Sunday Serenity #9

What's this? Christmas in June? No. It's just that, after what I just finished posting for Saturday, I couldn't resist going after a Isaac Watts version. I envisioned a church choir singing as background to a scenic video or slide show. But the only video like that was instrumental and I wanted the words. Neither one of these two are remotely like the version I knew growing up. Above you have Mariah Carey singing at Disney with a choir backing her up but she puts elements of blues, jazz, rock and swing into it. And tacks on a surprise at the end. Listen for it.

I gets so bouncy that I couldn't sit still. In spite of not having slept since Friday afternoon, I had to get up and move to the beat. Not sure you could call it dancing.

Twenty years ago it would have never, ever, ever, ever crossed my mind to stand up and dance to a hymn.

The joyful faces of the children are fair exchange for the 'fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains' that I'd envisioned. I fell in love with Carey's vivacious rendering and went ahead and embedded the code in my post and started working on it while I listened again. But when it was over I neither restarted it nor closed the YouTube window. I clicked on another video in the related list out of curiosity because the vocalist had an Asian name.

Xuan Mai turned out to be a Vietnamese girl about six give or take a year. Her sweet voice and the delicate depiction of a winter wonderland on the stage she shared with a couple dozen or more children as sweet-faced as she, charmed me.

I couldn't choose. So I didn't. Besides, they are so thematically related to the poem I'm planning to post for Poetry Train tomorrow, they just belong. Both of the. Kids have been on my mind a lot in the last couple weeks. The kids I never had, the nieces and nephews so much a part of my daily life at one time and now heading off to start their own. Two of them graduating this past week and another getting married next weekend. Two of them in the military and one of those possibly heading to Iraq or Afghanistan in late fall. The poem I am posting tomorrow was written when most of these kids were infants, toddlers and preschoolers. All but the bride in question.

The video below has the lyrics on it, with the words chaining color as they are sung. I considered for a moment not posting the lyrics written by Isaac Watts because of that. But then discovered that some of the words had been changed and a whole stanza left out. So here's Isaac's version:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing

.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

The way Xuan Mai pronounces 'rye juicenes' is too prescious altogether.

Please join in on Sunday Serenity. Post something on the theme of serenity (or joy, as they are essensial to each other) and then leave your link at the hub: Sunday Serenity. Then spread the joy to the world.