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This is a great piece – best sung a capella, with three strong song leaders to help fill in the rich harmony.

I often forget about it, this sweet song written by cantor Linda Hirschhorn, and I’m not sure why. So when it comes up in conversation or I hear a snippet of it, I go ‘oh yeah, that’s a good song.’ And then promptly forget it again.

I don’t have much more to add today – still fighting off the crud. But I like it and I wish we sang it more… it’s a beautiful sung prayer. You can hear it here, courtesy of the Church of the Larger Fellowship and the Oakland Chancel Choir:

Circle ‘round for freedom, circle ‘round for peace,
for all of us imprisoned, circle for release,
circle for the planet, circle for each soul,
for the children of our children, keep the circle whole.

Amen.

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There are days in this practice when I get so caught up in the holy act of singing, I hardly pay attention to any analysis. Then there are days in this practice when I get so caught up in the analysis, I lose any sense of the holy. A perfect day is when there is an equal balance – a holy moment and an analytical eye. When that happens, I tend to delve into the theological more than the musical or, frankly, the trivial.

Sadly, today is not a perfect day, as much as I want it to be.

Setting aside mood or events, what takes me out of this spiritual practice’s original purpose most is running into hymns that are troubling right from the start – sometimes it’s misappropriation, sometimes it’s odd or concerning lyrics, and sometimes, such as in this case, it’s because of its tune.

Here’s the thing: if this is intended to be a hymnal – a book of songs for a congregation to sing – then fails to complete its mission, as there are definitely songs (like this one) that are not meant to be sung by a congregation. If this is intended to be a collection of music that informs our living tradition, then it fails to inform the user of that purpose.

All of this to say, this is not a congregational hymn. It is an art song that sets some amazing lyrics to a texture. From a musical standpoint, it’s beautifully crafted – the melody matches the lyric, speeding up at the crashing of the sea, slowing at the calm and still. And the lyrics are more than “hey, look at pretty nature” – the final two verses make a fantastic connection between humans and the rest of nature – we can see our hearts, minds, and souls in the wonder of the sea. It’s an inspiring lyric and a well designed song to match it.

Wild waves of storm,
the wonder of the wind and crashing sea,
nature in power and might and majesty,
yet wonder more in deep tranquility,
sea, calm and still.

Migrating birds,
in flock intent upon far distant shore
great wonder hold; yet there is wonder more
when lonely eagle, watchful on the tor,
sits, calm and still.

All people one
in urgent haste, on some great enterprise,
hearts beating fast, great dreams to realize,
yet in the soul a dream of richer prize,
serene and still.

Then striving cease:
from troubled turmoil seek an inward goal;
tranquility shall make the spirit whole.
Be still, and know a Presence in the soul,
serene, alive.

But let’s not fool ourselves: this would take a lot of work and an already extremely musical congregation to attempt this. The only example of this song I found was the Oakland UU Chancel Choir’s recording, and their performance reveals the complexity of the piece.

This is a piece that belongs in our Unitarian Universalist repertoire.

But it is not a hymn.

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Some might say this is unsingable.

It’s a complex, twentieth-century modern, sometimes atonal piece of music, and to the average congregant trying to sing for the first time, makes no sense and might make people run out the doors, never to come back.

That’s because this isn’t a song for congregational singing.

You see, what we forget about the hymnal is that it’s not just a sing-along book, it is a collection of the music that informs, inspires, and imagines our Living Tradition. These are the songs and readings that, in 1993, anyway, were deemed most important to our heritage, our theologies, and our movement forward. That’s why there are songs from the time of slavery, and songs from non-western cultures, and songs like this one.

In time of silver rain the earth puts forth new life again,
green grasses grow and flowers lift their heads,
and over all the plain the wonder spreads of life, of life, of life!

In time of silver rain the butterflies lift silken wings,
and trees put forth new leaves to sing in joy beneath the sky
in time of silver rain, when spring and life are new.

Now if I had just read the lyrics, I’d say “meh” to them – they, like many that have gone before (and many that will come after), don’t really go anywhere. They describe a state of mind and a state of the earth’s cycle – namely, early spring.

But that’s only half the story here. This is a poem by notable 20th century poet Langston Hughes, set to music by one of the most prolific 20th century composers, George Walker. Hughes is famous in our circles for sure, an easy addition to any service thanks to his powerful words and jazz-like lyric. Walker is sadly much less well known – a Black composer of Jamaican descent, Walker (who is still alive at age 94) wrote concertos, symphonies, cantatas, and choral works and won a Pulitzer for Lilacs. Walker has had a long and prolific career that rivals his more famous white contemporaries like Copland, Britten, Cage, Shostakovich, Barber.

It’s too bad he’s not better known – while this kind of 20th century modern classical isn’t my cup of tea, it’s important that we lift up and celebrate artists like Walker, and examine our places of privilege that make discovering a composer like this an uncomfortable revelation in our journey toward justice.

Which is, I’d say, precisely why this song is in this hymnal.

It is not meant to be sung by a congregation – an important note that makes the need for a hymnal companion all the more necessary. It is meant to be sung for a congregation, to celebrate the richness of creativity and meaning and expand the boundaries of our tiny experiences.

 

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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.

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New rule: there should be no time signature changes in the middle of a hymn you are trying to learn by sight before you’ve had your coffee.

Now while the day in trailing splendor gives way to glories of the night,
thanksgiving to thy name we render, O God of darkness and of light.
Each day from thee we have our being, in all this wondrous order set;
thine omnipresence blinds our seeing, and in thy gifts we thee forget.

Touch thou our eyes, their blindness healing, till all this common earth and air
to our illumined sight and feeling thy glory and thyself declare;
till storied marvel, sign, and token, all pale before the nearer thought
of such vast miracles unbroken from hour to hour around us brought.

