Hymn Notes

Integrating Children in Worship

2008-12-19T10:57:00.001-08:00

I was surprised to receive two separate queries this month about a post from last year on children's sermons. Having worked a little more with children this year and having read a lot more about children, here are the two very best titles I've found for integrating children into worship:

The Church of All Ages, ed. Howard Vanderwell (Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2008)

A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship, ed. John D. Witvliet (Garland, Texas: Choristers Guild, 1999)

They include some discussion of the development of the children sermon; the historical role of children in worship; philosophical and theological perspectives; and LOTS of practical ideas.

Merry Christmas!

"A Mighty Fortress": The Reformation Lives On

2007-11-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Note: This was originally printed for a September bulletin.

On October 31, 1517, twelve years before he wrote this hymn, the Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences to the door of a Wittenberg, Germany, church, effectively sparking the Protestant Reformation with his critique of indulgences sold by the Catholic church. Out of this Reformation, celebrating its 490th anniversary next month, was born all of the other churches (besides Roman Catholic and Orthodox) that we know today: Lutherans, Presbyterians (including the branches of the Reformed Church), Anabaptists (predecessors of the Baptist denominations)--and Anglicans [that's the church I'm currently serving]!

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was the five "solas", meaning "alone":

Sola gratia (we are saved "by grace alone")
Sola fide (through "faith alone")
Sola scriptura ("Scripture alone" is the source of Christian doctrine)
Solus Christus ("Christ alone" is the mediator between God and man)
Soli Deo Gloria (all glory is due to "God alone")

Two of the ways Luther expressed the idea of sola scriptura were by encouraging ordinary people to read Scripture for themselves and to sing scriptural ideas in their own languages, rather than merely hearing scriptural ideas sung in Latin. Because of his emphasis on ordinary people participating in the service, Luther was a father of congregational singing.

"A Mighty Fortress" expresses the strength of ordinary people's devotion in the face of much resistance, and since its words and tune were both written by the founder of the Protestant Reformation, it has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation." For a while, it is the last hymn we will sing that was written by a monk--because ordinary people learned to read, write, and praise God with hymns in their own languages. May we sing it today with vigor, knowing we stand with generations of ordinary people to praise an extraordinary God.

"Be Thou My Vision" 4: Valuing the Tune

2007-10-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Not only the words to the church's hymns but the tunes themselves are gifts from the Holy Spirit, to be treasured and passed down from one generation to the next. The tune of Be Thou My Vision is known as SLANE (hymn tune names are typically capitalized), and refers to a very dramatic event that occurred on March 26, AD 433 (Easter Sunday), on the Hill of Slane in Ireland.

Oral tradition relates that at the command of Leoghaire, the Supreme Monarch of Ireland, the druids and Irish chiefs were to meet in full number...

"...and the decree went forth that... the fires throughout the kingdom should be extinguished until the signal blaze was kindled at the royal mansion. ... [The druids] would muster all their strength to bid defiance to the herald of good tidings and to secure the hold of their superstition on the Celtic race, for their demoniac oracles had announced that the messenger of Christ had come to Erin. St. Patrick arrived at the hill of Slane, at the opposite extremity of the valley from Tara, on Easter Eve...and on the summit of the hill kindled the Paschal fire [as an Easter fire, it was a sign of the presence of Christ, the Light of the world]. The druids at once raised their voice. 'O King', (they said) 'live for ever; this fire, which has been lighted in defiance of the royal edict, will blaze for ever in this land unless it be this very night extinguished.' By order of the king and the agency of the druids, repeated attempts were made to extinguish the blessed fire and to punish with death the intruder who had disobeyed the royal command. But the fire was not extinguished and Patrick shielded by the Divine power came unscathed from their snares and assaults. On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels, and followed by St. Patrick who with mitre and crozier was arrayed in full episcopal attire, proceeded in processional order to Tara. The druids and magicians put forth all their strength and employed all their incantations to maintain their sway over the Irish race, but the prayer and faith of Patrick achieved a glorious triumph. The druids by their incantations overspread the hill and surrounding plain with a cloud of worse than Egyptian darkness. Patrick defied them to remove that cloud, and when all their efforts were made in vain, at his prayer the sun sent forth its rays and the brightest sunshine lit up the scene. Again by demoniac power the Arch-Druid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid from his flight was dashed to pieces upon a rock.
"Thus was the final blow given to paganism in the presence of all the assembled chieftains. It was, indeed, a momentous day for the Irish race" (from "http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm", accessed July 25, 2007).

The Irish folk song Slane was written about this occasion, and became the hymn tune SLANE when it was matched appropriately to the Irish monastic prayer of protection, Be Thou My Vision, in the early 1900's.

