Complicated…

Deke really could not find a better word to describe “Dread” than that which the seemingly omnipotent being had used to describe himself. On the one hand, he seemed utterly vain and sadistic, creating Ravenloft for his own amusement, while on the other hand, Dread seemed fairly just, imprisoning some of the most foul and wicked beings in that dreadful realm. He seemed to have power supassing that even of the “gods” of Faerun, but he said that even he was a created being, albeit chief among them. Who created Dread? Did that creator have a Creator? So many questions…

Deke tapped his finger twice on the bar and the well-trained barkeep knew to bring him another pint of ale, his eighth.

Never had Deke felt so powerless, so insignificant, so powerless. Even when his father had been murdered by Darksparkle, he felt that he could do something; he thought that he was in control of his own destiny. Now he wasn’t so sure. Had Dread known about Cain’s bargain before Cain offered it to him? If so, then there was really nothing Deke could do. Knowledge is power. If Dread was truly omniscient, then he was omnipotent and there was nothing Deke could do to save Cain. But Deke really had no way of knowing whether Dread knew his current thoughts. Could he really pay attention to everything at once?

Cain had not fully solved the problems in Faerun. It seemed as if Cain had pruned the weeds without getting to the root, for Womai was still alive and well, far more powerful than Bloodborne and far more malevolent. However, Womai had not yet destroyed the free peoples of Faerun either. Deke had always been willing to sidetrack his larger quest for the sake of his comrades, as he had left the party with Cain to recover Drakesbane during the campaign against Muhrann. Deke had no hesitation as to what he should do. The only question was how…

Deke tapped his finger on the table but the barkeep was nowhere to be found. He groggily rubbed his eyes and staggered to his feet in the dark, empty room.

Now for it! At some point during the night, perhaps while he was passed out Deke had found his solution. It was certainly something he had to do before he sobered up and his wisdom kicked in…

Deke slowly lumbers up to the battlements and cries into the dead of the night:

“ALL RIGHT DREAD! IF YE LIKE TO MAKE DEALS ‘N PLAY GAMES, I’VE GOT ONE FOR YA! YOU WANNA BE AMUSED? TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE! GIMME A CHANCE TO REDEEM CAIN! PULL ME AN’ TRYTO AN’ JONATHAN INTO YOUR SADISTIC LITTLE REALM! PUT US TO THE TEST! IF WE PASS, YOU RELEASE CAIN TO US, BUT IF WE FAIL, I SHALL BE FORFEIT TO YOU; FOREVER YOUR SLAVE! CAN YOU HEAR ME DREAD?! IF YOU WANT SOME EXCITEMENT, I’VE GOT A BELLY FULL!”

“Amateur,” thought Deke as he gazed in the dark at the corpses of the elite Tristadi bodyguards, and, more specifically, at the field plate armor it had taken himself and Zynthoid all of five seconds to breach. “Look at this! No range of motion, an (h)uge gap between the breastplate and the epaulettes. Any fighter worth his weight in mutton could exploit this. Shabby…”

“Speaking of shabby,” Deke remembered that he had two handprint-sized holes in the shoulders of his chain mail. His shoulders were still a little tender from his odd supernatural encounter. “I guess I’ll be doing some mending during my watch,” he muttered. Deke had saved the material he removed when he shortened the suit of mail and would use it to mend the small holes left by the handprints.

He had woken up a little early for his watch and decided to take a walk to wake himself up.

With little else to do, Deke had taken up his armorsmithing in earnest during the years he spent in Ravenloft. He had used his engineering knowledge to build his own forge and had masterfully crafted armor that turned his town’s militia from a ragtag band of broadsword fodder into a formidable defensive force. It was a lonely existence, and had caused Deke to become increasingly like his taciturn ancestors. He would spend days simply drawing up designs for the perfect suit of armor, the amount of crumbled paper in the corner amounting daily to a month’s wages for a member of the Leneasa town guard, where his adventuring career began. During this time he had finally begun to see the wisdom of the words his father, Ebanezar, spoke to him when he was but a wee lad.

“Deke, ye cannah survive in battle on offense alone. Ye can kill yer opponent with a wee pebble if ye place it right, but it dannah matter much if ye doonah live to see the next battle. Learn weapons ahnd yull burn brightly but not fer long; learn defense ahnd yull be tellin’ this to yer wee great-great-grandson.

He thought back to that day.

