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Hmmm.

I really don’t have much to say, because I don’t know how I feel about this one. (Also, I’m squeezing this reflection into a day full of fall house cleaning.)

What I can tell you is the lyrics, by Sarah Flower Adams (of Abide with Me fame), set to the Charleston tune (which you may know from There’s a Wideness in Your Mercy), is lovely and well matched.

Part in peace! The day before us.
Praises sing for life and light.
Are the shadows lengthning o’er us?
Bless thy care who guards the night.

Part in peace! With deep thanksgiving,
rend’ring as we homeward tread,
love and service to the living,
gentle mem’ry to the dead.

Part in peace! Our voices raising,
in thy presence always be.
This the worship and the praising,
bringing peace to you and me.

I’m not sure I would use it for a memorial or funeral, but I would use it as a closing for a Memorial Day or All Souls service.

Anyway… not much from me today, as it didn’t feel as much like spiritual practice and more like duty today. And I guess that happens. I look forward to your reflections in comments.

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A dozen years ago, I sat in a workshop at a UU Musicians Network conference talking about music as pastoral care.

The leader (whose name escapes me now) talked about her prison ministry. She told us that she goes to a women’s prison, and one of the first thing she has them do is sing “The Water Is Wide.” She lines it out, with them repeating each line back. The women start singing the first verse…

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er
Neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall cross my true love and I

…and the women stiffen up a bit, because the last thing they need is a happy love song. But she makes sure they know the melody, and then has them sing the second verse…

I lean’d my back against an oak
Thinking it was a mighty tree
But first it bent and then it broke
So did my love prove false to me

…and they begin to soften, and feel, and by the time they finish the song (which continues in the same vein) they are ready to talk, and share their hard, heartbreaking stories, and begin to heal.

I tell you this story because “The Water Is Wide” – the Anglicized version of “O Waly Waly”, is the tune upon which our lyrics today are set.

A happy, joyous, love-eternal sort of lyric.

Set to a he-done-me-wrong song.

Look at these lyrics, knowing the song’s origins:

Surprised by joy no song can tell,
no thought can compass, here we stand
to celebrate eternal love,
to reach for one another’s hand.

Beyond all other gifts is this,
best gift, alone to mortals given;
the love of parent, lover, friend
attunes our hearts to bliss of heaven.

Faith, hope, and love here come alive; life’s deepest treasure is made known when in forgiving, giving all, insep’rably, two are as one.

Doesn’t sing the same, does it?

In other hymnals, this lyric – by Erik Routley – is set to the Melcombe tune, a more rigid, less folky tune. I suspect there are even better melodies in 8.8.8.8. that this could be set to. I don’t have a hymnal handy at the moment as I’m sitting in an Oneonta, NY, coffee shop, but I bet one or more of you will find more suitable tunes before I get home.

I think the lyrics are fine – and I suspect if I ever did a wedding and the couple wanted a hymn, I’d steer them in this direction.

But I’d definitely change it up.

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When I was a little girl, my mom would come to tuck me in every night and sing lullabies to me. Now I’m pretty certain some of the songs weren’t actually lullabies, but many of them were. She had a rich alto voice, and she loved to sing. At one point, she put the songs on a cassette that met its untimely death by water damage. But I can still remember her sitting on my bed, singing one after another like a lullaby medley.

In fact, Mom sang a lot. She’d sing morning songs, like “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain, from the bottom of the stairs to wake us up. She’d sing “Poor Jud” from Oklahoma to help her keep time when kneading bread. She’d sing doing chores, driving places, gardening, or just when a song struck her.

And you wonder where I get it from.

Mom died ten years ago this month, and it feels simultaneously like so long ago and just yesterday. And in fact, the memory of her sitting on the side of my bed, singing to me all those years ago (lordy, half a century ago!), feels fresh and present. For all our struggles – because what strong daughter doesn’t have some struggles with their strong mother – Mom was a deeply compassionate, loving, caring, funny, creative woman. I get some of my fierceness from her, along with her eye for detail, a love of language, skill in the kitchen, and of course the music.

Including this beautiful lullaby.

And now, apparently, my spiritual practice this morning is to sit on the sofa with the hymnal on my lap, computer open and waiting, bawling my eyes out and not actually singing.

Sleep, my child, and peace attend you, all through the night.
I who love you shall be near you, all through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping, all through the night.

Mother, I can feel you near me, all through the night.
Father, I know you can hear me, all through the night.
And when I am your age nearly,
still I will remember clearly,
how you sang and held me dearly, all through the night.