******************************************************

If the tunes themselves are gifts, we should treat them well!

If you are singing this tune at home, here is a hint to help you find the correct rhythm in one difficult place: for the words to match the tune, one syllable in the third line usually gets two beats instead of one.

The syllable that gets two beats is capitalized in the following illustrations.

1. Thou my best THOUGHT, by day or by night....
2. Thou my great FA-ther, I Thy true son....
3. Thou my soul's SHEL-ter, Thou my high tower....
4. Thou and Thou ON-ly, first in my heart....
5. Heart of my own heart, whatever befall.... (here the syllables match the tune, beat for beat)

"Be Thou My Vision" 3: Fighting and Resting

2007-09-19T11:44:00.001-07:00

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.

Sean's Question 2: All the Stanzas All the Time?

2007-09-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Sean's Question 1: Origins of Hymn of the Month

2007-08-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Sean asked a number of questions in the Comment section of the last post. I thought they each were worth answering in a separate post.

By the way, Sean, since you're one of about three people who reads and comments on this blog, I'm curious: Are you a church musician? Do you have a web site you'd like me to feature one of these days?

OK, here we go:

“How did you first start the hymn of the month idea?”

The summer after graduating from college, I had a few weeks in an apartment with nothing to do before the next gig. I decided to memorize hymns. Every day I would walk to the college library with a list of favorite hymns and then I would research their first appearances to get as close to the original lyrics as possible. Every afternoon I would order the hymns by date of writing and happily memorize them, stanza by stanza, in strict chronological sequence. Why deny my congregations this pleasure just because they have only a few minutes per week instead of hours per day?

The next year, as a first-year graduate student in Massachusetts, the church I served as organist requested an extended prelude once per month to prepare the congregation for communion. I thought the congregation might as well understand what they were hearing, so began little synopses in the bulletin each month, describing the prelude music, especially how the tunes and organ colorings illustrated the text.

Later, as a choir director, with a ton of music to teach every week and very little time to allow the words we were singing to sink in, I found it helpful to have a “theme” hymn just for the choir, to help focus their attention during a season.

Finally, at this most recent church, I’ve had the joy of considering what hymns could best minister to the congregants if they were deeply in the congregants’ minds—and what hymns would best help the congregants minister to God. They’re not all my absolute favorites—my personal favorites being rather too complex and often in different languages—typical of any trained musician—but they’re well-loved and quite good enough to live in hearts through a life-time. Many of them already have survived many centuries, so they’re likely good for a few more years….

Most of the hymns chosen for this congregation come from Hymns and Tunes Recommended for Ecumenical Use (ask the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada for this list), and then I chose which version of each we’ll use and what month it would fit best, including which hymn it best follows. Twelve to twenty months, meaning twelve to twenty hymns, is probably enough to plan ahead.

Hal Hopson has written One Hundred Plus Ways to Improve Hymnsinging: A Practical Guide for All Who Nurture Congregational Singing—do you know this book? I’ve only skimmed it, but it’s chockful of good ideas. You could spend the rest of your life and ministry implementing his ideas.

"Be Thou My Vision" 2: Men, Men, Men!

2007-08-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise;
Thou mine Inheritance now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

Today we focus on the second and fourth stanzas (see above) because one leads to another. Although we proclaim Christ's salvation for male and female, the language of "sonship" here conveys an important theological truth for both sexes: in Christ we share His inheritance, the inheritance of the first-born Son, which is freely given to all. The exclusive language of Psalm 2:7-8 ("The LORD said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession."), exclusive because it speaks of Christ, becomes the inclusive language of Galatians 3:26, 28-29: "...for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. ... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's , then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." Because the Son inherits, all of us inherit.

In "Be Thou My Vision," instead of our inheriting the nations, we inherit God Himself. "The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; thou holdest my lot. The [property] lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage" (Psalm 16:5-6).

Lord God of Abraham, we cannot quite grasp what it means for us to inherit this promise--the promise of fully dwelling with You. May Your Spirit begin to probe in us what it may mean to live in the light of this inheritance; while we serve as stewards of earthly treasures, help us consider what it means for You to be our greatest treasure.

"Be Thou My Vision" 1: With That Missing Third Stanza

2007-07-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

So the first Sunday of the month, I always print the full hymn text as we will eventually sing it. Even though we may not sing all stanzas every Sunday, individuals are offered the chance to take that first insert home and work on memorizing the whole thing.

Of course YOU aren't surprised by the third stanza about battles and fighting and such, since as the people who read hymn blogs, you know almost everything there is to know about hymns already; but the congregation sure was surprised, since mention of Christian-as-warrior, even though it doesn't mean we should literally take up swords to hack our enemies, is removed from most P.C. hymnals. But you knew that.

