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Use this hymn with great care.

I cannot stress this enough.

Use with care. Really. Give context. Use it in the right context.

This lesson is one I learned thanks to friend and colleague Dawn Fortune, a white minister whose allyship shone brightly the day we sang this at a collegial training as though “the welcome table” meant happy fun times for us. Dawn reminded us that this was a song from the time of slavery.

Now it is true that there are about as many versions as there are verses – by which I mean there are many many verses we don’t print in our hymnal. For example (from a 1930 article called “The Negro Sings a New Heaven” by Mary Allen Grissom, quoted at The Mudcat Café – spelling as presented in the original, or you’d see [sic] all over the place):

I’m gonna tell God how you treat me…

I’m gonna cross thuh river of Jurdun…

I’m gonna drink uv thuh healin’ waters…

I’m gonna drink and nevuh get thirsty…

I’m gonna eat off thuh welcome table…

I’m gonna walk an’ talk wid Jesus…

I’m gonna ride in thuh charet wid Jesus…

I’m gonna shout an’ not be weary…

You’re gonna wish that you’d-a been ready…

God’s gonna set yo’ sins befo’ you…

God’s gonna bring this world to judgment…

And there are more. Many many more. I learned the first verse as “I’m gonna set the world on fire.” But all sung from a positions of resistance. And on that bright summer day in Bloomington, Minnesota, we were not singing from a position of resistance but one of privilege.

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table.
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table,
gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

All kinds of people around that table…

No fancy style at the welcome table…

And so I mean it: use this one with care. Because the welcome table is the one we who are privileged have not laid out for everyone, and we have to. If we’re going to be serious about Susan Frederick-Gray’s assertion that “no one is outside the circle of love” then we have to be serious about setting the table for those who are knocking to come in.

I end with this short video of Ysaye Barnwell, with some folks at the 2014 spring cleaning & celebration/memorial at Love Cemetery in Marshall, TX. Not because it’s an amazing version, but because it reflects the grit and heart of what it means to sing together in these moments.

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I need more opportunities for communion in my life.

This is not my way of declaring myself in a particular theological camp. What I am declaring, however is that I recognize the power of what Jesus called for us to do – gather together, with intention, to eat, drink, and remember. To pray together. To work together. To welcome all. To feed all.

I’ve written about my Eucharistic journey elsewhere on this blog and in various essays and papers during seminary. I’m grateful that during seminary, I had the opportunity for communion every Thursday, and I listened carefully to hear whether I was welcome. Some weeks, I was, some weeks, well, not so much. But since then, I have had little opportunity. I have sought out communion services on precious Sundays off. I have attended UUCF’s communion at General Assembly when I have been able. And I made certain that a few hours before my ordination, a small communion service was held for fellow clergy.

And now, in these hard days (made a little easier by last night’s election results), I need this more than ever. I need to be called into sacred space to remember, to pray, to ritualize our connection with each other and the Divine.

I know this ritual doesn’t mean much to many UUs, and there are some who reject it outright because of their spiritual histories. But for me, and for many of us, the Eucharist is deeply meaningful and powerful. And I am glad we have these songs in our hymnal.

Let us break bread together on our knees.
Let us break bread together on our knees.
When I fall on my knees,
with my face to the rising sun,
oh, Lord, have mercy on me.

Let us drink wine together on our knees…

Let us praise God together on our knees…

Between the Lines only says it is a traditional song, so I asked the internet, and up pops the United Methodists’ Discipleship Ministries, a full site devoted to worship, music, preaching, as well as leadership, church planting, and international ministries. It’s…well, it’s amazing. And included in this site is hymn history and analysis. In the case of this song, it’s by C. Michael Hawn, Distinguished Professor of Church Music at Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He writes this about the history:

In a recently published article in the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, written by United Methodist Hymnal editor, Dr. Carlton Young, he reveals the probable roots and major variants of this spiritual. Dr. Young suggests that this “spiritual was formed in the West African Gullah/Geechee slave culture that developed in the costal areas of South-Eastern colonial America, including St Helena Island, Beaufort, and Charleston, South Carolina . . ..”