His father was caught by surprise by the raid of the drow, and didn’t have the opportunity to get back home for his shield and armor. He grabbed two bastard swords from fallen comrades and assailed Darksparkle. Though he did a great deal of damage to the evil invader, a cheap, poisoned dart got the best of him. He became sluggish; his attacks became fewer and further between until Darksparkle finally cleaved his head from his shoulders with his vorpel blade. Would that dart have hit him if he were properly armed? Doubtful… Would Darksparkle have gotten the best of him if he were wearing his armor and using his shield? Also doubtful.

But on that day, Deke was too shocked, too angry to think clearly. He grabbed the bastard swords from his father’s body and went out for looking for revenge. Perhaps he was also suicidal from all that happened to him. He knew his style of combat was foolhardy, he knew he would not live to see his children, much less his great-great- grandchildren, but he fought this way nonetheless, nearly dying several times without using his brain, needlessly rushing into battle hoping he could kill them before they killed him. Reckless… Foolhardy… Maybe Isharra was right. Deke was one-dimensional…

The time alone without adventuring gave Deke thousands of hours to reflect upon the past and to self-consciously form a combat philosophy. He had never been adequately armored. Even the magical field plate he wore before he came to Ravenloft restricted his range of motion more than he would have liked, as he would often curse under his breath when he took a hit he would have otherwise dodged. There had to be a way for Deke to protect himself. “That’s why Jonathan never got hurt,” he would think, “nobody could touch him.” Deke remembered back to his dream and to that polyhedral armor that nearly any direct blow would glint off of without harming the wearer. As Deke analyzed that armor, he realized that it was simply a fancy alteration on plate armor, and would still limit his range of motion. He thought of ways he could preserve the range of motion without leaving vulnerable soft spots in the armor, often frustrating himself with the apparent paradox. He had to craft armor that would perfectly suit his unique abilities and idiosyncrasies, for the perfect style of armor for Deke would be an annoying hindrance to Cain and fail to take into account the subtleties of mounted combat that would better suit Jonathan and Zynthoid. Armor had to be crafted to the individual user in order to be of optimal use. The armor Deke had worn was not crafted to suit him. A master armorer does not mass-produce generic armor to collect dust on shelves but crafts armor to suit specific, wealthy clients. Weight was not an issue, as Deke could don lead armor weighing 300 pounds, without even being affected by the weight, but he needed the range of motion to take advantage of his agility. Could he make something that protects better than full plate, but grants the mobility you would find with studded leather or chain? It seemed like a pie in the sky dream, but when you have a lot of time and enough motivation, the impossible becomes improbable, and the improbable becomes reality. The mithril Sash of the Martyr his father had given him provided a model for…

SASH OF THE MARTYR! The thought of his most prized possession jolted him back to reality. He had no idea where it was. He hadn’t had it the whole time in Ravenloft and had no idea where it could be now. He had kept hope, a fleeting wisp of hope, the whole time in Ravenloft that it would mysteriously reappear in his possession when he returned to Faerun. If he ever returned to Faerun… Now that he had returned, without the sash, the last vestige of hope fled from him. He wanted to cry but knew he could not. “Spare your tears, dwarf,” Cain would callously and coldly admonish him, the way he did when Deke pleaded for the opportunity to fight Darksparkle that first time. Deke could not cry; he refused to cry, but had to vent his emotion somehow.

Rage…

Deke let out a primal yell that surprised even himself and kicked the lifeless body of the Tristadi bodyguard so hard it flew five feet into the air and landed with a muffled thud in the tall grass a full fifteen feet away. After a minute, Deke came to his senses, as his heart rate subsided and the adrenaline became diluted within his bloodstream. He looked at his hands and saw his own blood. In his rage he had rent his chain shirt with such force that it removed some of the skin from them. The shirt was now but a long flat sheet of mesh, lying on the ground next to him. He soberly picked up his chain shirt and returned to camp. It was now time for his watch, and he would now need to spend all of it mending his shirt, all the while reflecting on how this new power Rhal Afar had granted would affect him.

Today I preached my second sermon at Christ Church of North Carolina.  I preached on Proverbs 11:1 and the title of the sermon is “Weights and Measures: Just and Unjust.”  In it I deal with such issues as honest business dealings, fraud, fiat money, and a basic overview of Christian economics.

Feel free to listen to the sermon, provide feedback, and share it with anybody whom you believe may benefit from it.  Like any endeavor you need a lot of practice at this to get good at it.  I’ll probably need to preach a hundred sermons before I come into my own.

The sermon audio can be downloaded here.

The manuscript of the sermon in PDF format can be found here.

While you’re at it, check out the Christ Church sermon archives page here.

Like all things at michaelduchemin.com, you are free to distribute these under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.

