By |

Today’s hymn brings together several things I really love: a joyful Hebrew folk melody in a minor key, a simple song that can be repeated as a chant, and a setting of Psalm 150 that reminds us to be joyful.

There’s not a lot to say about this one, as it’s fairly straightforward. And even my experience of it is straightforward – I love the setting, by UU music director and Hymnal Commission member Mark Slegers. The psalm, too, is straightforward. Get out your instruments and rejoice.

Haleluhu, haleluhu, betsiltselei shama.
Haleluhu, haleluhu, betsiltselei terua.
Kol han’shama tehaleil yah,
Haleluyah, haleluyah!
Kol han’shama tehaleil yah,
Haleluyah, haleluyah!

This is pretty much verses 5 and 6 – the last two verses of the psalm, which go like this:

5 Praise him with clanging cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

And really, who doesn’t love that the editor of the Psalms decided to put this one at the very end? I mean, for all the lamenting and praying and searching contained in the collection, in the end, don’t forget joy.

Wow.

By |

This round evokes in me another, which we’ll get to in November:

Where does it come from? Who wrote it? Why is it in here?
Where does it come from? How did it get here?
Mystery. Mystery. This hymn’s a riddle and a mystery.

Okay, so not all of it is a mystery – it is clearly a round whose text comes from perhaps the most famous of all of the lament Psalms, number 137, which was written by the Israelites during their forced exile in Babylon, beginning around 587 BCE. In even this first verse of the Psalm, we understand the longing of a people taken from their homeland.

We do also have in our hymnody a much-more-familiar-to modern-ears reggae version, which we’ll get to in late December, but this version is a lovely round whose composer is unknown. According to Between the Lines, the round is falsely attributed to William Billings – a likely mistake as he was a master of the fugue form, and this round has probably been around for a long time.

I had never heard it before this morning, and it’s a lovely round with a haunting melody. I’d love to know more about it. Here are the lyrics:

By the waters, the waters of Babylon
we sat down and wept, and wept for thee, Zion.
We remember, we remember, we remember thee, Zion.

Psalm 137:1 reads “By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.”

There is, of course, a lot more to say about the whole Psalm, but I want to wait until December, when we get more of the psalm’s text in song. Something to look forward to….

Meanwhile, I am hoping to solve the mystery of this tune. Or at the very least become comfortable with dwelling in the mystery.

—

Painting by 19th century French artist Jacques Joseph Tissot, entitled “By the Waters of Babylon.”

By |

I suspect there are three types of Unitarian Universalist congregations:

The first sing this all the time because they are deeply grounded in Unitarian Christianity – I’m thinking of congregations like King’s Chapel in Boston.

The second wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole, because their humanists and even many of their theists would rise up in revolt over the idea of praising anything that might be construed as supernatural.

The third would use this with a lot of context, like maybe in talking about how there are many theologies in our hymnals and many theologies in our pews and maybe we shouldn’t be so judgy when we use a hymn that doesn’t perfectly reflect your theology because it might reflect someone else’s.

You see, when you get past “praise be to God” (which was originally “praise to the Lord”) you get lots of wonderful stuff that many who look beyond themselves for comfort, strength, understanding, etc. are looking for. This is, in many ways, the thank you to Carolyn McDade’s ask in Spirit of Life. At least that’s how I read it – this never says which god we’re praising, and anyway, if the word “god” is shorthand for an individual’s understanding of the Divine (see Nancy Shaffer’s excellent poem for all the names we might use), then this hymn could be praising just about anything we deem praiseworthy – even creation itself.

Praise be to God, the Almighty, who rules all creation!
O my soul, praise the Love who is our health and salvation.
Join the great throng, wake harp and psaltery and song,
sound forth your glad adoration.

Praise be to God, who is o’er all things wondrously reigning,
who, as on eagle wings, lifts us, so gently sustaining.
Have you not seen, all that is needful has been
set by God’s gracious ordaining?

Praise be to God, who will prosper your work and defend you;
surely God’s goodness and mercy here daily attend you.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,
who with great love does befriend you.

Praise be to God, O forget not God’s manifold graces;
all that has life and breath one song of gratitude raises.
Let the Amen sound from the people again;
gladly forever sing praises.

And if some of the language still feels uncomfortable, with all its reigns and rules, know that the Hymnal Commission changed some of the language from Catherine Winkworth’s 19th century translation of a 17th century song by Joachim Neander, which is based on Psalms 103 and 150. Winkworth’s translation includes phrases like ” the King of creation” and “Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him” and thus I suspect you’re already more comfortable with the Commission’s changes that advocate Love all over the place.

