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A new Augustinus Vox album is now available at the link. It might be the only place without ads where you can listen for free?

https://suno.com/playlist/b17fe884-dc5f-49ae-9d34-87afb874c0a4

I continued to return to the Ambrosian hymn fragment “Orabo mente Dominum” (found here) as I gave thought to the upcoming Ambrosian Hymns album. Personally I have been listening to it for about a month and think its the best album yet. Mid way through the album is a song inspired from the earlier mentioned hymn which I call Heart and Spirit on the album. It is unique on the album being a true blue rock song in the midst of what I would call very rockin’ hymns. It is almost like an intermission in the album.

I felt I wanted to continue working with that same hymn as I was reflecting on the idea of prayer in the spirit. So this prompted a very interesting experiment that resulted in the cool instrumental song below. I also have two other versions of it: one with Latin of the hymn and one with English. I may post them someday.

Someone could ask why are you doing hymns of Ambrose when you are focused on Augustine? It is a great question. What I found out was you have these two Christian thinkers whose paths crossed during this stage of Augustine’s life. Think of it like you, crossing paths with your pastor or mentor or a good friend and kindred spirit. Also Augustine in one place actually mentions Ambrose’s hymns. So I’ve been waiting to do this for a while to get into something a bit different than the heavy philosophical albums of before. They are good but doing them made me want to do more overt worship songs. Often when exploring Augustine in Cassiciacum I kept hearing the call of Ambrose hymns.

Before I post the video let me supply what I have on Suno:

Orabo means “I will pray” in Latin. This instrumental was inspired by an upcoming song “Heart and Spirit” both songs are drawn from the same Ambrosian hymn fragment “Orabo mente Dominum”. Here is the translated hymn:

I will pray to the Lord with my mind,

and I will pray with my spirit too.

Let it not be only my voice that sings to God

while my thoughts wander elsewhere,

pulled off-course and drifting,

caught up in empty distractions.

https://youtu.be/ExKl3Aty1G8?si=U_fDgysCktc2Ic5o

Tonight we have a special presentation:

A third attempt at an ALIVE show. Not the last attempt but for sure the most recent! Maybe the most polished.

https://suno.com/playlist/ffd33db3-36c7-4b4e-add1-c95099d8c274

Sisters and brothers rejoice as Sapientiae Lux goes live! The debut song is CREATOR OF ALL a song inspired by Saint Ambrose’s Hymn “Deus creator ominum”. Click the image to listen on Youtube.

Spotify link https://open.spotify.com/track/39XIpSJ0uSnXcjE1RALJMW?si=EIfD-qbLQTmQ1nD1evQ73w

Find out more about the project at sapientiaelux.com

Tonight we have a double feature

Against the Skeptics Take 2 (because I still have not figured out live music or because Suno has difficulty with live music covers)

AND

Dilexi Te (because it seemed worth reading as a Christian and because before I read it I performed a test to turn it into rock music)

Disclaimer: An A.I. was used in the generation of these songs. The human was just a happy bystander.

Also if you want to actually listen to Dilexi Te then try the download below.

Disclaimer x2: Very little QA was performed for these)

Experiments in live music for fun!

Against the Skeptics Live Take 1

Totally has errors but shows great potential.

Also a hidden gem at the end.

Enjoy!

-Kyle

P.S. For the best experience, you should wear headphones

Well it’s now out in the wild. You can now check out Return to Milan: Instrumental Meditations. Click the cover to listen now and enjoy those Cassiciacum skies.

Lately I have been reflecting on Augustine’s journey back to Milan in vatious experiments to create a rockin’ instrumental album. We know that in 387 Augustine and friends along with likely Monica and his son journey back to Milan from their retreat in the hills of Cassiciacum.

This marks a pivotal change in Augustine’s journey. He is returning back to Milan for instruction in the faith and ultimately baptism.

As I have reflected on this trip from Cassiciacum to Milan I was imaging a kind of slow and reflective vibe. According to what I could find it seems the journey would be possible in a day of about 8 hours of walking at a non stop brisk pace. Comfortably the journey can be made on foot in about 2 days time with an overnight rest.

In looking into potential stops along the route to Milan from Cassiciacum I found there was at the time a small town located about half way between Cassiciacum and Milan that was called Modicia (modern day Mondza). This ancient town I think makes sense as a likely stop for the crew especially when we consider they were given to long talks eith care to rest and also when we consider that part of their company consisted of a very young teenager and a woman in her mid to late fifties.

To me this fit with a slow and reflective pace which I am imagining for the party. I don’t see them as in too much of a hurry to arrive back to Milan though I do think there was a growing sense of anticipation and excitement for what lies ahead. We might even say the journey is reflective to a degree of Augustine’s own spiritual journey from the heights of philosophy to the simplicity of faith.

