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This is a very long song.

I suppose it has to be, given that it’s about life, death, and the whole schmear. But it is a long song, made longer by accompanists who drag it out – and lordy, there seems to be a compulsion amongst some of our accompanists to draaaaag thiiiiiis ooooone ouuuuuut so that we think we’ve lived a full lifetime from the opening laugh to the final answer.

I suppose that, plus the weird compulsion that turns waltzes into drinking songs, makes Shelley Denham’s song a killer. Oh, plus the fact that there’s a battle in the pews between the rhythm written on the page and the rhythm people want to sing. And to Betsy Jo Anglebranndt’s credit, she tried to enforce a most-certainly-not-a-drinking-song syncopation through her arrangement. Too bad so many folks don’t notice.

And did I mention that it’s a long song?

Now I suspect I have 354 haters reading this right now, but bear with me. Do me a favor and read these lyrics as though they are four separate movements in a concerto:

We laugh, we cry, we live, we die; we dance, we sing our song.
We need to feel there’s something here to which we can belong.
We need to feel the freedom just to have some time alone.
But most of all we need close friends we can call our very own.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;
and we have found a need to be together.
We have our hearts to give, we have our thoughts to receive;
and we believe that sharing is an answer.

A child is born among us and we feel a special glow.
We see time’s endless journey as we watch the baby grow.
We thrill to hear imagination freely running wild.
We dedicate our minds and heart to the spirit of this child.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;
and we have found a time to be together.
And with the grace of age, we share the wonder of youth,
and we believe that growing is an answer.

Our lives are full of wonder and our time is very brief.
The death of one among us fills us all with pain and grief.
But as we live, so shall we die, and when our lives are done
the memories we shared with friends, they will linger on and on.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;
and we have found a place to be together.
We have the right to grow, we have the gift to believe
that peace within our living is an answer.

We seek elusive answers to the questions of this life.
We seek to put an end to all the waste of human strife.
We search for truth, equality, and blessed peace of mind.
And then, we come together here, to make sense of what we find.
And we believe in life, and in the strength of love,
and we have found a joy being together.
And in our search for peace, maybe we’ll finally see:
even to question, truly is an answer.

Taken individually, these verses are quite something. Denham has captured something of the UU experience here that I haven’t found anywhere else.

So what do we do with it? First of all, we do not sing all four verses in one sitting. Because unless you have an accompanist who can both take it at a good tempo and maybe change it up with modulations and alternate accompaniments AND a congregation that can sing it well, it just goes on forever and the answer just might be losing the will to live. In other words, choose wisely. Don’t sing the third verse unless there’s been a death in the congregation, maybe don’t sing the second either unless there’s a new birth, the start of an RE year, or a child dedication. Seriously, verses 1 and 4 are plenty and get us to some of the best lines in our hymnody.

Is this a favorite? Nope. Is this on the Nope list? Nope. Am I glad we have it? Absolutely.

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Carpe diem. Que sera, sera. There’s no time like the present. You can’t turn back time.  Learn from yesterday, live today, hope for tomorrow. Time marches on. All the lyrics to this hymn.

Welcome, my friends, to the Henry Blake Cliché Festival (A M*A*S*H reference? Joe Cleveland’s right – I am old) … er, I mean, our hymn about time. John Andrew Storey sets to music (the McKee tune, which we last sang in Freedom Spans both East and West) the cliché of all clichés, that of time marching on and us living in the present.

I mean, it’s a fine sentiment, and useful at those moments when we must haul out all the old wisdom about time marching on; I imagine this would be useful after a significant hardship, or at the New Year, or in services about the eternal Now.

The ceaseless flow of endless time no one can check or stay;
we’ll view the past with no regret, nor future with dismay.

The present slips into the past, and dreamlike melts away;
the breaking of tomorrow’s dawn begins a new today.

The past and future ever meet in the eternal now:
to make each day a thing complete shall be our New Year vow.

But it surely is a bit of a cliché.

Not saying I won’t use it, but only if it truly serves the service.

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I’m finding things a little hard this morning (9/11, Irma, the memories this song stirs), so I’ll let Michael Tino introduce today’s post:

“We confront the complex reality that something can be both insipid and profound simultaneously.”

