Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd

I was recently discussing musical settings of Psalm 23 (The Lord is my Shepherd) with my eldest daughter. She went to a Church of England primary school, and therefore learnt a version of the song at school. But we use a different version at church, so we started trying to remember all the versions we had heard. There are so many, we eventually resorted to YouTube to remind us of the different tunes. There are even more versions there, so here’s my pick of the best and most interesting:

Anyone who was at school in the 1970s, even if they didn’t attend a church school, probably learnt the “Crimond” version:


My own favourite is the version by Howard Goodall. Those who know the BBC series The Vicar of Dibley will know the first and last verses, but may not know the middle bit. Here the Choir Boys sing it:


Here’s a Greek Orthodox version ... in greek:



The version we use at church is composed by Stuart Townend. I couldn't find it sung on YouTube, but here's the tune:


[Update - I did find a version with the words:]


Even a hip hop version (well, kind of):



One by John Rutter




Here’s an odd version composed by Joel Navarro, and performed by Sole Voce of Los Angeles



...and a version composed by an Australian opera singer Jason Barry-Smith and performed by an Australian youth choir:



Here’s Bob Chilcott's setting:



... and Keith Green's song:



Psalm 23 must be the best known psalm in entire psalter, and is probably one of the best know passages of the entire bible. Here are the words from the King James Authorized translation:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he
leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table
before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my
cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

[Update: thank you to my contributor for pointing out the version known as Brother James' Air, which is in fact, the one we use at church. I didn't know it was called that, which is why I missed it. Here's a youtube example

Grohe Dump Valve

A few years ago I installed a new bathroom, and replaced the WC cistern with a concealed one. Not long after it was installed it started leaking water into the pan. It definitely wasn’t the overflow, and it was not too bad, so I left it to leak. It kept getting worse.

Now I remember some years ago hearing a debate about cisterns in this country and new EU regulations to free up the market. It used to be the case that a cistern had to have a siphonic valve to be legal in the UK. These are leak-proof by design. As soon as the cistern is empty, the siphon is lost and the water is trapped until the flush is operated again. The EU wanted the UK to drop the requirement for a siphonic flush because we were the only country in the world that manufactured them. Our rules were preventing import of cisterns from other EU countries, forming a trade barrier. Our bathroom manufacturers at the time claimed that other types of valve were not leak-proof, and therefore relaxing the regulation would cause a flood of wasted water to leak down our toilet pans. The EU won – and at the time I thought they were right – this was just protectionism masquerading as environmental concern. However, I have now been proved wrong. Non-siphonic cistern valves can and will leak, and when they do they are a pain to put right.

Eventually my cistern was leaking so badly that I had to do something about it. First of all I descaled it – we have extremely hard water and there was lots of lime scale in the cistern. That helped a bit, but after a few months it was leaking more than ever, and keeping us awake with its trickling noise. I took out the guts of the valve and took it to the local plumbers’ merchant to see if he could advise. “That’s a Grohe dump valve” he said; “if I could get hold of them I’d make a fortune.” Apparently these things are notorious, particularly in hard water areas. So over to Google to find out something about the Grohe dump valve and how you service them. I came across an interesting piece at How to mend it .com where someone had noticed a water bubble forming under the skin of the silicon washer. They said if you prick it with a pin you can remove the bubble, and allow the valve to seat properly. On inspection I found exactly such a bubble in both the washers in my valve. I pricked them with a pin, a tiny amount of water squirted out, and I was back in business. The thing now seals like new. Considering I had been contemplating replacing the cistern at a cost of at least £50, I think I’ve got off lightly. I wonder how long its’ going to last.

Update - see the epilogue

Christian Aid 2008

Next week is Christian Aid Week – the week when Christians from all the churches in the country will be knocking on doors and asking people to donate to this very worthy charity. I was recently speaking to some people from my church who have been collecting for this cause for many years. I was surprised to find that few of them enjoy the job of walking round the parish, knocking on doors and begging for donations to help the poorest people in the world. Most of them, it seems, do the job because it’s a job worth doing, and not because they enjoy it. One person commented that door-to-door collecting is a very old fashioned way of raising money. Christian Aid is one of very few charities who still fund themselves in this way.

So this year they've decided to use some new technology to support this very worthy cause. If you would like to make a donation to Christian Aid without someone having to come out to knock on your door and ask you to fill an envelope with cash, then use our fund raising page to make a donation with your credit- or debit card. It’s a simple transaction – just click the “Donate” button on the widget above to visit the virtual door-to-door collection page. They don't guarantee that you won’t also get a call from a collector; but if you tell them you’ve already donated on-line I'm sure they’ll be delighted to leave without the traditional envelope full of cash.

The Iron Bridge

Many years ago a temporary foot bridge was built over the River Stort in Bishop’s Stortford linking a car park outside a Chinese restaurant with a car park outside the train station. It’s was never much of a bridge, but it served a purpose of allowing pedestrians, many of them hurrying to catch a train, to cross half way between the two available road crossings, thereby saving themselves a walk of about 1000 metres.

A couple of years ago the council got a lottery grant to put something more aesthetically pleasing in place. The project has the rather utilitarian title of “Bishop’s Stortford Goods Yard Bridge”. The main drawback with the old bridge was that it had quite steep steps up each side, so it was out of bounds to mothers with prams and pushchairs. The new bridge design is to have shallow ramps up each side, almost parallel with the river, with steps providing a shortcut for unencumbered, able-bodied pedestrians. Work started a few months ago, and they removed the old bridge and replaced it with an even less inspiring, even more temporary wooden affair, a few metres downstream of the original. Ground work then began to build the foundations for the new structure.

