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lutheranhymns) wrote2021-04-02 11:38 pm
lutheranhymns) wrote2021-04-02 11:38 pm
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#495: We Who Once Were Dead
The lyricist's name is "Muus," which I think is pretty awesome. Double U's! Is it pronounced like "Moose"? If he were a baseball player, would people say they were yelling Muuuuuus instead of booing him?
Translation is by committee, so I'm not sure if the rhymes are as repetitive in Dutch. But the rhyme scheme is ABABA; the B's are feminine rhymes that turn out to be masculine-in-disguise, the A's are masculine. And they repeat between verses: we get stuff like "dead/head/bread," "bread/fed/dead," "dead/bread/dead." At this point it's so repetitive that it loops all the way around back to charming! That's why it's in the "awesome" category.
Meanwhile, on hymns in the wild, we had this hymn for Good Friday that's addressed in part not to Jesus or to our neighbors, but to the cross itself, as if praying for it to treat Jesus' body respectfully. On the one hand, this is bizarre timing-wise. (I have an uncle who has opinions about whether you can cheer for a sports game you're watching on tape delay, versus watching live on TV where your cheers won't be heard either way--but that's for hours, not millennia!) On the other, the miracle of Easter transcends space and time; not only does Christ's sacrifice change the entire universe, but maybe we can envision the cross itself as reaching beyond that physical moment so that we can address it "contemporaneously."
Translation is by committee, so I'm not sure if the rhymes are as repetitive in Dutch. But the rhyme scheme is ABABA; the B's are feminine rhymes that turn out to be masculine-in-disguise, the A's are masculine. And they repeat between verses: we get stuff like "dead/head/bread," "bread/fed/dead," "dead/bread/dead." At this point it's so repetitive that it loops all the way around back to charming! That's why it's in the "awesome" category.
Meanwhile, on hymns in the wild, we had this hymn for Good Friday that's addressed in part not to Jesus or to our neighbors, but to the cross itself, as if praying for it to treat Jesus' body respectfully. On the one hand, this is bizarre timing-wise. (I have an uncle who has opinions about whether you can cheer for a sports game you're watching on tape delay, versus watching live on TV where your cheers won't be heard either way--but that's for hours, not millennia!) On the other, the miracle of Easter transcends space and time; not only does Christ's sacrifice change the entire universe, but maybe we can envision the cross itself as reaching beyond that physical moment so that we can address it "contemporaneously."