The text of the version that is commonly sung in the United States was first published in The Journal of American Folklore (1925). The Journal included spirituals, as well as African American folk tales and proverbs that were collected by students at the Penn School on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina.

A second version appeared in Saint Helena Island Spirituals (1925) by Nicholas Ballanta, a very significant collection that included 103 Gullah spirituals.

Now we don’t know its true origins, or even if this was a coded song as some might suggest. But as Hawn points out, we do know that

African American composer John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) arranged the first solo version with the three stanzas that are common to most hymnals in the United States. He also established the precedent of singing the final stanza up the octave. … This version of the spiritual was popularized by notable African American soloists in the mid-twentieth century such as Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and Marian Anderson.

And so I leave you with Robeson’s version:

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“And I’ll bring you hope, when hope is hard to find.”

We sing this incredible line in Come Sing a Song with Me, which we have acknowledged is simultaneously insipid and profound. And while that one isn’t today’s hymn, it is the line that sings over and over in my head even after singing today’s piece.

You see, yesterday’s lament was part of a greater day of grief, sorrow, and anger. Grief over more lives needlessly lost; sorrow over the many burdens family, friends, and colleagues bear; and anger over the shocking lack of compassion and human decency that has led to these moments – too many moments.

By evening’s end, I had found myself in a hole. I’ll let Leo McGarry explain:

My shout was a simple Facebook post that read “I’m pretty low on hope right now. What’s bringing you hope today?” and at last count 37 people jumped in the hole with me, and shared short and long lists of hope, including a photo of a late autumn rose.

Then this morning, my mentor tweeted this blessing:

And then I opened the hymnal and found more hope, in a beautiful, lyrical version of Luke 22:19-20, a version that meets my own Eucharistic theology and which holds my faith for me when I can’t find it.

This do in memory of me;
eat now this broken bread.
This is my life from death set free,
here on my table spread.

This do in memory of me;
drink now this cup, I said.
This shows my love for all to see,
here on my table spread.

We praise your living memory,
remembering all you said.
Your words and life have set us free,
here through your table spread.

I’m not sure I am whole again or full of hope again, but I am grateful for those who are willing to sing songs of hope and faith back to me when I can’t find it myself grateful for those willing to jump into the hole with me, grateful for those who share sacred moments and holy rituals with me, grateful for those who share a rose with me.

—

Because I will regret not putting this info here, I’ll share some musical details: Our tune was written by a Yorkshireman, Gordon Slater, who became a church organist and conductor after serving in the first World War. As the Reformed Church in North America’s Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes, the tune was first published in Songs of Praise for Boys and Girls (1930) and named for the church where Slater first served as organist. It’s a lovely and somewhat meditative piece, which works well for our lyrics, by UCC minister and professor Wayne Bradley Robinson.

 

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This song is making me angry today.

Normally, I like it – a sweet song for a stewardship campaign, for mitten tree Sundays, for services about mission or honoring our ancestors or gratitude.

But today, after another white man with a history of domestic abuse and an AK-15 murdered 26 (or more?) people, including young children and adults of all ages, IN A CHURCH, this song rings as hollow as the ‘thoughts and prayers’ offered by politicians bought and sold by the National Rifle Association. (It’s helpful to start saying their full name.) What gift can we bring, especially when we can’t keep people safe in places of sanctuary? And if churches and schools aren’t safe, what can we possibly hope to bring?

Is it possible that we could ever bring gun control and background checks and real consequences for domestic violence?

I want those things, and I have been part of a majority that elected representatives who want those things (I am fortunate to live in NY-20), but I am not the one who has any influence at all beyond my vote and my occasional ‘thanks for voting in favor of my interests’ emails to Schumer, Gillibrand, and Tonko. I am not rich. I am not male. I am not employed by a powerful lobby. I’m a simple woman-identified minister with only this blog as my pulpit right now. And while I have some moral authority, that isn’t carrying much weight with the people who can bring the gifts we need most of all.

