By |

Sometimes simple is best.

Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the gift to all inspire,
and have not love, my words are vain as sounding brass and hopeless gain.

Though I may give all I possess, and striving so my love profess,
but not be given by love within, the profit soon turns strangely thin.

Come, Spirit, come, our hearts control, our spirits long to be made whole.
Let inward love guide every deed; by this we worship, and are freed.

This is such a familiar old tune, and such a familiar old Bible passage, it would be easy to sing it without much attention. Something I am sure I have done countless times.

But it is so rich, and deep, and full – and thanks to its simplicity, easy to access, if you’re willing.

Let’s start with the lyrics – a gorgeous, poetic interpretation of I Corinthians 13, the famous Love passage from Paul’s epistle. I have found myself returning to the passage again and again, certainly once I realized it wasn’t about romantic love but about community. And I’ve preached on it, more than once, most explicitly in a sermon called Sharing the Love. This is a powerful passage, and in this interpretation, it becomes a personal call – “let inward love guide every deed; by this we worship, and are freed.” Wow. Beautifully put. We hear “if I have not love, I am nothing” all the time, but this puts it into a frame we can see.

So that’s the words. Now let’s layer in the music.

This tune – from the British Isles, with an expectedly complex history – is perhaps best known as the folk song “The Water Is Wide.” It starts out as a love song… but it doesn’t end there. It’s about love gone wrong, a break of trust, a test. It expresses the complexity of relationships, of the first blush of love that ‘fades away like morning dew.’ It’s a hard song, a song of sadness, loss, indignance, and still a glimmer of hope.

It may seem odd, but pairing these words and this tune delights me.

Love is hard. Love takes a lot of work. In the passage from Paul, he outlines all the things that love is not, because it’s so easy to mistake those things for love or to let those things obscure love. And if you sink into it, love – even the deep, holy, sacred Love that we express with a capital L because it is bigger than any one Greek term – love can fade away like morning dew.

Love with a capital L takes work. And in this last weekend before the American presidential election, love is sometimes hard to come by, so it’s even more important that we lean into it. Deeply. Whole-heartedly. And if you have questions about how to turn the ‘what love is not’s into ‘what love is, read (or listen to) this from Kendyl Gibbons. Because what Love IS helps us through all the times when we are confronted with what Love isn’t.

By |

A post that is hardly about this hymn at all, but it’s fine.

Sovereign and transforming Grace,
we invoke your quickening power;
reign the spirit of this place,
bless the purpose of this hour.

Holy and creative Light,
we invoke your kindling ray;
draw upon our spirit’s night,
as the darkness turns to day.

To the anxious soul impart hope,
all other hopes above;
stir the dull and hardened heart
with a longing and a love.

I feel like I’ve been on a tune rant – one of the consequences of singing while clergy, I suppose, is that part of my mind is always thinking about how a congregation receives and participates in the music. And I wonder, more so lately, if we should be thinking about our collections of music differently.

My hunch is that there are hymns in STLT, and maybe even in STJ, that we want to keep, want to remember, believe are a crucial part of our theology, our tradition, our body of work. And yet, they aren’t necessarily songs a congregation would sing on even a remotely regular basis. What happens if we create a worship professionals’ guide to the hymnals, a commentary of sorts, that not only talks about the origins of the hymns (like we have in Between the Lines), but also comments about tempo, style, choral v. solo v. congregational choices, tips for teaching, etc.? Surely we have enough musicians in the UUMN, along with musical clergy, who could shed some light onto these hymns. Surely we could help those in small congregations without music professionals, or without musical clergy, so that good choices could be made AND hymns that get flipped past regularly find new life through different means of presentation in worship.

Am I asking too much? I mean, I look at a hymn like this – the lyrics are really good. It’s got a fairly square meter (7.7.7.7.). But the tune requires some teaching so that the lyrics shine and not get lost – as they did originally for me – in favor of figuring out how to sing it.

And yes, the musical among us will say “we already do that – we know what should be sung by a soloist or choir and what will work for group singing.” But I am realizing many don’t – or wish they had a clue.

Is this a crazy idea? Or one that just might work?

