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Mar 27 2016

Lessons & Carols 2015 Roundup (1 of 3 – Theme & Publicity)

(Part 1 of 3. Better late than never!)

On December 12, 2015, we had our annual Festival of Lessons & Carols at Uptown Church. If you are not familiar with this service, it comes out of the Anglican tradition, specifically King’s College in Cambridge. More on that here and here. Following the 2014 L&C service, I posted a Roundup which was well received, so here is the next one.

Note: All of the musical selections are in the third part this post. I put them last because I want to draw recognition to all of the other amazing talent that is so important to this event. But if that’s what you are looking for, just click here.

THE THEME

This year, we themed our service “In the Fullness of Time,” a reference to Galatians 4:4-5:

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

This is such a compelling image to me. I imagine the brokenness of all of creation waiting, groaning in anguish, impatient for the day when she would be redeemed from the curse. Then, at just the right time, salvation came in the person of Christ. Not a moment too soon or late.

THE PUBLICITY

This year Uptowner Mandie Spear collaborated with Tyler LaCross to develop an invitation and poster that well captured the spirit and ethos of the night:

 

L&C_invite_11.9L&C_poster_11x17

I love everything about this design. The intertwining holly and thorns is a sobering reminder of the reason Christ came which was to suffer and to die the death we deserved to die. But this is good news worth celebrating because we know that death could not hold the maker of life, and defeating death he bought us life. Mandie did the beautiful hand lettering. The black and white image on the left was for these beautiful letter-pressed invitations by Emory Cash. The color image on the right was for posters printed by Mom & Pops Printshop here in Charlotte.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography this year was provided by Rebecca Lynn Olson and it spectacularly captures the atmosphere:

[FAG id=247]

Written by JDGoodwyne · Categorized: Creativity, Liturgy, Music

Jan 07 2015

Lessons & Carols 2014 Roundup

On December 14 in the Year of Our Lord 2014, we conducted our annual Festival of IX Lessons & Carols at Uptown Church, or as we affectionately refer to it, #L&C. If you are not familiar with this service, it comes out of the Anglican tradition, specifically King’s College in Cambridge. More on that here and here. Every year I intend to write a follow up blog post about the service, but this year I’m actually going to post a follow up blog post about the service. So here goes.

Note: All of the musical selections are at the end of this post. I put them last because I want to draw recognition to all of the other amazing talent that is so important to this event. But if that’s what you are looking for, just scroll down.

THE PUBLICITY

This year, I hired Emory Cash to do some hand-lettering for me. Emory is an extremely talented artist, designer and entrepreneur from Greenville, SC, as well as a dear friend and brother. (If you have seen the giant blue painting I have in my office, that is also his handiwork.) I asked him to letter out Isaiah 60:1, and this is what he came up with:

HandLettered

For print publicity, we hired Mom and Pop’s Printshop, a local business and they printed posters and invitations for us.

uptown lessons carols 1

uptown lessons carols 2

 

THE WREATH

We always hang a large wreath on the organ pipes, but this year local florist and Uptown member Aubrey Rich created something pretty unique. This wreath is made entirely of pages from old hymnals. It is 6 feet in diameter, and Julie buried white lights in between the pages to make it glow. It was pretty special. Aubrey is the owner and operator of Willow Floral Boutique in Huntersville. She arranges flowers (and hymn book pages!) like nobody’s business.

Wreath_4818

THE ART

The original art this year was created by our own talented musician and painter, Cate Miller. There are three pieces, and each piece was inspired by a section from John Donne’s divine sonnet, La Corona. The pieces were breath-taking which pictures do not fully capture. She used metallic paints in each pieces to capture light in a unique way, and they really came to life in the sanctuary. Images of the paintings are below and are each followed by the verse of La Corona that inspired them. Also, these paintings will be for sale at the JWU RUF silent auction dinner in a couple of months, so make sure you are there if you’d like to bid. To commission art from Cate, you can email her at “a[dot]cate[dot]miller[at]gmail[dot]com”

Title: Entwine
30×30 Acrylic, Salt and Sand

Cate Miller - Entwine - 2014

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,
Weaved in my lone devout melancholy,
Thou which of good hast, yea, art treasury,
All changing unchanged Ancient of days.
But do not with a vile crown of frail bays
Reward my Muse’s white sincerity;
But what Thy thorny crown gain’d, that give me,
A crown of glory, which doth flower always.
The ends crown our works, but Thou crown’st our ends,
For at our ends begins our endless rest.
The first last end, now zealously possess’d,
With a strong sober thirst my soul attends.
‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high;
Salvation to all that will is nigh.

 

Title: Imprisonment
30×30 Mixed Media

Cate Miller - Imprisonment - 2014

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb ; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He’ll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt’st in little room
Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb.

