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In this exciting episode: Jason Shelton did a great innovative thing and I just had to go and innovate it further.

This may be one of my favorite liturgical pieces – a chorus by Jason Shelton to make new the stunning piece by Sophia Lyon Fahs that most of us use at Christmastime, often on Christmas eve. The melody is sweet and simple, warm and peaceful. Jason’s response turns the ‘ho hum, we’ve heard it before’ recitation into an interactive, musical responsive reading. And the truth is, we need more of this kind of thing – I play a lot with unexpected sung responses, but I’m not a composer, so I’ve interleaved pieces. Jason just goes right ahead and composes something. Bless him for that gift.

Anyway. The piece as Jason envisioned it is as follows, interleaving with each stanza of the Fahs poem:

Chorus:
Each night a child is born is a holy night:
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping,
Each night a child is born is a holy night.

Reader:
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.

Chorus

Reader:
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wise men see a star to show where to find
the babe that will save humankind.

 

Chorus

Reader:
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
Fathers and mothers–
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, “Where and how will this new life end?

Chorus

And when you sing it with the congregation, that’s perfect.

However, the first time I used it, in December 2005 at my home congregation, we didn’t yet have a full complement of STJ, nor did the minister think we had time to teach the congregation a new piece for Christmas Eve. So I involved the choir… and yes, I innovated. I imagined an a capella setting, with the choir singing parts as written in STJ, and then landing on a hum to underscore the reader. Here’s how I have done it:

Choir (singing):
Each night a child is born is a holy night –
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
Each night a child is born is a holy night.
(hum final chord under reader – don’t do bass tag)

Reader:
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.

Choir (singing):
(Back to beginning of song)
Each night a child is born is a holy night…
(hum landing chord under reader)

Reader:
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wise men see a star to show where to find
the babe that will save humankind.

Choir (singing):
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
(hum landing chord under reader)

Reader:
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
Fathers and mothers–
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”

Choir (singing)
(back to full chorus)
Each night a child is born is a holy night –
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
Each night a child is born is a holy night.
(include bass tag)

It goes a little faster, for sure. It also lines out the song so the next time the congregation encounters it, it’s a bit more familiar. But mostly, it helps introduce Jason’s innovation in an innovative way.

Yes, there’s a gender binary issue here – many change “fathers and mothers” to “loving parents” or some variation.  I don’t think it changes the meaning or sentiment to ensure all are included here. It’s worth making that expansive change, because this is a gorgeous piece – whether read as a poem, as a responsive reading, or with some variation on the sung response.

—

I have no idea who this baby is – it’s just a great photo from Pixabay.

 

 

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When I was a little girl, my mom would come to tuck me in every night and sing lullabies to me. Now I’m pretty certain some of the songs weren’t actually lullabies, but many of them were. She had a rich alto voice, and she loved to sing. At one point, she put the songs on a cassette that met its untimely death by water damage. But I can still remember her sitting on my bed, singing one after another like a lullaby medley.

In fact, Mom sang a lot. She’d sing morning songs, like “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain, from the bottom of the stairs to wake us up. She’d sing “Poor Jud” from Oklahoma to help her keep time when kneading bread. She’d sing doing chores, driving places, gardening, or just when a song struck her.

And you wonder where I get it from.

Mom died ten years ago this month, and it feels simultaneously like so long ago and just yesterday. And in fact, the memory of her sitting on the side of my bed, singing to me all those years ago (lordy, half a century ago!), feels fresh and present. For all our struggles – because what strong daughter doesn’t have some struggles with their strong mother – Mom was a deeply compassionate, loving, caring, funny, creative woman. I get some of my fierceness from her, along with her eye for detail, a love of language, skill in the kitchen, and of course the music.

Including this beautiful lullaby.

And now, apparently, my spiritual practice this morning is to sit on the sofa with the hymnal on my lap, computer open and waiting, bawling my eyes out and not actually singing.

Sleep, my child, and peace attend you, all through the night.
I who love you shall be near you, all through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping, all through the night.

Mother, I can feel you near me, all through the night.
Father, I know you can hear me, all through the night.
And when I am your age nearly,
still I will remember clearly,
how you sang and held me dearly, all through the night.

While the moon her watch is keeping, all through the night;
while one-half the world is sleeping, all through the night.
Even while the sun comes stealing,
visions of the day revealing,
breathes a pure and holy feeling, all through the night.

This traditional lullaby has been adapted by Alicia Carpenter but I don’t notice a difference between what is on the page and what I remember… and frankly, I haven’t the wherewithal to care at the moment.

It’s lovely, and sad, and sweet, and now I know why I will never use it – because it wouldn’t do to have the minister baptize the child with tears.

—

Mom loved Colonial-era décor, and our house was an early American marvel when she got done with it. We’d often go to historical sites for day trips and vacations, and this photo of a cradle also reminds me of her.

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Huh – it’s autumn and I am singing an autumn hymn? That’s not bound to happen very often.

If only I liked it more.

I actually got a little excited to sing an autumn hymn on this Thanksgiving day. And then I sang it, and while I was unimpressed by the lyrics (I’ll get to that), I found myself connecting to memories because of the tune.

It’s a lullaby – fairly simple to sing, and quite familiar. As I started to sing, I was transported back to my bedroom in our farmhouse on Taborton Mountain – the northernmost mountain of the Taconic range, which help make the Hudson Valley a valley. Mom would come into my room when I had climbed into bed and sing lullabies. There must have been a dozen or more that she sang, in a deep alto voice. At some point in the 1970s she recorded them onto a cassette tape – but it got lost, or broken, or taped over, and so I don’t have those songs anymore. But I do remember many of them, including this soft tune (Cradle Song).

The lyrics to this hymn are not the lullaby lyrics – they are instead an unremarkable ode to the turning of the year.

In sweet fields of autumn the gold grain is falling,
the white clouds drift lonely, the wild swan is calling.
Alas for the daisies, the tall fern and grasses,
when wind-sweep and rainfall fill lowlands and passes.

The snows of December shall fill windy hollow;
the bleak rain trails after, the March wind shall follow.
The deer through the valleys leave print of their going;
and diamonds of sleet mark the ridges of snowing.

The stillness of death shall stoop over the water,
the plover sweep low where the pale streamlets falter;
but deep in the earth clod the black seed is living;
when spring sounds her bugles for rousing and giving.

To be honest, I don’t know when I would ever use this hymn in worship. The lullaby tune feels out of place for morning worship, and the lyrics don’t move worship along. They’re like a set piece in a musical – think “A Bushel and a Peck” from Guys and Dolls: Adelaide sings it on stage, as she’s a performer. The song is cute and features this great secondary character (who actually has some great songs and lines elsewhere in the show), but nothing changes because she sang this – only time has progressed. We learn nothing about character, plot, motives.

Similarly, in my musical theatre theory of worship (one of many frames I like to think about worship through), nothing moves forward here. It’s an ‘oh, look, the seasons change and we’re going to remind ourselves of this fact’ piece – there is, for me, no sense that hearts, minds, or spirits are changed or moved or even really affected by this. They’re more likely to be moved by a memory of the tune than inspired by the lyric.

And now, I expect this will be a favorite of folks I adore and admire, and once again I’ve stepped into the breach and an argument will ensue. Hopefully about the hymn, not about Guys and Dolls, which is an incredibly well-crafted musical, even if Brando did kinda screw up “Luck Be a Lady” in the movie version.

Anyway, I digress. Despite my not really liking this one, I’m dwelling in lots of good memories today, and that’s not a terrible consequence of this practice.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.