Predators "R" Us

Writing Prompt: Why are you loyal to certain brands/stores? What keeps you coming back?

I read somewhere that if a bird of prey finds a mouse under a certain bush, it will revisit that bush regularly for a while to see if it can find more mice there. We as predators are hard wired to return to the scene of success. (Oh, yes, we are, too, predators.) So if we have made successful "kills" at a certain store, we are more likely, statistically, to return to it. But if our success is not repeated, then the behavior will taper off.

If on the other hand, we are not successful, then we will seek other places for our hunt. We may pass the unsuccessful site and give it a try, but we won't go out of our way to revisit it.

Think now, if the hawk or owl has an unpleasant experience at a certain bush-- say a fight with another predator or a narrow escape from a trap or even just a loud noise, the predator is most likely to avoid the site. I doubt if any one has studied this idea in terms of birds of prey, but entire theories of psychology are built on this proposition.

So for all you marketing execs out there, it is better not to lose the customer in the first place than to overcome a bad experience.

I know you can't have merchandize that appeals to everyone, but you can carry a good selection in your niche and keep in mind what your niche market really wants.

You can also give good customer service so the predator, I mean, shopper won't avoid you.

Is it really that simple?

Yes, it really is.

Note on an Experiment

My daughter tells me that my blogs are too long. Cutting them into separate posts has problems too. The blog on Rogers Heights seems out of order. Either you read the second part first or you have to scroll down to the first part and then scroll up to the second part.

I discovered something about the way blogs are posted at Blogspot that I think will allow me to post one a day, but also allow a future reader to read the posts in order.


This is an experiment.

If it works.

If not, I’ll have to start over.

Wish me luck.

My Favorite Hymns: Foreword

I wanted to write a blog about my favorite hymns, but choosing my favorites among all the hymns I love proved difficult. Who could not like "In the Garden" or "Sweet Hour of Prayer"? Who would not be stirred by "God of Our Fathers, Whose All Mighty Hand,"? (#14) Who could not feel the joy when we exalt "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today"? (#13) Or the sorrow in "Were You There?"(#17) Who does not feel the acceptance in "Jesus Loves Me"? (#15)

I can’t forget “God of Grace and God of Glory,” (#18) “Faith of Our Fathers,” “Come, Thou Almighty King,” “All Creatures of Our God and King,” “I Know My Redeemer Lives,” (#19) “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” “Nearer My God to Thee,” “Rise up, O Men of God,” “Bread of the World in Mercy Broken,” “Break Thou the Bread of Life,” (#20) or “Rock of Ages.”

At Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, we sang “Fairest Lord Jesus,” “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian,” and “This Is My Father’s World” and felt the love. Even so, much as I love them, these don’t quite make it to the top of my list of favorites

I have a large number of CDs of The Cedarmont Kids© singing all the hymns and Sunday School songs that I loved as a child. I look over the indexes and think, “Oh, yes, I remember this. I loved it.” If I tried to list them all, this would be merely a roll call of great hymns.

Then there are some new hymns that I have come to appreciate. Notably, “Shout to the Lord,”(#16) “Awesome God,” and “Lord, I Lift Your Name on High” fill me with delight.
I especially like “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” (#12) The sentiment so exactly captures one of my beliefs – that it isn’t so much what the different denominations believe as how well we exemplify Christianity in our lives. How well we walk the walk, not how well we talk the talk.

Looking back on my teaching career, I am proudest that my students told me they knew I was a Christian by how I treated them. I never preached. Readers of my blogs know more about what I believe than they did, but the students told me that I was fair, that I looked for and saw the good in them, that I believed in them, that I was Christian. We lead best by example, not by force, not by words, by our love.

Still even though there are many hymns I love, I do have some favorites.

11. His Eye Is on the Sparrow:
Okay, I never said I’d narrow it down to 10. Given what I’ve said, how could a hymn that reads: “I sing because I’m happy; I sing because I’m free...” not be one of my all time favorites. There is great comfort in “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” Some might feel spied on, but I feel protected. I love this hymn; I can’t omit it.
Words: Civillia D. Martin
Music: Charles H. Gabriel

Tomorrow I’ll list number 10 through 7.

My Favorite Hymns: Beginning in the Middle of the List

This part covers the tenth to the seventh on the list of my favorite hymns.

Some may wonder why I am writing this. I've wondered that myself. The hymns are a large part of the spiritual journey of my life. I want to document this part and move on. The order may change. I may learn a new hymn and have it move upward on my list. Ten years ago, "Give Thanks" or "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love" wouldn't have been on the list because I hadn't heard or noticed them. Things change. Life changes. Overall, though, this list hasn't changed a lot --new additions, maybe-- old favorites stay.

