528. An 'Un-Twelve Days of Christmas' Hymn

I indulged in a bit of "graded numerical sequence" versification in this Advent/Christmas hymn, which is also (not-so lowkey) a spoof of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." It's a theme I've touched on before (maybe with a little less grace). I have no particular tune in mind at this time, as usual.

Word from all ages, Gift of truth,
Begotten ere creation's root,
You came to draw the serpent's tooth
That charged with death the garden's fruit.
See what my true Love gives to me:
The God-Man offered on a tree!

Two Testaments, both Old and New,
Direct my eyes of faith to You,
Igniting that thrice-holy fire—
Faith, hope, and love—which they require.
Four gospel witnesses proclaim,
With Moses' five, Your holy name.

Now let me join my hymn of praise
With everything that in six days
You named—from life, its kinds unmixed,
To cosmic spheres, their courses fixed—
That I, with graces seven blest,
May sing to You, my Sabbath Rest.

Nursed on eight blessings from Your lips,
I taste the life that from You drips.
T'ward one who hungers for the nine
Fruits of the Spirit, oh! incline,
That nourished on Your ten commands
I find free pardon at Your hands!

I with the twelve-less-one subscribe,
And with the ancient twelvefold tribe,
And all the saints before and since,
Whose countless tongues one truth evince:
Christ is the Gift, the Root, the Key,
The Life for all—yea, even me!

ART: A poster by Xavier Romero-Frias, via Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

527. Leap, John!

This hymn doesn't name Mary, Elizabeth or even John, but they're all there. So is Herod, for that matter. But it does name Christ. Funnily enough, I was thinking about writing an "Un-12 Days of Christmas" hymn but instead, this is what came out. So, I guess it's an Advent hymn. Or maybe a Martyrdom of John the Baptist hymn. Again, I haven't given any thought to a tune pairing for it. Suggestions are welcome.

Leap, prophet yet unborn,
Upon the maiden's greeting
Whose babe, the age completing,
Its dragon-lord defeating,
Will die to pull death's thorn!

Discern from womb to womb:
In her is tabernacled
He who sin's bond has crackled,
By whom man comes unshackled
From death and Hades' gloom.

Prepare to run ahead:
Soft fare and garb rejecting,
Men to repent directing,
A King and Lamb expecting
To smite the serpent's head.

Prepare to run and pour
On heads abased, lamenting,
God's grace, from wrath relenting,
On even Christ consenting
To place this seal once more.

Prepare to run and point
To Him, your role disowning:
Whose head for His enthroning,
For all the world atoning,
'Tis strangely yours t'anoint.

Prepare to run and die,
To wane as He is waxing;
A tyrant's temper taxing,
Your trial ne'er relaxing
Till you awake on high.

Prepare to leap again
With all the resurrected,
To greet the Lamb perfected,
And with all saints elected
Join in the angels' strain!

ART: The Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1866, Frederiksborg Castle. Public domain.

526. No Fear of Heaven

This hymn takes its departure from a pastor's anecdote about a girl in his catechism class who said she didn't want to go to heaven because she couldn't imagine anything more boring then spending eternity sitting on a cloud and strumming a harp. If I felt an impulse to harangue this hypothetical brat about the foolishness of being guided by the imagery of Tom & Jerry cartoons, I wisely trampled it underfoot in order to arrive at this hymn. With no particular tune in mind, but knowing many that could fit the text, I give you:

How glad a consummation
That Day of days shall bring,
When every tongue and nation
The praise of Christ shall sing!
Then borne on many waters,
True joy and love will thrive
And Zion's sons and daughters
Through floods come forth alive.

The floods indeed have drowned us,
Have buried us with Him
Who in transgression found us,
Who bore our sentence grim.
His blood has washed our garment
And made the scarlet white,
Has lifted the debarment
That came 'twixt us and Light.

Let no one dread dull hours
On harp-strung wing and cloud,
When all creation's powers
With one voice shout aloud!
What joyful tasks await us—
What distances we'll go—
Ought rather to elate us,
Though little yet we know.

Now may we live with vigor
And die with sweetest peace,
Since from th' accuser's snigger
Our cause has sure release.
Now may we mourn rejoicing,
Now rest our searching eyes:
For soon, Christ's praises voicing,
We shall to life arise.

