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This one seems very familiar…

No, I’ve not sung it before, which surprises me a little. If I had, I hope I’d sung it to Vom Himmel Hoch, because that seems the best pairing to my ear. But it seems very familiar. They certainly are a sentiment that makes sense to me – one I’ve certainly preached before.

Rejoice in love we know and share,
in love and beauty everywhere;
rejoice in truth that makes us free,
and in the good that yet shall be.

Seems more familiar in the singing… but I turn my attention to the facts: these lyrics are by Charles Lyttle (with an abridgement by Vincent Silliman and Edwin Palmer). I wrote about him recently, I recall, and find that yes, he wrote the lyrics to Praise God.

Which are remarkably the same.

Seriously. Click the link, then come back here.

::::: hums ‘Girl from Ipanema’::::::

You’re back! See what I mean? It’s almost like Silliman and Palmer took out the God and fleshed out the words to fill the meter. They certainly aren’t as theist – even though Lyttle’s original lyric was meant to bridge the theist/humanist gap – taking away God makes this much more palatable to many of our congregants. But even for this theist, I dig this lyric a lot. Sure, it’s aspirational. Sure, there’s a lot of love lost between members of our congregations, and that work of building beloved community often needs to be done inside our walls as well as outside – but I love the aspirational thought that love and truth are what ground us and that good is what we are working toward.

Yep. It’s a winner.

Even though I know you’re walking away from this not humming the hymn but rather humming ‘Girl from Ipanema” – which you can’t blame on me, but you can blame on the Bosa Nova.

You’re welcome.

—-

Yes, that’s Ipanema Beach, in Rio de Janeiro.

 

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I wonder sometimes if I’m overthinking these things.

You see, I first looked at our lyric – another one by Ken Patton – and at first cheered at having an artsy doxology text, since I am an artsy minister. Yay, loveliness! Yay all arts, all songs, beauty! Yay all the other stuff! Yay! Ours be the poems of …wait, of all tongues? Ours? Huh? Who is us?

And now I don’t know what to think. Here’s the lyric:

Ours be the poems of all tongues,
all things of loveliness and worth.
All arts, all ages, and all songs,
one life, one beauty on the earth.

I’m a little confused. Are we taking an imperialistic tone here, or are we saying that all of humanity’s artsy stuff belongs to all of us because we’re all human? And if that’s the case, isn’t that a bit too much “I don’t see differences”? Or… is this meant to be a “thanks, God, for giving us all this artsy compulsion and this artsy, lovely planet to be artsy on”?

Seriously – I may be overthinking this one and may need help to get out of my head. Because I don’t want to be suspicious when I encounter praise for artsy-ness, and I’m feeling that way today.

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Before I begin today’s piece, I want to invite those of you not on Facebook to check out my posting of yesterday’s hymn, because it generated a fascinating discussion about the use of doxologies and changing them up. I am so happy when people engage my meandering thoughts on the songs we all think we know.

Now – approaching this one led to an interesting train of thought. Hop on… which requires first reading the lyrics, by Ken Patton:

Let those who live in every land
declare that fear and war are done —
joined by the labor of their hands,
in love and understanding, one.

I first thought, “huh, we really do have a lot of war and peace songs in this hymnal.”

Then, “well, this hymnal was developed at the end of the Cold War, when we talked about war and peace a lot.”

And then, “even so, this is a pretty odd thing to sing for a regular doxology. But maybe it wouldn’t have been then.”

And then, “interesting, we don’t talk much about that anymore. War seems so distant.”

And then, “oh wait. We are still at war. Have been engaged in war for thirteen years.”

And finally. “Oh crap. We forgot about it. I forgot about it. And now we could be facing a new war.”

And then, I turned back to the doxology:

Let those who live in every land
declare that fear and war are done —
joined by the labor of their hands,
in love and understanding, one.

And I thought, “Maybe we need to sing this every week again and remember we’re still at war abroad, as well as at home. Maybe we need to make declarations of peace across the board.”

Maybe. Maybe.

(Also – I instinctively sang this to Tallis Canon.)

 

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I’m beginning to wonder why congregations only sing one doxology throughout the year, year after year. Is it because of habit? Because in Protestant churches that sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” that’s how it’s done? Or because that’s one more thing the minister and music director have to think about?

I admit, as the minister at First Universalist Southold, it never dawned on me to change their doxology or even switch it up now and then. Once as a lay worship leader in Saratoga, we did it for a seventh principle service, but we made a big deal about the change for the one week.