(By the way, we’ve seen Winkworth’s translations from the German before, in Now Thank We All Our God. She was apparently a prolific translator of German [read: Lutheran] hymns into English, and was highly praised for her work.)

Now while the hymnal isn’t explicit in this case about which Psalms this comes from, Between the Lines is – thus, here are the NRSV translations. First, Psalm 103:1-6:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and do not forget all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good as long as you live*
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.


6 The Lord works vindication
and justice for all who are oppressed.

And Psalm 150:

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty firmament!*
2 Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his surpassing greatness!


3 Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
4 Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
5 Praise him with clanging cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

I like this hymn a lot. It’s joyful and strong, it reminds me of who I am – not an isolated being but a part of this whole creation, it reminds me to be thankful for the gifts of life and love. And yeah, I love the very German feel. As I mentioned when writing about Now Thank We All Our God, hymns like this activate my Lutheran DNA.

Sure, it’s not a hymn for everybody, but it is a good hymn of celebration and thanksgiving.

Amen.

 

By |

For the record, I love that we have a section of hymns based on the Psalms. The time spent with the Psalms in my Old Testament class was one of my favorites – learning about the different kinds of psalms, learning about when they might have been written and why, and hearing the strength of poetry and potential for, yes, singing.

One of the assignments we were given in that class was to recast a psalm for a modern setting; I don’t remember now which one I did or how, but I remember at the moment finally understanding that the text we revere as The Bible was deeply human, deeply personal, deeply situational. And so while we might marvel at how one of these Psalm-inspired hymns got to where it is from where it was, we can remember that that the original psalm used words and meanings that we won’t ever truly understand (made further away by translation into English), and thus we can only reinterpret for ourselves the truths found within.

This first psalm hymn is an example. It’s based on Psalm 126 – the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) goes like this:

A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,*
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.

4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.

Now we Unitarian Universalists don’t sing much about Zion (it shows up in just three hymns across the two books ), but it was an important concept for the Israelites/Judeans/Jewish peoples. Because what Zion meant to them was Home. A deep-seated, God-given, long-remembered-in-our-bones Home.

Thus, it’s this concept of home and striving toward home that our lyricist (unknown, but probably the Hymnal Commission working together) caught and cast into our lyrics:

When we wend homeward to our land,
like dreamers we shall be;
like leaping rivers in the spring
we’ll joyful be and free!

For though our sowing work is hard,
and tears do freely flow,
on harvest day we’ll shoulder sheaves,
our hearts will overflow!

Yet for all its trueness to the psalm (bravo) and its setting to one of the sweet American folk tunes (Land of Rest), I’m not sure I would ever use this hymn. Because what is home to a European American like me, whose ancestors (the ones who came before the 19th century) were part of the problem here in the Americas? I mean, my line doesn’t go back to nameless settlers, it goes back to John Winthrop, he of the ‘shining city on a hill’ and declaring the land for England and Christendom and all that rot. This isn’t to say I’m not proud of my roots – friend and colleague Elizabeth Assenza joyfully visited Winthrop’s grave at King’s Chapel in Boston this spring, as we are both his descendants and love our cousin-hood. But the idea of homeward is uprooted for me; ideally, home is England. And yes, I feel an affinity. But to sing it as a European American in an American setting feels wrong somehow.

Funny that I’m writing this on July 4th, a day when I feel my American-ness deeply, a day when I rejoice in the parts my ancestors played in the Revolution, a day when I celebrate the good (and there is good) in US. But I have long lost the rose colored glasses of my youth, when we dove deeply into the bicentennial celebrations and were nothing but proud. Now my pride is dinged up and bruised by the realities of our country’s founding and growth, the abuses by some in leadership, the false patriotism, and the knowledge that our system, while not completely broken, has been damaged and corrupted.

Perhaps singing this hymn today is not about the home of my birth, but home to our roots as Americans, with all the messiness, knowing that there is still something true and strong about the idealism of democracy and freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

By |

Wow. Just wow.

Here’s another hymn that I have bypassed time and time again, not thinking it would have anything to do with anything I might preach, especially in the last six or eight months.

Silly me.

O young and fearless Prophet of ancient Galilee:
your life is still a summons to serve humanity,
to make our thoughts and actions less prone to please the crowd,
to stand with humble courage for truth with hearts unbowed.

O help us stand unswerving against war’s bloody way,
where hate and lust and falsehood hold back your holy sway;
forbid false love of country, that turns us from your call
who lifts above the nation the neighborhood of all.

Create in us the splendor that dawns when hearts are kind,
that knows not race nor station as bound’ries of the mind;
that learns to value beauty, in heart, or mind, or soul,
and longs to see God’s children as sacred, perfect, whole.

