Thursday, December 17, 2020

Love Came Down One Night

Dear Visitor:

Surely, year 2020 is one annus horribilis. And yet, things come not by chance but from the Father, COVID-19 notwithstanding. As exemplified by the saints and sinners in the Bible, salvation and spiritual growth can come to His people through sickness and affliction. God's love never begins and never ends. He always sustains. Nevertheless, at this blog entry may all go well with you in the Lord, health as well as the soul.

The treasure of God’s wisdom and Word is for His people. Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection is God’s will and promise to save His own. The ultimate salvation is accomplished by Christ who “delivers us from the wrath to come,”1, and “reconcile to Himself all things.”2  Indeed, because of Christmas and later Christ’s victory over death, the redeemed can assuredly proclaim, “in Him we live and move and have our being.”3

For this Christmas and those that may later follow, let your soul magnify the Lord, and your spirit rejoice in God our Savior.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you,

L'


11 Thessalonians 1:10
2Colossians 1:20
3Acts 17:28

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Last Month of the Year 2020

Here we are in December 2020. The last month of the second decade of the 21st century.

I suppose some of us at a certain age or a frame of mind, might recall once read Villon's words, “Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?”

Tempus fugit.

Monday, November 30, 2020

The Loss of Beauty Is Not Always Loss

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf; 
Long have I listened to the wailing wind, 
And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds, 
For autumn charms my melancholy mind. 

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge: The year must perish; all the flowers are dead; The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer, The holly-berries and the ivy-tree: They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's bier These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods, Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss; The naked, silent trees have taught me this,-- The loss of beauty is not always loss!

- Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902) - "November"

Sunday, November 22, 2020

MP3 iOS Ringtone - Wild Thing

On the page link below, access Table 5 2020 ringtone-ready MP3 for ringtone creation. The prerequisite for ringtone creation is an already installed iPhone app GarageBand (free download at the App Store).

From the site menu bar labeled "iOS Ringtones", any MP3 can be downloaded and listened from the drop-down menu Table 3 and above.

If you like this posted ringtone, download and export the MP3 to the Apple iCloud Drive. Then use the GarageBand app 2.3.x and higher on the iPhone to convert this MP3 now stored on the iCloud Drive.

There are mobile apps for the iPhone which export files to the iCloud Drive, including the music and ringtone files created with the GarageBand.

No longer required is the GarageBand app to delete any ringtone saved in the iPhone running iOS 13.x and higher. Ringtone can be deleted from the iPhone by the familiar gesture. Select a file and swipe from right to delete.

The ringtone:



iOS Device Ringtone Download:

Ringtone #46

The Troggs  (1966)

- Wild Thing


Friday, November 20, 2020

MP3 iOS Ringtone - A Fifth of Beethoven

On the page link below, access Table 5 2020 ringtone-ready MP3 for ringtone creation. The prerequisite for ringtone creation is an already installed iPhone app GarageBand (free download at the App Store).

From the site menu bar labeled "iOS Ringtones", any MP3 can be downloaded and listened from the drop-down menu Table 3 and above.

If you like this posted ringtone, download and export the MP3 to the Apple iCloud Drive. Then use the GarageBand app 2.3.x on the iPhone to convert this MP3 now stored on the iCloud Drive to a ringtone onto your device.

There are mobile apps for the iPhone which export files to the iCloud Drive, including the music and ringtone files created with the GarageBand.

No longer required is the GarageBand app to delete any ringtone saved in the iPhone running iOS 13.x. Ringtone can be deleted from the iPhone by the familiar select a file and swipe from right to left.

