By |

Merry Christmas to me – this is one of my very favorite hymns.

First of all, let’s not kid ourselves – 19th century English composer Samuel Wesley knew what he was doing when he wrote the anthem “Praise the Lord, O My Soul,” which includes the melody that we know as “Lead Me Lord.” Its composition itself – even without lyrics – is a prayer, beautifully formed in a conversational style (and an irregular meter) that calls us to speak what is on our hearts. Whether that is a prayer to God (“Lead me lord”) or as we encounter it, a prayer to Creation, this tune – with its complex harmonies yet ease of singing – calls us to look inward even as we look far outward.

And then we add the lyrics – for some Unitarian Universalists, this might be as close to prayer to anything or anyone as they might come. The words themselves draw us outward and inward – stillness, flight, and light become prayerful metaphors for that which our souls cry out for.

Winds be still.
Storm clouds pass and silence come.
Peace grace this time with harmony.
Fly, bird of hope, and shine, light of love,
and in calm let all find tranquility.

Bird fly high.
Lift our gaze toward distant view.
Help us to sense life’s mystery.
Fly high and far, and lead us each to see
how we move through the winds of eternity.

Light shine in.
Luminate our inward view.
Help us to see with clarity.
Shine bright and true so we may join our songs
in new sounds that become full symphony.

When I sing this hymn alone, I find a moment of stillness, a sense of release, and often – like this morning – a few tears that offer a moment of clarity. When I sing this hymn with others, I find a surprising connection, as though we have just breathed together in harmony for the first time and we have been, for even a moment, changed.

I love this hymn. I am grateful the universe conspired to give it to me on this Christmas morning.

To all of you – Happy Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. May this day bring you joy and comfort.

By |

Any other day, I might be up for a significant rewrite of a classic poem, but today is not that day. Snarky, cynical Kimberley is back, and she’s not having it.

I read the lyrics, sang (another fine Southern Harmony tune), then read again, feeling baffled. So I went to the internet to look up the original poem to see if anyone had any commentary, because I just wasn’t getting it.

It took me a long while to find it – finally, the phrase “whirl the glowing wheels” was enough for Google to point me to the original poem “Song of Nature.” For the record, I’m much more familiar with Emerson’s essays than his poetry – and even reading the full poem didn’t ring any bells of familiarity.

Now I am all for one art form inspiring the next – that’s what it’s all about, really. I like it when passages of longer pieces become lyric. I even get adjustments of words to fit musical meter. But this one has gotten under my skin in a bad way, and I think I know why: instead of picking a couple of verses that say something specific, the person who adapted the poem took bits and bobs from throughout the long poem and, to me, edited out the actual spirit of the poem.

The Song of Nature is a first-person song, sung by Nature! This adaptation is third-person – a human’s eye view. Oh gosh, yes, let’s notice once again nature and how long-lived it is. Because we haven’t already done that in previous hymns. But that’s not the point of the poem. The point of the poem is Nature, recounting with joy the long expanse of time through which she has stood and watched sometimes happily, sometimes sadly, as humans play their human games of birth, inspiration, anger, war, peace, and death. That’s the point – Nature sees the long arc of the universe, moral or otherwise, and sings an ode to it.

This hymn hints at what Emerson was going for, but to me takes all the teeth out of it.

No number tallies nature up, no tribe its house can fill;
it is the shining fount of life and pours the deluge still.
And gathers by its fragile powers along the centuries
from race on race the rarest flowers, its wreath shall nothing miss.

It writes the past in characters of rock and fire and scroll,
the building in the coral sea, the planting of the coal.
And thefts from satellites and rings and broken stars it drew,
and out of spent and aged things it formed the world anew.

Must time and tide forever run, nor winds sleep in the west?
Will never wheels which whirl the sun and satellites have rest?
Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, and mix the bowl again;
seethe, Fate, the ancient elements, heat, cold, and peace, and pain.

Blend war and trade and creeds and song, let ripen race on race,
the sunburnt world that we shall breed of all the countless days.
No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, the oldest force is new,
and fresh the rose on yonder thorn gives back the heavens in dew.

And maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe my mood – compromised by bad health news about one of my beloved pets – isn’t up to seeing some of Emerson’s poetry being sung at all. Maybe I stand alone in my frustration and disappointment, wishing for more than a hymn could provide. I mean, it might be weird to sing all the I-statements of this poem; it would easily be confusing to the singer.

So I don’t know… I’m not sure a hymn like this HAD to exist at all, given the plethora of other good nature hymns and the actual power of the original poem.