Here's a little review:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought by day or by night;
waking or sleeping, Thy presence my Light.

Be Thou my Wisdom and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

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.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise;
Thou mine Inheritance now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart;
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

"All Creatures of Our God and King" 2: St. Francis Not a Nature Lover

2007-07-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

(Note: The following didn't actually publish in my church's bulletin, because I decided not to play the hymn that Sunday.)

This hymn from St. Francis was a brilliant departure from the pantheism (nature-worship) of his day--instructive for us in a day when paganism is alive and well in parts of the United States, and when we ourselves feel a proper yearning to be in closer harmony with the nature God made.

The original lyrics included addresses not merely to Mother Earth but to Brother Fire and Sister Water, from a Christian perspective. G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous biography, St. Francis of Assisi, brings this into focus ([San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1986], 81-87; first published in 1923):

“St. Francis was not a lover of nature. … The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism.… Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. … He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. …

“Though in some ways [All Creatures of Our God and King] is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. … It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. … St. Francis was…the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen….

“[When he was going blind, he was told the solution was to cauterize his eye.] When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: ‘Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.’

“If there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces. Not to many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live one of their own poems. … For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the
garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend,calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.”

Creator Spirit, as we sing this hymn, minister to us; help us to properly name the many creatures You have made and to understand and rejoice in Your purposes for them. By our seeing all nature in Your light, help us to minister to creation, to care for it in the way You desire; may we have patience with its limitations and happiness in its strengths. May we become living testimonies to the care and delight You take in creation, in all the particular, different things, and to the hope we have in Christ of Your restoring it in the new heavens and new earth. Alleluia, alleluia!

"All Creatures of Our God and King" 1: The "Alleluia" Refrain

2007-07-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

OK! Thank you, Adam and Sean, for your encouragement. I would be happy to publish some of the Hymn Notes appearing weekly in the church bulletin. We've been doing this only two months now, although of course I've had the idea and done similar things at other churches for many years.

On the first week of each month, the congregation receives an insert with the full lyrics. They are encouraged to take these home and memorize them.

On successive weeks, they may receive some historical background or devotional material about the hymn.

Here's the second week of "All Creatures of Our God and King," as it appeared in the bulletin in June:

The songs of God’s people were never meant to rest in the church building, but to bubble up from our hearts throughout our moments and days. We pray that the Hymns of the Month may help us reflect on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through two millenia of congregational song, and to dwell on some of the words and tunes the Spirit inspired in our brothers and sisters before us, so that the Spirit may have opportunity again to bless God, others, and ourselves through these phrases in our own hearts in this time. As an example of how different hymns may be sung in different moments of our lives, we will sometimes sing them at different points in the Sunday morning service.

The refrain of this hymn of the month (“O praise Him, alleluia”) makes it particularly appropriate for use before and after the gospel reading.

“Alleluia” survives as a transliteration of the Hebrew “Hallelujah”, meaning “Praise Jah[weh]!” It appears numerous times in Psalms 113-118 and four times in Revelation 19, where it serves less as an injunction to praise than as a mighty summation of all the intensity of praise in heaven. This word’s continued use from the Old Testament temple worship to the New Testament’s revelation of heavenly worship, from the liturgies of first-century Christians to twenty-first-century Christians, allows us to join our voices with the company of heaven and to participate in the worship of all believers through time and space.

Please encourage one another in worship this morning, and yourselves throughout the week, by singing “Alleluia” with loudness and might.

Martin Marty 4: No Private Spirituality

2006-08-31T08:56:00.000-07:00

The last item I want to discuss from Martin Marty's list is #8, Going Public. Marty remarked that confessing our faith in public, as illustrated by such hymns as "I Love to Tell the Story", is a very strange act in our American milieu of private spirituality.

Yet the psalms are filled with announcements that "I will speak of Thy goodness in the great congregation." The Old and New Testaments do not really credit any faith that remains private.

My husband pointed out recently that people who say they believe in Jesus but not in the church do not really believe in Jesus at all—not to the point of following His teachings beyond a vague niceness (and was Jesus actually "nice"?). Jesus reveled in symbolism and community, following the Old Testament law to the letter in His circumcision, presentation at the temple, and baptism; He went to the temple feasts with His parents; He attended the synagogue regularly, reading Scripture there publicly until the crowd decided to stone him. His first followers continued these Jewish practices, giving them a Christian twist, but not neglecting to meet together and not neglecting to carry on Jesus' commandments to use physical signs—water, bread and wine—to convey His teaching. The signs themselves were of community with the Trinity and with each other, and could not be practiced in any act of private spirituality.

Take a deep breath. Sing it out. "I will speak of Thy goodness in the great congregation; I Love to Tell the Story."