Stir up in us a protest against unneeded wealth;
for some go starved and hungry who plead for work and health.
Once more give us your challenge above our noisy day,
and come to lead us forward along your holy way.

Now I will say that this is not entirely your father’s “O Young and Fearless Prophet” – the lyrics as written by Congregationalist S. Ralph Harlow are altered here, first to take out that thread of ‘we forget about Jesus but we should devote ourselves only to Jesus” theology; and second, to add a remarkably stirring third verse in their place, that emphasize the first principle-ness of Jesus’ ministry. (Also, our intrepid Hymnal Commission changed “the unity of all” to “the neighborhood of all” – which seems a more realistic goal.)

But even with alterations, the heart of Harlow’s lyrics are not only preserved but are celebrated. I mean, look at that second verse. It was written in 1931 – a time between the wars, with League of Nations failing to quell growing unrest in Germany and Italy, a country laid low by the Great Depression (being mismanaged by President Hoover), along with a surge of racist (Jim Crow) laws and the KKK. Most assuredly a fraught time. And that second verse could have been written for 2017.

And I wonder why I haven’t used it.

Except I know – it’s the same thing I say whenever I discover a hymn: we have our favorites, and often a first line or two doesn’t connect us. But POW! BAM! this text is a powerhouse. To be sure, I’ll use this one now.

This Welsh tune, Meirionnydd, is familiar – we also sang it with The Morning Hangs a Signal,  another hymn that is made for this time. I’m not sure it’s the right tune, exactly, but it’s not bad.

So today’s lesson – as if I haven’t learned it well already – is don’t judge a hymn by its first line.

—

I decided to show you a bit of Wales in the featured image today, because (a) our tune is Welsh and (b) any depiction of Jesus as a prophet that I could find was very white and very trite. Blech. So go Wales!

By |

I know there is a need in the world for Brian Wren’s songs. I hear it every time I get to one, because the fans come out of the woodwork and I am left wondering what I’ve missed.

Welcome to today’s Brian Wren hymn, which really, really, bugs me. I mean, first of all, it has Wren’s signature sound, and I confess that if I wasn’t paying attention, I’d start singing Bring Many Names instead, it sounds so similar.

But what really bugs me are the lyrics:

Joyful is the dark, holy, hidden God,
rolling cloud of night beyond all naming:
majesty in darkness, energy of love,
Word-in-flesh, the mystery proclaiming.

Joyful is the dark, Spirit of the deep,
winging wildly o’er the world’s creation,
silken sheen of midnight, plumage black and bright,
swooping with the beauty of a raven.

Joyful is the dark, shadowed stable floor;
angels flicker, God on earth confessing,
as with exultation, Mary, giving birth,
hails the infant cry of need and blessing.

Joyful is the dark, coolness of the tomb,
waiting for the wonder of the morning;
never was that midnight touched by dread and gloom:
darkness was the cradle of the dawning.

Joyful is the dark depth of love divine,
roaring, looming thundercloud of glory, holy,
haunting beauty, living, loving God.
Halleluja! Sing and tell the story!

I don’t even know where to begin here. First, I feel like telling the whole Christian story in one song misses a fair bit of detail and nuance. Second, why the darkness metaphor? I mean, I get the whole Jungian shadow stuff, but that’s not this. I honestly don’t understand why, except maybe as a counter to all the terrible “white as snow” language we hear in older hymns. But it seems awkward, like a one-line metaphor taken tragically too far.

The more I sing Wren’s stuff, the less I like it. And if I have a vote on what to include in the next hymnal, this one will be a firm no from me.

Let the apologists commence.

By |

These are the days I wish I was a pianist, or lived with one.

Because while I have listened to a recording of this hymn at Small Church Music, I feel like I want to play with this rather square tune by Frederick Charles Maker. I don’t want to change it, partly because the tune was written for this text by John Greenleaf Whittier and partly because there’s something lush in the melody. But the way I have heard it, it’s square and old timey, and I bet if I were a pianist or living with one, we’d be the kind of people who could reimagine the accompaniment.

And if we did that, I’d probably use this hymn – although I would take Whittier’s first line, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” one step further than our Hymnal Commission knew to do in 1993, and I’d make it something like “Dear God of All Humanity.” These lyrics are pretty great otherwise:

Dear Mother-Father of us all forgive our foolish ways.
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea,
the gracious calling of the Word,
let us, like them, our faith restored, rise up and follow thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity, interpreted by love.

With that deep hush subduing all our words and works that drown
the tender whisper of thy call,
as noiseless let thy blessing fall as fell thy manna down.

Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.

