Heaven Playlist 5--Well-rounded selection

This post is just a selection of different genres—something for everyone! I'll just go in alphabetical order.

"Blessed City, Heavenly Salem"—This beautiful English hymn is a translation from a 7th century Latin plainsong, Urbs Beata. The translator is the ubiquitous John Mason Neale, an evangelical Anglican who lived in the 19th century. Although he only lived for 48 years, he packed a lot of writing and translating into that life. We owe a great debt (we hymn-lovers, anyway) for his unceasing work in translating Latin and Greek hymns, writing original hymns as well. If you flip through any standard hymnal you will find many, and I mean really many, hymns with his name on the page. Several others that I will discuss are also from his pen. There is a fairly concise story of his life in Julian (reproduced in Hymnary.org). I can see that I really must write a blog post on Julian or on sources for hymnology research. 

He was of poor health but wound up being in charge of an almshouse (rather than, say, a parish) which he grew to encompass an orphanage, a sisterhood, and other charitable concerns. He was known to be a gentle and self-giving man who really wanted to make the world a better place. I feel like he understood that in some way our world was the heavenly city and we were supposed to be working to make Earth into that city. This hymn is chock full of scripture references from 1 Kings to Revelation and the description of the Blessed City is based on that found in Revelation. As you probably already know I'm not particularly looking forward to a heaven of that description; gold, pearls, jasper, etc. do not really appeal to me as architectural elements. However, in the first part of the hymn, I do love the line, "Vision dear of peace and love."

Blessèd city, heavenly Salem,
vision dear of peace and love,
who of living stones art builded
in the height of heaven above,
and with angel hosts encircled,
as a bride dost earthward move!

Later in the hymn is this wonderful verse which I do hope is a fairly accurate characterization of heavenly activity.

All that dedicated city,
dearly loved of God on high,
in exultant jubilation
pours perpetual melody,
God the One in Three adoring
in glad hymns eternally

Besides the plainsong from which the hymn was translated, this hymn has been set to a couple of hymn tunes. The one I am used to is WESTMINSTER ABBEY. I've chosen a nice, very English setting by the Worcester Cathedral Choir with organ and choir.

Gloryland Way—This would be another of the first songs I remember learning. My mom was a Chuck Wagon Gang (a mixed quintet—three men and two women) fan and often on Sunday mornings she would play a 'record' of theirs with this song on it. It's a song by J. S Torbett (both text and tune), a singing school instructor who lived from 1868 to 1940. It appears he wrote at least 15 or so songs and I'd say most of them have the theme of heaven. He must have really wanted to get there. This song doesn't have a lot of heavy theological stuff going on, but it is a vigorous song that makes you almost want to dance your way there (but we weren't allowed to dance when I was a child, don't get me started on that!).



"I Can Only Imagine"—This timely Contemporary Christian Music song—a film was released in March with the same title which portrays Bart Millard, the song writer's life, with an abusive father played by Dennis Quaid who becomes a Christian and reconciles with his son near the end of his life—is the highest grossing Christian song ever. It was  all over the radio (even on some Top 40 popular stations when it started getting traction on the radio (it was released in 2001 and started getting heavy play in 2003) by Millard's band, Mercy Me (it had originally been released in 1999 on an indie label). This song has a huge affinity with "When I Get Where I'm Going" (see Heaven Playlist 1).  It's all about imagining the reaction the person will have when they finally get to heaven, the place the person most wants to be. The writer wonders whether when he sees Jesus if he will be still in awe or dance, whether he will be silent or sing Hallelujah. Well, none of us know! Also similar to "When I Get Where I'm Going," the video for the song features folks holding frames, only in this video, first the frames are empty, then a second time around they have the photo of the deceased relative ending with a photo of Bart Millard holding the frame with his father in the picture.

In order to provide a contrast to the overly ornate heaven in the hymn Blessed City, I am including in this post "The Outskirts of Heaven," a country song by Craig Campbell that I fell in love with the first time I heard it a few months ago (it was released in 2016, but since I haven't been driving I don't listen to much country anymore—country music was my open the window and 'sing loud with' brand of music). My nephew Thomas just suggested I cover it as well. This concept of heaven sounds a lot more like a place I'd actually like to go to and live for eternity. Campbell shared his thoughts about penning this song which completely reflect my own ideas about heaven and he and I seem to share a vision of heaven that has nothing to do with pearly gates and streets of gold. Rather, our heaven has dirt roads, an old porch swing on the front porch, fish in the river. I think the song grabbed me from the first lines. Campbell sings:

My grandpa taught me
about buck knives and shotguns,
how to cast an old Zebco,
how to work a stick shift.

Well, my grandpa did not teach me these things, but my dad taught me how to cast my own little Zebco (still hanging on the wall in the garage at my parent's house) and when I was only about three or four I caught the biggest crappie my dad had ever seen. My dad also taught me how to drive a stick shift in his truck before I could try for my driver's license, but it took my mom to really get the lesson over—my dad had a tendency to try to describe how the engineering and physics all worked and I didn't get it. I remember my mom saying something like, "When you go up a hill, do this..." and she demonstrated. It was a good thing I learned to drive a stick shift—my first car was a VW bug with manual. I don't care to be driving a stick shift (or any car for that matter in heaven), but fishing is definitely something I could take up in the off times of singing!