Martin Marty 3: Voices and Bodies that Rise, Fall, and Rise

2006-08-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

The fourth point, Voice, emphasized Christianity as a material religion. Paying attention to our voices reminds us that we would not have Christianity without "a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a river" (Marty was quoting someone else here).

The first time we sang the hymn "That Joyful Eastertide" (VRUETCHTEN) with text, the second time on "aw". We focused on the vibrations and resonance in our body, on our "wonderful madeness."

One of my employers said last week that he believes we will just be spirits in heaven, that Jesus' resurrected body was an illusion or something he cast off after he got through the clouds. That rather defeats the purpose of our belief, doesn't it? We long to be restored humanity, in all our spiritual and physical glory, not merely ghosts.

Fortunately, the Bible disagrees with my employer's views and holds out a different promise. Thomas put his hand in Jesus' side, and no body fell thunk to earth after the disciples stopped gazing up.

Dan Schutte 3: Hunger and Satisfaction

2006-08-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

This Sunday a women's trio at my church is performing another of Schutte's tunes, "Pilgrim Companions", since the lectionary, as nearly as I can recall from planning this a couple months ago, has to do with Christ's being the Bread of Life (John 6) and with our walking together as imitators of God, His beloved children (Ephesians 4-5)--two themes unified in "Pilgrim Companions".

How do we capture the idea of the now and the not-yet, of Christ feeding us but not entirely satisfying us until heaven? One of the stanzas in "PC" reads, "Over and over, we hunger for someone to feed us and fill our desire; when the God of our longing has courted and captured our hearts, we will hunger no more," and the refrain closes with, "Hungry yet hopeful, sustained by the love of the Lord."

Since college years, I've latched onto that phrase, "hungry yet hopeful," as the theme of my life. My life didn't start that way. Since age nine, I had been nurtured on John Foley's version of Psalm 16, "For You Are My God" (and just why did a pack of St. Louis Jesuits have so much standing in a Reformed church?—but that is a question for another day), and its refrain, "For you are my God, you alone are my joy…". I thought God alone had to be my joy—sort of a beatific vision. But in college I began reading Psalm 16 seriously and finally noticed that immediately after the statement, "I have no good apart from thee," the psalmist follows with, "As for the saints in the land, they are the noble, in whom is all my delight" (italics added). So I began to get an inkling that God does not want us to enjoy "just" Him, but Him in His creation.

But how to enjoy God in His creation? The sadness of the world has never been far from me (many toddler portraits show a melancholy face, whereas my little brother is beaming), as the world, God's creation, including those made in His image, is continually falling short of God's intentions for it.

I read a lot of C.S. Lewis then and nearly memorized (really) his Weight of Glory essay, in which he talks frankly about our hunger for that which is not in this world, for the glory that is to come. This is still different from God alone being our joy; Lewis talks rather about our delighting in our Father's approval and stepping into the harmony and unity of creation that was meant from the beginning.

Hungry yet hopeful. You see how this develops.

When I taught for a couple years at a Christian high school, one of the kids' favorites songs was called "Hungry": "Hungry I come to you, for I know you satisfy." I sort of liked this song, but was worried that the students would get the ideas (1) that Jesus is supposed to satisfy immediately, meaning sometime in this life, and (2) that something is wrong with the kids if they don't feel "satisfied by Jesus" despite all their devotional practices. There certainly was a lot of unchristian guilt spread around that campus, possibly associated with songs like this.

I tried to talk about unrealistic expectations for satisfaction. I tried, for example, to tell the students in some chapels that if they got married, it could just increase the loneliness. My husband, The Abbott, is my best friend and a far-above-average partner in caring for me and preparing for our baby, but the loneliness I experience on a daily basis is real and unanswered by this wonderful man; I see more clearly after marriage than before that the dearest of human partners will not satisfy this ache, this hunger, for complete harmony and unity with God and His creation. I'm not sure the students understood this; I'm not sure I explained it well enough, or that because of songs like "Hungry", anyone was capable of understanding this.

The subtlety of Bernard of Clairvaux's "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts" helps us here. Two stanzas will suffice:

Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts,
Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men,
From the best bliss that earth imparts,
We turn unfilled to Thee again.

We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

The now and the not-yet. We're still hungry--yet hopeful. They didn't often sing this at the high school.

Haunted in New Mexico: Lutherans Amok

2006-08-10T06:24:00.000-07:00

Check out our friend's most recent post. She's been attending an art conference (writers' workshop?) in New Mexico with a pack of ex-Lutherans.

Martin Marty 2: Silence and Noise

2006-08-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

The first two points, Silence and Noise, could both be illustrated within sound.

