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I started singing this morning before I opened the hymnal, because I knew what today’s song would be. “Bright morning star’s a-risin’…” I sang.

And then I looked at our lyrics – “Bright morning stars are rising” – and thought, huh? Isn’t there just one morning star – the sun, or if we go Christian on it, Jesus? And which one’s right? This led me down the inevitable rabbit hole of learning more about the origins of the song and its original lyrics and tune. Surely I could get there and enlighten us all.

There is no “there” there.

Origins are sketchy – maybe Appalachian, someone hinted at Native American, someone else wondered about the Shakers, still another pinned it back to Ireland. And lyrics are sketchier still – seems some versions have been lengthily written to talk more about Jesus as the bright morning star, other versions more grounded in work and toil. And of course, there’s a debate on whether it’s “bright morning star’s a-rising” or “bright morning stars are rising”…

Bright morning stars are rising.
Bright morning stars are rising.
Bright morning stars are rising.
Day is a-breaking in my soul.

Oh, where are our dear mothers…

They are sowing seeds of gladness…

Oh, where are our dear fathers…

They are in the fields a-plowing…

The good news is that because of it’s long folk history, we can change some of our lyrics to remove the gender binary or add more verses to include others.

I know this is the first of our Entrance songs, but it is so wistful and somber to me, I couldn’t imagine using it that way. This always seems to me a song of hard-won joy or a longing for release. The “day is a-breaking” reminds me of the moment I had a few days ago with the line “Dawn breaks in me too” from Golden Skies at Dawn…. a releasing moment of prayer.

So. No clarity on this one, so make it your own. And if you’re not sure you can do that, start with this beautiful version by the Wailin’ Jennys:

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Among the things I have learned in almost a year of doing this practice is that I am sometimes the outlier – sometimes I see something in a hymn others don’t see that makes me anxious or angry or bored. I know some of it is that I do this before the coffee’s kicked in, but really, there are times that I just don’t get why we would want to include a particular song as part of our living tradition, as it feels wrong to me.

I say all this because I suspect few will feel as I do about this hymn, with lyrics by Alicia Carpenter, set to the haunting Guter Hilte tune: This hymn is scolding me, the way a Hobbit might have scolded Bilbo or Frodo.

Will you seek in far-off places?
Surely you come home at last;
in familiar forms and faces,
things best known, you find the best.

Joy and peace are in this hour,
here, not in another place.
Here in this beloved flower;
now, in this beloved face.

I can’t even with this one. “Surely you come home at last” because of course family’s the best. What if family isn’t the best and is in fact harmful? What if we want to see the world? What if we are called to another place? What if home is a landscape with flowers that don’t inspire but far off is the one that comforts our soul?

Look. I get that this is about appreciating what we have around us, and if it’s true that Carpenter was inspired by a Walt Whitman poem I can’t seem to find (Between the Lines notes that it’s inspired by “Here and Now” – anyone know what poem it’s talking about?), then it’s got that whole transcendentalist thing happening.

But surely you shouldn’t scold me into staying where I don’t want to be, or looking for something more.

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Our English ethical culturist is back – this time with a more or less decent song of thanksgiving (puzzling placed in the Here and Now section). Good old Perceval Chubb… who once wrote an article stating that Americans ‘have an incapacity for leisure’ and whose O We Believe in Christmas felt pretty empty and apologetic.

I don’t mind this hymn too much. The first three verses are fine, and if you need an unremarkable lyric set to a square Elizabethan tune that is good for a service on gratitude, then this is a perfectly serviceable song.

We lift our hearts in thanks today for all the gifts of life;
and, first, for peace that turns away the enmities of strife.

And, next, the beauty of the earth, its flowers and lovely things,
the spring’s great miracle of birth, with sound of songs and wings.

Then, harvests of its teeming soil in orchard, croft, and field;
but, more, the service and the toil of those who helped them yield.

And, most, the gifts of hope and love, of wisdom, truth, and right,
the gifts that shine like stars above to chart the world by night.

Where I bristle is the fourth verse. “Wisdom, truth and RIGHT”?!? I checked, it’s not a typo. Not in our hymnal nor in the original. I struggle with this – it feels arrogant to me. Maybe I’m over-sensitive to any show of arrogance or ego these days, but this line screams out to me in a way that makes me shudder.

I don’t know what more to say. I don’t love this hymn, largely because it feels dull and uninteresting and a little arrogant. But it’s not utterly offensive, and if it works for you, cool.

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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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I wasn’t expecting to have a moment with this hymn.

I don’t know what I was expecting – perhaps a morning of wading through information, or trying to ignore my personal exhaustion with nature metaphors (a product of this practice, to be sure – they don’t come barreling down in normal time), or a struggle with yet another unfamiliar-to-me tune. And admittedly, the first verse rolled on as expected. A translation of 20th century Chinese theologian TC Chao, they are poetic, but after all the hymns that have gone before in this practice, nothing moving this gloomy morning.