A few weeks ago I walked that way to the station in the morning, and noticed that some of the structure had started to arrive. Then last week I again walked that way for some reason, and was able to witness what may have been the first person to cross the new bridge. All they had in place were the pedestrian steps up one side and down the other, and a section of the main span linking the two. A workman was crossing over to tighten some bolts on the other side. It looked smaller than I was expecting, but it was far from complete. That evening I walked back that way, and the bridge was open – my first chance to cross it.

Since then, the rest of the bridge has continued to go up, and it’s as massive as I was expecting. Have a look at this.

British Summer Time (and the living is easy)

We’ve finally made it to the last weekend in March, when the British put their clocks forward to British Summer Time (BST), or Greenwich Mean Time(GMT) + 1 hour. The long winter nights are finally over, and it will be light for our journey home from work all the way through until November when the clocks will be set back to GMT for another five months. The only questions now is why on earth we only advance our clocks by one hour, and why do we use GMT all through the winter months. It would increase the quality of our lives enormously if we were to use GMT +1 hour during the winter and GMT + 2 hours during the summer. Why don’t the British do that?

Arguments in favour of this change:

1. It would put us on the same time zone as most of Europe, improving communication and increasing the ease of business transactions
2. It would increase the amount of daylight we are exposed to during at least 4 months of the year, thus reducing the incidence of Seasonal Affective Disorder, a form of depression associated with lack of daylight during the winter months.
3. It would save about 200 lives per year on our roads. Drivers are more alert during the morning, and thus keeping the daylight for the evening hours would reduce accidents including fatal ones during the dark evenings.
4. It would reduce the number of hours we need to light our homes and streets, saving some energy (thought there seems to be a debate about exactly how much). (In the USA the lighting issue is offset by increased use of air conditioning; but in the UK we don’t have the same consideration.)

A recent petition on the Downing Street website asked the government to switch to consider changing to Central European Time (i.e. GMT+1/GMT+2), and in response the government trotted out a list of reasons why they didn’t want to make this change. Most of these arguments were established in the 1970s when a trial of leaving the clocks on BST all year was undertaken for a couple of years. Indeed I remember as a child being dressed in reflective clothing to keep me safe during the dark mornings.

Arguments against the change:

1. Farmers prefer to have lighter mornings in the winter
2. The construction industry prefers to start work early, and this is affected by dark mornings in the winter
3. In Scotland the mornings are darker because they are further north. They prefer the light at the start of the day.
4. Milk and postal delivery people don’t like dark mornings
5. It is dangerous for school children to travel to school during the dark mornings. As the schools come out earlier than offices, children don’t benefit from the shift to light evenings.

However, that was the 1970s and much has changed since then which out-dates most of these arguments:

1. The number of people working the land has decreased, and the number of people driving cars to work has increased – in both cases the changes have been dramatic.
2. Scotland has far more autonomy, and could easily be allowed to set its own time zone
3. Milk deliveries have all but disappeared, and the postal service no longer attempts to deliver before breakfast
4. After-school clubs and social activities, and a general shift to all parents working have meant that children are travelling much later in the day and therefore exposed to the dark evenings in winter.
5. So that leaves only the construction companies affected by any such change. My only comment on that is that changing the clocks does not change the number of hours of daylight – simply the time at which it is light.

I have considered changing my own habits to allow me more daylight in the evenings. If I were to get up an hour earlier, go to work an hour earlier and leave the office an hour earlier I wouldn’t need everyone else to change. However, that’s not as easy as I first seems. I already get up at 06:00, so adjusting it any further would require a bedtime so early that I would have to drop out of society entirely. And anyone who has ever worked in an office will know that getting in early is easy; leaving early is another matter entirely. My other option is to move to France, where they use Western European Time. If I could figure out a way to maintain my income from France then that is what I would do. As it is, I find it simpler to remain in the UK and whinge for 5 months of the year.

Dem Bones

When I got up at 04:00 on Easter Sunday, I did not do so for fame. I simply wanted to be present at the first Eucharist of Easter at my church. A few hardy souls had spent the night in vigil at the church, not sleeping till Easter dawned. But I was driving to Wales on Sunday, so I needed my sleep. I did not voluteer to read the old testament reading because I wanted to be broadcast on the internet - I simply wanted to participate in the service, and Father John asked me if I'd like to read. I was unaware until today that Dr Durrant had brought his video camera along to the service. And so it was that this morning I discovered that my voice, and a dark image of my face, are on YouTube, reading the valley of the bones passage from Ezekiel. It's a bit dark, but this was dawn - about 05:30 on 2008-03-23 (and the temparature was about -3 C). The sound isn't brilliant, but I didn't read it very well, so that's perhaps just as well.

Passion Plays

This Holy Week I've been watching a couple of interesting new dramatisations of the passion story. First the BBC's excellent The Passion, serialised over the week, and last night I saw Redemption Song by the Riding Lights Theatre Company. Both pieces have given me plenty of new angles on this familiar story.
The Passion depicting not only the familiar characters, but attempting to capture the background of the politics of the time. It brings new light to the characters of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, also giving some interesting insights into Jesus Barabas and even to Judas Iscariot.
Redemption Song emphasised the Roman occupation of Judea, and used this as a metaphor for the occupation of our souls by sin. It also placed great emphasis on "the tradition" (i.e. Judaism), throwing the Roman occupation into even starker contrast - two peoples living different lives in the same city. Anyone in York or Southampton this week should make an effort to see this play. I left the theatre feeling I needed to go on a retreat to think through all the new ideas.