Silence here refers to the spaces between notes--the organist's touch or the length of pause between phrases or stanzas--and to the possibility of a leader simply reading a stanza out loud in the middle of the hymn, while the congregation listens. Attention to silence helps us tune in to sound; the silence becomes part of the sound, another of its forms or shapes.

I use this method of attentiveness instinctively when shaping phrases in congregational song, based on the meaning of the text, but I noticed last night that I also use silence and softness pedagogically during piano lessons or choral lessons. A quiet smile or other facial expression in response to a performance is very effective after I've been blathering away or the student has been pounding away for a few minutes; the sudden absence of verbosity, whether verbal or musical, quickens our ears and sharpens our focus.

I recall also that one theory behind chant is that monks were allowed to make it somewhat organically, without a strict tempus, and with lots of individual variations within a choir. The subtlety of these variations was due, not crassly to lack of practice, but thoughtfully to the Holy Spirit's interpreting the text through each vessel, nudging here, lengthening there, taking a little breath, according to as each understood and as each had need. I do hope that theory of chant performance is true. Even if it is not, we can make it true in our own performances, explaining to the choir why in some cases we do not want them to keep an absolutely strict rhythm and tempo.

Silence.

Noise was delightfully illustrated through the spiritual "Let My People Go", which we were instructed to sing "in a down and dirty manner", stamping our feet on beats three and four after "Go down" and "Moses." Not all hymns and church tunes should be sung reverently; not all the Bible should be read reverently, I mean in an ethereal voice.

This reminds me that in a later post I mean to cover a hymn written by one of the participants of the conference, Adam Tice, in which "[t]he maiden Mary (not so mild) bore into death's domain true God, and yet an infant child...." Not so mild! Get down and dirty, Mary. Bear us that child.

Martin Marty 1: Churchgoers as Naked Mole Rats

2006-08-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

During the Hymn Society's recent conference, Martin Marty brought us a look at the phenomology of hymnody—"What Is Going on When Christians Sing Hymns in Congregation?"—with each of his points accompanied by an appropriate hymn.

The points seemed a little haphazard, some of them having to do with the manner or technique of making music, some with the content of the songs, and one (#8) as the most cerebral, describing what happens in general when the private becomes public. I could have used another level of organization, dividing the points more neatly into categories.

I'll list the points first, then ponder some of my favorites in this and later posts.

Introduction: Phenomenology Defined; Location of Sacred
1. Silence
2. Noise
3. Awe
4. Voice
5. Rhythm and Harmony
6. Narrating and Listening
7. Conversing
8. Going Public
9. Unisonality and Harmony
10. Catechizing
Summary: Praising and Story

I don't recall how Marty defined phenomenology except through his example of stepping back from the congregation as a stranger to observe. I would supplement this with a concrete example, comparing this attitude of the stranger in the congregation to how you might observe a colony of naked mole rats burrowing around at the zoo, underground in a clear container like an ant farm: What are those creatures up to? How are they moving? Do they look busy or languid? What happens when one naked mole rat encounters another naked mole rat going the opposite direction in the same tunnel? How big are they making their burrows? How much noise does burrowing make? Where are the baby naked mole rats kept while the adults work? Are the babies allowed to observe, or are they confined? Does any adult oversee them? (This vision of the naked mole rats is vivid in my head, since I dreamed last week that I gave birth to one. My actual baby, due the middle of November, promises to look more human than that.)

During the introduction, Marty mentioned (as an aside?) that the discipline of acting like a stranger allows one to answer the question, "Where is this congregation locating the sacred?" Some congregations locate it in the host (the communion elements), some in the center aisle, some in icons, some in the music itself. I don't think I've seen a congregation locating it in the center aisle and I'm not sure how this would be observed, but the other places seem standard.

Dan Schutte 2: "Holy Darkness" and Songs of Suffering

2006-07-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

During the workshop, Schutte had us all sing his "Holy Darkness", based on the writings of St. John of the Cross. The refrain begins with the lovely blessing, "Holy darkness, blessed night, heaven's answer hidden from our sight", and the first stanza is quite beautiful: "I have tried you in fires of affliction; I have taught your soul to grieve. In the barren soil of your loneliness there I will plant my seed." (Please write Oregon Catholic Press for the full score, Catalog #9906 for SATB arrangement and "assembly edition"—words and melody only.) We had sung several other songs and then politely waited for his comments, but at the end of this performance, everyone clapped. I think we were relieved that someone has written a song about depression and suffering, when all the rage right now is how happy we are and how Jesus satisfies our suburban dream.

What songs about suffering does the American church sing on a regular basis? We have the songs of Passion Week, of course. We have "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", with its implied suffering: "Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God's truth abideth still…" But I don't think we have enough songs that acknowledge our suffering and allow us to hallow it. We will all suffer; we are all in big trouble if we have not been prepared with hymns that grant us strength of character to withstand it.