But then I got to the last couplet of the second verse, written by John Andrew Storey (hat tip to the Hymnal Commission for an intriguing mashup). “Dawn break in me too.”

Woah.

Golden breaks the dawn; comes the eastern sun
over lake and lawn, sets its course to run.
Birds above us fly, flowers bloom below,
through the earth and sky life’s great mercies flow.

As the spinning globe rolls away the night,
nature wears a robe spun of morning light.
Dawn break in me too, as in skies above;
teach me to be true, fill my heart with love.

Because now we have shifted from a “yay, interdependent web” to prayer – and not just any prayer, but the prayer of one who is ready to let go but isn’t sure how.

This is just stunning, breaking my own heart open as I realize how much grief – personal, professional, and global – I am holding on to. It brought first a lump in my throat, then a tear to my eye, then a heaving sob, and finally a time of crying in prayer.

These are the moments we long for in spiritual practice – those moments of opening, epiphany, release, and awe. they don’t happen every day; in fact, the more we seek them, the more elusive they become. But when we just practice, occasionally the Mystery creeps in and makes Its presence known, and we remember why we do this.

Woah.

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I should mention the tune, Le P’ing, by Hu Te-ngai (no information available); it was unfamiliar to me but it’s quite lovely and easy to pick up.

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Photo by Jan Shim.

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I love this prayer.

Seriously, this meditative, prayerful hymn – lyrics by Carl Seaburg, set to a Transylvanian folk tune – is absolutely in my top ten list. I love the haunting, minor key of the tune as well as the phrasing. Some might say the third phrase is too high, but that’s what transposition is for.

I also love the three-part invitation in the lyrics; especially that first one, to find, hold, and then let the stillness carry me. It’s a prescription for prayer and meditation. Find it, hold it, and let it do its work in us. I mean, really, the whole thing just knocks me out:

Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me.
Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.
In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power,
I will find true harmony.

Seek the essence, hold the essence, let the essence carry me.
Let me flower, help me flower, watch me flower, carry me.
In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power,
I will find true harmony.

Wow.

I sometimes sing this to myself as a prayer to help me pray. But it is effective for a congregation to sing – although always with an invitation to pray this hymn, which leads directly into a time of silent meditation.

And if you’re not a fan yet, consider singing this to yourself before you enter a time of prayer or meditation in your personal spiritual practice. I suspect you’ll notice – as I have – its helpful welcome and invitation to the Mystery.

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So… yesterday I kinda made fun of the whole “time cliché” thing. And this morning I realized we’re in the Here and Now section, so of COURSE we are singing songs about time and being present. I don’t regret yesterday’s post – it did feel a little cliché to me.

This one feels less so, because, I suppose, it isn’t advice, really, but rather describing a moment of decision and determination. This stuff is hard, but if I’m going to thrive, I must keep going. It reminds me a little of my mother, who, after my father died, decided to sell our large farmhouse in the country and move to a condo on the Outer Banks. She wanted to thrive, not just survive. And while she’d made a home there, and her grandchildren were nearby, she needed to do what was necessary to grieve and find life again.

A long, long way the sea-winds blow across the sea-plains blue,
but longer far my heart must go before its dreams come true.

And work we must, and love we must, and do the best we may,
and take the hope of dreams in trust to keep us day by day.

A long, long way the sea-winds blow — but somewhere lies a shore —
thus down the tide of time shall flow my dreams forever more.

This is set to a Southern Harmony tune called Liverpool; I’m having a hard time finding this one and not another tune by the same name, but because it’s Southern Harmony, it’s fairly simple and rich.

I realize as I am trying to conclude this that there are tears streaming down my face again; these hymns lately are reminding me of my parents, a heady mix of mourning and celebration. And add in a dose of joy, as we celebrated the marriage of my dear friends Lindsey and AJ Turner yesterday. So… emotions are running deep. I’m glad to have this practice to give me space to feel and think.

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The image is of the Elizabeth II, a small ship that is moored in the bay across from where my mother’s condo was in Manteo, North Carolina.

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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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Today, gentle readers, I offer you A Tale of Two Liturgical Moments. Because indeed, as our man Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

The best of times was when I learned an arrangement of this African American spiritual in my seminary gospel choir; the harmonies were rich, and a tag was added to give it musical interest. We sang this in a chapel service, accompanied by the Psalm from which it is inspired, and a homily from one of our African American students.

Now Psalm 119 is a very long lament to God for mercy. As our writer is seeking protection, so too are they trying to convince God that they are keeping true to the laws and commandments, to show they are worthy of God’s presence through the hardships. So it’s no wonder the enslaved Africans might have heard this psalm and these lines and wanted to ask for the same thing.

