{"id":93552,"date":"2021-12-16T21:48:45","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T04:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=93552"},"modified":"2021-12-16T21:48:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T04:48:45","slug":"churchill-and-smuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2021\/12\/churchill-and-smuts.html","title":{"rendered":"Churchill and Smuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The official 2013 movie poster for \u201cBlack Nativity\u201d
(Wikimedia Commons fair use image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Flying eastward today, I watched and enjoyed the film Black Nativity<\/em><\/a>, which I had never seen before.\u00a0 It\u2019s based on a 1961 play by the famous Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967).\u00a0 Originally released in late November of 2013, it really is<\/em> a Christmas film.\u00a0 And, although not entirely unpredictable, it\u2019s far more thought-provoking (and actually far more Christian) than the typical Lifetime or Hallmark Channel movie.\u00a0 I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also read part of a German translation of the memoirs of Lord Moran, who was the personal physician to Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Second World War.\u00a0 (Why in German?\u00a0 Because it\u2019s in a German volume of Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> condensed books that I found a couple of years ago among things that had been discarded by a faculty colleague of mine who was retiring.\u00a0 Anyway, it was free.\u00a0 And it was a book.\u00a0 How could I possibly have said No?)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For whatever little it\u2019s worth, I got a kick out of a passage in the book where Sir Winston is engaged in conversation, during meetings in Cairo, with the famous South African prime minister Jan Christian Smuts.\u00a0 (Curiously, I\u2019ve learned elsewhere, they had first met in 1899, when the much younger Winston had been captured by the Afrikaners during the Boer War.\u00a0 Smuts interrogated Churchill.)\u00a0 They\u2019re discussing how to handle the problem of Mahatma Gandhi.\u00a0 Smuts points out to Churchill that, while they\u2019re both men of the world and secular leaders, Gandhi is a \u201cman of God.\u201d\u00a0 Accordingly, Smuts tells Churchill, Gandhi must be approached in a different manner than other, secular, leaders.\u00a0 Churchill responds that he too is a spiritual leader.\u00a0 \u201cWhy,\u201d he tells Smuts, \u201cI\u2019ve probably named more bishops than St. Augustine did.\u201d\u00a0 (He was referring, of course, to St. Augustine of Canterbury<\/a>, not to the earlier and, outside England, the better-known St. Augustine of Hippo<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a remarkable a cappella<\/em>\u00a0version of a very popular Christmas carol:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qJ_MGWio-vc<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The carol was written by Katherine Kennicott Davis, an American classical music composer and teacher, in 1941. \u00a0(She originally called it \u201cThe Carol of the Drum.\u201d) \u00a0The Trapp Family Singers \u2014 think\u00a0The Sound of Music \u2014\u00a0<\/em>recorded it in 1955 and it became even more popular when the Harry Simeone Chorale recorded it in 1958.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that the latter may have been the version that I first encountered; I vaguely remember hearing the carol as \u201cnew\u201d when I was a very little boy \u2014 on the radio, while riding in our family car down the main drag in Alhambra, California, underneath the street\u2019s Christmas lights, which were a highly anticipated and wonder-inducing sign\u00a0of the season every year of my childhood \u2014 and loving it. \u00a0That was a magical moment, which is why it remains, among my earliest memories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Flying eastward today, I watched and enjoyed the film Black Nativity, which I had never seen before.\u00a0 It\u2019s based on a 1961 play by the famous Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967).\u00a0 Originally released in late November of 2013, it really is a Christmas film.\u00a0 And, although not entirely unpredictable, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nChurchill and Smuts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    ***   Flying eastward today, I watched and enjoyed the film Black Nativity, which I had never seen before.\u00a0 It's based on a 1961 play\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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