You see, this song by Carolyn McDade can be awfully sticky-sweet, with its rolling 3/4 time often played too fast or too much like a beer barrel polka. And it seems both universally used and universally loathed. Friends Alex Haider-Winnett and Claire Curole were very clear the other day that they find the tune too boring and too cheery, and the whole “rose in the wintertime” thing either not at all special (because in California, where Alex lives, roses are just all over) or just wrong (because in Maine, where Claire lives, any rose you find in wintertime is the product of a dodgy floral industry).

A lot to dislike. For sure.

But I refuse to dismiss this one out of hand. Sorry, folks. More after the lyrics, which I encourage you to read, not sing:

Come, sing a song with me,
come, sing a song with me,
come, sing a song with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)
And I’ll bring you hope
when hope is hard to find,
and I’ll bring a song of love
and a rose in the wintertime.

Come, dream a dream with me,
come, dream a dream with me,
come, dream a dream with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Come, walk in rain with me,
come, walk in rain with me,
come, walk in rain with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Come, share a rose with me,
come, share a rose with me,
come, share a rose with me,
that I might know your mind.

(Chorus)

Here’s why this song has meaning:

On December 17, 1984, my father died. I was barely 20, and made any  number of bad choices in how I dealt with his loss – including not really processing it as well as I maybe could have. But I always remembered how beautiful and meaningful it was that whoever designed the graveside service had us put roses on the casket – Mom, a red rose, and my siblings and I, white roses.

Fast forward to 2006. December 17 fell on a Sunday, so I signed up to bring flowers. I ordered an arrangement that included three white roses and a red rose, in honor of my father. The sermon was, not surprisingly, about hope, and this was the closing hymn.

The impact of which did not for a second occur to me until we started singing – not in a lively style, but in a more contemplative tempo and mode. The way we sang it gave us a little time to think about what we were singing. “I’ll bring a song of love, and a rose in the wintertime.”

Cue waterworks.

Because I started thinking about my father, not in terms of all the things I never got to do with him or know about him   which was my usual form or mourning for him, but about all the things I did get to experience and learn about him. I actually grieved for the man I knew, not that man that I wish I could have known. Singing this song, on that day, with that bouquet 10 feet away from me, allowed me to grieve again in a healthy way – and, although I didn’t know it at the time, helped make mourning my mother’s death a year later a little easier.

I can’t sing this song without thinking about my father, and about that experience.

Insipid as the song might be.

 

 

 

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It is always a relief to me to turn to a new section of the hymnal; I think it’s because of the frankly unnatural nature of this practice. i was getting worn out by the Insight and Wisdom section, feeling as though I had little of either by the time it all ended.

But now we are in a section called Hope.

Which seems a bit out of step (which means it’s perfect for this practice). It’s a hard day to have hope, when the Western Hemisphere is bearing the wrath of Mother Nature, and there are so many hard things to bear from the current administration.

But hope it is, and so hope it shall have to be.

And as hope hymns go, this one’s pretty decent. Lyrics by Alicia Alexander, and set to Was Gott Thut (the same tune as When Mary Through the Garden Went (Was Gott Thut), we have a good reminder of where to find hope and why it matters:

A promise through the ages rings,
that always, always, something sings.
Not just in May, in finch-filled bower,
but in December’s coldest hour,
a note of hope sustains us all.

A life is made of many things:
bright stars, bleak years, and broken rings.
Can it be true that through all things,
there always, always something sings?
The universal song of life.

Entombed within our deep despair,
our pain seems more than we can bear;
but days shall pass, and nature knows
that deep between the winter snow
a rose lies curled and hums its song.

For something always, always sings.
This is the message Easter brings:
from deep despair and perished things
a green shoot always, always springs,
and something always, always sings.

Almost like it’s a good wrap up for an Easter service.

I say “almost” because as Michael Tino and I talked about in a Hymn by Hymn Extra, Easter is not Spring – and this hymn makes a direct connection.

Yet putting Easter in a larger context, and drawing us into the entombment metaphor here, does offer some comfort, at least to me. I would still use this as a closing song at Easters when hope is he central theme.

Truth is, despite the Easter/Spring thing (which probably guys Michael more than it does me), I rather like this one.