When I remember the past and ‘those who had vision’ I remember how deftly, how surgically precise the dismantling of their progress has been by those who don’t value freedom, inherent worth and dignity, religious and racial and sexual plurality. What we see today didn’t happen a year ago today, or nine years ago this week. It happened in a coordinated fashion over time, this long, hard time of change. I’m not sure I buy Parker’s assertion about the moral arc of the universe today, because I sit here weeping at how hard Pharaoh’s heart as become and how little our moral authority can do to soften it.

The worst part of all this? Yesterday’s shooting in Texas wasn’t the only public shooting yesterday. And the shooting in the church wasn’t the only disruption in a church. And today there will be more news, another death, another eruption of violence, another decision to impinge upon the rights of humans, another woman abused, another woman raped, another child trafficked, another glacier melting, another overdose taking a life, another…another… another.. another…

And then it all becomes too much. We are not made for this kind of onslaught. Our brains are not made for this. Our hearts are not made for this. There is too much, too much, too much tragedy, trauma, and horror to bear. And it comes barreling down like that thing that chased Indiana Jones, only we’re not in an action film and no one is editing for a triumphant hero and I’m not even certain who the heroes are anymore, because this stopped feeling heroic a long time ago.

Yeah.

I have no answers today. I have no sense of joy today. I have only anger and tears and a need to name it.

And a hymn that wants me to find joy and hope.

Ooof. Okay. Hymn info after the lyrics.

What gift can we bring, what present, what token?
What words can convey it, the joy of this day?
When grateful we come, remembering, rejoicing,
what song can we offer in honor and praise?

Give thanks for the past, for those who had vision,
who planted and watered so dreams could come true.
Give thanks for the now, for study, for worship,
for mission that bids us turn prayer into deed.

This gift we now bring, this present, this token,
these words can convey it, the joy of this day!
When grateful we come, remembering, rejoicing,
this song we now offer in honor and praise!

This hymn, by Methodist composer Jane Marshall, is intended to be a hymn of pure gratitude, as her lyrics show – even the third verse, which we omitted:

Give thanks for tomorrow, full of surprises,
for knowing whatever tomorrow may bring,
we’re given God’s word that always, forever,
we rest in God’s keeping and live in God’s love.

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. Set to a lilting tune, also by Marshall. Joy, praise, honor, thanks!

Yay.

 

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Programming Note: Look for a short Hymn by Hymn Extra later today.

Last night, I attended a concert, honoring 50 years of folk  music at the Eighth Step in Schenectady, NY. The show was – if you’re into regional and national folk – rather a star-studded event: Reggie Harris, Annie and the Crackpots, Brother Sun, and Holly Near. Over and over again, we heard not just great music but about how strong the folk community is and how places like Eighth Step and Café Lena, along with festivals like Old Songs, really make a difference in bringing people together. Over and over again, the people in the audience were recognized as being integral to the power of this music, that folk is a collaborative event between performer and listener, and how we all bring gifts to the moment to create something sacred.

And then I turn to today’s hymn, a short piece with lyrics by Methodist-turned-Unitarian minister Horace Westwood, set to a very square yet surprisingly moving tune (Hamburg). “We bring ourselves as gifts”… Yes. Yes.

Spirit of truth, of life, of power,
we bring ourselves as gifts to thee:
oh, bind our hearts this sacred hour
in faith and hope and charity.

It reminds me of discussions we have sometimes about the three elements of stewardship: time, talent, and treasure. We get treasure and talent pretty easily, but time is harder to suss out. I think this hymn is about the giving of our time, because it is about the giving of our whole selves in that moment, that ‘sacred hour.’ Just as the attendees and the performers and the tech crew and the volunteers all gave of their whole selves for those two sacred hours last night, we can give the same to our sacred gatherings.

May we always remember we are a gift, and we bring ourselves together as gifts to one another.

 

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I was about to write something quick about this quick little song, and then go on with my day.

I was going to write something like “how sweet and familiar this is” and something else about how some congregations accept the offering by singing this.