Yet day by day, I’m discovering beautiful lyrics (and even ones I’m not in love with but still appreciate) that, while not appropriate for every week, would be great for some weeks. Like this one, another anonymous verse:

In greening lands begins the song
which deep in human hearts is strong.
In cheerful strains your voices raise,
to fill the whole spring world with praise!

I admit that this might be insensitive to use right now, given the fires out west and the lack of green in hurricane-ravaged areas. But that’s not always the case, and what a lovely springtime doxology to sing. This one feels right to me in Old Hundredth, although I admit I’m probably not giving Vom Himmel Hoch enough credit, as I’m not as familiar with it.

Anyway. Maybe it’s time we think about the doxology in our services in a different way – even if we never let the liturgical element go, maybe we switch up the words?

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So… huh.

I had gotten three quarters of the way through writing today’s post, all kinds of excited about the joy in discovery, the awe and wonder of science, calling in Malvina Reynolds’ O What a Piece of Work Are We, waxing poetic about religious humanism, thinking about when I could preach this and use this as my doxology. Feast on this bounteous world indeed!

And then I read the lyrics again…

Sing loudly till the stars have heard.
In joy, feast on this bounteous word!
Our praises call us to explore
till suns shall rise and set no more.

Feast on this bounteous WORD.

This anonymously written lyric isn’t so much about science as it is about sacred texts. Perhaps the sacred text at the center of our Protestant forebears, in fact. And not that this still isn’t about our human joy of learning and meaning making – it is. But it’s not the same lyric I started writing about.

This isn’t to say I wouldn’t still use this for a service about the fourth principle, or perhaps on the sacred texts of the third and fourth source. And if I did, I’d use Old Hundredth – of the three tunes, that is in my mind the most praiseful.

 

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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……

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We’ve kinda sung this before.

No, I don’t mean that in some UU congregations, the royal ‘we’ have sung it. I mean that on July 16th, we sang an adaptation of this in the hymn Creative Love, Our Thanks We Give. In the full hymn version, we sing these lyrics adapted by Beth Ide:

Since what we choose is what we are,
and what we love we yet shall be,
the goal may ever shine afar —
the will to reach it makes us free.

There’s only one word changed – “reach” instead of William DeWitt Hyde’s original “win,” which we then use here in the doxology section:

Since what we choose is what we are,
and what we love we yet shall be,
the goal may ever shine afar —
the will to win it makes us free.

And all of this makes me less likely to use it at all as a doxology, because now that I know it’s the last verse of a hymn we sing, it feels like reading just the last chapter of a novel and wondering what happened in the rest of the book. (Have you ever done that, though? Read a final chapter of a book you’re not likely to read all of, and then make up the story for yourself? Or is this just one of those quirky things I did because I was a bookish, lonely child?)

Anyway. I sang it to all three tunes (plus “Hernando’s Hideaway” as per my snarky friends on Facebook), and to me it fits best with Tallis Canon. But I’m not sure I would use it, because I’m still not sure I buy the theology or the privilege of it.

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I thought a lot about how to approach the next 12 entries in our hymnal – three tunes, nine different lyrics – and while I could dive into all the words and let the music fall where it may, that seemed to discredit the music, which requires attention. So – today I’ll talk about the tunes, and then the next nine, hit each of the nine quatrains.

Now together, these pieces form one of 27 possible doxologies – a common liturgical element that comes out of the Christian tradition yet possibly based in the Jewish tradition. The doxology, or “words of praise,” is typically a short, communal song of praise that may be a sung response (such as a section of the Kaddish in a Jewish service or the “Gloria Patri” in a Catholic service) or as an affirmation of faith (such as “Glory be to the Father” in many Protestant services). Unitarian Universalist congregations sometimes use doxologies in similar fashion. They become the ‘best known hymn’ because we sing it every week.

Now what we sing it to… ah, that’s today’s question.

Most UU congregations that I have been in that sing a doxology use what STLT notes is the “modern form” of Old Hundredth. Where yesterday’s appearance featured the original key and rhythm – elongated ends of the phrases, a lush, singable key, the commonly used tune for modern doxologies is a shortened rhythm written in G major for reasons passing understanding. (Seriously, what’s wrong with D major?)

Yet our Hymnal Commission offers two other tunes that may be used – and I wish more did.