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I am very tired of the humanist/theist debate. It seems to me that there are so many bigger, more important things for us to wrestle with, especially since – at least in Unitarian Universalist circles – even our most divergent theologies support the principles where we all meet.

And I get that it’s harder to be a religious humanist in America than it is to be a liberal theist. I know that the process of exploration and discovery of a personal non-theistic theology means (as wrestling with our theologies always does) thinking about language, finding entry points, seeking new ways of capturing spiritual connection.

And… I’d like to think that most of our religious professionals take care to ensure there is something for everyone in a service, or over the span of a church year, certainly. Sure, a service about the ten commandments will be heavy on the god language, but a service on awe and wonder in scientific discovery will likely ignore god language entirely. And many social justice sermons are very humanist, because that’s what social justice is: concern and care for humans.

It seems to me we waste a lot of time arguing about whether there is a god or not, when that’s a personal theology anyway, and what matters is how we treat each other and how we answer the call of love.

This soapbox, by the way, is brought to you by the crown jewel of the debate – a poem by William Herbert Carruth, set to an old New England melody:

A firemist and a planet, a crystal and a cell,
a starfish and a saurian, and caves where ancients dwelt;
the sense of law and beauty, a face turned from the sod —
some call it evolution, and others call it God.

Haze on the far horizon, the infinite tender sky,
the ripe, rich tints of cornfields, and wild geese sailing high;
and over high and lowland, the charm of goldenrod —
some people call it autumn, and others call it God.

Like tides on crescent seabeach, when moon’s so new and thin,
into our hearts high yearnings come welling, surging in,
come from the mystic ocean whose rim no foot has trod —
some people call it longing, and others call it God.

A sentry lone and frozen, a mother starved for her brood,
and Socrates’ dread hemlock, and Jesus on the rood;
and millions, who, though nameless, the straight, hard pathway trod —
some call it consecration, and others call it God.

Carruth’s point – which often gets lost – is that we all have different ways of understanding the interdependent web of all existence, and our reactions to it. And none is better or worse – just different perspectives.

Now the truth is, I’m not fond of this hymn. I find it scans awkwardly and has some outmoded language. But it makes the point that Down the Ages We Have Trod also makes – that there are many paths, many theologies, many ways to understand Mystery, so get over it.

My calling myself a theist means that I use theistic language to describe what others would use non-theistic language to describe – in terms of mystery, wonder, connection, and sense of the expansive infinite All. But in all the ways that I understand this world and our call in it, I am most assuredly a humanist – as is probably every UU. So I really don’t see the need for the debate.

I will leave you with this beloved poem, “That Which Holds All” by the late Nancy Shaffer:

Because she wanted everyone to feel included
in her prayer,
she said right at the beginning
several names for the Holy:
Spirit , she said, Holy One, Mystery, God.

But then thinking these weren’t enough ways of addressing
that which cannot fully be addressed, she added
particularities, saying,

Spirit of Life, Spirit of Love,
Ancient Holy One, Mystery We Will Not Ever Fully Know,
Gracious God, and also Spirit of this Earth,
God of Sarah, Gaia, Thou.

And then, tongue loosened, she fell to naming
superlatives as well: Most Creative One,
Greatest Source, Closest Hope –
even though superlatives for the Sacred seemed to her
probably redundant, but then she couldn’t stop:

One who Made the Stars, she said, although she knew
technically a number of those present didn’t believe
the stars had been made by anyone or thing
but just luckily happened.
One Who Is an Entire Ocean of Compassion,
she said, and no one laughed.
That Which Has Been Present Since Before the Beginning,
she said, and the room was silent.

Then, although she hadn’t imagined it this way,
others began to offer names.
Peace, said one.
One My Mother Knew, said another.
Ancestor, said a third.
Wind.
Rain.
Breath, said one near the back.
Refuge.
That Which Holds All.
A child said, Water.
Someone said, Kuan Yin.

Then: Womb.
Witness.
Great Kindness.
Great Eagle.
Eternal Stillness.

And then, there wasn’t any need to say the things
she’d thought would be important to say,
and everyone sat hushed, until someone said

Amen.

Image courtesy of NASA.

