Hymns to the Sun and Lieden’s Hymns Essay

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

Is religion alone that powerful enough to coerce an abundance of immigrants to start afresh with a new country? One of the main reasons immigrants move to the United States or any nation for that matter is for religious freedom and independence. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, readers follow the lives and narratives of two different women and their struggle to survive their brutal society. Through the book, the subject of religion and its impact on the two women is broached and further explored. In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, religion serves as justification of several aspects of the Afghan society; religion is used to justify violence, patriarchy, and discrimination against women.

“Night. No one prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes” ( Wiesel 18).

Is religion alone that powerful enough to coerce an abundance of immigrants to start afresh with a new country? One of the main reasons immigrants move to the United States or any nation for that matter is for religious freedom and independence. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, readers follow the lives and narratives of two different women and their struggle to survive their brutal society. Through the book, the subject of religion and its impact on the two women is broached and further explored. In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, religion serves as justification of several aspects of the Afghan society; religion is used to justify violence, patriarchy, and discrimination against women and other minority groups.

​ Life in the Middle Ages revolved around the Church, which was the Roman Catholic. So, we can imagine early music was pretty much from church. Every morning at 9 o’clock was Mass, a significant ceremony done to commemorate the Last Supper. At this church service, the music was the Gregorian Chant. The Gregorian chant is performed in the Latin language, unison voice and accompanied by no instruments which was believed that the text of the song which carried the divine message from God was more important. The music was just to help you get to a spiritual place (Wright, 4-1a).

Dickinson’s poem 1545 contains multiple meanings and interpretations. It is a criticism of Christianity, however, she criticizes in a rather witty way. Throughout this piece of literature, she uses words that have many meanings to dig at the bible and people’s narrow-minded beliefs within the sacred text. Dickenson also uses repetition to draw attention to certain words. Perhaps the ultimate gibe is that she takes seemingly long, complicated, and popular biblical stories and shortens them to four words or less. By doing this she gives off the impression that the “faded men” who wrote the bible are not as clever as they think; but rather they’re stories are simple and transparent.

the sun will one day plunge us into darkness if its heat has not dried

The Great Hymn to the Aten is about the god Aten in Egypt. The beginning of the hymn is praising how great Aten is and how the Egyptian people wanted to serve their god. Their god being King Akhenaten, who they praised for the ways he changed Egyptian religion. Akhenaten was loved and worshiped by his people and was said to be the sun. When he was not in the world or seen, like night time, the world became unbearably miserable and awful, but returned to perfection when he made his presence known to his people, like the sun rising.

Over the past years of my life I have seen many changes, some for the good and others not as good. Change can be demanding and also crucial. The early believers would encounter this. One can see that significant change happened, when reading through the gospels and the book of acts it is obvious to the reader that the believers who followed Jesus would never be the same again.

Jan Assmann, the famous Egyptologist, covers the essence of researching Egyptian theology in his classic work Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur. Translated to English under the title “The search for God in Ancient Egypt”, the book tackles the complex goal of investigating Egyptian Theology and offers Assman’s scholarly theories on Egyptology. With that said, the focus of the book shifts away from the study of Egyptian deities and mythology but centers rather around the implication of divinity at a societal and individual level. Overviews of theology and piety take precedence over the specific practices and technical beliefs of Egyptian religion, though the latter is also heavily discussed to better elaborate on the former’s context.

Both the Book of Ecclesiastes and the Harper’s Song have similar themes with similar contents, but different outlooks on life and death and their end goal. According to Lucas, the Harper’s Song are similar to Ecclesiastes in content. The Harper’s Song, an Egyptian writing found in the tomb of King Intef, emphasizes on the “enjoyment of life in the present” (Lucas, 2008, p. 160). The four passages from Ecclesiastes, 1:4 and 11, 3:22, and 11:9-10, also presents the enjoyment of life. These passages, especially Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 explains that one is to remember that we will be judge accordingly while enjoying one’s life. According to Fischer, the contents on the enjoyment of life, the cycles of generation, and afterlife are the common themes of these two writings.

At night there were no stars to look at, during the hot summer there were no cooling dips in a watering hole, each day only bropught

This poem, Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander, is one of the most memorable poems that have been recited within the last 20 years. Immediately after President Obama was sworn into office, Elizabeth Alexander recited her poem to the masses that had gathered on that cold winter day in January. The piece is full of symbolism, with the tone being hopeful, inspiring and thankful. The poem begins with a description of daily life which is filled with the daily grind of hard working individuals, often doing the work that drives this great nation of ours…small businesses, blue-collar laborers, honorable professions such as teaching.

However, the sun can only protect us for so long but as the sun sets,

Everything comes back to that moment of time when day turned to night at 1:25 pm. You know, the solar eclipse. I, being an extreme lover of traveling and all things bizarre, begged my parents to take my brother and me down to the point of greatest eclipse. To my greatest delight, they agreed, my parents being the total education endorsers they were.