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I feel like I should be writing something elegant and insightful and perhaps a bit humorous about Taizé , about glorias, about chants and canons. Just yesterday I spoke of how this practice has never (except around the election) felt like a chore. And truly, the practice itself – singing – has never felt that way.

But some days the blogging – a practice I set up and an expectation I developed – feels less for me and more for you. That’s not a bad thing; our spiritual practices at their best lead us to turn back outward after having turned inward. I love that a personal thing has become a public ministry. I love the research, the thinking, the musing, the writing. I love the comments, even if the discussion gets heated sometimes. I love the friendships I’ve developed because of it and all that I have learned. I love it.

And today, all I want to do is sing this Gloria, over and over, Taizé style (because it is a Taizé piece by Jacques Berthier, after all) and sod the research and musicology and lit crit and theological discussion.

Gloria, gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Gloria, gloria, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Yeah. I’m not gonna write about any of that stuff and just play this YouTube video that has really no good visuals but a gorgeous audio to sing along with.

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As I mentioned yesterday, the English version of this lyric is a mashup of Luke 2;14 and an Isaac Watts hymn.  I take it on faith that the translation here is good – my go-to on Spanish is currently out of the country, so please, someone, let me know if it’s more or less the same as 381.

De todos bajo el gran sol
surja esperanza, fe, amor
verdad, y belleza cantando,
de cada tierra, cada voz.

I’m not sure I have anything to add, as this is a translation of yesterday’s text.

Except to say it’s beautiful in Spanish, and that I should work toward being more adept at the Spanish language.

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Last week when I started into this doxology section, I ran to the internet to find out a bit more about doxologies – where they come from, why they are used, etc. Of course, I stopped by Wikipedia to see what they had to say, and I discovered a section on Unitarianism. In the text as I found it, the earnest author listed this text, from Isaac Watts, as THE Unitarian Universalist doxology and Old Hundredth as THE tune.

That says two things to me – first, that the section needed to be edited, which I did. But second, that this is very common as a doxology (or as my home congregation calls it, an Affirmation of Faith). In my experience, if a congregation sings a doxology, it is this one – although much like spoken covenants, words do change a little; I never got used to the alterations made by the Southold congregation – their second line is ‘let words of hope…’ and their third line is ‘let joyful songs of praise be sung’.

But like I said, this is very common as a doxology, at least in the congregations I have been in.

From all that dwell below the skies
let songs of hope and faith arise;
let peace, good will on earth be sung
through every land, by every tongue.

The lyrics are an abridgment of a two-verse hymn by the very prolific Isaac Watts, a late 17th/early 18th century English hymn composer. We know him from from  Joy to the World. 

Here is Watts’ text:

From all that dwell below the skies,
Let the Creator’s praise arise;
Let the Redeemer’s name be sung
Through ev’ry land by ev’ry tongue.

Eternal are Thy mercies Lord;
Eternal truth attends Thy Word;
Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore
Till suns shall rise and set no more.

Obviously, that won’t do for most of us – even if we are UU Christian, the idea of Redeemer is complicated by our Universalism.

But somewhere along the way – and the names are now lost to history – someone thought the sentiment of Luke 2:14 – “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” – would be a nice replacement, and so we get peace and good will on earth. The rest then is just poetry.

Now I will say there is nothing in our version that I object to, and it’s quite familiar to me. But I am not sure this is my favorite of the bunch – and I’m not sure why. I am not entirely sure I HAVE a favorite. I wonder if what I need are new doxologies, new songs of praise to stir my well-worn heart.

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This one seems very familiar…

No, I’ve not sung it before, which surprises me a little. If I had, I hope I’d sung it to Vom Himmel Hoch, because that seems the best pairing to my ear. But it seems very familiar. They certainly are a sentiment that makes sense to me – one I’ve certainly preached before.

Rejoice in love we know and share,
in love and beauty everywhere;
rejoice in truth that makes us free,
and in the good that yet shall be.