And then I was going to add a quick note about the composers, Joseph and Nathan Segal, and be done with it.

Until I started learning more. And found not only a heartbreaking story but also something interesting about the version we sing.

First, the heartbreak: the Segal brothers are rabbis – singing rabbis, in fact – who trace their lineage as singing rabbis back 12 generations. They performed a spiritual and often humorous show for decades, until a car accident in Jamaica in 1988 left Joseph critically injured; eight years after the accident, it was news that he would join his brother Nathan at the congregation Nathan served. Since then, it appears Nathan has continued his work as a spiritual leader, healer, and musician – sadly, nothing on his website says anything about Joseph other than providing MP3s of the songs they recorded together. In fact, along with those recordings, there is just one video of them together from a concert they did in Woodstock in the late 1960s.

But it was from watching a clip from that where I learned we aren’t singing the song correctly. Listening to the MP3 reveals the same. Now I suspect the hymnal commission didn’t have benefit of these recordings at the time and learned the song by rote, but it’s interesting that not only do we have a different version, but apparently Nathan himself sang it differently over time, based on a later solo recording.

From you I receive,
to you I give,
together we share,
and from this we live.

So this brings up the question around folk music: is it necessary to sing it in an original fashion, or is it okay to change it as we learn it? I think about the Facebook discussion around The Earth, Water, Fire, Air – a song that many of us learned very differently yet seems to be connected to the same origins as the one in our hymnal. Is it the same song? Different now because of the changes? Is it like languages that have the same root but a thousand years goes by and suddenly the guy from Paris can’t understand the gal from Barcelona?

I don’t know. But I’d like to relearn the song in 4/4 time with a different final phrase and see what happens.

—

Art by Nathan Segal.

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One of the blessings of my seminary experience was getting to know the remarkable singer and scholar Kim Harris; she was finishing her PhD while I was getting my MDiv. She became a friend and confidant, a mom when I was going through the worst of my heart troubles, a singing partner, and at least once formally, my teacher.

That semester, she taught a class on Spirituals; the class wasn’t just about the history, however; it was also about using the spirituals to deepen our own spirituality. By chance, the group was entirely women, a perfect mix of ages, sexual identities, and racial identities. We learned together,  and we sang together, and often our singing was a prayer together.

This song, with its original words “Come By Here” was particularly meaningful, as Kim tossed aside the whole “kumbayah” mythos and modern meaning and brought us back to the deep, mournful hope of this song. We prayed this more than once as a group, hands on each other’s shoulders, tears rolling, connections to ourselves, each other, and the Divine made real.

I almost hesitate to keep the “kumbayah” lyric in here, except it is in our hymnal and I can’t deny its existence.  But after the lyrics, I’ll share an excerpt from a 2010 New York Times article that talks more about the song and how it got corrupted.

Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Oh, Lord, kum ba yah!

Someone’s singing, Lord…

Someone’s laughing, Lord….

Someone’s weeping, Lord…

Someone’s praying, Lord …

Kum ba yah, my Lord …

This article sprang up because “kumbayah” had made its way into the political discourse, but it’s been in the pop culture discourse for a few decades. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I feel it necessary to share this bit:

“Come By Here” in its original hands appealed for divine intervention on behalf of the oppressed. The people who were “crying, my Lord” were blacks suffering under the Jim Crow regime of lynch mobs and sharecropping. While the song may have originated in the Georgia Sea Islands, by the late 1930s, folklorists had made recordings as far afield as Lubbock, Tex., and the Florida women’s penitentiary.

With the emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, “Come By Here” went from being an implicit expression of black liberation theology to an explicit one. The Folkways album “Freedom Songs” contains an emblematic version — deep, rolling, implacable — sung by the congregation at Zion Methodist Church in Marion., Ala., soon after the Selma march in March 1965.

The mixed blessing of the movement was to introduce “Come By Here” to sympathetic whites who straddled the line between folk music and progressive politics. The Weavers, Peter Seeger, the Folksmiths, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary all recorded versions of the song.