Title: Heaven Came Down
30×30 Acrylic

Cate Miller - Heaven Came Down - 2014

Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment.
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come.
But O!  for thee, for Him, hath th’ inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from th’ orient,
Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent
The effects of Herod’s jealous general doom.
See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eye, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

THE MUSIC

Finally, this was the song lineup. I hope you’ll follow the links and go support the artists who write this music. The overwhelming majority of the music that we use is not written by artists who are getting wealthy off their work. They’ve chosen to work independently of the mainstream music industry (hence the term,”indie”) so they depend greatly on word of mouth advertising and individual music sales.

(Side note: I always intend to mix down the audio of the service and make it available, but I just never get it done. This year I’m finally just paying someone else to do it. Hopefully in a couple of months, we’ll have a recording. So stay tuned!)

Rejoice, Rejoice! – The Oh Hello’s
listen | purchase

Once In Royal David’s City – Traditional
listen | info | purchase

Out of Heaven – Bifrost Arts
listen | info | purchase

Creator of the Stars of Night – Cardiphonia
listen | info | purchase

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Copeland
listen | info | purchase

Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light – Andrew Pressley
listen | info | purchase

Song of Simeon – Good Shepherd Band
listen | info | purchase

Little Drummer Boy – Erin McCarley
listen | info | purchase

Angels We Have Heard On High – Evan Wickham
listen | info | purchase

Glory Be to God On High – Chicago Metro Presbytery Music
listen | info | purchase

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree – Traditional (I’ve often received questions about the imagery and language in this obscure hymn, so here’s an interesting writeup about it)
listen | info | purchase

Of The Father’s Love Begotten – Traditional
listen | info | purchase

Begin and Never Cease – The Oh Hello’s
listen | info | purchase

That’s it! Looking forward to #LandC2015!

Written by JDGoodwyne · Categorized: Creativity, Liturgy, Music

Mar 14 2012

Christological Hymn

I ran across this yesterday in some old files. This is a “hymn” I wrote as an assignment for a class in seminary.

Christological Hymn
Jeremy D. Goodwyne


He was,
before the world or time began,
enjoying perfect relationship with the Father and the Spirit
distinct in person,
same in being
without even a hint of discord
When the Father spoke light, earth, sea, air, material into being,
The Son was that word
creating, creating, creating
the creative power of God
one with God
All that was made
was made by Him,
through Him
For Him.

The angels of God enjoy an exalted state
But the Son of God has received the Father’s name.
To which none can compare
And He receives the worship of the angels.
At the sound of His name
Some have reviled Him
Some have adored Him
But all will one day confess His limitless Lordship.


He, born of flesh, became a man
and knew the fullness of that state.
There was not a facet of humanity
with which he was not thoroughly acquainted

His heart beat,
blood flowed,
feet hurt,
hands worked,
He grew weary
frustrated
angry
sad
He was loved
rejected
cared for
abandoned
He faced the worst temptation, appealing to his nature, and rights

But he knew no sin. Not once. Not even once.


Being human and without sin,
He assumed the office of High priest,
Unlike his priestly “forebears,”
He needs not atone for His own sins.
Moses acted in a priestly office
But this he did as a type of the coming High Priest.
As great was the glory of Moses,
it was only a shadow
an imitation
For Moses was the house,
And the Builder of the House receives the glory.


He was not of the tribe of Levi,
but of the tribe of Judah
He was not a son of Aaron,
but was a son of David.

But this did not disqualify Him from His priestly role,
for His precedent was established in that of Melchizedek
who was without Father
Mother
Genealogy
Beginning
End
But Father Abraham recognized the priest of God
and offered to him his tithes.
In this Order, our great High Priest is ordained
and because He does not die,
He is a priest forever.


For a sacrifice, our Great High Priest offered
the lamb
which takes away the sins of the world
namely, Himself.
For the system with which our sins were atoned was inadequate.
the priests were themselves sinful and mortal
the sacrifices were themselves types and shadows

But our Great High Priest became that which the whole system represented
a pure, spotless Lamb,
without blemish
a perfect representative of both humanity and divinity


This priest offered himself
the lamb
which takes away the sins of the world
and His blood spoke a better word than the blood of Abel.
His are better promises
a better hope
a better country
a better life
a better possession

His sacrifice finished, completed, fulfilled the Law
the old covenant
And He inaugurated a better covenant
of which He is the Mediator

His blood speaks a better word than the blood of Abel
The blood of Able cries “Vengeance!”
but
The blood of Christ cries “Mercy!”


He does not leave His people to find their way,
but is their Shepherd
and His sheep know His voice

He can not lose even one of His own
and will cross land and sea
move heaven and earth
to bring His lost back into His fold

He gently leads His sheep across mountain and through valley
provides food and drink
gives them rest

He asks much,
but all that He asks he provides

He founds and perfects their faith
They keep their eyes on Him


He leads them Home.

©2012 JDGoodwyne

Written by JDGoodwyne · Categorized: Creativity, Liturgy, Theology

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