While the moon her watch is keeping, all through the night;
while one-half the world is sleeping, all through the night.
Even while the sun comes stealing,
visions of the day revealing,
breathes a pure and holy feeling, all through the night.

This traditional lullaby has been adapted by Alicia Carpenter but I don’t notice a difference between what is on the page and what I remember… and frankly, I haven’t the wherewithal to care at the moment.

It’s lovely, and sad, and sweet, and now I know why I will never use it – because it wouldn’t do to have the minister baptize the child with tears.

—

Mom loved Colonial-era décor, and our house was an early American marvel when she got done with it. We’d often go to historical sites for day trips and vacations, and this photo of a cradle also reminds me of her.

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Use this hymn with great care.

I cannot stress this enough.

Use with care. Really. Give context. Use it in the right context.

This lesson is one I learned thanks to friend and colleague Dawn Fortune, a white minister whose allyship shone brightly the day we sang this at a collegial training as though “the welcome table” meant happy fun times for us. Dawn reminded us that this was a song from the time of slavery.

Now it is true that there are about as many versions as there are verses – by which I mean there are many many verses we don’t print in our hymnal. For example (from a 1930 article called “The Negro Sings a New Heaven” by Mary Allen Grissom, quoted at The Mudcat Café – spelling as presented in the original, or you’d see [sic] all over the place):

I’m gonna tell God how you treat me…

I’m gonna cross thuh river of Jurdun…

I’m gonna drink uv thuh healin’ waters…

I’m gonna drink and nevuh get thirsty…

I’m gonna eat off thuh welcome table…

I’m gonna walk an’ talk wid Jesus…

I’m gonna ride in thuh charet wid Jesus…

I’m gonna shout an’ not be weary…

You’re gonna wish that you’d-a been ready…

God’s gonna set yo’ sins befo’ you…

God’s gonna bring this world to judgment…

And there are more. Many many more. I learned the first verse as “I’m gonna set the world on fire.” But all sung from a positions of resistance. And on that bright summer day in Bloomington, Minnesota, we were not singing from a position of resistance but one of privilege.

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table.
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table,
gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

All kinds of people around that table…

No fancy style at the welcome table…

And so I mean it: use this one with care. Because the welcome table is the one we who are privileged have not laid out for everyone, and we have to. If we’re going to be serious about Susan Frederick-Gray’s assertion that “no one is outside the circle of love” then we have to be serious about setting the table for those who are knocking to come in.

I end with this short video of Ysaye Barnwell, with some folks at the 2014 spring cleaning & celebration/memorial at Love Cemetery in Marshall, TX. Not because it’s an amazing version, but because it reflects the grit and heart of what it means to sing together in these moments.

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I need more opportunities for communion in my life.

This is not my way of declaring myself in a particular theological camp. What I am declaring, however is that I recognize the power of what Jesus called for us to do – gather together, with intention, to eat, drink, and remember. To pray together. To work together. To welcome all. To feed all.

I’ve written about my Eucharistic journey elsewhere on this blog and in various essays and papers during seminary. I’m grateful that during seminary, I had the opportunity for communion every Thursday, and I listened carefully to hear whether I was welcome. Some weeks, I was, some weeks, well, not so much. But since then, I have had little opportunity. I have sought out communion services on precious Sundays off. I have attended UUCF’s communion at General Assembly when I have been able. And I made certain that a few hours before my ordination, a small communion service was held for fellow clergy.

And now, in these hard days (made a little easier by last night’s election results), I need this more than ever. I need to be called into sacred space to remember, to pray, to ritualize our connection with each other and the Divine.

I know this ritual doesn’t mean much to many UUs, and there are some who reject it outright because of their spiritual histories. But for me, and for many of us, the Eucharist is deeply meaningful and powerful. And I am glad we have these songs in our hymnal.

Let us break bread together on our knees.
Let us break bread together on our knees.
When I fall on my knees,
with my face to the rising sun,
oh, Lord, have mercy on me.

Let us drink wine together on our knees…

Let us praise God together on our knees…

Between the Lines only says it is a traditional song, so I asked the internet, and up pops the United Methodists’ Discipleship Ministries, a full site devoted to worship, music, preaching, as well as leadership, church planting, and international ministries. It’s…well, it’s amazing. And included in this site is hymn history and analysis. In the case of this song, it’s by C. Michael Hawn, Distinguished Professor of Church Music at Perkins School of Theology at SMU. He writes this about the history:

In a recently published article in the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, written by United Methodist Hymnal editor, Dr. Carlton Young, he reveals the probable roots and major variants of this spiritual. Dr. Young suggests that this “spiritual was formed in the West African Gullah/Geechee slave culture that developed in the costal areas of South-Eastern colonial America, including St Helena Island, Beaufort, and Charleston, South Carolina . . ..”