The ringtone:



iOS Device Ringtone Download:

Ringtone #45

Walter Murphey & The Big Appble Band (1976)

- A Fith of Beethoven
(after Beethoven's 5th Symphony)


Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Year 2020: Celebrating Beethoven's 250th Birthday

Tab 1 Feature:

11 November 2020 Beethoven's 250th Birthday in Year 2020 Celebration

Bagatelle No.25, in A Minor (Fűr Elise) 2:31
(Beethoven)

In a Classical Mood - Tranquility (1996)

~*~

Tab 2 Feature:

11 November 2020 Beethoven's 250th Birthday in Year 2020 Celebration

Midnight Blue En Irlande (French) 3:19
(after Beethoven "Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, 2nd Movement")

Michèle Torr (1995)

♫ Play L'envoi Music Features ♫

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

A Better Country for S_

“Send out your light and truth...
let them bring me to your holy hill”
- Psalm 43:3

Dear E_:

Autumn has arrived. Every year this time, I harvest the fruits and clean the garden. Indian summers in October with temperature in the 80s. Now with the morning temperature in the 40s, I moved some cold-temperature intolerant potted plants inside the house last week. The furnace turned on two weeks ago.

Because of the numerous forest fires and associated debris fallouts, the air quality has been poor in this area. The annual October almond and walnut harvesting in nearby orchards stirred up even more dust in the air. For these reasons, I did not use the patio at all this year. Over the weekend, the final patio cleaning and covering up the furniture were done. The patio is now closed until next spring.

Seasonal house maintenance chores are a minuscule representation of God’s ordained truth. There is a beginning and an end to all things created. Mortal life is foretasting beginnings and ends in pairs of: life and death, sow and harvest, spring and autumn, war and peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11). To date by His mercy, God still provides the underlying stability world order in our turbulent tottering world (Psalm 75:3). In an undisclosed final end time, Christ will come again. He will hand over the kingdom to God the Father when every ruler, authority, and power are demolished, including the very last enemy - death. (I Corinthians 15:24-26).

It has been 14 years then since our foregathering at the Savannah-Charleston trip. For several seasons after said trip, you and S_ traveled to the Standing Rock Reservation to do short-term missionary works. What you both did in this area was unknown to me. Your gifts of talent, time, and treasure in this field would have pleased God, and to “whom [He] will look” (Isaiah 66:2).

In our mortal minds, S_’s death has saddened and lingered. Her passing is like a pleasing melancholy of an Indian summer. That our present sadness is blended with the joyful hues of a by-gone summer memory. (As you will recall, it was ten summers ago I visited you two in Roanoke. The blitheness of that visit-fellowship still vividly etched in our collective minds). All of us are much comforted, nothwithstanding our mortal lamentation. S_ is ever precious to the LORD even in death (Psalm 116:15). As an heir to God’s inheritance, she has gone home to “a better country” which the Father already prepared (Hebrews 11:16; 1 Peter 1:4).

So it is, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). For Christ has given to His people, His church, “rest by His sorrow, and life by His death”.

God’s grace and mercy abiding with you, and the Lord Jesus be with your spirit.

L’

Sunday, August 30, 2020

A Haunted Summer’s Life

30 August 2020

Dear B_:

We can see blue skies again now the forest fires debris contained, and the fires under control. Being nearing the end of summer, there is not much disagreement whether COVID-19, forest fires, and Hurricane Laura, haunt the sunshine of one’s summer life.

Your recent letter was unexpected but certainly welcome!

Since the Fall, "our stitching and unstitching has been naught." Still, our world is harboring misty dreams, yearning for long lasting “days of wine and roses.” The palimpsest tells us otherwise, however. From Actus reus to Zarathustra, are layered with war, famine, pestilence, death, and so forth. These sorrows, more often than not, are ignited by the ever present Kurosawa-like “Rashomon” POV tinder. Notwithstanding these cacophonous realities, “our daily bread” is still being provided as you intimated.

Insinuated into life tapestry this year is COVID-19. We are now “unstitching” this distempered thread. The unraveling process is slow, with the Rashomon perceptions and preventive measures change frequently. More’s the pity, nonetheless, for those reside in memory care or assisted living who are isolated from loved ones. Though you and I “have heard the chimes at midnight,” it is time we exclaimed the Charlie Brown maxim, “Good grief!”