PDF of sheet music here

Piano accompaniment here

Soprano part here

Alto part here

Tenor part here

Bass part here

As with all material published on this site, you may freely copy, distribute, and even sell this hymn for a profit under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I wrote the whole sermon out in manuscript form and deviated from it some when I preached it.  Apparently my pages got out of order somehow and pages 3 and 4 were at the very back of the stack.  I’m very thankful for all the people who were praying for me and for the warm reception I received from everybody afterward.  Feel free to listen to the sermon, provide feedback, and share it with anybody whom you believe may benefit from it.  Like any endeavor you need a lot of practice at this to get good at it.  I’ll probably need to preach a hundred sermons before I come into my own.

The sermon audio can be downloaded here.

The manuscript of the sermon in PDF format can be found here.

While you’re at it, check out the Christ Church sermon archives page here.

Like all things at michaelduchemin.com, you are free to distribute these under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.

-Douglas Wilson, Future Men, Canon Press, 2001, p. 100, emphasis original

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

Ryle states that “By that expression [the gates of hell] we are meant to understand the power of the prince of hell, even the devil.”  He then goes on to tell about how the history of the church is that of being constantly assailed by Satan.  The church “has always been a bush burning, though not consumed—a woman fleeing into the wilderness, but not swallowed up.”  Our goal is essentially to endure the assaults of Satan without apostatizing and all of our hope in heaven.  Most of what he says is okay as far as it goes, but there is one problem:

GATES ARE NOT AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON.

When have you ever seen gates advance upon somebody?  Unless you interpret this passage in a Macbeth-style “never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” fashion, there is no way to conclude that the gates represent an offensive onslaught.  That would be like saying that fire represents a waterfall or Michael Jackson represents masculinity.  To paraphrase C.S Lewis, we are apt to break out the fire extinguisher in a flood.  I don’t have a problem with stating that there are times that Satan attacks, but we need to keep in mind that they are desperate counter-attacks. Satan has been on the defensive ever since Jesus cried out “It is finished,” and the writing was on the wall long before that (Genesis 3:15).

Whether you see the life of the Church as one of hunkering down in a bunker and trying to merely survive while the world goes to hell in a hand-basket or whether you see it as one of plundering the strong man’s house and storming the very gates of hell will have a profound effect on your daily life. The boldness of great martyrs of the church throughout history has been a boldness that stormed the gates of hell, knowing that the gates would not prevail.

Every soul that is converted to Christ is a conquest over territory once held by the enemy.  Beyond that, your individual sanctification is offensive warfare against the powers of hell.  Every time you confess and forsake your sin, apologize without passing the blame or making excuses, and reconcile yourself with your brother, you are slamming a battering ram against the gates of hell.  If your wife has done something to upset you and you know exactly what you could say to make her burst into tears but refrain out of love for her and love for Christ (especially when you would have sinned in that manner a year ago), you are catapulting a boulder into a watchtower of Satan’s city.  When we assemble corporately on the Lord’s Day to worship the Triune God according to His word, how much more do we prevail!  Not only do we strike our most powerful blows against Satan’s principalities when we worship rightly, but we are also there equipped for our battle throughout the week ahead.

I know that things may look bleak at times.  You can look around and see the apparent demise of Western Civilization.  You can look to Washington and shudder.  You can look at our pulpits and see hucksters trying to manipulate people into signing a card and calling it a “conversion” or would-be gurus trying to lead you on a twelve step program to inner peace.  You can look to our congregations and see grown men shaking and barking to lyrics the Vogons would be ashamed of.  On the other side we have Calvinists who are right about the doctrines of grace (at least on paper), but are so preoccupied with intramural squabbles that we marginalize our influence on the world and the rest of the Church.  You can look at families where parents (at least the good ones that don’t commit infanticide) abandon their children to daycare at the age of six weeks and to government schools and latch-key lives at the age of six years.  There is certainly still much territory occupied by the enemy.  But do we get our theology from the six o’ clock news or the Bible?  If Jesus has said that He will build his church, we had better believe Him.

When the 12 spies went into the land of Canaan, 10 of them admitted that the land was good, but could only talk of the giants and the high walls, and the fortified cities.  Only Joshua and Caleb had enough faith to say “we can take ‘em.”  Certainly the principalities and fortified cities of Satan are more impressive than those of the Canaanites, but Jesus has said he will build His church.  He himself has said “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:18b-20).”  Now are we going to respond to this with a hearty “Amen!” or are we going to say “No, Lord,” and try to take the Lord of Glory aside and rebuke him?

Be encouraged and rejoice.  We have been winning; we are winning now; and we will win.  Let Christ be true and every man a liar!