Now barring the first line business, the lyrics are almost entirely Whittier’s, with just a couple of adjustments by our Hymnal Commission that I think make it stronger – mainly the second verse. Here’s Whittier’s, with the changed words in bold:

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
beside the Syrian sea,
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word,
rise up and follow thee.

I think our version is better, and I’m glad for it. It’s clearer that we are being called not by one man but in service to that which is greater and more powerful than all humanity and yet is the best of humanity.

All in all, a good hymn. I just long for a better arrangement…

—

The photo is of Syrian refugees along the Syrian Sea. In case we forget what we are called to.

By |

My post will be short today, as I have succumbed to what is commonly known as “con crud” – the general flu-like illness that befalls many a convention attendee. But I wouldn’t be true to this practice without at least singing through this beloved hymn and making a few comments before the siren song of my bed overtakes my weakened resolve.

I do love this hymn, although I think one reason is that when I hear it in my head, I hear Geraldine Granger, the Vicar of Dibley, singing it. I’m not sure what episode it appears in (“Songs of Praise” maybe?) but what I love about her singing is the enthusiasm with which she does it, egging a tiny congregation on to sing robustly.

I also love that this is in our hymnal, a wonderful expression of the transcendent god we find in the Bible.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise.
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above
thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life thou givest, to great and to small;
in all life thou livest, the true life of all;
all laud we would render; oh, help us to see,
‘tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

Perhaps the only quibble (and I’m not sure I disagree with this one) is that our Hymnal Commission compressed verses 3 and 4 into one verse that better reflects the process threads in our theology. Here are the original verses 3 and 4, by 19th century Scottish minister Walter Chambers Smith, who led the Free Church of Edinburgh and later was moderator of the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland:

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small;
in all life thou livest, the true life of all;
we blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree,
then wither and perish, but naught changeth thee.

Thou reignest in glory, thou dwellest in light,
thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
all praise we would render; O help us to see
’tis only the splendor of light hideth thee!

I don’t mind losing tree leaves and angels – in fact, I think the combined verse is stronger and better.

Anyway… enjoy this delightful, free Scottish hymn while I crawl back to bed.

—

I couldn’t find a Free Church in Edinburgh that looked old enough to be Smith’s congregation – so our image is of a Free Church in the village of Lochinver, which looks old enough and pretty enough that we’d want it to be his Edinburgh congregation.

By |

Fred’s back!

Good ol’ Frederick Hosmer (with an M)  – 19th/early 20th c Unitarian minister and hymn lyricist – gives us the lyrics to the second of our two official Pentecost hymns.

I say official because according to STLT, this and Come Down O Love Divine are the two marked “Pentecost” – but what has become clear is that we have a lot of Pentecost hymns and songs all over our hymnals… from the joyful Every Time I Feel the Spirit, the jazzy Do When the Spirit Says Do (from Singing the Journey), and even the prayerful Spirit of Life.

It seems to me that Unitarian Universalists should be the people of the Pentecost, that time of spirit calling us to answer yes to loving the hell out of this world. Whether you believe this is the time of Jesus’ ascension into heaven or just that moment when the disciples truly became apostles (meaning they went from learning to preaching), it is a significant recognition of that which some call Spirit (or which we might call the fire of commitment – another good Pentecost hymn, as I think about it) dwelling within us, being that flame that burns within.

So I don’t know about our having only two official Pentecost hymns – but I do know this: as I said yesterday, Pentecost is about joy and excitement; I don’t think it’s a mistake that our General Assembly happens each year just after Pentecost, as we often get ourselves revved up for the work ahead, and our church is reborn a little into something a little different each time.

Anyway, I really like the lyrics Hosmer gives us for a Unitarian Pentecost:

O prophet souls of all the years, speak yet to us in love;
your faroff vision, toil and tears to their fulfillment move.

From tropic clime and zones of frost they come of every name;
this, this our day of Pentecost, on us the tongues of flame.

One Life together we confess, one all-in-dwelling Word,
one holy Call to righteousness within the silence heard:

One Law that guides the shining spheres as on through space they roll,
and speaks in flaming characters on Sinais of the soul:

One Love, unfathomed, measureless, an ever-flowing sea,
that holds within its vast embrace time and eternity.

What I don’t love is the tune. This one is Bangor – a serviceable tune to be sure, but not at all a rouser. In fact, it’s somewhat dour and all too serious. As it’s in common meter (CM), we have a plethora of other tunes to choose from – I personally like the McKee tune for these lyrics but would love even a new tune if that ever happened.

And yes, I still maintain that “love” and “move” don’t rhyme. GRR.

But all in all, a good hymn. Just don’t let this be the only Pentecost song you sing.