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I am really struggling today to know what to say about this song.

Partly, it’s because I didn’t look ahead enough to think about interviewing colleagues Julica Hermann DelaFuente or Marisol Caballero, both of whom might have more insight into the difficulties or joys of this Mexican folk tune appearing in our hymnal – perhaps there will be a Hymn by Hymn Extra in our near future…

What can say is that it likely got noticed because (again) of the folkies we all know and love, this time the incomparable Joan Baez. While David Arkin’s lyrics were written for the 1976 song collection “How Can I Keep from Singing?” and published by the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, they appear to be reasonable musical translations of what appear to be original Spanish lyrics (except for the rooster crowing verse – which seems sad, since I want to hear a congregation sing “quiri, quiri, quiri” and “cara, cara, cara” and “pio, pio, pio” – or at least “cock-a-doodle-doo” and “cluck, cluck, cluck” and “cheep, cheep, cheep.”).

All the colors, yes, the colors we see in the springtime with all of its flowers.
All the colors, when the sunlight shines out through a rift in the cloud and it showers.
All the colors, as a rainbow appears when a storm cloud is touched by the sun.
All the colors abound for the whole world around and for ev’ryone under the sun.

All the colors, yes, the colors of people parading on by with their banners.
All the colors, yes, the colors of pennants and streamers and plumes and bandannas.
All the colors, yes, the colors of people now taking their place in the sun.
All the colors abound for the whole world around and for ev’ryone under the sun.

All the colors, yes, the black and the white and the red and the brown and the yellow.
All the colors, all the colors of people who smile and shake hands and say “Hello!”
All the colors, yes, the colors of people who know that their freedom is won.
All the colors abound for the whole world around and for ev’ryone under the sun.

De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera.
De colores, de colores son los pajaritos que vienen de a fuera.
De colores, de colores es al arco iris que vemos lucir.
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi.

My problem in response is this: is it misappropriation? Should we have all the Spanish verses? Should we sing those?

I also bristle at the first line of the third verse. And I fear that white congregations don’t know how to sing this, and thus turn it into something it is not (often a dirge, sometimes almost a polka, and never – more’s the pity – on guitar). And I’m not sure if I’m making assumptions or judgments that aren’t mine to make.

Meanwhile, I’m going to leave you with this recording of the song by Mexican musician José-Luis Orozco, whose music promotes bilingual education:

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I am such a geek.

After singing this hymn (and loving it), I looked to see who wrote the lyrics, and I wondered to myself, in the pattern of our Universalist forebear Hosea Ballou: Do I love this lyric because Mark Belletini wrote it, or did Mark Belletini happen to be the person who wrote a lyric I love?

I can say in true Universalist fashion that it is the latter, and, it’s awfully wonderful to have then seen it written by Mark, whose words I adored from afar for years and who now is a friend and frequent reader of the Hymn by Hymn series. Additionally, Mark was on the Hymnal Commission, and he often offers a perspective about the hymns they included. I hope that once the flurry of spring is past and General Assembly is under our belts, I can find some time to visit with him and get more stories and insight about the curation of Singing the Living Tradition.

But I digress.

This hymn, y’all. Set to a joyful (and somewhat familiar) Hebrew folk song, Mark’s lyrics make a strong and poetic connection between the Exodus story and the reasons we tell it today during Passover. And… when you look at the verses closely, it could have been written for 2017:

(Chorus)
Bring out the festal bread, and sing songs of freedom.
Shout with the slaves who fled, and sing songs of freedom.

What modern pharaohs live in arrogance crownéd?
Who shall be sent to challenge folly unbounded?

(Chorus)

Chains still there are to break; their days are not finished.
Metal or subtle-made they’re still not diminished.

(Chorus)

Still does resentment bind each brother and sister.
Still do the plagues affect us red as the river.

(Chorus)

Long be our journeying, yet justice is worth it;
dance, sister Miriam, and help us to birth it.

(Chorus)

O people, lift your heads and look to the mountains;
bushes aflame still call us, rocks still gush fountains!

(Chorus)

Now I’m sure if we asked nicely, Mark would be willing to adjust the “brother and sister” line to something like “family and neighbor” since we weren’t hip to the gender spectrum in the early 1990s, but otherwise, wow.  And thanks for naming Miriam – she who gets little notice but who was a pretty wise partner in this journey when brother Aaron was, well, the worst brother in the Bible after those awful siblings in Genesis.