The text of the version that is commonly sung in the United States was first published in The Journal of American Folklore (1925). The Journal included spirituals, as well as African American folk tales and proverbs that were collected by students at the Penn School on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina.

A second version appeared in Saint Helena Island Spirituals (1925) by Nicholas Ballanta, a very significant collection that included 103 Gullah spirituals.

Now we don’t know its true origins, or even if this was a coded song as some might suggest. But as Hawn points out, we do know that

African American composer John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) arranged the first solo version with the three stanzas that are common to most hymnals in the United States. He also established the precedent of singing the final stanza up the octave. … This version of the spiritual was popularized by notable African American soloists in the mid-twentieth century such as Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and Marian Anderson.

And so I leave you with Robeson’s version:

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“And I’ll bring you hope, when hope is hard to find.”

We sing this incredible line in Come Sing a Song with Me, which we have acknowledged is simultaneously insipid and profound. And while that one isn’t today’s hymn, it is the line that sings over and over in my head even after singing today’s piece.

You see, yesterday’s lament was part of a greater day of grief, sorrow, and anger. Grief over more lives needlessly lost; sorrow over the many burdens family, friends, and colleagues bear; and anger over the shocking lack of compassion and human decency that has led to these moments – too many moments.

By evening’s end, I had found myself in a hole. I’ll let Leo McGarry explain:

My shout was a simple Facebook post that read “I’m pretty low on hope right now. What’s bringing you hope today?” and at last count 37 people jumped in the hole with me, and shared short and long lists of hope, including a photo of a late autumn rose.

Then this morning, my mentor tweeted this blessing:

And then I opened the hymnal and found more hope, in a beautiful, lyrical version of Luke 22:19-20, a version that meets my own Eucharistic theology and which holds my faith for me when I can’t find it.

This do in memory of me;
eat now this broken bread.
This is my life from death set free,
here on my table spread.

This do in memory of me;
drink now this cup, I said.
This shows my love for all to see,
here on my table spread.

We praise your living memory,
remembering all you said.
Your words and life have set us free,
here through your table spread.

I’m not sure I am whole again or full of hope again, but I am grateful for those who are willing to sing songs of hope and faith back to me when I can’t find it myself grateful for those willing to jump into the hole with me, grateful for those who share sacred moments and holy rituals with me, grateful for those who share a rose with me.

—

Because I will regret not putting this info here, I’ll share some musical details: Our tune was written by a Yorkshireman, Gordon Slater, who became a church organist and conductor after serving in the first World War. As the Reformed Church in North America’s Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes, the tune was first published in Songs of Praise for Boys and Girls (1930) and named for the church where Slater first served as organist. It’s a lovely and somewhat meditative piece, which works well for our lyrics, by UCC minister and professor Wayne Bradley Robinson.

 

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This song is making me angry today.

Normally, I like it – a sweet song for a stewardship campaign, for mitten tree Sundays, for services about mission or honoring our ancestors or gratitude.

But today, after another white man with a history of domestic abuse and an AK-15 murdered 26 (or more?) people, including young children and adults of all ages, IN A CHURCH, this song rings as hollow as the ‘thoughts and prayers’ offered by politicians bought and sold by the National Rifle Association. (It’s helpful to start saying their full name.) What gift can we bring, especially when we can’t keep people safe in places of sanctuary? And if churches and schools aren’t safe, what can we possibly hope to bring?

Is it possible that we could ever bring gun control and background checks and real consequences for domestic violence?

I want those things, and I have been part of a majority that elected representatives who want those things (I am fortunate to live in NY-20), but I am not the one who has any influence at all beyond my vote and my occasional ‘thanks for voting in favor of my interests’ emails to Schumer, Gillibrand, and Tonko. I am not rich. I am not male. I am not employed by a powerful lobby. I’m a simple woman-identified minister with only this blog as my pulpit right now. And while I have some moral authority, that isn’t carrying much weight with the people who can bring the gifts we need most of all.

