take all that is human, and to turn it into an offering and a hymn of glory.
It isn't about singing a particular hymn or reciting a prayer – it's about a relationship with your Heavenly Father who loves and cares for you.
The rustling of the leaves is like a low hymn to nature.
One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations. There isn't much of that anymore either. There are very few poems people can recite, but there are quite a few hymns that, if you hum a few bars, people can at least come up with two verses. Many of the older hymns are very beautiful.
If I take my whole, passionate, spiritual and physical love to the woman who in return loves me, that is how I serve God. And my hymn and my game of joy is my work.
But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered, Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.
Democratic principles are the result of equality of condition.
Isaac Watts, of course, is a hymn writer in the tradition of Congregationalism who lived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He is very interesting and important because he was also a metaphysician. He knew a great deal about what was, for him, contemporary science. He was very much influenced by Isaac Newton, for example. There are planets and meteors and so on showing up in his hymns very often. But, again, the scale of his religious imagination corresponds to a very generously scaled scientific imagination.
In its current form, globalization cannot be sustained. Democratic societies will not support it. Authoritarian leaders will fear to impose it.
They both sang. My grandmother had a very haunted mountain voice and would sing hymns. My grandpa would sing but in a very, very subdued way.
I'm fortunate in that I've grown up in a worshipping tradition which is quite rich musically (and music is very important to me) and has a wonderful resource of hymns from all sorts of different parts of the Church. . . and to go to church and be able to sing that stuff and listen to a Bach motet or indeed some charismatic choruses.
I could be religious, if they sang the hymns to disco.
We are a strong democratic country.
Mom always tells me to celebrate everyone's uniqueness. I like the way that sounds.
Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, he asks of thee works first and words after.
We have not created any sort of democratic test for any nation.