So… this one confused the heck out me at first, because there is no such thing as a saffron tree. There’s a flower from which we get saffron that we use for cooking.

Until I realized that saffron here is a color – the color I saw all along the highways between here and northern Westchester County. D’oh!

As saffron trees now capture fire
and memories our hopes inspire;
we’ll praise imagination’s grace —
the human heart’s best resting place.

This anonymously written verse is lovely – I really like its imagery and especially the praise for imagination’s grace. But I will say that I don’t like any of our three tunes; in fact, when I first looked at the lyrics, I started singing them to the Danby tune (best known from For All the Beauty We Have Known), which I think fits them so much more elegantly and emotionally than any of our doxology tunes.

Anyway… I’m a fan of this one, but I suspect I’d only use it in the autumn. How much would it twist our congregations around if we switched up doxologies now and then? Hmmm……