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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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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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Welcome to Pinocchio’s favorite hymn.

I can’t deny making Diana wonder what this hymn practice as actually done to my sanity, because I am sitting next to her on the couch, drinking coffee and cackling manically as I ponder why we ever doubted that children might not be real, unless we are surrounded by Geppetto’s marionettes.

I mean, I get where lyricist Carl Seaburg is going – he’s trying to say that children have little pretense and experience the world openly and honestly. But “real” is just awkward and frankly stopped me in my tracks.

Odd lyric aside, this is a lovely piece. The tune – the Sussex Carol – gets a nice not-at-all-Christmas-related treatment here (fyi, another gorgeous Ralph Vaughan Williams setting), and yes, I could see this being used at Yuletide anyway, when we adults get so overwhelmed and jaded by the commercialization and possible sadness of the season. But it also speaks to that beginner’s mind, that childlike wonder that we all long for.

I seek the spirit of a child, the child who meets life naturally,
the child who sings the world alive, and greets the morning sun with glee.
Children are real beyond all art. May I see: Joy’s a gift to our heart.

I seek the freedom of a child, a child who loves instinctively,
who lights our day with just a smile, and shines that light on all we see.
Children are real beyond all fears. May I see: Hope’s a gift to our tears.

I seek the wonder of a child, a child who sees delightfully,
now clowns in cloud, now gold in sun — imaginations true and free.
Children are real beyond all lies. May I see: Faith’s a gift to our eyes.

If I can get past giggling about “children are real” I could see using it.

But it might be a while.

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I am in Peterborough, New Hampshire, preparing to lead a retreat with dear friend and colleague Diana McLean. And as I was preparing to write today, I waxed a little poetic about the Blake poem this hymn tune (Jerusalem, by Charles H.H. Parry) was written for.

And I burst into tears. Like, not just a weepy lump in my throat, but full on, reaching for the Kleenex, now I have to reapply my makeup tears. Which got worse when I read the lyrics we have in our hymnal.

I’m tellin’ ya. Ugly cry.

I’m not sure why the Blake lyrics gets to me – it’s very pro-England, very pro-Second Coming, very cliché. So cliché it’s inspired books, films, and tv shows.  And I’m a bit embarrassed by my reaction. Yes, I’m an Anglophile – I love British tv and film, I love English history, I love the English countryside, and once I loved an Englishman (who broke my heart). But why does this hymn – and not so many others that scream out my personal theology – make me burst into tears?

Anyway… makeup adjusted, tissues discarded… here’s our hymn. The tune is soaring and lush, and very fitting for these words by Don Marquis. And as much as our last encounter with Marquis frustrated me, this encounter draws me directly into the mystery of life and death and Mystery itself.

Have I not known the sky and sea put on a look as hushed and stilled
as if some ancient prophecy drew close upon to be fulfilled?
Like mist the houses shrink and swell,
like blood the highways throb and beat,
the sapless stones beneath my feet turn foliate with miracle.

And life and death but one thing are — and I have seen this wingless world
cursed with impermanence and whirled like dust across the summer swirled,
and I have dealt with Presences
behind the veils of Time and Place,
and I have seen this world a star — bright, shining, wonderful in space.

Gorgeous. Simply divine, really. And as I contemplate the lyrics, and my reaction, I realize this should probably be sung at my memorial service.

No wonder I had such a strong reaction.

I end with this beautiful choral arrangement of Jerusalem – not with our lyrics, but the Blake – sung by the West Point Cadet Glee Club (the song starts at 0:26):

And now I’m crying again. Where’s the Kleenex?

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It’s a Hymn by Hymn miracle!

Today is September 1st, and the hymn today mentions September! The hymnal is right on schedule, pretending it hasn’t had me sing Christmas songs in spring and summer songs in winter and Easter songs at General Assembly. I hardly know what to make of it.

What I do know is that every time I start to sing this hymn, all my memories go to the first time I sang it in a small group and how baffled we were to find the phrasing so it didn’t sound automated. The key, we discovered, was realizing that while the bar lines have us singing four beats, then three, then four, etc., it’s best thought of in a 7/4 phrasing, which we decided feels like the tides as sung by Gregorian monks.

So here’s the funny thing, though. We have sung this before, as In the Lonely Midnight. But it’ written there in 7/8 and has a very different feel. This 7/4 is more flowing, less sprightly, and oddly, easier to sing that the 7/8 setting. For me, anyway.

But on to the words – from a piece by 20th century Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (and translated by our very own Mark Belletini – is there anything that guy can’t do?) – this is a lush text. It is haunting and wistful and hopeful.

All my memories of love hang upon high stars.
All the souls I’ve lost to tears now the autumn jars;
and the air around me here thickens with their song;
sing again their nameless tunes, sing again, and strong.