ART: Lincoln (U.K.) Cathedral angel with harp, photograph by Jules & Jenny, shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Two Non-Reviews

Love at First Fright
by Nadia El-Fassi
Recommended Ages: 16+

This is not a review of this book. I'm not qualified to write one, because I didn't finish it. But since I put it down, I've slowly gathered resolve not to pick it up again. So in lieu of a review, informed by a complete read-through of the book, I'm just going to explain from my own personal perspective why I'm not going to review it. Maybe, if this concept seems to work, I'll try it out on a number of other books whose spines have been staring me out of countenance, with a bookmark sticking out of them, in some cases for years.

I picked up this attractive-looking novel at my small town's independent bookstore. I was intrigued by the concept of a "cozy paranormal romance," featuring a novelist who can see dead people (and pets), riding herd on the film adaptation of her horror novel, who at first objects to the dashing leading man who doesn't fit her mental picture of the character she created but with whom, against her will, she soon becomes infatuated. It had the hallmarks of a Hallmark Channel movie, with an added touch of ghostliness. I should have read a little more into the word "cozy" in the genre description, however. I'm a noob when it comes to "cozy" fiction and it's only slowly dawning on me that an essential part of the coziness apparatus is a tendency to prioritize representing fringe communities and identities over just telling a great story.

In short, apart from a certain steamy eroticism that overdelivered on my romantic expectations, this book (so far as I read into it) didn't deliver much at all on the spooky front. Meanwhile, it was so on-the-nose about its characters' lifestyle choices that I felt like I was being hectored at by the catechist of a sect whose morality is a retrograde-inversion of the moral code packaged with my faith. If you like, you can read this as the type of criticism that amounts to admitting the critic's blindness. But I'm not known for hurling books away from me on account of a non-heterosexual character or two. I do, however, think "cozy" should mean something better than badly structured, underpowered, and loaded with propaganda for cutting-edge gender ideology. Also, with a cast of characters as large as this book, my willing suspension of disbelief can only weather a certain percentage of individuals each representing his, her, or (choke) their unique shade of the kink rainbow.

It would have served me well if I had read the author's trigger warning in the foreparts of this book. Had I noticed there was a trigger warning at all, I might have hesitated to buy. But she did disclose that overcoming stigma, sextortion and homophobia were themes, as well as the whole dom-sub polarity that I find, after dipping my toe in, really makes my flesh crawl. Put that on me. No, I take that back; keep that off me and don't bother telling me where you do put it.

A couple weeks ago, I drove on impulse to the cineplex at the next larger city to the west of where I live, about an hour each way, just to see this movie, Roofman starring Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage. It's based on a true story that I heard about at the time it was in the news – about an escaped serial robber of McDonald's restaurants who hid out in a Toys'R'Us for, like, six months before being recaptured. Nobody happened to look inside the hiding place that he turned into a micro-apartment, despite a number of items disappearing from stock – including a steady shrinkage of Peanut M&Ms.

I can't exactly blame the movie for it, but at a certain point during the run-time – the scene where Tatum, dining out with members of a church group he has gotten involved with, faces a police officer who is skeptical of his claim to be an undercover agent – I decided I had seen as much of it as I cared to, and went home. Give or take a stop at Taco John's.

I can't put my finger on the reason I dropped out of watching the movie, despite paying full price to see it in a theater. It wasn't terrible. Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst are still looking nice after all these years. They have some good chemistry together. Peter Dinklage was adorably hateable. The situation had a certain pathos to it.

I guess it just made me squirm. The nervousness that ran through me as I watched Tatum's character floundering through his extended prison break started to vibrate at the precise frequency of the sensation that there must be something at home that I needed to take care of. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I finally caved in and left.

Previously, when I've done that, it was because I really hated the movie. That wasn't the case with Roofman. But I didn't love it enough to keep watching it, even when all it would have cost me to stay (over and above what it cost me to be there in the first place) was maybe another 45 minutes sat in a reasonably comfortable seat. It's mysterious. But if I were to assess this movie, based on my incomplete viewing, I guess the final verdict would be, "I just couldn't sit still through it."

Two Uplifting Movies

About a week ago, I went to see The Senior, not my first movie out of Angel Studios. Previous ones I've checked out included Sound of Freedom – that Jim Caviezel vehicle about child trafficking; The Last Rodeo – the Neal McDonough flick about the washed-up bull rider who goes back to the mad and hairy to raise money for his grandson's operation; and Sketch, the Tony Hale picture about a kid whose drawings came to monstrous life. Others that I did not see included Cabrini, Sight and Bonhoeffer, all screened in my local small-town movie theater, which I think has something to do with the owners' Christian faith commitments. Other evidence of this passion is their showing of such faith-friendly flicks as Father Stu, Light of the World and Ordinary Angels and, I guess, the second movie in this twofer reviewfer.

