Classical Moment - Gustav Mahler

I have always been a nerd on many different levels. One of those level is my love of classical music. I have always liked orchestral music, not so much organ or chamber music (unless they are really good), but big full symphonies. One of my favorites for a long time was Beethoven's Sixth Symphony entitles "Pastorale." A few years ago (maybe 2003 or 2004) Michelle and I went to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra play this work. When I ordered the tickets the lady on the phone was telling me about the other works that were on that evening's program. One of the pieces was by a guy named Gustav Mahler whom I had never heard of before.

So we went to the performance and had a great time, however, that evening changed my classical music life! I fell in love with Gustav Mahler. The CSO played his First Symphony entitled "Titan" and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Before leaving the Symphony Center for the evening I purchased a recording of Mahler's First Symphony and have since acquired all of his 9.5 symphonies and my love and appreciation for his music has grown. (The reason there is a half symphony is because he died during his writing of his Tenth Symphony). Besides the First, Michelle and I have also heard a performance of Mahler's Third Symphony (the longest symphony ever written by anybody!) by the San Diego Symphony, and I am hoping to hear the Sixth this winter in San Diego.

Overall Mahler's music is not that widely known, however, that is changing rapidly and more and more orchestras are adding it to their repertoires. The reason I love Mahler's symphonies is because overall they are (in my opinion) weighted towards the brass section. I love the strings, but give me a robust brass anytime! The sounds are huge and powerful.

One thing that I have been thinking about doing for a long time is to "review" Mahler's Symphonies here on my blog. I am not a music scholar by any stretch of the imagination, which I hope might actually make this somewhat interesting for people to read? Probably not, but I can try!!

With that said, look for these "reviews" to show up in the next few weeks. I might give a brief bio of Gustav as well. So if you are ever looking for a new piece of classical music to buy, take a look at Mahler, you won't be disappointed!

My Summer

I know that summer has unofficially been over for a couple of weeks now, but I thought I would update the two readers of this blog with what Michelle and I were up to this past summer. It was a really busy summer, but a great summer in my opinion. I am not going to elaborate too much on some of these items at this time, but I might in the near future.

June

June was marked by my being able to exhort at three different URC churches:

June 1 - Grace Evangelical Church in Torrance, CA

June 8 - Pasadena United Reformed Church in Pasadena, CA

June 22 - Las Vegas United Reformed Church in Las Vegas, NV

Other than that we kind of took it easy while I was preparing for July 2 (see below)

July

July 2-8 - One of my passions is doing stuff outdoors. I have always loved backpacking, but never really had the opportunity to do any long trips in the past 10 years or so. Well, this year I organized a trip to do the High Sierra Trail, which is 75 miles long and goes across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It took us seven days and it was great (tough but great!). Here is a link to a trip report and a bunch of photos - VPol HST Trip

July 16 - Michelle and I (along with Michelle's sister Beth) left for Washington State

July 17-21 - Every two years we have gone on a family vacation with Michelle's family. This year it was our year to plan the location and we chose Olympic National Park in Washington. We all stayed at the Log Cabin Resort, which meant we didn't go camping (we couldn't get all our stuff up to WA). However, Michelle and I stayed in a very rustic, but nice little cabin which all it had were two full beds and a desk. It was a great little vacation in a beautiful part of the country.

July 22 - One of the reasons we chose to go on our family vacation in WA was because I was scheduled to do an internship at the United Reformed Church of Lynden, Washington. We left for Lynden on this date and that was to be our "summer home" for the next six weeks. The church was able to find us a car to drive around in and a house to live in!

July 28 - I had only met a handful of people at the church, but yet I was scheduled to preach that first Sunday morning!

August

August 3 - I exhorted at the Bellingham URC in the morning.

Next few weeks - I was able to exhort a lot more at LURC and two weeks did both the morning and evening services. During this time we got to know a lot more people in the church and were invited to houses and events a couple times a week and had a great time. We also got to go horseback riding, hiking, climbing on glaciers, cook-outs, sight-seeing, etc. Part of the time Michelle got a job for two weeks as an aid in a school for the migrant workers.

August 24 - Michelle had to leave to go back to Escondido. So I was left in Lynden for a week by myself. I still had a sermon to prepare so I had stuff to do, but I also drove into the mountains to take photos a couple of times

September

September 1 - I left Lynden to return home. Both Michelle and I had such a great time in the Lynden area and at the Lynden URC that we hope we can return again there in some capacity, even if it is only for a visit.

September 4 - My final year of Seminary started and Summer was over!

Well that is about it. If you have any questions about anything we did, please ask! I hope to talk more about my internship and my HST trip here at some point soon.

The Wilderness of Sin?

My pastor is currently preaching a sermons from the Book of Exodus in the mornings. This morning we were in Exodus 16, and in verse 1 there was something that always caught my attention, but something I never looked into. Exodus 16:1 mentions the people of Israel left Elim and came to the Wilderness of Sin. Now this has always puzzled me, why was this place called the "Wilderness of Sin? Considering the story and what Israel does there, the name seems fitting. It seems like it would be similar to naming a restaurant "The Place for Eating" or a store "Room of Buying" - there is no doubt what is going to happen there - it is in the name!!

However, this morning as my pastor was reading through his text I was following along in my Hebrew Bible as I try to do, and when he read "Wilderness of Sin" I saw the Hebrew word "Sin." Not the Hebrew word for sin, but the actual word Sin (samech-yod-nun). When you say that word "Sin" as it is found in Exodus 16:1, you are actually speaking a Hebrew word! This is common when English translations translate place names and even personal names. In fact in Exodus 16:1 the words "Elim" and "Sinai" are also the Hebrew words put into English phonetically.

Finally, at least from my very limited resources available to me here at home on a Sunday afternoon, I cannot see any connection between this Hebrew place name "Sin" and our English word "sin" except for coincidence. The actual Hebrew word for sin (hata - chet-tet-aleph; sorry, I am horrible at transliteration) is nothing like what is found in Ex 16:1. So when the Hebrews walked through the Wilderness of Sin they couldn't use that as an excuse for sinning!

So that is all, and sorry it has been so very long since I have posted. Maybe I will do more soon.