Ms. Simpson was the feisty one; her husband the gentle love god.
"He is gentle with God's creatures, even those he catches on the fly," she said.
But there was just this gentle insistence, God saying, "You need to be moving in this direction".
"He's one of the dearest, gentlest souls God ever put on this earth," said Frederica von Stade, the mezzo-soprano whom Mr. Heggie had in mind when he and his frequent librettist, Gene Scheer, created "Last Acts," from a sketch by the playwright Terrence McNally.
Some are angry vows to kill every terrorist responsible; others are gentle reminders of God's eternal love.
Lyons was a gentle man of God who cared for and gave so much to all those he ministered to.
And yet somehow we sense that the crazy person is doing an act for us, that somehow deep in the unconscious of our culture is this need to kill, this need to kill the beautiful, the need to despoil the gentle land that God has given to us, the need to burn down the very cities in which we dwell.
But gentle Mother of God.
She admired "her personal Indian clerk & Munshi, who is an excellent, clever, truly p[i]ous & very refined gentle man, who says, 'God ordered it' ... God's Orders is what they implicitly obey!
The group's dynamic shadings added to the effects throughout, as with vivid contrasts in "Glory to God" and gentle pianissimos in "Since by man came death".
Armed settlers -- which we tell our children were God fearing, gentle, sharing, kind Pilgrims -- invaded a Pequot village.
