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Continuing off of the previous post, T.S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi is another brilliant example of a work of art that addresses the melancholic nature of the Christmas message, although the magi seem to be filled with fear and loathing as much as melancholy. Here's the last stanza, although I recommend reading the entire poem (it's not that long): All this was a long time ago, I      remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This:   were we led all that way for Birth or Death?   There was a Birth,      certainly, We had evidence and no doubt.   I had      seen birth and death, But had thought they were different;      this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like      Death, our death. We returned to our places, these      Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old      dispensation, With ...

For such a festive holiday, Christmas has no shortage of wistful, melancholic songs associated with it: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas , I'll Be Home for Christmas (If Only in My Dreams) , Blue Christmas , and virtually all of the songs on my favorite Christmas album--Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas --are arranged in such a way as to bring out the melancholy. Even the Christmas hymns express this. One of my favorites is What Child Is This , an old English folk melody, which has lyrics like these: Why lies He in such mean estate, Where ox and ass are feeding? Good Christians, fear, for sinners here The silent Word is pleading. Nails, spear shall pierce Him through, The cross be borne for me, for you. Hail, hail the Word made flesh, The Babe, the Son of Mary. In a religious sense, that melancholia exists because implicit in the incarnation is the crucifixion, as the lyrics quoted above make brutally clear. Furthermore, reading the account of the ann...

This post would have been more timely had I written it during finals week, which concluded yesterday, but I was too busy studying. I had three finals over the course of two days for Church History, Systematic Theology, and Old Testament. I feel good about Church History and Old Testament. Systematic is a wild card. We had to interpret the novel The Shack against the Nicene Creed, identifying and analyzing doctrines covered in the book corresponding to each article of the creed. I'm both looking forward to and somewhat dreading reading the professor's comments on that one. For all you children of the 80s and/or fans of Arrested Development, hair is your moment of zen:

I don't know whether it would seem ludicrous or be deemed proper to have a favorite doctrine, but I have always been fascinated by the Incarnation. The divine choosing to limit itself by entering the physical realm and taking human form strikes me with awe and terror. The Right Reverend Bono and W.B. Yeats, two Irishmen possessed of the power of words, capture this sentiment more powerfully than I ever could. First, Bono: "That there's a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. But the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in shit and straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally." And Yeats: The Mother of God The three-fold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I not found content among the shows Every common woman kno...