The U.S. pandemic response is an analogy; a reminiscence of Pope Julius II and Michelangelo crisp exchange seen on the silver screen. Agonizing over the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, looking up Pope Julius said, “When will you make it end?” Looking down from the ceiling on a scaffold, Michelangelo was flustered by the Pope’s implied priorities. He cast down a repartee, “When I am finished.” I suspected beneath the latter’s toil to paint the Last Judgment on the chapel ceiling, he sensed an inner ecstasy percolating. The finished fresco would be his testimony and thanks to God. Well, we are waiting for Dr. Fauci to percolate a brew of joyous news so we can pour it on COVID-19.

As for Rainer Maria Rilke, my copy of his works was published in 1918. The few verses from which you quoted in the movie credits, “Jojo Rabbit,” are taken from a later volume of Rilke’s poem, “The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.” Undoubtably, Rilke’s works are popular in New Age and self-help quarters. The complete poem can be found on various Internet poetry sites.

You may read the poem credited in the movie here:  The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

Rilke’s spirituality dawned during his visit to Russia in the late 19th century. His admiration of the Russian Orthodox practices and the works of Dostoevsky spawned his syncretic vision of a Christian god. In existentialism, man is always at the center of a given moment of time and space; his future is not yet, and his past no longer. So Rilke stood at various moments of time and space intersects, pontificating (pun) the beauty of selectively perceived Christian elements and its God. His “Book of Hours” was never about God’s demonstrated historical love and mercy. His syncretic Christian god is always subordinate to himself, the existentialist. In Rilke‘s syncretism, he sought the power of Christianity while giving up what is uniquely Christian. Thus orthodox Christianity he disdained, and the gospel of salvation eschewed. Rainer Maria Rilke died in his own sandbox of existential righteousness at the age of 51, three years before the Great Depression.

When King Lear exhaled his last, Shakespeare simply wrote two words: “He dies.” These are the two profound and abject words in all walks of life since Eden and east of it (not the Steinbeck fiction). Life is uncertain, and death is sure in “a field where glory does not stay.”

Only God’s glory is everlasting, His righteousness just, His love for man has no beginning nor end, and His gospel of salvation is certain.

Take care.

L'

Friday, August 07, 2020

New Google Makeovers Could End Ringtone Posts

I have not been able to access the music files (posted music and iOS ringtones) since late spring of this year 2020. Perhaps it is time to let these posted files die on the Google vine. I should evaluate how this new Google fandangles works. As a matter of fact, I have been redirected (not that I had a choice) to use the new Google Blogger for this blog entry.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

A Summer Letter

"The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet"
-Sonnet 94: line 9.

19 July 2020


Dear E & S:

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.  Your recent comments on the decaying of moral in our government and society is shared.  If we were to remember the "days of old", let us not reminiscence the good o' days, but on God's love and care for His people (Psalm 143:5-6).  Most important, let us not confuse the general grace of God bestowed to all of mankind, where "He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:44).  What God creates, He sustains.  

Be assured God sees and knows the heart of man, “those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20).  The time will come when He shall collect His people.  In the meantime, the chaff (unrepentant) grows along side the wheat (God's people), as the Lord teaches in Matthew 13:30. 

Taking after Lucifer, unredeemed souls in all walks of life are ever prideful and self-righteous.  As such, real or perceived obstacles and injustice are vented by symbolic gestures or actus reus. In these United States, history is episodically revised, altered. Landmarks and edifices of yore are destroyed. All hid behind the so-called "righteous indignation". Unlike the Revolutionary War or brutal conflicts among nations in archival palimpsest, nary life or limb is sacrificed from the epicurean comforts and security of conceited dissidents.  The disgruntled souls see the specks in the eye of others but not the log in their own eyes.  In the words of Lewis, “he had worked them with his brain but not with his blood.”