My favorite song of suffering is Bonhoeffer's "By Gracious Powers So Wonderfully Sheltered", especially the stanza, "And when this cup You give is filled to brimming with bitter suffering, hard to understand, we take it thankfully and without trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand."

A few rounds of "Kyrie Eleison" never hurt either. I feel the American suburban churches are so complacent that whenever I play a "Kyrie Eleison" or "Agnus Dei" during a service, I try to make the organ wail. If somebody won't cry, then something has to cry. And perhaps it gives people a chance, however fleeting, to acknowledge there may be tears inside themselves, now or later.

Dan Schutte 1: Listening to Scripture

2006-07-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

Despite my not having written on this blog for some months, hymn activity has hardly slowed!

I just came back from the Hymn Society National Conference in Greencastle, Indiana. Where else can you rub shoulders with great text and tune writers, have three snack breaks plus three meal breaks per day, and sing for hours every morning and afternoon?

Thursday morning, the final day of the five-day conference, I was much too groggy to introduce myself to even one new person, but I enjoyed at least listening to Dan Schutte, a composer whose works I've been singing since age nine. He gave a workshop on the Spirituality of Hymn Writing.

One of the things I appreciate most about Dan is his attentiveness to Scripture. He said that when he writes a new song, he often (always?) opens about eight translations of a scriptural text. Listening to language prompts him to develop certain metaphors for God or Christian experience which are only hinted at or bypassed in some translations, more fully expressed in others.

This philosophy of hymn writing is completely different from what I've encountered in the writings of Ruth Duck and Brian Wren, as exemplified in Wren's hymn, "Bring Many Names." Briefly, the Duck/Wren philosophies of hymn writing state that Scripture is culturally bound and therefore does not have ultimate authority in determining how we address God; rather, the Spirit releases us to find new names for God in our new age of Christian history. This puts tremendous emphasis on the individual's perception of God rather than on God's revelation of Himself.

"For All the Saints": Encore!

2006-04-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

There are THREE MORE STANZAS in the Cyber Hymnal version of "For All the Saints" than have appeared in any hymnal I own. We'll have to consider those later.

"For All the Saints": Warfare and Light in the Bedroom

2006-04-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

In comparing the three official supplements of the Episcopal Hymnal 1982, I've noticed that their language becomes gradually more pacifistic. No more "marching to Zion"—no, now we're just enfolded in a "warm embrace."

Now I'm about as female as they come. I wear skirts six days a week; I bake cookies (when I'm not struggling with morning sickness—four weeks to go till the end of the first trimester!); I sing lullabies for pleasure; I'm kind to animals. But! I like action movies and adventure stories and fairy tales of knights fighting dragons; like every human on the planet, I struggle against temptation, fight to control my tongue, battle inward thoughts, and occasionally have to speak sharply to make a point. The metaphor of warfare in my daily life, usually against myself, very much applies.

So we come to Ralph Vaughan Williams' setting of Bishop How's saints song. Lying in bed last week with a churning tummy, nibbling a ginger muffin and sipping water before daring to stand up, I found "For All the Saints" had fresh meaning. Thank God it was in the Episcopal Hymnal!—even if variations on the theme wouldn't show up in the supplements.

The first stanza doesn't actually set the theme so well—gratitude for the saints, but they rest only from "labours" and not from the warfare that marks the rest of the song, except for the last stanza. I wonder, however, if those first and last stanzas, the bookends that don't fit the books, have a sly way of saying, "Warfare is not really the point. Blessing, thanksgiving, and singing are the beginning and end of the story."

Through the middle six stanzas, the themes of warfare and light are interestingly intermingled.

Stanza 2: The Lord, the Captain of the "well-fought fight", is also the one true Light in the darkness.

Stanza 3: His soldiers fight as the saints of old to win a gold crown (you have to envision gold to see the light here).

Stanza 4: While we are feebly struggling, those saints are shining in glory—in the full presence of the Light that cheers us now.

Stanza 5: This one leaves out the light theme, but stealing on the ear is a "distant triumph-song" in the fiercest strife and longest war. I suddenly like that light is left out of this one stanza, because it makes the substitute, that distant strain of music, seem light-like in its place. It reminds me of a Wendell Berry poem about morning light darting into a room like a little bird through the window.

Stanza 6: As the golden evening brightens in the west (the setting sun, the end of our lives, the end of the world), the faithful warriors expect rest.

Stanza 7: And lo! before the darkness settles in, there "breaks a yet more glorious day". All of us saints rise triumphant in "bright array" while the "King of glory" (perfect Captain/King, perfect Light/glory) passes us in review.