10. Blest Be the Tie That Binds:
I wrote about what this hymn means to me and to the life of the church in the blog on Rogers Heights, http://tricia3718.blogspot.com/2008/08/rogers-heights-christian-church-1946_14.html so I won’t repeat what I said.
Words: John Fawcett
Music: Arr. from Hans G. Naegeli by Lowell Mason

9. Morning Has Broken:
Cat Stevens first introduced me to the lovely hymn, “Morning Has Broken.” Every day is “... like the first morning.... God’s re-creation of the new day.” There is perhaps in me a remnant of the American Indian custom of greeting the dawn with prayer. This song – and to a lesser extent, “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” -- are prayers of praise and thanksgiving for each new day. It is good to remember Who gives them to us.
Words: Eleanor Farjeon
Music: Gaelic Melody: Bunessan, arr. by David Evans

8. Give Thanks; We Gather Together; Let All Things Now Living; Come, Ye Thankful People, Come; O, Be Joyful in the Lord:
This is more of a category than a single selection. I never said I was limited to individual songs either. This group of hymns is about thankfulness. I’ve preferred Thanksgiving to Christmas for a long time. There are no great expectations for Thanksgiving to live up to, just a peaceful time to count our blessings.

“Give Thanks” is my favorite among the new music. It is a simple song, but so moving.
Words and music: Harry Smith

“We Gather Together” is not strictly a song of thanksgiving, but I have always grouped it with the hymns of thankfulness. The last line of the first verse “He forgets not his own” is the promise that we will never be lost to God. The last line of the third verse, “Oh, Lord, make us free.” Our freedom comes from the Lord, let us never forget.
Words: Anonymous, Tr. by Theodore Banker
Music: Netherlands folk song, Arr. by Edward Kremser

“Let All Things Now Living” is also based on a traditional folk melody, Welsh, this time. “His banner is o'er us, his light goes before us,.... As forward we travel from light into light.” We have much to be thankful for.
Words: Katherine K. Davis
Music: The Ash Grove, a traditional Welsh melody.

“Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” exudes the joy of the harvest safely gathered. Those of us raised in cities can feel only a pale echo of the relief when the crop is stored and the coming winter provided for, but in my own life, I can remember a few times of feeling -- for a short while -- that everything was well. That condition never lasted for long, but then, it didn’t for the farmers either. Meanwhile, it is a wonderful feeling.
Words: Henry Alford
Music: Charles J. Elvey

Finally, “Oh Be Joyful in the Lord” from Psalm 100. I haven’t been able to find a source for this. Apparently Psalm 100 has been set to music several times. I learned it from sheet music; I think it is not a hymn, per se, but an anthem. I’ve searched my sheet music and can’t find it, so it may have been lost with so much else along the way. The words are an adaptation of the psalm. The version I like may be by Handel.

It is a song of praise and thanksgiving, of taking joy in the Lord.

7. Joy to the World:
This is a traditional Christmas song, but I remember once at summer camp, the leader suggested that we sing it. I realized then that “Joy to the World” is a universal hymn not just a Christmas one. On the other hand, in two Christmas plays I’ve directed, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” by Barbara Robinson and a “Wondrous Event” by yours truly, we ended by singing “Joy to the World.” I told the children that I didn’t care if they sang the right pitch, I didn’t care if they were together, I wanted to hear a shout of “Joy.” And I did.
Words: Isaac Watts
Music: George R. Handel

On that note, I’ll leave you for today. To be continued tomorrow:

My Favorite Hymns: Second Part of the List

6. Amazing Grace:

I don’t remember singing this hymn in my childhood, but I was introduced to it later. It is one of America’s greatest and most beloved hymns. Our own unaided efforts are not enough to save us. We cannot work enough, or even believe enough, but God can always find us. We triumph by his Grace. “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. ‘Tis grace has brought me safe this far, And grace will lead me home.” Yes.
Words: John Newton
Music: Early American Melody, Arr. Edwin O. Excell

5. Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee:

This hymn from the “Hymn to Joy” by Beethoven is probably the best piece of music in the list – and the only one that justifies being played on an organ. It is here by virtue of its shear beauty.
Words: Henry Van Dyer
Music: Ludwig Van Beethoven

4. The Doxology and Gloria Patri: Every Sunday, we sang these two hymns as responses.

Gloria Patri:
This is again a beloved promise: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, Amen, Amen.”
Words: from the Latin
Music: Traditional

The Doxology:

When my father was stricken with Parkinson’s disease and unable to communicate or control much, to the very end, he could still join in when the congregation recited the Lord’s Prayer. I believe that the last song I will ever be able to sing is the Doxology:
Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
Words: Thomas Ken
Music: Attributed to Loys Bourgeois

3. O, God, Our Help in Ages Past:

I really can’t give a reason for this choice. I just like it, okay? There is truly no accounting for taste.

The third verse starts, “Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame....” Every time I see tiers of hills or mountains stretching to the horizon, I am reminded of this line.