From time immemorial since the Fall, mankind has yet attested that war, pestilence, famine, girded in with climatic and geologic disasters, could be subjugated.  Rather, individuals and nations all went into a tail-spin when faced a major disaster.  More often than not, civil and economic foundations collapsed, lives loss, and hopes dashed.  Presently, it is the pandemic COVID-19 which concerns the nations.  This virus has become the “white whale” to the world’s Ahabs. It has to be subdued and conquered.  Otherwise, grandiose dreams such as colonizing the planet Mars are hampered.  Then when the "rude sea grew civil at song" once again, sand boxes are rebuilt beside newly emerged sand castles.  Still, the heraldry of self and nations is ever the same prideful strain, "I am the master of my fate.  I am the captain of my soul."  These words are the touchstone of civilizations; a succinct expression of pride.  Chided and forgotten was and is our Lord’s warning on the tower of Siloam disaster (Luke 13:4-5). 

The cussedness of man has its root of disobedience in the pride of our first parents, Adam and Eve.  The pathos of their sin and dire consequence of being cast out of Paradise is expressed thusly by Milton, 

“They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.”

Everything mankind does, it should be done for God’s eternal and undiminished glory (1 Cor. 10:31).  Created in His image, the Fall has resulted in mankind derogating from His glory.  After the Fall, first-born son Cain, eschewed God’s chastisement, killed his younger brother Abel.  Then Cain went east of Eden, away “from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 4:16), built a city, and named it after his offspring.  A pride which akin to the later Nubuchadezzar.  The proud emperor exclaimed, “for the glory of my majesty” (Daniel 4:30).  As “all pride is willing pride”, sin germinated.  It has now innately entwined in mankind. 

When step onto the stage of life, individuals and nations are sailing on the zeitgeist of the time, their “glory is like a circle in the water, which never cease the to enlarge itself”.  Indeed, it is glorious and exhilarating to have the spirit of the age sits in the shoulder of one’s sail. Nevertheless, when man exits life’s stage, the circle in the water “disperse to nought”.  

But by His mercy, God redeemed us, His people.  In our final breath on earth, we need not utter a conceited cavalier despair such as, “time’s winged chariots hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie, desert of vast eternity”.  God drew us from the pit of destruction. God set our feet on solid rock.  God adopted us as sons and daughters.  God’s adoption “is surely the apex of grace and privilege.” 

Our testimony of God’s grace is not complete until we offer up our song of thanksgiving to Him in public and in worship. Psalm 40 apropos our view on the pandemic.  It is not what we can do in view of COVID-19,  but what we must do to worship God in difficult circumstances.  As the Psalmist David says, 

“I was glad when they said to me,
Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Psalm 122:1 (ESV)

In sum, Psalm 40 underpins several points on worshiping God. The joy of corporate identity in public worship is not to be extinguished.  In church worship we are striding to appreciate its permanency (assailed but never prevailed), its diversity and unity (one Lord, one faith, one baptism), and its justice (wrongs are righted).  Finally, our prayers for and in the church ensures its accessibility so that God’s family may always journey to and gather together in the house of the Lord.  

Recently, as you might have learned from the news cast, the state of California further decreed that no singing with uncovered mouths is allowed inside the church.  So last Sunday, 19 July, we conducted our first worship service outdoors on church grounds.  Below is a picture taken at the 9 AM service that Sunday on the parking lot of the church.  We brought our chairs.  The pastor you can see in the photo; the organist and his portable keyboard are to his right. 


Finally, after this long and perhaps convoluted missive, I like to leave with you the second stanza of “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken". Written in 1779 and set to the music of Haydn in 1797.

“See the streams of living waters,
Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters
And all fear of want remove;
Who can faint while such a river ever flows
their thirst t’assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the giver,
never fails from age to age.”

Our Redeemer lives; and that “all [our] springs are in [Christ]” (cf. Psalm 87:7).

God's grace be with you. In my heart I forget you not.

