{"id":100287,"date":"2023-05-29T15:26:50","date_gmt":"2023-05-29T21:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=100287"},"modified":"2023-05-30T02:16:21","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T08:16:21","slug":"o-man-pay-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/05\/o-man-pay-attention.html","title":{"rendered":"“O Man!\u00a0 Pay attention!”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"dfaslkakajk<\/a>
Elder Orson Pratt, of the Quorum of the Twelve, climbed atop Arthur\u2019s Seat, overlooking Edinburgh, in order to dedicate Scotland for the preaching of the Restored Gospel.\u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)\u00a0 It was slow work in his day, and it has remained somewhat difficult ever since.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have, I\u2019m happy to say, finally developed a rudimentary ability to sleep on airplanes over the last few years \u2014 if conditions are precisely optimal.\u00a0 So I logged a solid forty-five minutes of slumber, accompanied by several incursions into selected country and classical music, a couple of movies, and, of course, reading.\u00a0 My reading focus was on Richard E. Turley, Jr., and Barbara Jones Brown, Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), from which I will eventually share a few extracts.\u00a0 The movies that I watched were The Jesus Revolution<\/em><\/a> and, conveying rather a different theme, John Wick \u2014 Chapter Two<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Several friends had recommended The Jesus Revolution<\/em> to me, and I did, in fact, enjoy it.\u00a0 But I have to admit that it left me unsatisfied.\u00a0 The idea (at least in its first hour) seems to have been that the \u201cJesus Revolution,\u201d the \u201cJesus People,\u201d would heal a divided nation, bring \u201chippies\u201d to Jesus and bring generations together.\u00a0 Much of the film, which is based on a true story, is set in the area of Newport Beach, California, which I know well.\u00a0 I grew up not too far away, though, and I was never conscious of any real mass transformation of the kind hinted at by the movie, not locally and certainly not nationally.\u00a0 Nor, sadly, does there seem to have been much lasting impact.\u00a0 Still, I rather liked The Jesus Revolution<\/em> \u2014 I found it personally thought-provoking \u2014 and I want to be supportive of Christian cinema.\u00a0 (I am, by the way, really, really<\/em> looking forward to the forthcoming movie Sound of Freedom<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I had never watched anything about John Wick until a fairly recent flight, where I needed something with lots of action that would help me to pass the interminable time.\u00a0 The two films in the franchise that I\u2019ve now seen offer little of permanent value, and they\u2019re extremely violent and sometimes even brutally graphic.\u00a0 But the mythical hitman subculture depicted in the movies is, I think, quite funny.\u00a0 It partially redeems them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Utah<\/a>
The Utah Symphony, at Abravanel Hall, though not on Saturday night
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We went out to dinner with friends on Saturday night and then, at Abravanel Hall, caught the very last concert conducted by Thierry Fischer<\/a> as music director of the Utah Symphony.\u00a0 His farewell was entirely given over to a performance of Gustav Mahler\u2019s massive Symphony No. 3 in D minor, assisted by the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson, choristers from the Cathedral of the Madeleine Choir School, and a group of sopranos and altos from the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.\u00a0 Maestro Fischer was greeted by a standing ovation when he first appeared on stage and, when the performance ended, by another standing ovation that continued for a very long time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m something of a Mahler fan, having been introduced to his work by my high school German teacher, Lenore Smith.\u00a0 As a reward for those who stayed with the language for the third and fourth year, she devoted those classes to art and architecture (for one year) and to music (for the other).\u00a0 I didn\u2019t exactly come from an artsy family, so this was really my introduction to Albrecht D\u00fcrer (whose work I love, and whose sites we have visited in N\u00fcrnberg), Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka,\u00a0 and (another personal favorite) Lyonel Feininger, as well as a number of other Germanic painters.\u00a0 And it was my introduction not only to the titans of Austrian and German music like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms but to Dietrich Buxtehude, Georg Philipp Telemann, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Anton Bruckner.\u00a0 Miss Smith had earned a degree in piano performance before going on to a master\u2019s degree in German and, eventually, to another graduate degree from the Universit\u00e4t Heidelberg.\u00a0 My debt to her is incalculable.\u00a0 She became a lifelong model for me of a genuinely cultured person.<\/p>\n