When I remember the past and ‘those who had vision’ I remember how deftly, how surgically precise the dismantling of their progress has been by those who don’t value freedom, inherent worth and dignity, religious and racial and sexual plurality. What we see today didn’t happen a year ago today, or nine years ago this week. It happened in a coordinated fashion over time, this long, hard time of change. I’m not sure I buy Parker’s assertion about the moral arc of the universe today, because I sit here weeping at how hard Pharaoh’s heart as become and how little our moral authority can do to soften it.

The worst part of all this? Yesterday’s shooting in Texas wasn’t the only public shooting yesterday. And the shooting in the church wasn’t the only disruption in a church. And today there will be more news, another death, another eruption of violence, another decision to impinge upon the rights of humans, another woman abused, another woman raped, another child trafficked, another glacier melting, another overdose taking a life, another…another… another.. another…

And then it all becomes too much. We are not made for this kind of onslaught. Our brains are not made for this. Our hearts are not made for this. There is too much, too much, too much tragedy, trauma, and horror to bear. And it comes barreling down like that thing that chased Indiana Jones, only we’re not in an action film and no one is editing for a triumphant hero and I’m not even certain who the heroes are anymore, because this stopped feeling heroic a long time ago.

Yeah.

I have no answers today. I have no sense of joy today. I have only anger and tears and a need to name it.

And a hymn that wants me to find joy and hope.

Ooof. Okay. Hymn info after the lyrics.

What gift can we bring, what present, what token?
What words can convey it, the joy of this day?
When grateful we come, remembering, rejoicing,
what song can we offer in honor and praise?

Give thanks for the past, for those who had vision,
who planted and watered so dreams could come true.
Give thanks for the now, for study, for worship,
for mission that bids us turn prayer into deed.

This gift we now bring, this present, this token,
these words can convey it, the joy of this day!
When grateful we come, remembering, rejoicing,
this song we now offer in honor and praise!

This hymn, by Methodist composer Jane Marshall, is intended to be a hymn of pure gratitude, as her lyrics show – even the third verse, which we omitted:

Give thanks for tomorrow, full of surprises,
for knowing whatever tomorrow may bring,
we’re given God’s word that always, forever,
we rest in God’s keeping and live in God’s love.

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. Set to a lilting tune, also by Marshall. Joy, praise, honor, thanks!

Yay.

 

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Programming Note: Look for a short Hymn by Hymn Extra later today.

Last night, I attended a concert, honoring 50 years of folk  music at the Eighth Step in Schenectady, NY. The show was – if you’re into regional and national folk – rather a star-studded event: Reggie Harris, Annie and the Crackpots, Brother Sun, and Holly Near. Over and over again, we heard not just great music but about how strong the folk community is and how places like Eighth Step and Café Lena, along with festivals like Old Songs, really make a difference in bringing people together. Over and over again, the people in the audience were recognized as being integral to the power of this music, that folk is a collaborative event between performer and listener, and how we all bring gifts to the moment to create something sacred.

And then I turn to today’s hymn, a short piece with lyrics by Methodist-turned-Unitarian minister Horace Westwood, set to a very square yet surprisingly moving tune (Hamburg). “We bring ourselves as gifts”… Yes. Yes.

Spirit of truth, of life, of power,
we bring ourselves as gifts to thee:
oh, bind our hearts this sacred hour
in faith and hope and charity.

It reminds me of discussions we have sometimes about the three elements of stewardship: time, talent, and treasure. We get treasure and talent pretty easily, but time is harder to suss out. I think this hymn is about the giving of our time, because it is about the giving of our whole selves in that moment, that ‘sacred hour.’ Just as the attendees and the performers and the tech crew and the volunteers all gave of their whole selves for those two sacred hours last night, we can give the same to our sacred gatherings.

May we always remember we are a gift, and we bring ourselves together as gifts to one another.

 

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I was about to write something quick about this quick little song, and then go on with my day.

I was going to write something like “how sweet and familiar this is” and something else about how some congregations accept the offering by singing this.

And then I was going to add a quick note about the composers, Joseph and Nathan Segal, and be done with it.

Until I started learning more. And found not only a heartbreaking story but also something interesting about the version we sing.

First, the heartbreak: the Segal brothers are rabbis – singing rabbis, in fact – who trace their lineage as singing rabbis back 12 generations. They performed a spiritual and often humorous show for decades, until a car accident in Jamaica in 1988 left Joseph critically injured; eight years after the accident, it was news that he would join his brother Nathan at the congregation Nathan served. Since then, it appears Nathan has continued his work as a spiritual leader, healer, and musician – sadly, nothing on his website says anything about Joseph other than providing MP3s of the songs they recorded together. In fact, along with those recordings, there is just one video of them together from a concert they did in Woodstock in the late 1960s.