By |

It’s almost like someone heard me complain about hymns going nowhere, and slid this one right in for me so I wouldn’t lose faith in our hymnal.

This isn’t bad, as hymns go. The title hides the message, for sure – you wouldn’t think something called “In the Spring with Plow and Harrow” would be an anti-war tune, but sure enough: anti-war, anti-greed. And really, we don’t sing the word “avarice” enough in hymns.

In the spring, with plow and harrow,
farmers worked in field and furrow;
now we harvest for tomorrow.

Beauty adds to bounty’s measure
giving freely for our pleasure
sights and sounds and scents to treasure.

But earth’s garden will not flourish
if in greed we spoil and ravish
that which we should prize and cherish.

We must show a deeper caring,
show compassion to the dying,
cease from avarice and warring.

So may we at our thanksgiving
give this pledge to all things living:
that we will obey love’s bidding.

My real problem in writing about this hymn is not the hymn itself – it’s good, it moves, it’s easy to sing, it’s a mid-20th century hymn that doesn’t try to be too clever. My real problem is that I’m becoming frustrated by this lingering in the first source.

You see, while hymnals from Christian denominations are arranged by liturgical season, ours are arranged by source – from the start, we’ve been working through Transcending Mystery and Wonder (don’t believe me? Look at the Contents page of your hymnal). We are about three-quarters of the way through, with more nature, then meditations, mystical songs, and hymns of transience still to go. We will be stuck in the first source until mid-January.

I get it. Oh lordy, do I get it. Through dark days – politically, spiritually, and naturally – it’s been all about transcending mystery and wonder. And sure, on ordinary days in ordinary times, I’m a big fan of the first source. But it just keeps on coming right now, day after day, when I am tired of taking the long view, tired of seeing the long arc of the universe grow longer, tired of looking beyond the here and now for some greater inspiration and meaning, tired of looking at nature to inform us, tired of awe.

Really, it just boils down to being tired, beaten down, still fearful, still angry, feeling uncertain and frustrated, and watching these cold dark days get colder and darker. I’m tired.

But tomorrow, I’ll pick up the hymnal again and sing a hymn of mystery and wonder again, and maybe feel just as tired, or maybe less so, but most certainly will keep on moving forward. Maybe I’ll feel a little more transcendence in another day or so.

By |

Hey, look! We’ve entered the “Harvest and Thanksgiving” section of the hymnal. And we start right off with the usual Thanksgiving song.

C.J.: There’s a usual song?
DONNA: “We Gather Together.”
C.J.: The song.
DONNA: That’s the usual song.
C.J.: So you know it?
DONNA: Everybody knows it.
C.J.: I don’t know it.
DONNA: [sighs] Didn’t you go to elementary school?
C.J.: Yes, right before being a National Merit Scholar.

(Sorry, West Wing fans, I couldn’t find a clip. But it’s season 2, episode 8, “Shibboleth”, written (of course) by Aaron Sorkin).

So yes, there’s a song. And somewhere later in the hymnal, we sing the usual words to the usual song. But here, in the “Harvest and Thanksgiving” section, we sing this paean to humanity.

We sing now together our song of thanksgiving,
rejoicing in goods which the ages have wrought,
for life that enfolds us, and helps and heals and holds us,
and leads beyond the goals which our forebears once sought.

We sing of the freedoms which martyrs and heroes
have won by their labor, their sorrow, their pain;
the oppressed befriending, our ampler hopes defending,
their death becomes a triumph, they died not in vain.

We sing of the prophets, the teachers, the dreamers,
designers, creators, and workers, and seers;
our own lives expanding, our gratitude commanding,
their deeds have made immortal their days and their years.

We sing of community now in the making
in every far continent, region, and land;
with those of all races, all times and names and places,
we pledge ourselves in covenant firmly to stand.

It’s not bad. Overall, it’s a decent “yay, humans” piece, sweet in an approaching-but-not-quite-completely-mired-in-treacle sort of way.

However – and here comes the serious quibble:  What is hard is the ending of the second verse – I am not a fan of the idea that tragic deaths and assassinations are in any way a triumph. “They died not in vain” is a humanist’s way of saying “It is God’s will” and it constantly feels empty and angering. They died and they shouldn’t have is the only right answer. Maybe we get woke and stay woke because they died, but they still should not have died. Death is never a triumph and anyone who says that has a pretty twisted way of understanding life.

But I digress.

The question is this: on balance, would I use this hymn? Probably in the right setting, gritting my teeth through the end of verse two, made easier with a memory of the sweetest flentl in the entire series:

 

By |

I’m not sure I have much to say about this one – partly because I’m jetlagged and got too little sleep thanks to a trip to Phoenix. Yay.