The fourth movement of Mahler\u2019s Third includes a text taken from the so-called \u201cMidnight Song\u201d in Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s Also Sprach Zarathustra<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n
O Mensch! Gib Acht!<\/div>\n
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?<\/div>\n
\u2018Ich schlief, ich schlief \u2013,<\/div>\n
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: \u2013<\/div>\n
Die Welt ist tief,<\/div>\n
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.<\/div>\n
Tief ist ihr Weh \u2013,<\/div>\n
Lust \u2013 tiefer noch als Herzeleid:<\/div>\n
Weh spricht: Vergeh!<\/div>\n
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit \u2013,<\/div>\n
\u2013 will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!\u2019<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

Here is my rough translation of the piece, which Anna Larsson sang on Saturday night:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
O Man!\u00a0 Pay attention!<\/div>\n
What does deep midnight say?<\/div>\n
\u201cI was asleep, I was asleep \u2013,<\/div>\n
I have awakened from a deep dream: \u2013<\/div>\n
The world is deep,<\/div>\n
And deeper than the day had thought.<\/div>\n
Deep is its sorrow!<\/div>\n
Joy, even deeper than heartache!<\/div>\n
Sorrow says: Perish!<\/div>\n
But all joy wants eternity \u2013,<\/div>\n
\u2013 wants deep, deep eternity!\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

It was especially the declaration that \u201call joy wants eternity . . . wants deep, deep eternity\u201d (alle Lust will Ewigkeit . . . will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!<\/em>)\u00a0that arrested my attention.\u00a0 I confess to being puzzled by people who say that survival of death holds no interest for them.\u00a0 I realize, of course, that our desire to live beyond the grave doesn\u2019t prove that we actually do.\u00a0 But to not regret the transience of beauty and happiness and of human relations seems to me exceedingly odd.\u00a0 And, although I realize that he speaks it as part of a wager with Mephistopheles, the sentiment expressed by Goethe\u2019s Faust toward a single passing moment \u2014 Verweile doch! du bist so sch\u00f6n!<\/em> (\u201cStay for a while!\u00a0 You are so beautiful!\u201d; in Faust 1<\/em>, line 1700) \u2014 has always resonated powerfully with me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/a>
The monument to Sir Walter Scott \u2014 said to be the largest monument dedicated to an author in the entire world \u2014 on Princes Street, in Edinburgh
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, we\u2019re overseas again.\u00a0 Entirely at our own expense.\u00a0 No Bolivian tithes were used to pay for this trip; no rural Congolese were exploited for it; no purloined Interpreter Foundation gifts subsidize it; no African colonialism underwrites it.\u00a0 My wife and I plan to do a little bit of poking around into her family history both before and afterwards, but the basic reason that we\u2019re here is that we\u2019re meeting a group of neighbors, former neighbors, and friends for a tour of Scotland, England, and Wales that has been in the planning for well over a year.\u00a0 The trip will certainly offer an occasion to some for righteous indignation (or, at least, for the pretense<\/em> of such indignation), and it certainly will be the cause for offended clucking in at least a certain quarter.<\/p>\n

I learned yesterday on the Peterson Obsession Board that, as an apologist, I may have been given \u201csweetheart deals\u201d (by the Church or, anyway, by somebody) for my cars and my house.\u00a0 Do I really need to say that I never received any such \u201csweetheart deals\u201d?\u00a0 Since, in that quarter, I\u2019m presumed to be lying every time my lips move or my fingers type, would it do any good?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Edinburgh, Scotland<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I have, I\u2019m happy to say, finally developed a rudimentary ability to sleep on airplanes over the last few years \u2014 if conditions are precisely optimal.\u00a0 So I logged a solid forty-five minutes of slumber, accompanied by several incursions into selected country and classical music, a couple of movies, and, of course, reading.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":34438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14791,20373,36147,36144,19234,36150],"class_list":["post-100287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-eternity","tag-faust","tag-jesus-revolution","tag-mahler","tag-nietzsche","tag-sound-of-freedom"],"yoast_head":"\n"O Man!\u00a0 Pay attention!"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    I have, I'm happy to say, finally developed a 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