By |

That time I remembered my patrilineal ancestors were Lutherans…

Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices;
who from our parents’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
the one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore,
for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

While my parents were Unitarians, Mom grew up in the Anglican church, and Dad grew up a Lutheran. And Mom’s first husband was the son of a Lutheran minister,  I dated a Lutheran minister for a while, and two of my closest friends from seminary are Lutheran… so there’s something Lutheran/attracted to Lutheran in my DNA.

I don’t think about that a lot, but singing today’s hymn brought it to mind. This very German song, with these very Lutheran lyrics.

It’s probably surprising to many modern Unitarian Universalists that there are congregations among us who sing this, but I bet there are some – those who are comfortable with God language, those who embrace a transcendent, omnipresent Divine. And some days, in my own personal theology, I’m totally down with that. In my Universalist view of process theology, it makes sense some days to thank a Creator God who is involved in and should be thanked for this amazing creation.

And for those who might argue against this one, I would remind you that this is pretty much the same theology found in For the Beauty of the Earth – just with the G word and a little more explicit greater-than language.

I like it. My Lutheran DNA likes it.

This hymn brings me joy.

By |

So….

(Chorus) Name unnamed, hidden and shown, knowing and known. Gloria!

Beautifully moving, ceaselessly forming,
growing, emerging with awesome delight,
Maker of Rainbows, glowing with color,
arching in wonder, energy flowing in darkness and light:

(Chorus)

Spinner of Chaos, pulling and twisting,
freeing the fibers of pattern and form,
Weaver of Stories, famed or unspoken,
tangled or broken shaping a tapestry vivid and warm:

(Chorus)

Nudging Discomfort, prodding and shaking,
waking our lives to creative unease,
Straight-talking Lover, checking and humbling
jargon and grumbling, speaking the truth that refreshes and frees:

(Chorus)

Midwife of Changes, skillfully guiding,
drawing us out through the shock of the new,
Woman of Wisdom, deeply perceiving,
never deceiving, freeing and leading in all that we do:

(Chorus)

Daredevil Gambler, risking and loving,
giving us freedom to shatter your dreams,
Lifegiving Loser, wounded and weeping,
dancing and leaping, sharing the caring that heals and redeems.

… after what became a three-day discussion about Bring Many Names, I know this kind of hymn was and still is important for those who need to re-imagine God.

And truthfully, even the lyrics here – for the most part – are pretty decent. I like the premise, that there are still many names for God that we don’t know and only discover through time and experience. And some of Wren’s names are pretty awesome – Daredevil Gambler, Spinner of Chaos, Weaver of Stories – I’m totally in. Not so much with Lifegiving Loser, although I understand where that comes from and why it’s there. And as some have pointed out, some of the names can be problematic.

Maybe my problem is less with lyrics in Wren’s hymns and more with tunes; as my colleague Thom Belote rightly noted, the tune for Bring Many Names is “pure treacle.” This tune feels awkward and unwieldy – again, maybe good for a soloist or choir, but clunky for a congregation. There’s no way I’d spring this on people on a Sunday morning without an incredible amount of preparation.

My other quibble is that Wren’s lyrics are seemingly endless – in an effort to broaden and expand, they go on…and on… and on. They seem like nothing more than a list. Nothing, really, happens in any sort of progression. It’s recitation (albeit poetic and different), with no movement.

And maybe that’s the real problem with a hymn like this. It’s hard to sing and we get bored. At least I did.

I’m gonna use some of these names for God, though.

By |

A song that evokes memories..

Over my head I hear music in the air.
Over my head I hear music in the air.
Over my head I hear music in the air.
There must be a God somewhere.

Over my head I hear singing in the air…

Over my head I see trouble in the air…

Over my head I feel gladness in the air …

Over my head I see angels in the air …

This hymn. Feeling all the feelings, thinking all the thoughts, and wishing I had a better memory.

From a purely music and lyrics standpoint, this gets right to my heart, that part of my soul that wonders about God, that part of my spirit that feels lonely and afraid. Even when I’m feeling reasonably okay, this one cuts through all the noise to bring me voice for my fears and comfort for my soul.

And I am just a middle aged white woman in the 21st century. I cannot imagine what this song meant to the enslaved Africans who sang it in the fields, or the black Americans in the crosshairs of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement. For them – I cannot imagine how meaningful a song like this must be, how much hope it must bring.