What I know is that the lyrics are fine – another praise for spring. Yay. This set is from the Renaissance, so it’s historical. Yay.

And I know that the tune is lovely – almost as lovely as the man who wrote it, Tom Benjamin. I met Tom at UU Musicians Network conferences, and he was sweet and kind to me.

The year we were in St. Paul, I organized a series of lunchtime salons, where various musicians could perform a piece – sometimes on instruments they don’t normally play, sometimes music they can’t use in worship, sometimes putting together ad hoc combos. I hosted each day’s offerings, knowing that I would close the whole series with Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye” because I’m a huge fan of the American Songbook. I put out a call to get some musicians to play with me, and I was blessed to have Vicki Gordon on piano, Matt Meyer on drums, Dana Decker on bass.

The one that surprised me though, was a meek request from Tom, who asked if he could play clarinet. Now understand: I had been a fan of his for a while, and I was just some random chick who didn’t play an instrument and didn’t compose music, so who the hell was I? And here he is, asking permission to play with me! Well of course I said yes, and we worked out an arrangement where he got to shine. It was amazing. I loved the alchemy of the group, even for that one song. And more, I loved how real, and gentle, and insanely talented Tom is. As a result, I love singing hymns that he wrote – especially when we can use the Yaddo tune while in Saratoga Springs, NY, because Tom wrote it when visiting Yaddo, which is about a mile down the road from our congregation.

So – yeah. Sometimes our spiritual practice doesn’t go the way we expect. Sometimes it takes us to a memory that gives us joy and comfort.

Anyway, here are the lyrics. Yay.

Spring has now unwrapped the flowers, day is fast reviving,
life in all her growing powers toward the light is striving.
Gone the iron touch of cold, winter time and frost time,
seedlings working through the mold now make up for lost time.

Herb and plant that, winter long, slumbered at their leisure,
now bestirring green and strong, find in growth their pleasure.
All the world with beauty fills, gold the green enhancing;
flowers make glee among the hills, set the meadows dancing.

 

By |

And with one turn of a page, we enter the sublimely ridiculous.

Yes, it’s time, in these last days of autumn, as the nights grow dark and cold, to begin singing our Spring and Summer songs. Because if spiritual practice teaches us anything, it’s to expect bizarre coincidences and juxtapositions. Plus, this is what I get for starting this project on my early October birthday. If I’d started on January 1st, like a normal person might have done, we’d be in the start of March right now and all this singing about spring might make sense. But no, I started on October 4th, which means we’re stuck with spring tunes here in Advent.

I’d say I’m sorry, but if you’re like me, you’re enjoying the juxtaposition too, delighting in my fake misery, and maybe a little relieved that I am giving you a break from the constant cacophony of carols this season brings. (Just remember this feeling when it’s May and we’re working through the aforementioned cacophony of carols.)

I will say this: I am glad we start with this hymn, a beloved and familiar tune, and more lyrics from our man Sam (Samuel Longfellow, that is).

Lo, the earth awakes again — Alleluia!
From the winter’s bond and pain.
Alleluia! Bring we leaf and flower and spray — Alleluia!
to adorn this happy day. Alleluia!

Once again the word comes true,
Alleluia! All the earth shall be made new. Alleluia!
Now the dark, cold days are o’er, Alleluia!
Spring and gladness are before. Alleluia!

Change, then, mourning into praise, Alleluia!
And, for dirges, anthems raise. Alleluia!
How our spirits soar and sing, Alleluia!
How our hearts leap with the spring! Alleluia!

As I sang this – especially the second verse, I thought about how it’s maybe not so bad to sing a spring hymn in autumn, as it reminds us that the dark, cold days we’re facing now will not last – even though at some point it feels like we will never see light and feel warmth again.

I like this one. And because it’s a catchy tune, I will probably be singing it all day. Thank god the only one I will annoy with that is my cat.

By |

I am likely going to disappoint you all today – because I’m struggling to articulate much of anything this morning.

I’m not feeling witty (although when I am these days, I am grateful – thanks to Victoria Weinstein for highlighting that as a gift of grace).

I’m not feeling moved deeply (although I can see this hymn’s potential for deep meaning).

I’m not feeling inspired to talk about the tune, for good or ill (although someday there will be a consideration of tunes like this from a cultural and musical viewpoint).

The truth is, I’m not feeling much of anything today except a bit overwhelmed by the personal, professional, and prophetic To Do Lists. And so this hymn, which I sang, felt a bit like a chore that I had to get done, not a balm to my spirit or an offering to others.