By the late 1950s, though, it was being called “Kumbaya.” Mr. Seeger, in liner notes to a 1959 album, claimed that America missionaries had brought “Come By Here” to Angola and it had returned retitled with an African word.

Experts like Stephen P. Winick of the Library of Congress say that it is likely that the song traveled to Africa with missionaries, as many other spirituals did, but that no scholar has ever found an indigenous word “kumbaya” with a relevant meaning. More likely, experts suggest, is that in the Gullah patois of blacks on the Georgia coast, “Come By Here” sounded like “Kumbaya” to white ears.

So a nonsense word with vaguely African connotations replaced a specific, prayerful appeal. And, thanks to songbooks, records and the hootenanny boom, the black Christian petition for balm and righteousness became supplanted by a campfire paean to brotherhood.

“The song in white hands was never grounded in faith,” Professor Hinson said. “Its words were simplistic; its tune was breezy. And it was simplistically dismissed.”

Go read the whole thing… and please, use this song with care.

—

Kim and Reggie came to the Keys while I was doing my internship; we took a photo together at this great place for Cuban sandwiches.

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This morning I am grateful for Google’s proximate search capabilities.

You see, I typed in the title of today’s hymn, a sweet traditional Jewish round, and it corrected me in that totally not shaming way Google has, by sending me results with ‘chaverim’ instead of the more phonetic ‘havayreem’.

It also presented me with a variety of YouTube videos of the song so that I could sing it in a round with other voices.

Shalom, havayreem!
Shalom, havayreem!
Shalom, shalom!
L’hitraot, l’hitraot,
shalom, shalom.

Finally, Google helped me with translations. At its basic, the lyrics translate as “Peace friend,
’till we meet again!” However, there is a version sung by children that extends the language into this English translation:

Goodbye, my friends!
Be safe, my friends!
Have peace, have peace!

‘Til we meet again,
‘Til we meet again,
Have peace, have peace.

What a delightful benediction or postlude this is. So warm and loving. What a blessing.

Thanks, Google.

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In my last year of seminary, I and five of my most creative friends co-created and produced a Broadway revue that told the story of the book of Exodus.

We began our work with Biblical preparation led by Old Testament scholar David M. Carr: not just reading and exegeting the text but also examining the history of interpretation of the text. We learned how passages from Exodus were used to forward an idea, connect a current struggle to an old one, and in the case of the US Civil War, used by both sides to suggest God was on their side. Reading about interpretation helped us in our own, as we found ourselves wanting to explore the text’s relationship with violence, oppression, and women. As a result, we created a show that humanized the Egyptians, leaned into the stories of Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter, and reacted with compassion at the moments of violence.

This came to mind this morning as I explored this song online, and found almost nothing about the song itself but plenty about the verses from which it is formed.

And ev’ry one ‘neath a vine and fig tree
shall live in peace and unafraid. (Repeat)

And into plowshares turn their swords;
nations shall learn war no more. (Repeat)

The texts, from prophets Micah and Isaiah, put together like this are very anti-war. Yet what I have discovered  at the site Teaching American History is that the first verse especially (Micah 4:4) was such a favorite of George Washington that it not only became – in his use – a representation of what the colonies should experience after the Revolution, but also a call to arms, a ‘let’s get this thing over with so we can go back to our farms.’ It was quoted to give depth to the more defiant ‘don’t tread on me’ – a feeling of hope, of being free not just to go back to one’s land but to be free from an oppressive government. The passage was not so much an ant-war sentiment as a ‘let’s fight, let’s win, and then let’s go home’ sentiment. And it was such a popular image, it appeared in art and even embroidered samples (such as our image today).

Adding on the Isaiah text for this song from the Jewish tradition does distill the let’s fight sentiment, although it acknowledges war in the present even as we hope for no war in the future.

Interesting.