A few years ago, I remember the amazing songstress, scholar, and friend Kim Harris telling a story about this song, about how a young girl in the civil rights era South sang it in church while the cops were trying to come in. In my incredibly faulty memory, that girl is Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, but the details are gone and I can’t trust this memory of a song. I am hopeful that when I ping Kim on Facebook, she’ll be able to fill in the details.

But I bring it up because of this song’s power to signal, to comfort, to communicate. Even to a middle aged white woman, for whom this song was never meant to be.

That’s the power of music.

And it is a gift.

By |

Thank you, Sister Act.

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, God of glory, God of love;
hearts unfold like flowers before thee, hail thee as the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the pain of doubt away;
giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the joy of day.

All thy works with joy surround thee, earth and heav’n reflect thy rays,
stars and planets sing around thee, center of unbroken praise;
field and forest, vale and mountain, blossoming meadow, flashing sea,
chanting bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in thee.

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blest;
wellspring of the joy of living, ocean-depth of happy rest.
Ever singing march we onward, victors in the midst of strife;
joyful music lifts us sunward in the triumph song of life.

I was about to go on another rant regarding lyric changes – how some of them made sense, but at what point are we taking the teeth out of another person’s song, and is it okay to do it when the words are from an dead white guy, and what does that mean… and at where is the line – is it okay to change ‘dark’ to ‘pain’ (I think so) and ‘Lord’ to “God’ (works for me) and ‘angel’ to ‘planet’ (less comfortable).

But the truth is, I could obsess about only this throughout the hymnal and miss the point of this practice – to sing every hymn, to start my day with music, to feel the power of song as a way to awaken and ground my spirit, to find meaning.

Because despite my stumbling through singing this as printed in STLT – this is indeed a joyful hymn.

The joy starts in the mastery of Beethoven – especially that early entrance in the final couplet – like joy is bursting through and can’t wait to be expressed. Brilliant.

And of course, the lyrics are joy-filled. I love the line “wellspring of the joy of living, ocean-depth of happy rest” – I talk a lot about the unimaginable expansiveness of God, and this captures it for me lusciously.

And then, of course, I start singing what I can remember of the contemporary gospel setting as we first saw in the film Sister Act II, featuring the incomparable Lauryn Hill…

How can you hear this and not be filled with joy? Barring the incredibly-90s outfits (the appearance of which causes a continuity issue for me – who thought that minor plot point made sense?) – this rendition is joy personified. It brings me to tears every time, tears from deep in the well of my soul, tears that tell me underneath the pain and sorrow, the stress and concern – my soul is ultimately made of and made for joy.

We are made for joy. And with music like this, we get to celebrate all the joy that is found above, around, and within us. Joyful, we humans adore thee – all that thee might be.

Joyful.

By |

Titles are deceiving…

View the starry realm of heaven,
shining distant empires sing.
Skysong of celestial children
turns each winter into spring, turns each winter into spring.

Great you are, beyond conception,
God of gods and God of stars.
My soul soars with your perception,
I escape from prison bars, I escape from prison bars.

You, the One within all forming
in my heart and mind and breath,
you, my guide through hate’s fierce storming,
courage in both life and death, courage in both life and death.

Life is yours, in you I grow tall,
seed will come to fruit I know.
Trust that after winter’s snowfall
walls will melt and Truth will flow, walls will melt and Truth will flow.

I have never sung this hymn. I have never really even paused to read the lyrics. I think once or twice I have noticed that it was written by notable Unitarian minister and martyr Norbert Capek. But I’ve easily flipped past, because we’ve got so many “ooo, look at God in nature” hymns already.

Mea culpa.

Sure, the first verse is lovely and nature filled. But this second verse… “my soul soars with your perception; I escape from prison bars.” And the verses after… “courage in both life and death”… “trust that after winter’s snowfall walls will melt and Truth will flow.”

Damn.