As always,

L’





Sunday, June 21, 2020

Father's Day, 21 June 2020

"There is something in't.
More than my father's skill, which was the greatest."
- All's Well That Ends Well: A1, S3.


On the matter of the official beginning of summer yesterday, 20 June 2020, any calendar day was just another work day in Arabia for T.E. Lawrence of yore.

"Here flew a head, dissever'd from the trunk,
There mangled arms and legs were tossed aloft,
As when a whirl wind takes the summer dust."
-Edward III, A3, S1.

Steve Allen and His Jazz Band,  (1996)
- Lawrence of Arabia Movie Theme
(Jarre)


Click or tap here to view this L'Envoi YouTube.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

First Day of Summer, 2020, Northern Hemisphere




"Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;
  And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
  So is her face illumin'd with her eye."

- Venus & Adonis


Monday, May 04, 2020

2020 Mother's Day iPhone 11 Pro, XS, and X Wallpapers



By using the Apple iPhone 11 Pro (XS, and X) logical resolutions, these custom wallpapers fit these iPhone models as intended.

As always with a prospective wallpaper, one should test the selected image to ensure it is acceptable prior to saving it. Otherwise, hit the cancel button during the selection setup.


Click here to download
all four wallpapers and contact sheet in one zipped file:

2020 Mother's Day iPhone 11 Pro, XS, and X Wallpapers

Saturday, April 18, 2020

A Condolences Letter on the Death of a Parent


18 April 2020

Dear S&E:

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You have exemplified and lived out the gospel in constant filial devotion, love, and care of your widowed mother while she was living on this side of eternity (1 Timothy 5:8).

I grieved with you at the death of your mother. Invariably, it tugs at one’s heartstrings at this loss, especially when the end of one’s life here on earth came upon the very last of a generation. Yet He knows our weeping and sorrow. He has kept count of our tossing and put our teardrops in a bottle. Because He loves us so much, anthropomorphically, He engraved our names on the palms of His hands, and “calls His own sheep by name”. For the faithful, we are comforted, whether in life or in death, knowing the Lord cares for His people. It is a trustworthy saying then, from time immemorial, the Lord “has been our dwelling place in all generations.”

It is a fitting if not a jolting reminder, God has appointed our steps on this earth, as our “times” are in His hand (Psalm 31:15). Truly, your Christian mother has come to her “grave in ripe old age”. By no accident, she was, too, spared by the Lord the COVID-19 pandemic complications and dysphoria. Like “a sheaf gathered up in its season”, her soul is reposed now in His safekeeping.

Your mother’s passing came three days after the official beginning of spring and the subsequent Easter season this year. For by Christ, who was dead, and is alive, your mother was delivered from her second death. She lives! It truly was a special remembrance for you this Easter. Because He lives, for all the saints, sine nomine, they also live. Indeed.

Forever, your mother is enjoying His presence with no time and seasonal constraints, and no more subjugation to “famine, sword, and pestilence”, and other calamities. On the other hand, all the beauties of this earth are only shadows and shards. There is nothing on earth equals to the infinite glorious heavenly field and paradise she possesses. For the centrality of her rest, there shall be the Rose of Sharon. Its eternal fragrance will always envelop her and her heavenly abode. To this end, I rejoice with you!

Grace be with you. To him be honor and eternal dominion.

L’

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Hastens the Seeds of All Beauty to Birth

Some Home Garden Spring Flowers, 2020

The Joy of Springtime

Springtime, O Springtime, what is your essence,
The lilt of a bulbul, the laugh of a rose,
The dance of the dew on the wings of a moonbeam,
The voice of the zephyr that sings as he goes,
The hope of a bride or the dream of a maiden
Watching the petals of gladness unclose?

Springtime, O Springtime, what is your secret,
The bliss at the core of your magical mirth,
That quickens the pulse of the morning to wonder
And hastens the seeds of all beauty to birth,
That captures the heavens and conquers to blossom
The roots of delight in the heart of the earth?