Seems more familiar in the singing… but I turn my attention to the facts: these lyrics are by Charles Lyttle (with an abridgement by Vincent Silliman and Edwin Palmer). I wrote about him recently, I recall, and find that yes, he wrote the lyrics to Praise God.

Which are remarkably the same.

Seriously. Click the link, then come back here.

::::: hums ‘Girl from Ipanema’::::::

You’re back! See what I mean? It’s almost like Silliman and Palmer took out the God and fleshed out the words to fill the meter. They certainly aren’t as theist – even though Lyttle’s original lyric was meant to bridge the theist/humanist gap – taking away God makes this much more palatable to many of our congregants. But even for this theist, I dig this lyric a lot. Sure, it’s aspirational. Sure, there’s a lot of love lost between members of our congregations, and that work of building beloved community often needs to be done inside our walls as well as outside – but I love the aspirational thought that love and truth are what ground us and that good is what we are working toward.

Yep. It’s a winner.

Even though I know you’re walking away from this not humming the hymn but rather humming ‘Girl from Ipanema” – which you can’t blame on me, but you can blame on the Bosa Nova.

You’re welcome.

—-

Yes, that’s Ipanema Beach, in Rio de Janeiro.

 

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I wonder sometimes if I’m overthinking these things.

You see, I first looked at our lyric – another one by Ken Patton – and at first cheered at having an artsy doxology text, since I am an artsy minister. Yay, loveliness! Yay all arts, all songs, beauty! Yay all the other stuff! Yay! Ours be the poems of …wait, of all tongues? Ours? Huh? Who is us?

And now I don’t know what to think. Here’s the lyric:

Ours be the poems of all tongues,
all things of loveliness and worth.
All arts, all ages, and all songs,
one life, one beauty on the earth.

I’m a little confused. Are we taking an imperialistic tone here, or are we saying that all of humanity’s artsy stuff belongs to all of us because we’re all human? And if that’s the case, isn’t that a bit too much “I don’t see differences”? Or… is this meant to be a “thanks, God, for giving us all this artsy compulsion and this artsy, lovely planet to be artsy on”?

Seriously – I may be overthinking this one and may need help to get out of my head. Because I don’t want to be suspicious when I encounter praise for artsy-ness, and I’m feeling that way today.

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Before I begin today’s piece, I want to invite those of you not on Facebook to check out my posting of yesterday’s hymn, because it generated a fascinating discussion about the use of doxologies and changing them up. I am so happy when people engage my meandering thoughts on the songs we all think we know.

Now – approaching this one led to an interesting train of thought. Hop on… which requires first reading the lyrics, by Ken Patton:

Let those who live in every land
declare that fear and war are done —
joined by the labor of their hands,
in love and understanding, one.

I first thought, “huh, we really do have a lot of war and peace songs in this hymnal.”

Then, “well, this hymnal was developed at the end of the Cold War, when we talked about war and peace a lot.”

And then, “even so, this is a pretty odd thing to sing for a regular doxology. But maybe it wouldn’t have been then.”

And then, “interesting, we don’t talk much about that anymore. War seems so distant.”

And then, “oh wait. We are still at war. Have been engaged in war for thirteen years.”

And finally. “Oh crap. We forgot about it. I forgot about it. And now we could be facing a new war.”

And then, I turned back to the doxology:

Let those who live in every land
declare that fear and war are done —
joined by the labor of their hands,
in love and understanding, one.

And I thought, “Maybe we need to sing this every week again and remember we’re still at war abroad, as well as at home. Maybe we need to make declarations of peace across the board.”

Maybe. Maybe.

(Also – I instinctively sang this to Tallis Canon.)

 

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I’m beginning to wonder why congregations only sing one doxology throughout the year, year after year. Is it because of habit? Because in Protestant churches that sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” that’s how it’s done? Or because that’s one more thing the minister and music director have to think about?