The fourth verse is “A thousand ages in thy sight, Are like an evening gone; Swift as the watch that ends the night, Before the rising sun.” I remember how shocked, SHOCKED, I was the first time I learned that some people still took seriously the man who counted up the ages of everyone in the Bible and arrived at a date of creation. (Some year in the 4000’s B.C. In October, I believe.) At a very young age, I understood the meaning of allegory. “A thousand years is but a day unto the Lord.” (2nd Peter 3:8) How can we presume to understand time the way God does?
Words: Isaac Watts
Music: William Croft

2. The Lord’s My Shepherd:

This version of Psalm 23 has everything, a lovely melody and probably the world’s favorite psalm. I don’t know why it isn’t sung more often than it is, but the way the words are arranged to fit the melody may put people off. Personally, I have no preference for “to lie down” over “down to lie.” But possibly it reminds some of the convolutions their English teaches put them through in order to not end with a preposition. (A rule that doesn’t work in English like it does in Latin.) The odd thing is that a later line ends with the preposition “by” in order to rhyme with “lie.” Go figure. I love the music and the psalm, enough reason for its placement second to the top of this list.
Words: Psalm 23
Music: Jesse Seymour Irving

Tomorrow: My Favorite Hymn

My Favorite Hymn

1. Once to Every Man and Nation:
“Once to Every Man and Nation” is my favorite hymn. I remember the first time I heard it in church. I was about 10. Every Sunday for weeks, I would look it up and devour the words and the music. Even today, my hymnal falls open automatically to this hymn.

The words came from a longer poem by James Russell Lowell pruned and set to a Welsh hymn melody. James Russell Lowell was a descendent of one of the most influential New England families. Later off-shoots of the family include poets, Amy Lowell and Robert Lowell and astronomer Percival Lowell.

This is the most difficult of all of the discussions to write. This hymn means so much to me.
Words: James Russell Lowell
Music: Welsh Hymn Melody

I’ll go back to the first verse later.

Second verse:
Then to side with truth is noble,
When we share her wretched crust.
Ere her cause bring fame and profit
And ‘tis prosperous to be just.
Then it is the brave man chooses
While the coward stands aside.
Till the multitude make virtue
Of the faith they had denied.

This history of the world is replete with examples of people standing for truth. Galileo was believed to have whispered “Earth still revolves around the sun,” even as he was forced to recant. Luther was tried by the church for his attempts to reform it. In our own time, we have the example of the resistance in Europe during WWII who risked everything, including their lives and families to stand against the Nazis, for the truth.

Third verse beginning at line 5:
...
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.

A number of customs that were observed in Biblical times are no longer. As situations changed, God’s law changed. The principles never do, just the law. Paul spends some parts of his letters explaining how to be a slave and still be a Christian. We came to feel that slavery itself was wrong. Jacob had 2 wives and 2 concubines. We no longer allow plural marriage. His two wives were sisters, a situation that was later outlawed. Our understanding of God and what He wants from us has grown even from the time of Christ. Christ taught what He could in His time on earth and left us with principles to guide us in the future, but to keep abreast of truth we must labor on.

Fourth verse:
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ‘tis truth alone is strong:
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future
And, behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.

The first part of this verse expresses our hope that truth will triumph. Looking back, after long battles, truth has won, not easily, but it has won. The rest of the verse sums up the sentiments expounded in “We Gather Together.” I like both this verse and the hymn for the same reason; I believe God will support us, keep watch over us, forget not His own.

The first verse:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side:
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light.

This was the verse that caught my attention. Most of us who have been baptized (or confirmed) believe that we have made this choice. And for the most part, we have. That is what it means to be a believer, to affirm our belief.

But from the far side of my life, I wish it were that simple.

I think that we have to keep on choosing, day by day. There are many challenges in our lives, and sometimes we don’t make quite the right choice, but we have to pick ourselves up and try the next day to do better, to make the right choice. It never gets any easier either. I wish it did.

I think now that the choice I made when I was baptized was to keep choosing as best I could the side of truth.

Tomorrow, some final thoughts.

My Favorite Hymns: Final Assessment

With great difficulty, I pruned my list to 25.

What have I gained out of all these hymns?

In my young and middle adulthood, I could learn any hymn in three verses. The first verse, I followed along. The second verse, I sang. The third verse, I sang out, I had it.

Now I can’t sing the even ones I love.

Do hymns influence what we believe? The elders chose hymns each Sunday to support their message. I don’t think that the hymns led me so much as reinforced my beliefs, but to have connected so quickly to “Once to Every man and Nation” I must have already believed a lot of the words. That’s pretty advanced thinking for a ten-year-old, but it is the thinking my church elders led me to. These are the hymns that still speak to me, the ones that I still hear.

The Final List:
20. “Break Thou the Bread of Life”
19. “I Know My Redeemer Lives”
18. “God of Grace and God of Glory”
17. “Were You There?”
16. “Shout to the Lord”
15. “Jesus Loves Me”
14. “God of Our Fathers, Whose All Mighty Hand”
13. “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today”
12. “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love”
11. “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”
10. “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”
9. “Morning Has Broken”
8. “Give Thanks; We Gather Together; Let All Things Now Living; Come, Ye Thankful People, Come; O, Be Joyful in the Lord”
7. “Joy to the World”
6. “Amazing Grace”
5. “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee”
4. “The Doxology and Gloria Patri”
3. “O, God, Our Help in Ages Past”
2. “The Lord’s My Shepherd”
1. “Once to Every Man and Nation”