Sarojini Naidu
1879 - 1949


Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Mozart's Birthday


Paranoia or prudence in cyber-crime prevention has entrenched. Thus your preferred web browser might no longer be able to auto-play the featured music on the associated website.

Click on the referred link below to access the related music website. At the music page, click on the play-bar on either Tab 1 or Tab 2. The featured music should play accordingly.



Tab 1 Feature:

27 January 2020
Mozart 264th Birthday

Là Ci Darem La Mano 2:53  (Mozart)

Eric Hammerstein
and the London Promenade Orchestra (1987)

~*~

Tab 2 Feature:

27 January 2020
Mozart 264th Birthday

Voi Che Sapete 2:50  (Mozart)

Eric Hammerstein
and the London Promenade Orchestra (1987)

MP3 Music
Play L'envoi Music Features

Thursday, January 23, 2020

MP3 iOS Ringtone - Stayin' Alive

On the page link below, access Table 5 2020 ringtone-ready MP3 for ringtone creation. The prerequisite for ringtone creation is an already installed iPhone app GarageBand (free download at the App Store).

From the site menu bar labeled "iOS Ringtones", any MP3 can be downloaded and listened from the drop-down menu Table 3 and above.

If you like this posted ringtone, download and export the MP3 to the Apple iCloud Drive. Then use the GarageBand app 2.3.x on the iPhone to convert this MP3 now stored on the iCloud Drive to a ringtone onto your device.

There are mobile apps for the iPhone which export files to the iCloud Drive, including the music and ringtone files created with the GarageBand.

No longer required is the GarageBand app to delete any ringtone saved in the iPhone running iOS 13.x. Ringtone can be deleted from the iPhone by the familiar select a file and swipe from right to left.

The ringtone:



iOS Device Ringtone Download:

Ringtone #44

Moonlight Strings Orchestra (1999)

- Stayin' Alive
(Barry Gibbs et al.)


MP3 iOS Ringtone - The End of the World

On the page link below, access Table 5 2020 ringtone-ready MP3 for ringtone creation. The prerequisite for ringtone creation is an already installed iPhone app GarageBand (free download at the App Store).

From the site menu bar labeled "iOS Ringtones", any MP3 can be downloaded and listened from the drop-down menu Table 3 and above.

If you like this posted ringtone, download and export the MP3 to the Apple iCloud Drive. Then use the GarageBand app 2.3.x on the iPhone to convert this MP3 now stored on the iCloud Drive to a ringtone onto your device.

There are mobile apps for the iPhone which export files to the iCloud Drive, including the music and ringtone files created with the GarageBand.

No longer required is the GarageBand app to delete any ringtone saved in the iPhone running iOS 13.x. Ringtone can be deleted from the iPhone by the familiar select a file and swipe from right to left.

The ringtone:



iOS Device Ringtone Download:

Ringtone #43

Skeeter Davis (1962)
- The End of the World
(Kent and Dee)

Sunday, January 19, 2020

MP3 iOS Ringtone - Gauntanamera

On the page link below, access Table 5 2020 ringtone-ready MP3 for ringtone creation. The prerequisite for ringtone creation is an already installed iPhone app GarageBand (free download at the App Store).

From the site menu bar labeled "iOS Ringtones", any MP3 can be downloaded and listened from the drop-down menu Table 3 and above.

If you like this posted ringtone, download and export the MP3 to the Apple iCloud Drive. Then use the GarageBand app 2.3.x on the iPhone to convert this MP3 now stored on the iCloud Drive to a ringtone onto your device.

There are mobile apps for the iPhone which export files to the iCloud Drive, including music and ringtone files created with the GarageBand.

No longer required is the GarageBand app to delete any ringtone saved in the iPhone running iOS 13.x. Ringtone can be deleted from the iPhone by the familiar select a file and swipe from right to left.

The ringtone:



iOS Device Ringtone Download:

Ringtone #42

Brazilia '67
- Guantanamera
(Fernández)