Something many, but not necessarily all, of these films have in common is their success at tugging at the heart strings, bringing tears to my cheeks, without actually beating me over the head with a sectarian message. In fact, you could actually look pretty hard for anything specifically Christian in many of these films, apart from the fact that ministers and churchgoers in general are depicted as OK folks. This movie's foray into Christian evangelism goes as deep as showing the main character discovering his late father's Bible (not having known the old man even had one) and having a personal epiphany connected with the prayer for forgiveness handwritten in it. Mention is made of faith being restored and becoming important in the main character's life (a real-life person named Mike Flynt who, at age 59, became the oldest college football player to actually play in an official game).

This movie features Michael Chiklis as Flynt, a scrappy fellow who got kicked out of college football during his senior year for fighting. Not just off the football team, of which he was the captain; out of college altogether. One day he realizes he could go back to complete his senior year and be eligible to play one last season, and he decides that's what he needs to do to lay his personal demons, etc. Other cast members include Mary Stuart Masterson as Flynt's longsuffering wife, Rob Corddry as the head coach who could be described with the same adjective and up and coming TV star Brandon Flynn as his estranged son.

A bit of the movie focuses on the problematic way fathers (try to) pass fisty tendencies onto their sons, and the various ways that screws things up between generations and for their lives in general. Then there's a bit of fighting your way back against tremendous odds (including an almost season-ending injury during the preseason). And finally, actually spoken out loud in the movie, there's the scent of "a 59-year-old Rudy" to it, complete with a season-long struggle for Flynt to earn his spot on the field, only to save the last game of the season at the last moment. And miraculously heal the schism between him and his son. You know. Some moving, inspirational stuff. And also, plenty of football.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't come out of the theater dry-eyed. But you know what? That's usually how sports movies take me. Field of Dreams? Remember the Titans? Hoosiers? You name it. I cried during it, exactly when called upon. It wasn't the Christian message that did it for me. And I think Mike Flynt wanted to say something more specifically Christian than the movie actually did. See the advertisy bit at the end. So I can say with a clear conscience that the Three Scenes That Made It For Me were not the result of a theological bias. This is pure cinephile stuff. (1) Masterson goes to bat (to risk mixing sports metaphors) for her husband with Corddry, telling him to put her husband in the game. A moment later, by chance, Chiklis crosses her so hard that it almost ends their marriage – leading to a moment of truth between them. (2) Corddry puts Chiklis in charge of the locker room at halftime of their last game of the season – opening the way for a pep talk that turns the tide of the game. (3) Well, that last play, right? I don't want to spoil it for you. It's pretty awesome.

Not an Angel film, but also a piece of vaguely faith-related inspiration, Soul on Fire features Joel Courtney (remember the hero kid from Super 8?) as the grown-up version of a kid who, at age 9, burned down his family home and suffered burns over 100 percent of his body, many of them third-degree. After barely surviving, he fights through a long, agonizing rehab process, learning to walk, feed himself and, despite having all his fingers amputated, play the piano a little. His spiritual journey continues to have ups and downs, but he eventually becomes an again real-life motivational speaker and author. You might know him as John O'Leary, author of On Fire: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life, on which the movie was based.

Also featured in the movie are John Corbett as John's dad, whose promise, "I love you and there's nothing you can do about it," has a profound effect on the son. And also William H. Macy as St. Louis Cardinals commentator Jack Buck, who heard about John's predicament and decided to take on encouraging the kid as a personal project. As a longtime resident of St. Louis, I of course appreciated the city's role as a character in the movie. Whoever I didn't mention in the cast, you can look up for yourself.

Without going into spoiler, or even non-spoiler, detail about the storyline, let me just say parts of this movie did legitimately get me in the feels. Nevertheless, I didn't think it was a particularly well structured film. The ending came across as weak, in my opinion. But it does dramatize the moving conclusion Courtney's character himself draws – that had it not been for his horrible accident, he might not have enjoyed the greatest blessings in his life. Such as, for starters, marrying his best friend and starting a big family with her. So let's close straight in on the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Courtney acknowledges all the people to whom he owes his life, from the big brother who smothered the flames on his poor little body (suffering burns of his own) to the little sister who ran back into the burning house three times to fill glasses of water to dash in his face, all the way to the janitor who kept his hospital room clean so he wouldn't develop an infection. It's a bit repetitive of previously established material, but it shows his maturity as he puts it together. (2) The scene in which boy and girl decisively exit the Friend Zone. You'll know it if and when you see it. (3) Everything Corbett does, but perhaps especially his line, "You've been running from that gas can for 25 years. When are you going to realize it isn't chasing you?"