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I feel like an apostate for saying this, but I do not care for this hymn.

Now let me be clear: I like the tune (an initially tricky Swiss folk tune called Solothurn). And I like Wendell Berry’s poetry. And I don’t even mind the two together – they seem to fit well, with some musical phrasing that matches the poetic meter beautifully.

I think my problem is this – and it’s something I’ve encountered before in this practice but didn’t quite have words for until this moment (which is nearly an hour coming…this has been a hard write today): I want hymns to move the plot, not describe the scene. And I know that’s unreasonable, since every good musical has at least one descriptive song, usually in the beginning (“Fugue for Tin Horns” from Guys and Dolls, “Another Openin’, Another Show” from Kiss Me Kate, “Six Months” from Damn Yankees); of course, even those set up the situation or the setting (New York gamblers, theater people, baseball fanatics). This hymn doesn’t even do that. It just describes a particular part of the interdependent web.

It does describe that part beautifully, of course:

O slowly, slowly, they return
to some small woodland let alone:
great trees outspreading and upright,
apostles of the living light.

As patient stars they build in air
tier after tier a timbered choir,
stout beams upholding weightless grace
of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,
uprisings of their native ground,
downcomings of the distant light;
they are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,
their life’s a benefaction made,
and is a benediction said o’er
all the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
fly down the wind, and we are pleased
to walk in radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised.

I just don’t know why it’s a hymn. And I don’t know why it’s in the Insight and Wisdom section, and not the World of Nature section. And again, I don’t know that a congregation singing this will get the grace of Berry’s poetry unless they spend time with it. And I don’t know where or when I’d use it as a hymn. As a reading, absolutely. But this doesn’t do the work of a hymn, in my opinion.

Perhaps it’s a failing of imagination on my part. But I am not feeling it.

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I am in a Lichtenstein painting: “Oh no! I forgot to read George Santayana!”

And I’m a bit embarrassed, largely because he wrote about spirituality and aesthetics, and this is the area of my ministry and while God knows I have read a ton of literature in my area of ministry, how is it I’ve never read – or frankly, been directed to read – Santayana. What’s crazy is that I know more about Orlando Gibbons, the 16th century English composer of our tune, than I do about 20th century Spanish philosopher Santayana.

Sometimes this spiritual practice of mine is an unexpected wake up call.

What it isn’t, today, is a love of this particular hymn. Now hear me out: I love the tune (Song 1) – partly because it’s Gibbons and partly because it’s another Vaughan Williams arrangement. And I love the lyrics. And I don’t even mind them together (their mood matches). What I don’t love is the same thing I didn’t love about our setting of Frost’s poem in O Give Us Pleasure in the Flowers Today: I want time to savor and explore and think deeply about the words, not rush through them because of the demands of the music. Seriously, take a few moments to delight in these words:

O world, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
and on the inward vision close the eyes,
but it is wisdom to believe the heart.
To trust the soul’s invincible surmise
is all of science and our only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
that lights the pathway but one step ahead
across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
by which alone the mortal heart is led
unto the thinking of the thought divine.

And this leads me to wonder whether this should have been included instead as a reading – would it be used more, or less? I honestly have never used it nor remember ever singing it, but I wish I’d been more aware of it before now – not just because I haven’t read enough Santayana, but because I would have used it in at least three different services.

Grateful, however, for this practice.

Now off to read some Santayana.

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If you’re looking for music to accompany a service about anti-intellectualism and fake news, this is your hymn.

Heck, even if you’re just looking for music to accompany a service about James Luther Adams’ five smooth stones, or William Ellery Channing’s Baltimore sermon, or our fourth principle, this is your hymn.

Knowledge, they say drives wonder from the world;
they say it still, though all the dust’s ablaze with marvels at their feet,
while Newton’s laws foretell that knowledge one day shall be song.

We seem like children wandering by the shore,
gathering pebbles colored by the wave; while the great sea of truth,
from sky to sky stretches before us, boundless, unexplored.

Adapted from a longer piece by Arthur Noyes, this captures in two short verses the value we place on reason and awe of the natural world. And to be honest, nothing gets me thinking loftier thoughts about God than the latest photos from the Hubble or a previously unimaginable discovery of an animal, or a star system, or a cure.