1.) I recently purchased the Academic/Theological edition of Finale 2009, a music notation program from Make Music, Inc., which I wouldn’t have done unless I was made choir director of Christ Church of NC in January.

2.) I listened to the 1999 Christ Church Ministry Conference on “Poetic Knowledge” which is available from WordMP3.com.  I wouldn’t have done this unless my father in law, Marshall Joiner, hadn’t given me his old edition of the entire WordMP3 library.

3.) I then listened to several years of ACCS conferences in which Matt Whitling talked about the basics of poetry.

4.) One of the members of my church, David Stambaugh went out of town on the weekend of 03/15/09 and asked me to switch prayers with him.  (He was scheduled for the prayer of praise on 03/15 and I was scheduled for the prayer of thanksgiving on 03/29.)

When I received the request to take over the Prayer of Praise on 03/13, I decided to arrange my prayer in verse.  Most of the prayers you see in the Bible are poetry rather than prose, so I decided to take a stab at it.  To quote Adrian Monk, “Here’s what happened:”

Poetry: The discussion of poetry should begin with a disclaimer.  I have little experience writing and studying poetry, so I’m splashing around in the shallow end of the pool here.  I hope that it’s at least marginally better than Vogon poetry.  I set the poem in “Common Meter Doubled”  (8 lines per stanza of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter).     There are 6 stanzas in the poem, eight lines each.  The first two lines of trimeter rhyme with each other and the last 2 lines of trimeter rhyme with each other.

The stanzas have a chiastic structure.  The first and last stanzas contain Jesus-as-bridegroom imagery. The first stanza dealing more with the establishment of the covenant; the last dealing with the consummation of the covenant.  The second and fifth stanzas are dominated by nature metaphors.  The second stanza dealing more with the attributes of God, the fifth dealing with the nature of the kingdom.  The third and fourth stanzas contrast the wicked and the righteous.  The cross is at the very center of the chiasm, being that which distinguishes the wicked from the righteous.  So without further ado, here’s the text:

Jehovah’s covenant is sure
His name is lifted high
By his own name he swore an oath
To Abram’s seed draw nigh
Those purchased by the blood of Christ
On whom thy favor rests
Predestined ere the dawn of time
The bridegroom’s prized bequest.

Transcendent yet incarnate Lord
Sublime in mystery
For who can know the ways of God
Unless revealed they be?
Unchanging as a mountain high
Or like a cedar tall
Yet like a river giving life
And hearing when we call.

Our enemies and yours decry
Your righteous name in vain
They blasphemously gnash their teeth
And mock you in disdain
They shriek, connive, conspire, and howl
In evil schemes they plot
Your cross, O Lord, has cast them down
And brought their plans to naught.

You save the wicked from the pit
You raise the dead to life
You vanquish sin and Satan to
Secure the Son a wife
The proud don’t understand thy pow’r
In weakness made complete
While elders take their crowns of gold
And lay them at your feet.

Your kingdom like the mustard seed
Grows slowly by design
As fam’lies, nations, tongues, and tribes
Are grafted to thy vine
While principalities and pow’rs
Against your saints inveigh
The order of Melchizedek
Grows stronger day by day.

Lord hasten consummation’s hour
When bridegroom shall return
To claim his chaste, unblemished bride
And make the serpent burn
The goats shall separated be
Expelled by thee for aye.
Thy sheep shall in thy fold abide
And death shall pass away.

Music: Early on in the process of composing the poem, I considered the idea of setting it as a hymn.  I think I started out in G major, but abandoned it pretty quickly to D major, primarily for range considerations based on how I wanted to write the tune.  Since the poem was iambic, I began the hymn with a pick-up note.  I did a little bit of tone painting (“name is lifted high“), but that’s hard to do when you’re setting six verses.

I tried to look at what the verses had in common.  I noticed that lines 5 and 6 of the vast majority of the verses were darker in content, so I dabbled in the relative minor (b minor) there.

I also needed to think of a name for the hymn tune.  This kind of stumped me, so I decided to name the tune “Stambaugh,” since this wouldn’t have happened unless David swapped prayer assignments with me.

The .PDF of the music can be found here.  I was also able to export audio files from Finale.  I saved the hymn as piano, string quartet, pipe organ, and choir (midi).  I also saved one track where each of the four voice parts (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) is isolated in the left channel so people can learn their part easier by adjusting the balance setting on the playback device (or removing the right earphone).  Enjoy!

Edited Legal note: LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE ON THIS SITE THIS HYMN MAY NOW BE FREELY COPIED AND DISTRIBUTED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 3.0 UNPORTED LICENSE.