I admit, as the minister at First Universalist Southold, it never dawned on me to change their doxology or even switch it up now and then. Once as a lay worship leader in Saratoga, we did it for a seventh principle service, but we made a big deal about the change for the one week.

Yet day by day, I’m discovering beautiful lyrics (and even ones I’m not in love with but still appreciate) that, while not appropriate for every week, would be great for some weeks. Like this one, another anonymous verse:

In greening lands begins the song
which deep in human hearts is strong.
In cheerful strains your voices raise,
to fill the whole spring world with praise!

I admit that this might be insensitive to use right now, given the fires out west and the lack of green in hurricane-ravaged areas. But that’s not always the case, and what a lovely springtime doxology to sing. This one feels right to me in Old Hundredth, although I admit I’m probably not giving Vom Himmel Hoch enough credit, as I’m not as familiar with it.

Anyway. Maybe it’s time we think about the doxology in our services in a different way – even if we never let the liturgical element go, maybe we switch up the words?

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So… huh.

I had gotten three quarters of the way through writing today’s post, all kinds of excited about the joy in discovery, the awe and wonder of science, calling in Malvina Reynolds’ O What a Piece of Work Are We, waxing poetic about religious humanism, thinking about when I could preach this and use this as my doxology. Feast on this bounteous world indeed!

And then I read the lyrics again…

Sing loudly till the stars have heard.
In joy, feast on this bounteous word!
Our praises call us to explore
till suns shall rise and set no more.

Feast on this bounteous WORD.

This anonymously written lyric isn’t so much about science as it is about sacred texts. Perhaps the sacred text at the center of our Protestant forebears, in fact. And not that this still isn’t about our human joy of learning and meaning making – it is. But it’s not the same lyric I started writing about.

This isn’t to say I wouldn’t still use this for a service about the fourth principle, or perhaps on the sacred texts of the third and fourth source. And if I did, I’d use Old Hundredth – of the three tunes, that is in my mind the most praiseful.

 

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So… this one confused the heck out me at first, because there is no such thing as a saffron tree. There’s a flower from which we get saffron that we use for cooking.

Until I realized that saffron here is a color – the color I saw all along the highways between here and northern Westchester County. D’oh!

As saffron trees now capture fire
and memories our hopes inspire;
we’ll praise imagination’s grace —
the human heart’s best resting place.

This anonymously written verse is lovely – I really like its imagery and especially the praise for imagination’s grace. But I will say that I don’t like any of our three tunes; in fact, when I first looked at the lyrics, I started singing them to the Danby tune (best known from For All the Beauty We Have Known), which I think fits them so much more elegantly and emotionally than any of our doxology tunes.

Anyway… I’m a fan of this one, but I suspect I’d only use it in the autumn. How much would it twist our congregations around if we switched up doxologies now and then? Hmmm……

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We’ve kinda sung this before.

No, I don’t mean that in some UU congregations, the royal ‘we’ have sung it. I mean that on July 16th, we sang an adaptation of this in the hymn Creative Love, Our Thanks We Give. In the full hymn version, we sing these lyrics adapted by Beth Ide:

Since what we choose is what we are,
and what we love we yet shall be,
the goal may ever shine afar —
the will to reach it makes us free.

There’s only one word changed – “reach” instead of William DeWitt Hyde’s original “win,” which we then use here in the doxology section:

Since what we choose is what we are,
and what we love we yet shall be,
the goal may ever shine afar —
the will to win it makes us free.

And all of this makes me less likely to use it at all as a doxology, because now that I know it’s the last verse of a hymn we sing, it feels like reading just the last chapter of a novel and wondering what happened in the rest of the book. (Have you ever done that, though? Read a final chapter of a book you’re not likely to read all of, and then make up the story for yourself? Or is this just one of those quirky things I did because I was a bookish, lonely child?)

Anyway. I sang it to all three tunes (plus “Hernando’s Hideaway” as per my snarky friends on Facebook), and to me it fits best with Tallis Canon. But I’m not sure I would use it, because I’m still not sure I buy the theology or the privilege of it.