But it was from watching a clip from that where I learned we aren’t singing the song correctly. Listening to the MP3 reveals the same. Now I suspect the hymnal commission didn’t have benefit of these recordings at the time and learned the song by rote, but it’s interesting that not only do we have a different version, but apparently Nathan himself sang it differently over time, based on a later solo recording.

From you I receive,
to you I give,
together we share,
and from this we live.

So this brings up the question around folk music: is it necessary to sing it in an original fashion, or is it okay to change it as we learn it? I think about the Facebook discussion around The Earth, Water, Fire, Air – a song that many of us learned very differently yet seems to be connected to the same origins as the one in our hymnal. Is it the same song? Different now because of the changes? Is it like languages that have the same root but a thousand years goes by and suddenly the guy from Paris can’t understand the gal from Barcelona?

I don’t know. But I’d like to relearn the song in 4/4 time with a different final phrase and see what happens.

—

Art by Nathan Segal.

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One of the blessings of my seminary experience was getting to know the remarkable singer and scholar Kim Harris; she was finishing her PhD while I was getting my MDiv. She became a friend and confidant, a mom when I was going through the worst of my heart troubles, a singing partner, and at least once formally, my teacher.

That semester, she taught a class on Spirituals; the class wasn’t just about the history, however; it was also about using the spirituals to deepen our own spirituality. By chance, the group was entirely women, a perfect mix of ages, sexual identities, and racial identities. We learned together,  and we sang together, and often our singing was a prayer together.

This song, with its original words “Come By Here” was particularly meaningful, as Kim tossed aside the whole “kumbayah” mythos and modern meaning and brought us back to the deep, mournful hope of this song. We prayed this more than once as a group, hands on each other’s shoulders, tears rolling, connections to ourselves, each other, and the Divine made real.

I almost hesitate to keep the “kumbayah” lyric in here, except it is in our hymnal and I can’t deny its existence.  But after the lyrics, I’ll share an excerpt from a 2010 New York Times article that talks more about the song and how it got corrupted.

Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah.
Oh, Lord, kum ba yah!

Someone’s singing, Lord…

Someone’s laughing, Lord….

Someone’s weeping, Lord…

Someone’s praying, Lord …

Kum ba yah, my Lord …

This article sprang up because “kumbayah” had made its way into the political discourse, but it’s been in the pop culture discourse for a few decades. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I feel it necessary to share this bit:

“Come By Here” in its original hands appealed for divine intervention on behalf of the oppressed. The people who were “crying, my Lord” were blacks suffering under the Jim Crow regime of lynch mobs and sharecropping. While the song may have originated in the Georgia Sea Islands, by the late 1930s, folklorists had made recordings as far afield as Lubbock, Tex., and the Florida women’s penitentiary.

With the emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, “Come By Here” went from being an implicit expression of black liberation theology to an explicit one. The Folkways album “Freedom Songs” contains an emblematic version — deep, rolling, implacable — sung by the congregation at Zion Methodist Church in Marion., Ala., soon after the Selma march in March 1965.

The mixed blessing of the movement was to introduce “Come By Here” to sympathetic whites who straddled the line between folk music and progressive politics. The Weavers, Peter Seeger, the Folksmiths, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary all recorded versions of the song.

By the late 1950s, though, it was being called “Kumbaya.” Mr. Seeger, in liner notes to a 1959 album, claimed that America missionaries had brought “Come By Here” to Angola and it had returned retitled with an African word.

Experts like Stephen P. Winick of the Library of Congress say that it is likely that the song traveled to Africa with missionaries, as many other spirituals did, but that no scholar has ever found an indigenous word “kumbaya” with a relevant meaning. More likely, experts suggest, is that in the Gullah patois of blacks on the Georgia coast, “Come By Here” sounded like “Kumbaya” to white ears.

So a nonsense word with vaguely African connotations replaced a specific, prayerful appeal. And, thanks to songbooks, records and the hootenanny boom, the black Christian petition for balm and righteousness became supplanted by a campfire paean to brotherhood.

“The song in white hands was never grounded in faith,” Professor Hinson said. “Its words were simplistic; its tune was breezy. And it was simplistically dismissed.”

Go read the whole thing… and please, use this song with care.

—

Kim and Reggie came to the Keys while I was doing my internship; we took a photo together at this great place for Cuban sandwiches.