Here I raise my Ebenezer

In my Memorial Day post on May 26th, I mentioned that the name 1LT Edwin Steven Brague Jr. is engraved on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

From Ridgewood, New Jersey, Lieutenant Brague was 23 years old in 1967 when the helicopter he piloted crashed during hostilities in Quang Tin, South Vietnam. One of the commenters on that May 26th post was a Gerry Brague, whom I did not know. Gerry said that he was Steven Brague’s cousin and that Steve’s dad, Ed, had been his oldest uncle. Gerry also said he would love to find out if we are related in some way.

Elizabeth said she had a good feeling about this turn of events.

Gerry and I subsequently exchanged a couple of emails and some family information, and although there are a couple of gaps in the information on his side and also on mine, it appears that Gerry may be my third cousin, once removed. It is possible that our common ancestor is Ebenezer Brague, but we can’t tell because of the gaps. Ebenezer might be Gerry’s great-great-great-grandfather (three greats) and my great-great-grandfather (two greats). Ebenezer Brague was born in 1770, probably in Connecticut, married Elizabeth Brandon, and moved to Ulster, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in 1812. Counting Ebenezer as generation 1, I am in generation 5 through Ebenezer’s and Elizabeth’s son William, and Gerry is in generation 6, possibly through one of Ebenezer’s and Elizabeth’s other two sons, Charles F. or Horace. Gerry’s dad, who is in generation 5, may be my third cousin, which would make Gerry and me third cousins, once removed.

A lot of this is speculation and guessing, since there are -- all together now -- gaps. But it has been fun. Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.

In the meantime, listen to the magnificent Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra performing “Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing” (6:12) , which includes the line “Here I raise my Ebenezer.”

I do not share the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra’s theology, but their music is top-notch.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find out what an Ebenezer is and why someone would raise one. As always, should you or any of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This post will not self-destruct in five seconds.

As a result, you can listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform “Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing” over and over.

But only if you want to.

Speaking of quirky...

...which we weren’t, but I decided to change subjects...

One of my pleasures back during the 1990s was watching the series Northern Exposure on the telly.

Call me crazy, but I really liked it.

It was low-key.

It was funny.

It was a dramedy (a portmanteau word meaning “drama and comedy”) but it had no laugh track (I hate laugh tracks).

Best of all, it was quirky.

Here, in two parts, is the pilot episode that launched the series:

Northern Exposure Pilot - Part 1 (18:01)

Northern Exposure Pilot = Part 2 (22:46)

Did I mention it was quirky?

Perhaps Northern Exposure is not your cup of tea. So sue me.

I like things that are offbeat, not run-of-the-mill. Movies such as Big Fish and The Purple Rose of Cairo and Raising Arizona and Harold and Maude and television series such as My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething and Twin Peaks and one whose name I can’t remember about a family that owned a funeral parlor (British, parlour)*, that’s what I like.

It’s the same thing when it comes to music.

[Editor's note. While happening to re-read this post at random on September 3, 2017, it suddenly occurred to me that the one whose name I couldn't remember was Six Feet Under. The human brain is a marvelous thing. --RWP]

I don’t want to hear Doris Day sing “Que Sera Sera” (2:26), I want to hear Pink Martini sing “Que Sera Sera” (3:55).

Sometimes I want to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” (6:03), and sometimes I want to hear Michael W. Smith sing “Breathe” (6:32).

Sometimes I want to hear “Revelation Song” (4:58) more than anything else in the world.

Yes, I do.

But I never, ever, want to hear anything by the Rolling Stones or Lionel Richie or Meat Loaf or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga or....

The list goes on and on.

Quirky, huh?

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it

Here are the choirs and orchestra of Brigham Young University in a beautiful and inspiring performance of an old hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”.

The words were written by Robert Robinson in 1759 and set to an American folk tune called NETTLETON by John Wyeth in his Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second in 1813.

I learned the song as a child and especially liked this verse:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

And here is a verse rarely sung nowadays or even found in print:

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

If you are the sort of person who really enjoys arguing about the relative merits of Calvinism or Arminianism, or criticizing some particular group of people for their obviously defective theology or bizarre practices, please go do it on someone else’s blog -- I recommend Scot McKnight’s or Michael Spencer’s. Or perhaps you could find a quiet spot in a library somewhere and write a 3,000-word research paper on, say, The History And Meaning Of The Phrase “Here I raise my Ebenezer” And Its Ramifications For Postmodern Society In America In The Twenty-first Century. As for the rest of us, we prefer to listen to this impressive choir and orchestra praise God with their voices and musical instruments so excellently while we ponder our eternal destiny.