Pretty much, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, this is your hymn.

That is, if you can get the hang of the tune.

Composed by Cyril Taylor, this tune is a bit tricky and with an odd rhythm. I find it clunky and – broken record time – I lose the depth of the words because I’m trying to figure out how to sing it. That is not good, if this is sung congregationally. As a solo, perhaps. Now I should note that this was previously in the Celebration of Life, the 1964 hymnal, so it’s got some history. But as much as I love the lyrics, I don’t love the tune. So much so that I’ve scrapped the music altogether and used Noyes’ words as a reading.

Because it’s worth shouting from the rooftops some days.

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True fact: context matters.

I mean, I know you know this, but in this case it’s not just the context of where the lyrics come from or when they were written or how they were used. In this case, it’s about the accompaniment – in other words, the context in which the melody sits.

And I’m struggling with this one, because the tune seems hard and I don’t know the context.

Now you’d think it would be easy to find – a famous composer (the Hungarian Unitarian Béla Bartók), and a note from Between the Lines clearly stating that these lyrics (by American Unitarian Universalist minister George Beach) were written to be sung with the Chorale tune from Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. Sadly, I don’t know the piece at all, and thus, I’m struggling to find the melody Beach is referring to here.

And thus, I don’t have the musical context for this tune…and that takes away from the lyrical context.

Perfect Singer, songs of earth rise on every field and hearth;
let our voices sound again ancient songs of joy and pain.

All your creatures strive for life, suffer hurt in angry strife,
seek compassion, find release in the covenant of peace.

Sing a sacred melody for the justice that shall be;
let our harmonies resolve dissonance in steadfast love.

Steadfast Seeker, find our song woven into lives made strong;
let the patterns of surprise kindle hope with each sunrise.

What I will say is that given some of the apparent dissonance in the tune, these lyrics are perfectly suited, as the perfect singer isn’t all about the good times. No, it’s about finding joy out of sorrow, comfort out of pain, and letting our compassion lead in places of suffering.

Truly, it’s an amazing lyric. I wish I knew how the song goes.

EDIT: The fantastic Michael Tino sussed it out for me! He found this page that breaks down the Concerto and discovered the chorale is a brass trio in the middle of the second movement. You can hear it here – our melody starts at 2:52:

Now it’s still a bit dissonant, but it’s not as hard to sing as I feared. In fact it’s rather beautiful. I therefore mark this “Complex but Worth it.”

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Welcome to Hymn By Hymn After Dark!

Sorry, there’s no sexy R&B played by Venus Flytrap, or suggestive storylines, or anything anywhere near close to that. I’m in a tshirt and leggings, hair a mess, a Stuff You Should Know podcast on my phone. But it’s dark! And it has been a long day, since the early rising sing as I dried my hair, through last minute preparations for a closing ceremony, packing, cleaning, saying tearful goodbyes, processing, packing, cleaning, and finally battling summertime traffic on the Garden State Parkway  and the New York State Thruway to finally arrive home. But it’s been good.

As is this hymn. Now I’m not a big fan of the tune, Brother James’ Air, which is a little complicated to sing. But the lyrics, by William Oliver and adapted by Waldemar Hille, are a good and delightful celebration of humanity. I like that it is framed as gifts (rather than commodities) because whether or not you believe there is something beyond us, I hope we can all agree that life is a gift of something, even if it’s a gift of crazy random happenstance.

Life is the greatest gift of all the riches on this earth;
life and its creatures, great and small, of high and lowly birth:
so treasure it and measure it with deeds of shining worth.

Mind is the brightest gift of all, its thought no barrier mars;
it seeks creation’s hidden plan, its quest surmounts all bars;
it reins the wind, it chains the storm, it weighs the outmost stars.

We are of life, its shining gift, the measure of all things;
up from the dust our temples lift, our vision soars on wings;
for seed and root, for flower and fruit, our grateful spirit sings.

My one quibble would be the whole “high and lowly birth” thing; I am pretty sure that’s an older way of indicating the things that fly versus and the things that burrow in the ground, but it’s a bit problematic in today’s frames. On the whole though, the lyrics are expansive and quite lovely.