So I picture the journey as beginning at the heights of philosophical reflection in the hills and then a decent from those lofty places towards city life and faith orientated reflections.

The album began as just 5 songs but quickly grew to 12. I have been listening to it for the past few weeks along with the album On the Immortality of the Soul. I am considering releasing them together. I especiallt enjoy the new album On the Immortality of the Soul and am excited to share it. I have also been experimenting with creating simple translations of that work and also past ones so that I can listen to the works themselves and share them also for others to enjoy. Thanks for reading!

So now that I have released the rockin’ early letters EP its time to next begin work towards an album based on Augustine’s next work On the Immortality of the Soul. You may wonder…how does Kyle know which work comes next? Well the easy answer is I am relying on Augustine’s own recollection in a book he wrote near the end of his life called the Retractions or in Latin Retractationes. In this work Augustine surveys much of his writings in the order he recalls writing them and provides comments about each. So it makes it easy I just go to the Retractions and look at what is next. Augustine is 73 years old writing his Retractationes and when he wrote On the Immortality of the Soul he was in his early 30s. So he is remembering back 40 years or so. Retractationes then is very useful as a guideline for constructing a timeline of Augustines writings and life and Augustine did have copies of his own works so he was able to read them. Imagine reading something you wrote 40 years ago. For me I guess it would be baby scribbles at my current age but because I am a little bit of a digital pack rat I was able to pull up a research paper from college that was about 16 years old. It was interesting to read parts of it.

Well anyways here is what Augustine writes regarding his work On the Immortality of the Soul. In my weird sense of humor I chuckled a bit reading the end of the first paragraph. It was almost exactly the thought I had trying to read the work. Thank God for AI being able to summarize it! In reading the below I kinda picture Old Man Augustine rolling his eyes a little at his younger self. Regardless we will create a cool rock album on the work to bring out the best parts in an accessible way. It is a good reminder that Augustine’s thoughts did transform significantly over time and that we are presently dealing with early Augustine who was really at this point in his life mostly untaught in the Christian faith. It has been one of those things listening to the albums and reading portions of the works that I struggled a little with as they are not exactly 100% theologically correct. That said I didn’t really intend this band to be all albums expressing Christian ideas but rather to be faithfully Augustine and help learn about him. Sometimes that means learning about people’s shifts in thinking, how they learned and even their mistakes. It is a good thing for you to remember if like me you find some of the songs to be a bit too much glorifying reason and the mind or too philosophical. Trust me when I say we will see a shift. Some of that shift I think we see especially in Soliloquies with his prayers there. All that said though, God uses people to convey His truth even in youthful ignorance and also sometimes it’s the partial truths (which is a truth just less full) that hit us when we are far from God that God uses to lead us to Christ.

Augustine, Retractions, Chapter 5

After I finished the Soliloquies and returned from the countryside near Milan, I wrote a short book called On the Immortality of the Soul. I meant it to be a kind of personal note to help me complete the Soliloquies, since that work was still unfinished. But somehow, even though I didn’t intend it, the book was copied and shared, and now it’s counted among my writings. The reasoning in it is very compact and difficult to follow—so much that even I find it tiring to read, and I can hardly understand it myself.

When I wrote that book, I was thinking only about the human mind. In one place I said that learning cannot exist in something that never learns. Elsewhere I said that knowledge only includes what belongs to a certain discipline. But I failed to remember that God doesn’t learn any disciplines, and yet He knows everything, including things that have not yet happened. I also wrote that no being has life joined with reason except the soul. But of course God’s life is not without reason, for in Him there is the highest life and the highest reason. And when I said that whatever is understood always stays the same, I forgot that the mind itself is something that can be understood, yet it changes constantly. I also wrote that the mind cannot be separated from eternal reason because it is not joined to it by place. I would not have said that if I had already learned from Scripture, which says that our sins separate us from God. That shows that even things not joined in place can still be separated in a spiritual way.

I also said that if the soul is without the body, it is not in this world. I can no longer remember what I meant by that. Surely the souls of the dead are without bodies, and yet they are still somewhere in this world, since even the realm of the dead belongs to creation. Perhaps when I said “without the body,” I meant being free from the body’s corruptions or sicknesses; if so, my wording was poor. I also wrote rashly that the highest Being gives form to the body through the soul, so that the body exists only as long as it is alive—whether this applies to the world as a whole or to each living creature within it. That whole idea was careless and mistaken.

This book begins with the words, “If there is anywhere such a thing as learning.”