A look to the bottom of the page – the tune is called Dachau. And I remember this, from the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography:

On the 28th of March, 1941, Čapek and his daughter, Zora, aged 29, were arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Pankrac Prison. Zora was accused of listening to foreign broadcasts and distributing the content of some BBC transmissions; Čapek himself of listening to foreign broadcasts and of “high treason.” Several of his sermons were cited as “evidence” of the latter charge. Listening to foreign broadcasts was a capital offense under the Protectorate. Two separate trials were held, the first at Pankrac Prison soon after their arrest; the second, an appeal of the original decision, at Dresden in April 1942. The appeals court found Čapek innocent of the treason charge, recommending that, given his age, the year between his arrest and the appeals trial be counted toward his jail time. The Gestapo, ignoring the court’s recommendation, nonetheless sent Čapek to Dachau, Zora to forced labor in Germany. Čapek’s name appears among prisoners sent on an invalid transport on October 12, 1942 to Hartheim Castle, near Linz, Austria, where he died of poison gas.

And I think to myself of all the people of faith who maintained their faith in the worst of atrocities – Čapek, yes, and Bonhoeffer and Frankl – and I think of all that our faith calls us to do, and how we find the courage to do so.

And my mind goes to my colleagues who are heading to Standing Rock to answer the call to clergy to come pray… and the call that went out 51 years ago to clergy to join King in Selma… and all of the times our faith calls us to face down atrocities, because our faith helps us find the courage to do so.

I’m not heading to Standing Rock because of various commitments here – but I support those who are going, and I pray with those who are, and I pray that all who are there remain safe.

“Life is yours – in you I grow tall.” May we all grow tall, and courageous, and may the truth flow.

By |

Another edition of “why didn’t I know this one before?”

I am that great and fiery force
sparkling in everything that lives;
in shining of the river’s course,
in greening grass that glory gives.

I shine in glitter on the seas,
in burning sun, in moon and stars.
In unseen wind, in verdant trees
I breathe within, both near and far.

And where I breathe there is no death,
and meadows glow with beauties rife.
I am in all, the spirit’s breath,
the thundered word, for I am Life.

This is gorgeous. Everything about it is gorgeous – Hildegard of Bingen’s paean to the immanent God, the elegantly simple Renaissance tune by Josquin des Prés (Ave Vera Virginitas).

What I love most is that Hildegard has taken the God of Exodus 3 – the burning bush that declares “I am that I am” – and put that God in context with the whole of creation. Of course God is in the burning bush, because God is in everything, because God is everything, because – as she concludes – God is life.

Gorgeous. Powerful.

And for me, on a morning when I am full of doubts about my call, my spiritual life, my place in the world – this hymn has brought me home.

By |

Hymns that make you go “hmmm….”

Holy, holy, holy, author of creation!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee;
holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty;
who was, and is, and evermore shall be.

Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee,
hindered by our vanities we have not eyes to see.
Only thou art holy, there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Holy, holy, holy, author of creation!
All thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea;
holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty;
who was, and is, and evermore shall be.

I need to say right off the bat that I have no problem with a transcendent, omniscient God reflected in our hymnal.  I don’t even mind when that God is reflected through famous hymns that are found throughout Protestantism.

What I’m not crazy about is when our propensity to change language to make it palatable to sensitive ears actually changes the intent and meaning of the hymn.

So – we’ve seen shifts already in this series; For the Beauty of the Earth’s original chorus reads “Lord of all, to thee we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.” We change it “Source of all” – which shifts out the language of empire for a more loving (and indeed, more Universalist) name for the Divine.  We also sometimes shift out gendered language to welcome a broader image of God and to remove the binary so trans* folk can find themselves (and cis folk remember that there is a spectrum). Recently, Jason Shelton himself rewrote language in one of his hymns to remove ablelist language – Standing on the Side of Love is now Answering the Call of Love.

I am glad we think about language in this way – because words do matter.

But what bothers me here is when we shift the original meaning right out the song, we are doing a disservice to the author and the meaning.  “Holy Holy Holy” is a ode to the Trinity. Full stop. Its original last line for some of the verses is “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” It extols the three natures found in the trinity. This is a Trinitarian hymn. And yet we include it, with words changed to emphasize one God, a Unitarian view. This isn’t just shifting language to include many, this is changing the intent and meaning of the song.