I don’t know that I thought much about this one before today, and while I find it full of anti-war sentiment, it also feels very full of sadness, as the peace being longed for is hard-won and may never come. It doesn’t rally me but rather feels like a song of lament. Maybe this is me in my present context – realizing how long we have been at war, realizing that in American history, we’ve been at war or in conflict nearly the entire time, realizing how much violence we have normalized within and beyond our borders. For us, to sit under the vine and fig tree unafraid is a pipe dream akin to Psalm 137 – living  in terrible circumstances, remembering not with hope but with tears.

Sorry to bring you all down today – this is where my thoughts are as we continue to fight the wars of oppression at home without much recognition of how worn and inured to the violence we have become. My heart is so heavy with the weight of sorrow I can’t remember any other way. And while I can sing this song, I can’t imagine it ever coming to pass.

This song is my lament today.

—

The embroidered image, Chairback-Vine and Fig Tree, is from the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework.

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Programming Note: I’ve added a lovely piece from Mary Grigolia about her song I Know This Rose Will Open, from an email exchange we had, about the origins and meaning of that song. After you read this, go to that entry and check it out!

—

There are days in this practice when the little chalice next to a name at the bottom of the page sends me down a rabbit hole. Like today, where I saw a chalice next to the name Edvard Grieg, the Norwegian composer who arranged this folk melody for hymn singing.

Grieg was a Unitarian?

A few bio sites revealed few clues, although one references his leaving the Lutheran ministry after a series of tragedies and a sense of his musical creativity being strangled. But it took our own resource, the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biographies, to unearth the Unitarian connection:

Charles Harding, vice-president of the Birmingham [England] Festival, and his wife, Ada, members of the Unitarian Old Meeting Church in Birmingham, introduced Grieg to other Unitarians there, including members of the Kenrick family. Shortly before he died Grieg wrote, “During a visit to England in 1888 I was attracted to Unitarian views, and in the nineteen years that have passed since then I have held to them. All the sectarian forms of religion that I have been exposed to since have not succeeded in making any impression on me.”

Like most Unitarians of his time Grieg believed in God, the goodness of God, and the power of Jesus as an example—”Christ was filled by God as no one else known to me, living or dead, in the family of man.” He disbelieved in original sin. “Why should innocent people suffer for the sins of their forefathers?” he asked. “I think that the moral pain of the soul, which results from our bad deeds, as well as from the good we neglected to do, makes a Hell as effective as I can possibly imagine.”

In 1889 the Griegs were impressed by the ex-Anglican Stopford Brooke, who preached at Unitarian pulpits in London. “What a man! [his wife] Nina says, and it is true,” Edvard wrote. “A big, splendid, sparkling personality full of fire and power. We talked about this and that: about Unitarianism and socialism . . . and I daresay he felt just as I do.” Grieg thought some Unitarians were “some of the noblest people I know.” Like them he believed in separation of church and state and in a tolerant attitude towards others—”for what we don’t know, we don’t know.”

Grieg’s religious attitude is reflected in the independence of musical thought that led him, as Liszt advised, to “hold to your course.” Broad in musical appreciation as well as in religious scope, he admired the music of composers, such as Brahms, whose styles were quite different from his own, and valued the musical inheritance from peasant culture, considering it not primitive, but advanced. He stood against conservatism in both religion and musical culture. Sickly from his youth, brooding on the passing of his baby daughter and of his parents, Grieg worked out his peace with death through his Unitarian faith, by connecting himself with the Norwegian people and their mountainous landscape, by putting his faith in nature as a whole, and through the life-affirming exuberance of his music.

I had no idea. I’ve always loved his music – beyond the all-too-familiar “Morning Mood” from Peer Gynt – and into some of his other settings. Until today I had not heard this song, Den Store Hvide Flok, and it does not disappoint.

Nor do the lyrics, the first verse of the poem “Auguries of Innocence” by English poet William Blake:

To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wildflower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.

Gorgeous.

It’s a song I’d use as an introit, or as a sung response to the right sermon. In fact, I can think back to a dozen services where this would have been perfect…. and I may have to write another one just to use it.

Simply gorgeous.

 

Image found at Deviant Art, by user Devil-Grades.