So there you have it. The ridiculous feeble struggle of a young pregnant woman trying to get out of bed is suddenly lit by millions of saints and one strong Light. A "distant triumph-song" sounds in the darkened bedroom. No more warm embrace of blankets! The woman finishes her muffin (and the last stanza of the hymn) and decides to try to stand.

Actually, I made it to work only four minutes late.

"Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven": A Lesson in Hymn Editing

2006-04-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

Please do check out an article that appeared in Touchstone magazine, "No More 'Hims' of Praise". It's a little sarcastic, but proves a good lesson on why we should exercise much more care in editing hymns--or why we should keep our hands off the hymn editing altogether!

"Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven" is the subject. The author takes us through a contemporary version of the hymn and compares it to the original, with commentary, stanza by stanza.

Time to Say Goodbye: Septuagesima and "Alleluia, Song of Gladness"

2006-03-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

We have a guest columnist today! Nan from Holy Hauntings has been a faithful reader of this blog. When she sent me an email last month about the burying of the "Alleluia," I asked her if she would be willing to share this fascinating stuff with my readers. Has YOUR church ever held a ceremony like this?!?

Nan:

"Alleluia" or "hallelujah", meaning "Praise the Lord", is one of the few Hebrew words adopted untranslated into Christian worship. It is interesting to note that nowhere and at no time was any effort made to translate it into the vernacular, as Saint Isidore of Seville (636) mentioned in his writings. He explains this by the reverence for the hallowed traditions of the Apostolic Church.

Perhaps more than any other word, Alleluia ties us in a direct line to our Christian Fathers and Mothers. St. John mentions the Alleluia in the Revelation, Saint Jerome (420) praises the pious farmers and tradesmen who used to sing it at their toil, and the mothers taught their babies to pronounce Alleluia before any other word. Finally, the expression "Alleluia, the Lord is risen" became the general greeting of Christians in early medieval times on the Feast of the Resurrection.

But the time has come to say goodbye to the Alleluia, at least for a short time. Most people think that the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday is the official day we do this, but it historically was done weeks before, on Septuagesima Sunday (actually, the eve before). When we abandoned the Historic Lectionary, one of the great losses was this season of the "Gesima" Sundays. We also lost a reminder of why there even needs to be a Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

From Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints: "At Septuagesima beginneth the time of deviation or going out of the way, of the whole world, which began at Adam and endured unto Moses. And in this time is read the Book of Genesis. The time of Septuagesima representeth the time of deviation, that is of transgression. The Sexagesima signifieth the time of revocation. The Quinquagesima signifieth the time of remission. The Quadragesima signifieth of penance and satisfaction."

Septuagesima, Sexagesima, & Quinquagesima, words that sound strange to our modern ears, are in fact three Latin words and they indicate how far away we are from Easter—that is, 70, 60, and 50 days respectively.

Historic Ways to Say Goodbye

The "depositio" (discontinuance) of the Alleluia on the eve of Septuagesima assumed in medieval times a solemn and emotional note of saying farewell to the beloved song.
The liturgical office on the eve of Septuagesima was performed in many churches with special solemnity, and Alleluias were freely inserted in the sacred text, even to the number of twenty-eight final Alleluias in the church of Auxerre in France.

This custom also inspired some tender poems which were sung or recited during Vespers in honor of the sacred word. The best known of these hymns is Alleluia, dulce carmen (Alleluia, Song of Gladness), composed by an unknown author of the eleventh century. It was translated into English by John Mason Neale (1866) and may be found in the official hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

In some French churches the custom developed in ancient times of allowing the congregation to take part in the celebration of a quasi-liturgical farewell ceremony. The clergy abstained from any role in this popular service. Choirboys officiated in their stead at what was called "Burial of the Alleluia" performed the Saturday afternoon before Septuagesima Sunday. We find a description of it in the fifteenth-century statute book of the church of Toul:

On Saturday before Septuagesima Sunday all choir boys gather in the sacristy during the prayer of the None, to prepare for the burial of the Alleluia. After the last "Benedicamus" [i.e., at the end of the service] they march in procession, with crosses, tapers, holy water and censers; and they carry a coffin, as in a funeral. Thus they proceed through the aisle, moaning and mourning, until they reach the cloister. There they bury the coffin; they sprinkle it with holy water and incense it; whereupon they return to the sacristy by the same way [24].

Thus the Alleluia is sung for the last time and not heard again until it suddenly bursts into glory during the Mass of the Easter Vigil when the celebrant intones this sacred word after the Epistle, repeating it three times, as a jubilee, not herald, of the Resurrection of Christ

Things We've Handed Down

Fortunately we have held onto one of the treasures of the final Sunday of this season, Septuagesima: a hymn present in most hymnals today, Alleluia, Song of Gladness.