Dead to Me

Dead to Me
by Anton Strout
Recommended Ages: 14+

Simon Canderous used to use his weird power of psychometry – the ability to read the history of objects by touching them – to leverage a lucrative life of crime. Now he mostly uses it for good, working for New York City's Department of Extraordinary Affairs, Other Division. To be sure, he still cruises swap meets, looking for items charged with sentimental value so he can sell them back to their original owners – it helps pay the rent. He isn't really looking to mix with the restless dead or the brain-munching undead. But sometimes, duty calls.

Duty calls when Simon and his DEA mentor, Connor, are faced by an aggressive ghost in a back alley. The plot darkens when an attractive female ghost shows up at their workplace, strangely lifelike despite being dead. The trail of clues leads to a group of cultists (a.k.a. the Forces of Darkness) who have somehow managed to achieve government recognition as an alternative lifestyle. Something they're doing is keeping Irene, the ghost, tethered to the physical plane, and is driving other ghosts insane. Something that soon costs Simon's ex-girlfriend her life and puts another beautiful (but perhaps evil) woman in mortal danger. And even though Simon is only starting to understand how to control his powers, they will become crucial in the coming showdown with evil, as well as some hilarious scenes of paranormal action and danger.

The nearest comparison I can make with this book is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Simon Canderous is a young, hot-headed everydude who happens to have a rare magical talent, a roguish streak, a goofy sense of humor and tastes that range from knee-length leather jackets to Count Chocula action figures. He works on the side of Good but sometimes lets himself get too close to the forces of darkness, perhaps because his own unsavory background gives him an insight into what's up with them. He has a certain sex appeal, but he somehow isn't very successful with the ladies. He has power, vulnerability, dorkiness and cool all wrapped up in a self-deprecating package. He's honest but he also guards some heavy secrets. His appeal as a lead character and narrator would draw me into a long, open ended series. Alas, it isn't a long one, and again alas, it's now firmly closed.

This is the first book in the four-book Simon Canderous series by Anton Strout, an urban fantasy author, podcaster and blogger who, sadly, died in 2020 at age 50. Other titles in the series include Deader Still, Dead Matter and Dead Waters. He also wrote the Spellmason Chronicle trilogy of Alchemystic, Stonecast and Incarnate and a baker's dozen of short stories, including several Simon Canderous tales. Alas, his personal website now redirects to a Korean massage site. He left behind a wife, two kids and seven novels. Bookwise, not much. I'm sorry I encountered him too late to look forward to more. But through Simon (sniffle) he's alive to me.

BONUS NONSENSE: From the "not to be confused with" department, here are some other books titled Dead to Me or close to it, according to Fantastic Fiction: Dead to Me, a 2025 mystery by Gytha Lodge; You're So Dead to Me, a 2023 Grimdale Graveyard mystery by Steffanie Holmes; Dead to Me, a 2020 Grave Talker novel by Annie Anderson; a 2026 mystery of the same name by Jessie Keane; a 2023 Hidden Norfolk murder mystery by J.M. Dalgliesh; a 2024 Kelsey Hawk mystery by Kate Bold; a 2012 Scott & Bailey mystery by Cath Staincliffe; a 2021 urban fantasy by Rachel Morton and Mason Sabre; a 2023 Thornwood Academy young adult fantasy by LJ Swallow; a 2017 Kate Matthews mystery by Stephen Edger; a 2026 Gulf Coast Reaper urban fantasy by Tegan Maher; a 2024 Mountain Shadow cozy mystery by Tarah Benner; a 2016 historical mystery by Lesley Pearse; a 2015 young adult novel by Mary McCoy; a 2016 young adult novel by Cristy Watson; a 2017 mystery collection by Dean Wesley Smith; Jack Kerouac Is Dead to Me, a 2020 young adult romance by Gae Polisner; Dead to Me, a 2018 Cold Case Psychic gay romance by Pandora Pine; a 2018 Harry Russo Diaries urban fantasy by Lisa Emme; You're Dead to Me, a 2024 young adult fantasy by Amy Christine Parker; Dead to Me, a 2025 paranormal romance by Jeanette Clarke; and possibly a 2022 Burton and Fielding mystery by Pamela Murray called Signs, for which Dead to Me seems to be either a subtitle or an alternate title. This book is well down the list, so perhaps you'll recognize one or more of these titles. Comment if you dare.