And while this is meant for the Passover season, I think it’s okay to sing outside of then, because we always need to sing songs of freedom and remember the systems Moses & Co. were escaping – especially since we see them played out in living color every day.

We must lift our heads out of the horror and look to the mountains, seeing the bushes aflame still calling us.

And then bring out the festal bread and sing songs of freedom.

Lord knows we need them.

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This is one of those hymns that make you go “huh!” (And that isn’t a bad thing.)

First “huh” – it’s a Pentecost song, most definitely, stuck in the Worship section. And I go “huh, is that so we’ll use it, because some music directors and ministers will flip right by that liturgical season?”

Second “huh” – it’s a spiritual from the 18th century, with unknown origins. And I go “huh, check out that coded language in the second verse, pointing to the Underground Railroad!”

(Chorus)
Ev’ry time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.
Yes, ev’ry time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart, I will pray.

Upon the mountain, my God spoke,
o’er the mount came fire and smoke.
All around me looks so shine,
ask my God if all was mine.

(Chorus)

The River Jordan runs right cold,
chills the body, not the soul.
Ain’t but one train on this track,
runs to heaven and right back.

(Chorus)

Third “huh” – the first hit I get when putting this title into Google is Nat King Cole. “Huh, I didn’t know he did an album of hymns and spirituals…. is it sacrilege that I don’t like this version?”

Fourth “huh” I wonder if I can find a less late-50s-good-for-the-white-Ed-Sullivan-audience version on YouTube version to share with y’all, because “huh – this is a song you need to experience, not talk about.”

I did spend a long time listening to versions – and there are a plethora out there. But my eye was caught by the suggestion that the African American choral composer and arranger Moses Hogan did an arrangement of this song, and so I started listening to those. To be honest, there are a LOT of bad versions, mostly sung by high school and college ensembles. There’s the overproduced version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, too, and men-only or women-only versions.

But “huh” happened again, when I found a version that really moved me, by the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. Here they are, in some traditional garb (which is reflective of the Spanish influence on the indigenous culture, something I learned about during my CPE unit with a Filipino supervisor). I love this version, because there is such life and light in the soloist’s voice, demeanor, and eyes.

Enjoy. Feel the spirit.

 

Postscript: Sorry these are coming out so late these days – I seem to be experiencing a shift in my sleep habits since Easter. We’ll see if this is the new pattern or if I’ll go back to rising earlier.

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Sometimes all you really have to say is YES!

I love this Hymn. I love that we sing this joyful alleluia to the earth and all its inhabitants, and that we use an Easter Hymn to sing this joy.

(Edit 4/24/17: In my sleep-deprived state, I called this an Easter hymn, but research by my colleague Aaron Stockwell reveals this is actually a shorter version of a Christian classic, All Creatures of our God and King, adapted from words of Francis of Assisi. Why I think of this as an Easter song, I’m not sure, but I do, but maybe I should stop that. Or maybe this is next year’s Easter sermon…)

Now I realize I have complained before about hymns that don’t really do anything except say yay to a litany of things. It happens frequently in songs connected to nature, because there is so dang much of it that’s so varied.

So what makes this different?

I am not sure, but I think it’s the alleluia. This is a praise song, pure and simple, and there’s an exuberance that comes in moments of praise.

I also think it’s different because the final verse serves as a reminder that we are part of this creation too, and by golly, we have a responsibility.

All creatures of the earth and sky,
come, kindred, lift your voices high,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Bright burning sun with golden beam,
soft shining moon with silver gleam:

(Chorus)
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Swift rushing wind so wild and strong,
white clouds that sail in heav’n along,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Fair rising morn in praise rejoice,
high stars of evening find a voice:

(Chorus)

Cool flowing water, pure and clear,
make music for all life to hear,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Dance, flame of fire, so strong and bright,
and bless us with your warmth and light:

(Chorus)

Embracing earth, you, day by day,
bring forth your blessings on our way,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
All herbs and fruits that richly grow,
let them the glory also show:

(Chorus)

All you of understanding heart,
forgiving others, take your part,
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Let all things now the Holy bless,
and worship God in humbleness:

(Chorus)

I will end with two notes:

First, I had a last minute request to be present at a youth con, and I’m exhausted.  I have not done much research, by which I mean no research…

Second, what a perfect song to sing on Earth Day Weekend, a day after tens of thousands marched for science.

Yay!

Alleluia!

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I wonder how many denominations have Duke Ellington in their hymnals?