And if we’re willing to do this to the music of an old white guy, then how easy is it for us to do this to the music of other groups – women, people of color, indigenous peoples, etc.? For example…

  • Natalie Sleeth refused to let us change the lyrics of Go Now In Peace to read “may the spirit of love surround you” because her meaning was clear in the lyric “may the love of God surround you” – and yet congregations all over sing the unauthorized, changed lyric.
  • I remember a moment when a group of UU religious professionals misused I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table as a happy gathering song, and one of our group was brave enough to call us out, reminding us white folk that this was not a song of happy Caucasians, this was a song of righteously determined enslaved Africans.
  • In GA choir last year, we raised the question of changing some lyrics in a gospel tune, and Glen Thomas Rideout rightly refused, saying we would be changing the intention by changing the lyrics and thus would be colonizing the music of another culture.

We need to be very careful in our language of inclusion to not change the intent or colonize the meaning for our own comfort. Music is radical expression of our souls and spirits, our hopes and fears, our anger and determination, our joys and triumphs. Music is radical – and when we try to make it palatable, we take the teeth right out of it, and we miss the lessons and energy that music seeks to provide.

Okay, yes, I’m on a rant about this in a post about one of the whitest hymns we have – but maybe it’s not a bad thing to look at how white people even do this to each other, no less to others. Maybe we can begin to see how damaging a change of intent can be in a song like this, we can see how damaging it would be for songs that aren’t ‘ours.’

I couldn’t sing more than a verse of this hymn today before I got angry at what I saw that we had done. Maybe others are okay with this, but I’m not.

By |

Welcome to today’s edition of Hymn By Hymn, wherein Kimberley quibbles with the hymnal editors.

God of the earth, the sky, the sea,
maker of all above, below,
creation lives and moves in you;
your present life through all does flow.

Your love is in the sunshine’s glow,
your life is in the quick’ning air;
when lightnings flash and storm-winds blow,
there is your power, your law is there.

We feel your calm at evening’s hour,
your grandeur in the march of night;
and when the morning breaks in power,
we hear your word, “Let there be light.”

But higher far, and far more clear,
you in our spirit we behold;
your image and yourself are there —
indwelling God, proclaimed of old.

This has the potential to be such a terrific hymn – Longfellow’s lyrics are a wonderful reflection of the immanent God, that divine energy living in everything. Longfellow captures the living pulse that says God is in everything and that the love of this indwelling God is present, always, for all of us.

And then the editors screw up the rhyme pattern in the first freaking verse:

God of the earth, the sky, the sea,
maker of all above, below,
creation lives and moves in you

…YOU? Really? The original, of course, and as expected, is “thee.” And it isn’t like the word isn’t used in STLT – it appears 64 times – five times so far in the hymns we’ve just sung, and we’re only up to #25! Surely one more “thee” would not have hurt. Instead it hurts the ear and feels unnatural, and takes us out of the song.

And while we’re talking about being taken out, the hymn tune that’s being used here – Duke Street – is simply the wrong match. Yes, the meter matches (L.M, or Long Meter – a common meter of four lines of eight). But even if you reject (as our editors do) the commonly used tune St. Catherine (along with typical alternate Pater Ominum) – which isn’t a bad thing, as both tunes feel terribly out of date and a bit hokey – the choice of Duke Street feels incongruent. And it isn’t like there aren’t more LM tunes to choose from – there are 30.

Now admittedly, not all of the 30 would work either, and that’s fine (One More Step is in this grouping, for example). This is how hymnody works – multiple tunes in the same meter that have different emphases, different moods, different tempos. Ultimately, you want a tune that reflects and enhances the lyrics.

And this is where it is subjective, of course. (The change from “thee” to “you” was just silly.) Duke Street, the tune used in STLT, is somewhat strident. It’s a proclamation tune. And when we use it later in Unto Thy Temple, Lord We Come, it makes sense – we’re proclaiming our intention. But here, in this gorgeous language reflecting nature and creation and the indwelling God? Strident makes no sense.  Instead, I’d use Danby (also used for Let All the Beauty We Have Known and Let Christmas Come), or even Gift of Love (Though I May Speak with Greatest Fire) for a more folksy feel. These settings are more reflective, more mystical, more contemplative. And to me, there is Wonder in Longfellow’s lyric, and thus there should be Wonder in our tune.

I love this lyric – it’s grounding for me and harkens to something deep and primordial, something wholly of creation. I will sing it to a different tune, and I will sing “thee” – as Longfellow intended.

And thus endeth the quibbling.