I wrote the following a couple months ago with a migraine; there are a lot of semi-colons....
Be Thou my Battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
“Dignity” and “delight”, an unusual pairing in a hymn, provide the transition from fighting to resting. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “dignity” as worthiness, worth, nobleness, excellence; honorable or high estate; nobility or befitting elevation of aspect, manner, or style; becoming or fit stateliness, gravity. In medieval times, noblemen were required to fight with their king. Our King stays so close to us that we are not separated by the length of a battlefield nor even by another body; He defends us as our Shield and fights for us as our Sword. He goes deeper even than providing the tools of war; He confers nobility, the nobility belonging to sons and daughters of the King, that we may use the tools with good conduct and honor. This graciousness prompts deep delight, the kind of delight found in the safe shelter of a worthy lover, whose tower protects us from the battle raging outside. We have here pairings of outward activity (battle shield, sword) and inward rest (shelter, tower); the singer ecstatically prays that God meet all needs. “Battle shield” and “shelter” are further paired as images of things that surround us, while “sword” and “tower” are paired as images that point up and straight to the sky; we are protected from earthly perils and raised heavenward by God’s own power. The dignity of the uplifted human soul is joined with the delight of the sheltered human heart in one hymn of praise to God.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Monday, September 03, 2007
Sean's Question 2: All the Stanzas All the Time?
Sean asked: "It seems as though you spread the hymn out over the course of the month, is this formulaic or do you look at the context of the hymn stanzas? ... Do you sing ALL the verses in the hymn or just the verses in your hymnal..."?
Answer to both questions: it depends.
I'm interested in using the Hymn of the Month in different places in the service, so singing all the stanzas is not always appropriate. For example, my priest has requested that I almost always close our contemporary service with a high-energy praise song--send them out with a bang.... To honor his request, but also to illustrate to the congregation a correspondence of themes through the centuries, I closed with only the final stanza of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"--changing "That word above all earthly pow'rs" to "God's word above all earthly pow'rs" so we weren't hitting it without context--and then on the last note of the last line--"His kingdom is forevER"--launching immediately into the intro of a praise song called "King of Kings."
Another reason to not sing all the stanzas all the time is that the congregation could get weary of it. Some Sundays I present our Hymn of the Month merely as an instrumental during communion, offertory, prelude, or postlude. I hope the musical variations will bring different aspects of the text to light, as words drift in and out of the congregation's minds, both staving off boredom and illustrating text.
Finally, we don't necessarily sing the version in the Episcopal hymnal. In fact, we don't even have hymnals (which I much regret, but the church has other things to deal with right now). So while I'm picking the version or translation, I'm also studying all the original stanzas and beginning to assign them to different parts in the service during the coming month. Then we just pubish the desired stanzas each week, print format for the traditional service, Power Point for the contemporary service.
I have no idea if people in the congregation are actually holding on to the bulletin insert from the beginning of the month, the insert that prints the hymn in its entirety, but if they are, then they have a bird's eye view of the hymn to work with at home.
Answer to both questions: it depends.
I'm interested in using the Hymn of the Month in different places in the service, so singing all the stanzas is not always appropriate. For example, my priest has requested that I almost always close our contemporary service with a high-energy praise song--send them out with a bang.... To honor his request, but also to illustrate to the congregation a correspondence of themes through the centuries, I closed with only the final stanza of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"--changing "That word above all earthly pow'rs" to "God's word above all earthly pow'rs" so we weren't hitting it without context--and then on the last note of the last line--"His kingdom is forevER"--launching immediately into the intro of a praise song called "King of Kings."
Another reason to not sing all the stanzas all the time is that the congregation could get weary of it. Some Sundays I present our Hymn of the Month merely as an instrumental during communion, offertory, prelude, or postlude. I hope the musical variations will bring different aspects of the text to light, as words drift in and out of the congregation's minds, both staving off boredom and illustrating text.
Finally, we don't necessarily sing the version in the Episcopal hymnal. In fact, we don't even have hymnals (which I much regret, but the church has other things to deal with right now). So while I'm picking the version or translation, I'm also studying all the original stanzas and beginning to assign them to different parts in the service during the coming month. Then we just pubish the desired stanzas each week, print format for the traditional service, Power Point for the contemporary service.
I have no idea if people in the congregation are actually holding on to the bulletin insert from the beginning of the month, the insert that prints the hymn in its entirety, but if they are, then they have a bird's eye view of the hymn to work with at home.
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