PARODY: A Hymn to Jupiter

At the risk of castigation from the enlightened...

If you read my review of the Higher Thing conference in Bloomington, Illinois, from last summer, you'll know that I'm not a huge fan of the hymn--or rather, the music of the text of the hymn--"We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God, to Be the Lord". As I explained in that post, we tell our people not to march down the aisle to the Wedding March because it's inappropriate, yet we have no problems singing a hymn with a tune tied to the planet Jupiter. Long have I threatened to write a hymn to an instrumental tune like Metallica's "Call of Cthulhu" (which wouldn't work very well) or another instrumental with a better rhythm and meter, but I'd hate to waste it as I'd never allow it to be sung.

Well, being on vacation and all, my mind tends to wander, and this time it wandered into Roman mythology. Don't ask me how it got there, as I don't know. But while it was there, it devised this parody of the ever-popular Te Deum hymn to the tune of THAXTED:

We praise you and acknowledge you,
O Jupiter, our king.
O greatest Olympian,
Your glory do we sing,
Who defeated titans vile--
Oppressors of the earth.
Your vict'ry o'er tyrants
Gives your subjects cause for mirth!
O ruler of the pantheon,
We kneel at your feet
And sing your endless praises,
For you are really neat!