Willows in September touch the water clear,
set among the rushes tall of the flowing year.
Rising up from sunlit past comes the shadowed sigh
running toward me silently, love to fortify.

Many are the graceful hearts hung upon this tree.
And it seems there’s room for mine on these branches free;
and the sky above the tree, whether wet or bright,
is my ease and comforting, my good news and light.

A fitting hymn for a memorial service, or an All Souls day service, or a gorgeous vespers set around memory and remembrance.

It’s not the easiest piece we have in our hymnal, but it is simply gorgeous.

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Photo by Alain /Papylin 

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Over the past almost eleven months, this spiritual practice has gone from personal folly to best kept secret. Somewhere along the way, Mark Belletini noticed this and has been a wonderful resource of stories from the STLT hymnal commission and these hymns. He said to me at General Assembly this year that he’s grateful that I am doing this project, examining every hymn, singing them as best I can and thinking about the massive scope of work such an undertaking requires.

And occasionally I irk him.

A few days ago, I found myself baffled by the inclusion of a particular hymn – not because it had what I consider troubling lyrics or history, but because I just didn’t get the theological purpose of its inclusion. On Facebook, colleague David Miller Kohlmeier found what I had been missing:

It reminds me of the Max Kapp hymn I Brought My Spirit to the Sea, in that it has a single individual in a moment of existential wondering and questioning. The difference is that the Wordsworth hymn has the speaker focused on another human and not on his own subjective mystical experience.

It feels profoundly theological to me in that its about (IMO) a male voice of privilege trying to feel a connection in the human experience of someone from a totally different social location, and leaving the encounter with something changed inside of him that he can’t quite articulate.

It’s one of those hymns that is about the question and not about the answer. That it doesn’t name God explicitly only makes it more theological, IMO. It’s deeply human. Which makes it about God.

And that’s all good. Mark followed up with frustration – not directly aimed at me (although maybe at my obtuseness over the hymn), but at those who think a song has to explicitly mention God in order to be theological. I get his frustration; from stories he’s told, this is among the many slings and arrows the STLT commission battled in their work to create a inclusive hymnal.

I tell you all this to say this: Mark, I don’t need a direct reference to God to be inspired by this one. I get it.

Once when my heart was passion free to learn of things divine,
the soul of nature suddenly outpoured itself in mine.

I held the secrets of the deep and of the heavens above;
I knew the harmonies of sleep, the mysteries of love.

And for a moment’s interval the earth, the sky, the sea —
my soul encompassed each and all, as they encompass me.

These words, by Catholic priest John Bannister Tabb (and set to the sweet shape note tune Primrose), encapsulate for me our first source, the direct experience of transcending mystery.

This is just lovely. Again, a hymn I have managed to bypass for reasons passing understanding. A hidden gem for sure…. a hidden gem speaking of that hidden gem that is transcendent awe.

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Photo source: http://heroes-get-made.tumblr.com/image/155737200748

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One of the cool things about this particular hymnal is that the commission had some remarkable 20th century poetry set to music, like this poem, “Canzone” by WH Auden. The downside, of course, is that most of those poems – including “Canzone” – are far longer and intricate than we have breath for in a few short verses.

I wonder if this is still a good thing – does having snippets of longer works provide a sense of the poem’s meaning? Or does it miss the point of the still fairly short work that has been carefully constructed? Are we short-changing the amount of attention the poet has asked for?

Or does anyone actually notice who writes these things except someone like me who is studying them?

I can’t argue that the edited-for-singing version doesn’t capture some of what Auden was going for, and some of the most striking couplets remain in tact here. But I know that only from reading the full poem did I get it; otherwise, it was snippets of phrases and syllables to sing.

And that, as I’ve said before, seems to be a consideration when choosing a hymn to be sung by a congregation versus a hymn to be performed by a choir or soloist: does the music get out of the way enough so singers can hear the words? So much amazing poetry we have in this book of ours, but so much of it obscured by tunes that are complex. And when the notes demand more attention that the words, we might as well be singing “la la la” together.

My point – and I do have one – is that to let Auden’s words sing forth, and perhaps lead another person to look up the full poem, this should not be a congregational hymn but rather a solo/choral work.

When shall we learn, what should be clear as day,
we cannot choose what we are free to love?
We are created with and from the world
to suffer with and by it day by day.

For through our lively traffic all the day,
in my own person I am forced to know
how much must be forgotten out of love,
how much must be forgiven, even love.

Or else we make a scarecrow of the day,
loose ends and jumble of our common world;
or else our changing flesh can never know
there must be sorrow if there can be love.

The tune is a flowing piece called Flentge that isn’t too hard to sing, written by Lutheran composer and lecturer Carl Flentge Schalk; I don’t have much more info on it, but there is a recording on YouTube.

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The image is of a now-extinct white rhinoceros, but that fact is not why it’s my featured image…