Lord have mercy.

Here I was, excited about getting into evening songs (although they are probably as cheery as the morning ones, if this first is any indication). And I tried to sing it, I did. It’s got a bit more of a medieval chant feel to it at the start, barreling in with eighth notes in a pattern that runs up and down a narrow band of notes. Once you get that, it’s not hard.

Except suddenly there’s a change from 3/4 to 4/4, and some syncopation, and then we are back to normal for the final line.

And if you are leaning the hymn by sight, before coffee, that third phrase will kill ya. I pulled out the tiny keyboard app on my phone to plunk out the notes. Then I set my metronome app to 3/4 so I could count out the section. Which always came out wrong. Because at seven in the morning, sitting alone in my kitchen while the lifeblood of existence was still brewing in the coffeemaker, I didn’t see the two-bar shift to 4/4 time. Maybe I was too distracted by the sudden upper register singing – two phrases in a normal singing range and suddenly we’re holding up the sky for three beats – or the syncopation on odd lyrics. But this phrase – without a music professional nearby to help a person out – makes this frustrating at best.

Really, the only thing I am getting out of it is a slight return of my wit – which, to be honest, has been sorely missed this past week.

So maybe that’s it’s purpose today. To give me something inconsequential to snark about, because it’s too difficult to find anything of consequence funny right now.

Lord have mercy.

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Far rolling voices of the sea chant loud upon the shore.
They tell the ancient mystery of God forever more.

Newborn, the sun in glory rides across the heav’nly fields.
The starry host in silence bides and to the morning yields.

White seabirds wheel against the sky, companioned with the dawn.
God, lift our winging souls on high, share in creation’s morn.

Your universal waters sweep upon the endless strands.
Your love and mercy ever keep asurge in all thy lands.

Far rolling voices of the sea chant loud upon the shore.
They tell the ancient mystery, O God, forevermore.

This was another hymn I have never heard – I suspect many stay away from it not only because of unfamiliar intervals more prevalent in Eastern music, but also because it is constructed differently, with two variations on verses and a third, middle verse (more like a bridge) suddenly in 3/4 time to the regular 4/4 of the piece. And while I suspect many a music director has said ‘we’ll have the choir sing it’ – even that doesn’t happen, as the minister chooses other more familiar (read: Western) hymns.

It’s a shame, because while I haven’t gotten the full effect from plunking out notes on my keyboard app, it is not difficult to sing – it is an intriguing, haunting tune that echoes beautifully the themes of the lyrics. So many times we long for mystery in our hymns, things sung in minor keys that leave the questions open and draw us to wonder – and here is one, just begging for us to wrap our arms around it as we enter the ancient mystery, the starry host, the universal waters.

 

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Songs of spirit, like a prayer breathing in the ambient air;
singing in the morning light, in the radiance of the day,
in the twilight shadows gray, in the brooding hush of night;
dark or light, or storm, or fair — singing, singing everywhere.

In the burgeoning of spring, in the summer’s scented bloom,
in the autumn’s mellow glow, in the winter’s ice and snow;
shade, or shine, or joy, or gloom, as the seasons come and go,
break and bare, or blossoming — still the songs that sing and sing!

Singing, singing everywhere, at the heart of everything,
in my soul I hear them sing, mystic music of the spheres;
songs that, with my utmost art, I can only catch in part;
broken echoes, cold and bare, of the songs my spirit hears.

Remember yesterday, when I talked about the easy-to-sing, familiar tune? What I deleted from that discussion was a rant about musical showboating. In this rant, which apparently I can’t keep quiet, I talked about how it is helpful to remember what the tune is for – in this case, getting non-singers to sing together in public. Thus, a tune should be fairly easy to sing, predictable, but not dull. A congregant should have a sense of where a hymn is going next, and those foundational phrases should, in and of themselves, be both interesting and comfortable. I think of Jason Shelton’s hymn Fire of Commitment (which we’ll get to sometime in mid 2018) – the pattern of the phrases is similar and familiar, dancing along the chord progression, even as the music itself is interesting; once you get the rhythmic sense, it rolls and calls back and keeps us going. This is a tune that does what it’s supposed to do.

Sadly, there are other tunes that try to be interesting, to toss in a surprisingly different phrase, or add an awkwardly inserted chord progression to add what the composer probably thinks is interest but is actually just something different to make it different – showboating. It’s “look at me, I write interesting music’ and not remembering that this is something non-singers have to sing together in public. I think it’s one of the struggles we have with hymn-ifying some popular and folk music, too – the music is interesting and should be, but it’s not really for non-singers, because what works for a performed song doesn’t always work for a hymn; they have different purposes and thus different constructions. You wouldn’t haul logs in a Mustang convertible, and you wouldn’t take a vacation along the Maine coast in a logging truck… it’s the same thing. They’re both vehicles, good and right, meant for different purpose.

And so we turn back to this tune. I plunked it out, I plunked it out again, trying to add the treble harmony, I tried to sing and then plunked it out again.

This, to me, is a terrible tune. And just because it is named Servetus doesn’t make it any less terrible.

Adding fluffy lyrics doesn’t help it any. Whereas the lyrics of the last couple of hymns had depth and purpose, the lyrics here are fluffy. I am not changed, I am not moved. I don’t need a recitation of nature, a recitation that goes by nearly unnoticed because we’re too busy trying to figure out this terrible tune.

And maybe I’m missing something, in my cynical mood, surrounded by cynicism and heartbreak and struggle. Maybe this is just the wrong hymn for the moment. Maybe this is me trying to go sightseeing in a logging truck. But right now, I need something to take my out of myself, to feed my soul, to inspire me.

This is just not it.