And here’s another truth, for the laity in my tiny readership: whether it’s a daily post like this, or a service, or a covenant group, or a rite of passage, sometimes ministers feel overwhelmed and unable to get their spirits to properly rise to the occasion. The good news is that it passes; we learn – and are reminded of – those practices that get us out of the funk, off the dime, on task, back into it. We learn how to fake it ’til we make it. We learn how to put on the character of minister until we are the minister again.

In the meantime, we clergy ask for some grace – we are human, as hard as we try not to be. And on a disappointing day like today, when I have no witty repartee, no caustic criticism, no soaring poetry, I ask for some grace.

Maybe that’s the point of this hymn, after all.

Almond trees, renewed in bloom, do they not proclaim
life returning year by year, love that will remain?
Almond blossom, sign of life in the face of pain,
raises hope in people’s hearts: spring has come again.

War destroys a thousandfold, hatred scars the earth,
but the day when almonds bloom is a time of birth.
Friends, give thanks for almond blooms swaying in the wind:
token that the gift of life triumphs in the end.

Amen.

By |

I’m trying – I really am. These songs, tho’…

We sing of golden mornings, we sing of sparkling seas,
of prairies, valleys, mountains, and stately forest trees.
We sing of flashing sunshine and life-bestowing rain,
of birds among the branches, and springtime come again.

We sing the heart courageous, the youthful, eager mind;
we sing of hopes undaunted, of friendly ways and kind.
We sing the roses waiting beneath the deep-piled snows;
we sing the earth’s great splendor, whose beauty ‘round us glows.

If I were in a different headspace, I’d be making some vaguely academic comments about Emerson and his journey with the immanent divine, which might include a dalliance into his exploration of Hindu texts.

And then I’d be commenting on the richness of the tunes from William Walker’s Southern Harmony and expressing gratitude for the preservation of these folk tunes.

But I am not in the right headspace today. My spiritual practice isn’t working to give me comfort or enliven thought. I suppose it’s true of any spiritual practice – sometimes you do it and it blows your mind, sometimes you do it and you check it off your To-Do list. Today is definitely the latter.

What has been helping are conversations with friends and colleagues – and a bit of immersion into the arts. My friend Micah Bucey, the fierce minister of the arts at Judson Memorial in NYC, reminded me that I need to both make art and take in art. Dr. Hal Taussig, one of my professors at Union Theological Seminary, says art helps us “enter the difficult sideways” so that we can approach the hard and sad and terrifying safely.

So… art.

Which I suppose these hymns are, too.

Maybe I’ve been doing as Micah and Hal have advised all along…

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 |

Dear weaver of our lives’ design
whose patterns all obey,
with skillful fingers gently guide
the sturdy threads that will survive
the tangle of our days.

Take up the fabric of our lives
with hands that gently hold;
bind in the ragged edge that care
would sunder and that pain would tear,
and mend our rav’ling souls.

Let eyes that in the plainest cloth
a hidden beauty see;
discern in us our richest hues,
show us the patterns we may use
to set our spirits free.

Back in my holy roller days, a member of my prayer circle self-proclaimed herself as having the gift of prophesy. In that space and time, we understood that to be a huge gift, but the way it played out was her telling us things about life in poetic language. And yes, she was doing an MA in creative writing. She’d wax poetic about trees and rebirth, crystals and growth, wind and change. Nothing too wild, but our 18-year-old minds were blown away by her 25-year-old wisdom. At one of our gatherings, she went into ‘prophesy’ mode and talked to me about being a tapestry, a life woven through time with many threads coming together; I wouldn’t be able to see it because I was still young and too close, but it would become significant.

As time wore on and I fell away from that path, I forgot most of what happened in those circles and firmly rejected the harmful doctrines; however, her image of a tapestry has stayed with me, more than 30 years now. I return to it time and time again, thinking about how not just our individual lives but our communities and indeed our world are woven into beautiful tapestries we can only see part of. When something especially good or especially bad happens, I think about what color threads are being used, what the image on the tapestry looks like, how it connects to other parts of the design.

So it’s not surprising that I love the lyrics of this hymn. Me, in my theistic, “god is creator and creating and so are we” understanding of theology, resonates deeply with this weaver of our lives’ design. We are plain cloth and tangled threads; we are the sculpture under the stone; we are the unprocessed film; we are the unplayed notes on the piano – all ready to be and already woven into our life’s tapestry. This is creation and creating, this is possibility and anticipation, this is what is and what’s next.