A hat tip to our hymnal commission for finding a place for this piece. And, as I’ve talked about before, this fits in the ‘not every song in the hymnal is meant for the congregation to sing’ category – although I would love to be present in a congregation that knows how to sing jazz together.

Now I will admit, I only kinda knew this one before I got to it, which is a surprise, as my parents were huge fans of jazz from the big band era and the Harlem renaissance, and I am fairly sure this song was on one of the Ellington albums they owned. But maybe not – as I learned from reviewer Ken Dryden at All Music,

“Come Sunday” was the spiritual movement of Duke Ellington’s extended work “Black, Brown & Beige,” but after the longer piece was lambasted by critics attending its premiere at the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, Ellington performed the complete work just once more before reworking it into a smaller suite.

So it’s possible this song only later found its way into collections. But either way, it’s not that familiar to me.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate it now…wow, do I. I even appreciate its connection to Easter. I wondered, when I read that, why this wasn’t in the Easter section, but then I thought that would limit this amazing piece. But look at these words:

Oo Oo Come Sunday, oh, come Sunday, that’s the day.

(Refrain)
Lord, dear Lord above,
God Almighty, God of love,
please look down and see my people through.

I believe that God put sun and moon up in the sky.
I don’t mind the gray skies, ‘cause they’re just clouds passing by.

(Refrain)

Heaven is a goodness time, a brighter light on high.
(Spoken) Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,
(Sung) and have a brighter by and by.

(Refrain)
I believe God is now, was then, and always will be.
With God’s blessing we can make it through eternity.

If that’s not a prayer for resurrection, I don’t know what is.

Now I can’t let this one go by without sharing a few versions. The first is from a church choir in Nebraska, whose version isn’t the most inspiring but helped me learn the song so I could sing it this morning.

This one is the incomparable Mahalia Jackson, singing with Sir Duke himself:

There are, of course, as many covers as there are jazz musicians. But I wanted to close with this little gem by Abbey Lincoln, complete with pops and scratches from the well-worn LP, that moved me to tears:

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I have stared at the screen for probably twenty minutes, unsure how to start today’s post.

Do I talk about how joyful this song is, in the midst of crisis? And how joy comes out of pains, sorrows, and troubles?

Do I talk about how the notes on this are so sketchy we really can only call it “traditional” in the hymnal and Between the Lines and it’s only in the internet age that we learn it is indeed a spiritual from slave times? And how seeing “Traditional” today feels like whitewashing?

Do I talk about how our General Assembly theme is “Resist and Rejoice” and this song seems to fit right in with that theme? (And do I talk about how hard General Assembly and Ministry Days might be?)

Or, do I take a moment and share some things I just learned about Sojourner Truth, for whom this tune was named?

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since I laid my burden down.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since I laid my burden down.

Feel like shouting, “Hallelujah!” …

Life is sweeter, so much sweeter. …

Feel like dancing, hallelujah! …

Love is shining all around me, …

Yeah, let’s do that.

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree in 1797; her father had been captured in his native Ghana and sold into slavery while her mother was the daughter of people captured in Guinea.

She spoke only Dutch until she was 9 years old. Why? Because she was a slave just south of Kingston, NY, which at the time was almost entirely inhabited by the Dutch.

While New York went through an abolition process starting in 1799 and ending in 1827, Isabella’s owner reneged on a promise to release her early, and so she left early anyway, with her baby daughter Sophia. “I did not run off,” she said, “for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right.”

After conversion to Methodism, she heard a message from God that told her to go forth and speak the truth about slavery, and she adopted the name Sojourner Truth in response.

She spoke widely about slavery and suffrage throughout the Northeast. In 1850 her memoirs were published under the title The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. Truth dictated her recollections to a friend, Olive Gilbert, since she could not read or write, and William Lloyd Garrison wrote the book’s preface.

And now, here’s the real shame, as explained in a piece about her at biography.com,

In May of 1851, Truth delivered a speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron. The extemporaneous speech, recorded by several observers, would come to be known as “Ain’t I a Woman?” The first version of the speech, published a month later by Marius Robinson, editor of Ohio newspaper The Anti-Slavery Bugle, did not include the question “Ain’t I a woman?” even once. Robinson had attended the convention and recorded Truth’s words himself. The famous phrase would appear in print 12 years later, as the refrain of a Southern-tinged version of the speech. It is unlikely that Sojourner Truth, a native of New York whose first language was Dutch, would have spoken in this Southern idiom.