Two Indie Films

A couple weekends ago, I was comped a ticket to this independent documentary about the American Basketball Association – a small-market competitor of the NBA that disappeared in 1976 after the NBA took in four of its teams in a league expansion – easily confused for a merger, but importantly not a merger. The result, this film argues, was decades of economic injustice against players who pioneered a style of play that made the NBA much more entertaining to watch. Director/narrator Michael Husain follows an Indianpolis mergers and acquisitions lawyer named Scott Tarter as he fights a years-long, pro bono battle to convince the NBA to give those players their due, culminating after many frustrating delays in a settlement described as recognition payments – not a pension – and only a faint, partial semblance of justice for the now elderly, physically and financially ailing players.

IMDB only lists one cast member: sportscaster Bob Costas, who covered the ABA in the early days of his career. But it features a lot of basketball greats and near-greats, some of them struggling toward the end of their life. The screening I attended was followed by a Zoom Q&A with Husain and ABA player Ron Perry. It was interesting to hear about the process of putting the film together, and how the story evolved from what was expected to be a feel-good short about sports history to an emotionally gripping, personal journey. But it's been weeks since I saw it, so I'll move on lightly to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Tarter photographs Sam Smith on his deathbed, lying next to a replica ABA basketball (you'd know it by its red, white and blue segments), and that pic's publication prompts the NBA players' union to press for change. (2) Tarter, left cooling his heels for hours while the NBA team owners haggle out a settlement with the surviving ABA players, picks up the phone saying, "It's either the NBA or it's pizza." Of course, it's pizza. (3) An NBA bureaucrat explains why the resolution was so long coming – an explanation that made the audience with me that night audibly angry.

This is definitely a movie that will get you in the feels, even if you're not particularly into basketball. The idea, forcefully driven home, that ABA players agreed to the "merger" (sic) based on a false understanding that their pensions would survive the extinction of their league, will definitely make you mad and the cheapness of the league that left them in the cold will charge that anger up to a whole new energy level. My big takeaway from this movie is that the documentary is definitely a category of film that I haven't properly appreciated.

Last weekend's concluding installment in the local movie house's month-long independent film festival was this Minnesota-made crime thriller, in which a small-town police chief realizes that his best friend, the local dentist, is a serial killer. Paul, the dentist, has a dark past related to clergy sexual abuse and an older brother's suicide. The victims include the priest who abused him and his brother and other reverends implicated in the tragedy. None of this is a spoiler; the film reveals this all along. The interesting bit is how the trail of evidence leads Paul's buddy, the cop, to become convinced he's the guy.

The movie builds a lot of dark tension, with some Minnesota local color woven in – always fun for Greater Minnesota audiences, who might suspect the fictional town of Scandia to be right around the corner. The grim theme of child sex abuse is lightened (a bit) by some wholesome family drama, the razor wit of a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension detective grown moody while trying to quit smoking, a cute dog (who in a lowkey way is also a witness to murder) and a side plot about a police secretary with a violently jealous husband. While the cast doesn't have any familiar names in it, save Vincent Kartheiser of 1990s child star fame (and later TV's Mad Men and Angel), one standout, in my opinion, is the third, elderly priest, who defies his killer. That was one tough guy, for a hospice patient with a death sentence looming over him regardless; his refusal to "take, eat" of the blasphemous communion that Paul offered left me kind of admiring him.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me, besides the one just described: (1) "I'm a monster." Paul actually says this in two scenes, but I'll let it count as one. (2) The cop and his kids discover Mrs. Cop cuddling the dog in the middle of the night, after she had put her foot down about adopting him. (3) The dog growls at the sound of Paul's voice on the cop's voicemail. All right, so some scenes made it for me. But full disclosure: The movie left me a little disappointed. I thought the ending was weak. Don't want to spoil it, but I think it let Paul off easy and resulted in less of a denoument and more of a limp, petering out. Cop guy keeps saying Paul was his friend, and an ambiguous trans-woman says something about people surprising you, but I felt like with more circumstantial detail and dramatic punch, those last couple of scenes could have been better written. Just sayin'.