The homily talked about hardship in the face of racism, and the prayer that is Guide My Feet was directly connected to the work different groups of people have to do – people of color, to be sustained and keep resisting; whites to do the hard work of dismantling white supremacy from within. It was a powerful moment for me, and it forever changed how I understand this song.

Guide my feet while I run this race.
Guide my feet while I run this race.
Guide my feet while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Hold my hand while I run this race.
Hold my hand while I run this race.
Hold my hand while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Stand by me while I run this race.
Stand by me while I run this race.
Stand by me while I run this race,
for I don’t want to run this race in vain! (race in vain!)

Now the worst of times was recently, as SUUSI, when our morning minister offered a service that was part travelogue, part Odyssey (a review of a minister’s career and lessons learned), and all offensive. Everything that happened in the service used the word “walk” exclusively; first of all, it was a huge problem to use only walking as the means for following a path (our theme was “blessed is the path”) – but more, our intrepid speaker (an older white man) changed the words of an opening reading to include only “we walk this path together” and then had the nerve to change lyrics to songs from other traditions. His homily screamed “walk” to the seemingly intentional exclusion of any other word. By the time he got to the closing, he had chosen to change even THIS song to “guide my feet, while I walk this path.”

That was the moment I could take it no longer and walked out, fuming. Fuming for the excessive ableism, fuming for the lack of context on the songs from other cultures, and fuming for the incredible gall of the man to change these lyrics.

—

So the moral of the story is this, my friends: use songs like this with extreme care. Be really clear you know how to address the abelist language of “run this race.” Be clear that you can use other verses (especially those we don’t include in our hymnal but exist elsewhere), but be very careful to not change verses if it isn’t your song to change. And definitely offer context and explanation, and don’t use this as a joyful song. It’s a song of pleading and lament and a call for God’s guidance.

And in case you wonder if any of that’s true, I’ll leave you with Bernice Johnson Reagon’s version:

But really. Be careful.

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This hymn almost got ruined for me in 2009.

That spring, Saratoga Springs’ minister, Linda Hoddy, went on sabbatical, leaving a congregation well prepared to hold the fort down. As chair of the worship committee, I was also on the sabbatical team, and after a fall spent ensuring we had all our ducks in a row, our meetings were usually ten minutes of checking in on everything, then another half hour or so of general chatter.

Our longest meeting was the one about halfway through the sabbatical, when we all realized that while as a team the worship committee was doing a good job of attracting a wide variety of speakers and tending the scope of topics over the six-month period, we failed to track the week-to-week use of music, and we had been singing Gather the Spirit extremely frequently – easily two out of every three weeks. I know why it was chosen – it’s popular, it’s general in its scope, and – unless it’s played like a dirge – it’s a joy to sing.

But we were singing it a LOT. And it didn’t help that as we were gearing up for our first cluster-wide worship service, the obvious choice for the opening processional hymn was… Gather the Spirit. As worship coordinator for the service, I gulped, wondered if we could find another song, but realized that no, this was exactly the right hymn.

Back in Saratoga, we started waving speakers off this hymn, asking them to choose something else (and eventually offering a few other options that the congregation was familiar with and do the same kind of work). And as I stood at the stairs of the stage our choir and speakers processed onto in the cluster-wide service, I didn’t need any lyrics, because I realized I knew them all. Because we just. kept. singing. this. song.

I still know them by heart, partly because of that spring, but also because it really is a terrific song. And while some of UU songwriter Jim Scott’s pieces can be complex and tricky to sing, this one gets it right.

Gather the spirit, harvest the power.
Our sep’rate fires will kindle one flame.
Witness the mystery of this hour.
Our trials in this light appear all the same.

(Chorus)
Gather in peace, gather in thanks.
Gather in sympathy now and then.
Gather in hope, compassion and strength.
Gather to celebrate once again.

Gather the spirit of heart and mind.
Seeds for the sowing are laid in store.
Nurtured in love, and conscience refined,
with body and spirit united once more.

(Chorus)

Gather the spirit growing in all,
drawn by the moon and fed by the sun.
Winter to spring, and summer to fall,
the chorus of life resounding as one.

(Chorus)

This is a song of warm, open welcome.  Just don’t overuse it… and by all that is holy, do not play it as a dirge! It is meant to dance in a gentle waltz, ushering us in with gentleness and love.

And I am glad it didn’t get ruined for me.

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Photo is of our first joint service in 2009, with members of the four congregations (Albany, Schenectady, Glens Falls, and Saratoga Springs) coming together for the first time to worship. We asked each congregation to bring their chalices, from which we lit a common chalice. Then St. Lawrence District Executive Tom Chulak (pictured) joined Tom Owen-Towle as our first speakers. The cluster has now expanded, and we continue to hold a service each year, featuring an outside speaker (past speakers have included Thandeka, Kim and Reggie Harris, and Scott Alexander). This year, our service will feature the amazing Glen Thomas Rideout – and I am privileged to be back as worship coordinator.