Lord have mercy. Not only did this woman have to stand up to white women and argue that they were ignoring women of color (something that still happens, much to our shame), but she also had been turned into a caricature. So much so that in 1861, when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote for The Atlantic what editors of that magazine now call a “hyperbolic portrait of Truth [that] romanticized her in contemporary racial tropes and popularized an enduring nickname, the “Libyan Sibyl,” Stowe even cast her as having been a Southern slave.

Lord have mercy, what we did to this woman’s history and legacy. Because she was amazing, without all of the BS that was layered on her both during and after her life.

I am so sorry this happened.

And dammit, this kind of BS keeps happening.

In 2017.

Lord have mercy.

 

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Artists of all stripes have a signature style, a turn of phrase or brush or pen or finger that marks them as distinctive, a common theme or mood that repeats throughout a body of work.

If we are seeing a representative sampling of Brian Wren’s hymns, then his signature is a propensity for expanding the labels we use for the Divine, in a Christian milieu. And while I don’t always like his hymns (much to the dismay of some of my colleagues), it is good that we have in musical arts (as with all art) a propensity to challenge the norms.

In this hymn, Wren goes a step beyond lists and offers an actual point: hush, shout, sing! Do a thing! Don’t just wax poetic (or is that pedantic?) about God, worship! Proclaim!

And because of this, I can forgive Wren his predisposition for lists.

God of many names, gathered into one,
in your glory come and meet us, moving, endlessly becoming:
God of hovering wings, womb and birth of time,
joyfully we sing your praises, breath of life in every people,

(Chorus)
Hush, hush, halleluia, halleluia!
Shout, shout, halleluia, halleluia!
Sing, sing, halleluia, halleluia!
Sing God is love, God is love!

God of Jewish faith, Exodus and Law,
in your glory come and meet us, joy of Miriam and Moses:
God of Jesus Christ, rabbi of the poor,
joyfully we sing your praises, crucified, alive forever,

(Chorus)

God of wounded hands, web and loom of love,
in your glory come and meet us, Carpenter of new creation:
God of many names gathered into one,
joyfully we sing your praises, moving, endlessly becoming,

(Chorus)

I will also say this is one of the more interesting tunes I’ve heard his lyrics set to – where Name Unnamed can feel very dull and pedestrian after half a verse, this melody by William Rowan has some interest, and the chorus has energy. It requires a bit of teaching/modeling before letting a congregation sing it, but it has definite potential, especially this week, as we have just celebrated Easter. (And maybe it is an Easter song?)

One final note: This is the first song of a new section, Jewish and Christian Teachings, under the heading Worship. Thus, I might have had a bit of whiplash, given that the congregation I serve is working through Buddhism this month in our Conversation with World Religions, and given that yesterday’s final hymn of the “Common Ground” section was a Hindu song of devotion. I thought to myself, after singing through,  “God of many names, eh? Well… God of many CHRISTIAN names…” because that’s what it is.

Anyway, lo and behold, a Brian Wren song that I don’t despise! Halleluiah!

 

Image; “A Heart So Big” by Jason Cianelli.

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I wish…

I wish I lived with someone, because I would have made them sing this round with me so I could revel in the fullness of this beautiful piece. Although there’s a good chance I would have gotten the pre-coffee stink eye, so maybe it’s just as well.

I wish the hymnal indicated that it’s Arabic. Not because most won’t figure it out, but it feels a bit like erasure to me. Maybe I’m a little oversensitive these days, but I am keenly aware of subtle methods of cultural erasure.

I wish I was less keenly aware of the Christian liturgical calendar that says we don’t sing alleluias during Lent, but then I remembered that I am not a Christian, the round is not Christian, and anyway, all those choirs rehearsing for Easter Sunday have to sing it over and over and over…

I wish I could articulate why, after this week that has shaken our institution, we should sing praises to God (however we understand “God”), but we should.

Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah,
Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah.

I wish I could hug you all right now, my gentle, loving, funny, insightful readers. It means the world to me that you find something to keep your interest, and even more when you comment here or on social media.

(I wish I hadn’t used “I wish” as my hook, because now I will be singing that piece from Into The Woods all day. There’s nothing worse than giving yourself an ear worm.)

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Today’s photo is by my friend, photographer Jeremy Garretson – of the Milky Way over Orient Point, Long Island. Maybe this is a good reason to sing praises to God.