One is the Tallis Canon, a gorgeous piece written in the mid 1500s by English composer Thomas Tallis; I’ve waxed poetic about the tune before; here is our opportunity to truly make it a ringing-thru-the-sanctuary round.

The other is a tune I’m not as familiar with – Vom Himmel Hoch (“from heaven on high”), from the Geistliche Leider by Valentin Schumann. We sang this once before, but I was too busy getting ready to attend the Women’s March in NYC to actually notice the tune. It’s not as lush as the Tallis Canon, and certainly not as familiar as Old Hundredth, yet I suspect it will be a better match for some of the quatrains we’ve got coming up.

So… those are our tunes. All are readily available to listen to at Small Church Music. And tomorrow, I will begin singing the lyrics; my plan is to sing them to all three tunes and make suggestions as to which one I think works best.

Off we go!

—

I couldn’t come up with a good image for today, so here are some decorative gourds for the season.

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Dear music directors and accompanists: Old Hundredth can be set in D major.

I make this an announcement, because it offended at least two musicians I have worked with when I suggested that we might transpose Old Hundredth down at least to F if not to D. “But it’s in G major and that’s where it’ll stay!” they argued. Because, oh, I don’t know, they forgot that musicians transpose things all. the. time. I don’t know why I encountered such pushback over the tune that congregations across the denominations have been using for centuries – I don’t know why they stuck with the high key when it was clear the congregations had lower voices. Saratoga Springs had no problem going to F major; it became warmer and more welcoming. Bringing it down to D makes it warmer still.

So now that I realize we have a setting of it in D major, right there on the page (set, by the way, in the original rhythm). In this case, it’s got three verses, which makes it a great introit kind of song. Here are our lyrics:

All people that on earth do dwell,
sing ye aloud with cheerful voice;
let hearts in exultation swell;
come now together and rejoice.

O welcome in this day with praise;
approach with joy your God unto;
give thanks, and faith proclaim always,
for it is seemly so to do.

For we believe that life is good,
love doth abide forevermore;
truth, firmer than a rock hath stood,
and shall from age to age endure.

They’re fine. A little fiddly in the second verse, and I’m not a fan of the phrase ‘it is seemly so to do’, but over all, pretty good. These lyrics are an Alicia Carpenter recast of the original version by Scottish cleric William Kethe. A paraphrase of Psalm 100, this was one of over two dozen psalm pieces he wrote for the 1561 Anglo-Genevan Psalter.

And given that information, we now know why the tune is called Old Hundredth. And it’s set in a nice, low, comfortable, warm and welcoming D major.

So there.

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The truth that passes understanding right now is how it’s been a year already.

A year ago today, I started this spiritual practice. At the time I thought I’d reflect a little on my own experience of singing and maybe have some interesting conversations with some friends who noticed. I did not anticipate this becoming a Thing, with musicology and literary analysis and providing indices and categorizations. I most certainly did not anticipate the number of people following, the great and funny and insightful comments (here and on Facebook), nor the friendships with members of the STLT hymnal commission, from whom I’ve learned so much about and beyond the hymns.

To all of you – frequent or infrequent readers – thank you.

The practice continues, of course… after today there are still 45 more pieces in this hymnal, then another 75 in Singing the Journey. What happens in February after it’s complete is still a question, but for now, let’s turn our attention to today’s hymn.

Another entry in the praise and doxologies section, this Robert Weston verse, set to the old Geneva Psalter tune Donne Secours, is both hopeful and haunting. I suppose, of course, if the words had been set to a different tune, it would be less haunting – this one is minor and slow. I don’t have a suggestion – the few tunes in this 11.10.11.10 meter I listened to are all minor and slow. But it’s possible.

Anyway, here are the lyrics:

This is the truth that passes understanding,
this is the joy to all forever free:
life springs from death and shatters every fetter,
and winter turns to spring eternally.

Is it me, or does this seem to be a little confusing? In my mind, I’m back to the Hymn by Hymn Extra I did with Michael Tino wherein we talk about how Spring is not Easter. Here we’re three lines in, and it’s all good Universalist theology, and then boom, it’s back to nature in a metaphor that doesn’t really work for me. The seasons are not the same as eschatology.

And I’m not sure when or how I would use this – certainly not as a doxology, perhaps as a choral response at a memorial service for someone who wanted some theology but not too much because they sometimes eschewed Sunday services in favor of hikes.

I will tell you one truth that doesn’t pass my understanding – I have a bright future ahead of me as a curmudgeon. 🙂