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I had the opportunity to sing this once, as a solo, to commemorate Hiroshima Day. While set on a pentatonic scale, it is in what musicologists call Phrygian Dominant Minor Mode – which is another term for “very unfamiliar but striking intervals that are at once difficult and haunting.” It was not easy for me to learn, but I have never forgotten it.

The song is, at its heart, a simple and very popular Japanese folk song from the Edo period (17th century). It’s so popular that it’s used by the Japanese at international events, and it’s well known in Japan that it’s used in some electronic crosswalks as ‘guidance music.’

And the original translation is simply a celebration of spring. YAY SPRING!

 Sakura, sakura,
yayoi no sorawa.
Miwatasu kagiri.
Kasumika kumo ka.
Nioi zo izuru.
Izaya, izaya,
mini yukan.

You see that sentiment in the English text by Edwin Markham:

Cherry blooms, cherry blooms,
cherry blooms are ev’rywhere,
like a cloud from out the sky!
Mists of blossoms fill the air,
cherries, cherries blossoming!
Come and see, come and see;
let all now see and sing.

Cherry blooms, cherry blooms,
all the world their beauty sees!
Yoshino is cherry land;
tatsuta for maple trees;
karasaki for the pine.
Let us go, let us go —
where pine trees greenly shine.

Yay spring!

And then sometime after World War II, to mark the anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, William Wolff wrote these alternative lyrics:

Cherry blooms, cherry blooms,
pink profusion everywhere,
like a mist of gossamer rain
cherry blossoms fill the air,
covering Hiroshima’s plain.
Come and see, spring is here,
it will not long remain.

Cherry blooms, cherry blooms,
when we die as we surely must,
why not under yonder tree?
And when we return to dust,
falling flowers our wreaths will be.
Come and see, come and see,
the fine Hiroshima tree.

Wow.

So… at Easter, I am preaching a sermon called Earth Teach Us Resurrection – with a nod to Linda Hoddy, whose sermon of the same name a decade ago has remained with me. The central metaphor of both sermons is the surprising and almost defiant return of life on Mt. St. Helens, which leads to a consideration of the Easter story with its surprising and almost defiant return of Jesus, and what such surprising and almost defiant returns to life can mean for us today.

And when I read these Hiroshima lyrics, I am struck by the same spirit. The unthinkable set out to destroy life, yet we witness the surprising and almost defiant return to life of the Japanese people – much like their cherry blooms… and it is that life that honors the dead in wreaths and falling flowers.

Yes, I might have written part of my sermon just now – at least some bones of it. In this time of rebirth and regrowth, we need every example we can find of surprising and almost defiant returns to life, so we can learn and accomplish our own.

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I’m a little more in love with this hymn today than I was yesterday.

I’ve used it several times – often with services about the arts or knowledge and reason. But even then, I don’t know that I actually meditated on the lyrics, written by Thomas Troeger, now a professor of preaching at Yale (officially the J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor of Christian Communication – isn’t that a helluva metaphor for preaching?).

But I digress.

The reason I love this hymn a little more is that Troeger’s lyrics rather described my personal theology, which is most decidedly a Universalist process theology. The lyric never defines what the “source of faith and learning” is, but instead invite us to consider the wonder of creation and the act of creating as connected to some source within and beyond us. The lyrics command us to learn and explore and create, and never lose a sense of wonder. And they implore us to use our reason and faith-led, ethical, humanist core to carry out justice and compassion, and to reject things that do not aid in the growth and nurturance of this world.

Just look at these words:

Praise the source of faith and learning that has sparked and stoked the mind
with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed.
Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey
keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray.

Source of wisdom, we acknowledge that our science and our art
and the breadth of human knowledge only partial truth impart.
Far beyond our calculation lies a depth we cannot sound
where the purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.

May our faith redeem the blunder of believing that our thought
has displaced the grounds for wonder which the ancient prophets taught.
May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed
lest we justify some terror with an antiquated creed.

Praise for minds to probe the heavens, praise for strength to breathe the air.
Praise for all that beauty leavens, praise for silence, music, prayer.
Praise for justice and compassion and for strangers, neighbors, friends.
Praise for hearts and lips to fashion praise for love that never ends.

I am weak.

(Also – while the tune has a decidedly Irish lilt, it was a commission, written for the 125th anniversary celebration of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Well met.)

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Image is of the seven wonders of the ‘modern’ world.