1. Alleluia dulce carmen,
Vox perennis gaudii,
Alleluia laus suavis
Est choris coelestibus,
Quam canunt Dei manentes
In domo per saecula.

2. Alleluia laeta mater
Concivis Jerusalem:
Alleluia vox tuorum
Civium gaudentium:
Exsules nos flere cogunt
Babylonis flumina.

3. Alleluia non meremur
In perenne psallere;
Alleluia vo reatus
Cogit intermittere;
Tempus instat quo peracta
Lugeamus crimina.

4. Unde laudando precamur
Te beata Trinitas,
Ut tuum nobis videre
Pascha des in aethere,
Quo tibi laeti canamus
Alleluia perpetim.

Alleluia, song of gladness,
Voice of joy that cannot die;
Alleluia is the anthem
Ever dear to choirs on high;
In the house of God abiding
Thus they sing eternally.

Alleluia thou resoundest,
True Jerusalem and free;
Alleluia, joyful mother,
All thy children sing with thee;
But by Babylon’s sad waters
Mourning exiles now are we.

Alleluia we deserve not
Here to chant forevermore;
Alleluia our transgressions
Make us for a while give o’er;
For the holy time is coming
Bidding us our sins deplore.

Therefore in our hymns we pray Thee,
Grant us, blessèd Trinity,
At the last to keep Thine Easter
In our home beyond the sky;
There to Thee forever singing
Alleluia joyfully.

Sources

The Cyber Hymnal, www.cyberhymnal.org

The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints. Compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, 1275. First edition published 1470. Englished by William Caxton, first edition 1483, edited by F.S. Ellis, Temple Classics, 1900 (reprinted 1922, 1931).

Francis X. Weiser, S.J., Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs. Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1958, 9 (http://www.neiu.edu/~history/Wei.htm).

Alliteration and the Incarnation

2006-03-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

Alliteration is a friendly gesture on an author’s part. I was greatly helped in memorizing “Like a River Glorious” by Miss Havergal, who wrote that “Peace” was “Perfect” and it “Floweth Fuller.” She proceeded to proclaim that “not a surGE of worry, not a SHade of care, not a blast of hurry, touCH the spirit there.”

She even added a gentle pun: God’s perfect peace floweth “fuller” (stanza 1), so we may trust Him “fully” (stanza 3).

Have you ever photocopied a hymn and circled or blocked its alliterations, even drawing lines between them? The pattern of circles and blocks is a sign of the author’s (or translator’s) prowess.

A good pattern also signifies respect for the Incarnation.

I’m not kidding.

Hymn writers who are in a hurry to get across an idea or to make a point, who hover on the theoretical level, don’t bother with artistic development or care for the language. There is no tenderness in how they handle words. They have not allowed language to roll over their tongue and to taste the physicality of a verb. It’s as if God were all Head and no Body.

Likewise, hymn singers who slop their consonants are too spiritual for their own good. God made us physical creatures with a physical language, spoken with tongue and breath and throat. We worship God with our whole bodies when we pronounce our beginnings and ends.

It’s no accident that “Jehovah” fit better in Miss Havergal’s chorus than “the LORD God”; the softly buzzing “v” sound in “Jehovah” is reflected in the softer “f” sound that fills stanzas and refrain. A picture of the Incarnation in a single song.

New House / New Post

2006-03-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

Has it been that long since the last post? Well, we finished moving into our new house last weekend. As soon as the move was complete, I wrote an article I'd been promising a friend, on the general topic of Why Hymn Festivals Are a Good Idea. I think I called it "Hymn Festivals: Feasting on the Spirit."

You can view the complete article--an apology for hymns that goes deeper than "some hymns teach good theology"--here.

Getting Started in Music

2006-02-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

In a newspaper interview a few weeks ago, the reporter asked me, "What got you started in music?"

People. Adults who sang to me.

1. My mother, who sang "Itsy-Bisty Spider" and "In My Heart There Rings a Melody."

2. Sandy Twigg, who played piano with gusto at our Christian Reformed church and had such a big smile and gave me my first piano lessons with flat black stickers of music notes as prizes for learning my pieces. Two notes, begin on middle C, alternate with D: "Here we go, to the zoo; funny monkey, how-de-do?"

3. Chris and Nancy Hansen, who started a children's choir at our next church and asked me to sing alto instead of soprano: "Just think of it like another melody."

4. Sister Eucebia, at the Catholic school where I was sent for punishment in fifth grade, who put a plastic recorder in my hands and told me I was going to learn to play it.

5. Sister Juliana, who saw the recorder in my hands and asked if I would play it next to her at the organ during weekly mass. Recorder and organ! Tooting ten-year-old and expert musician! I learned all the songs, and still know them by heart.

Last month, while directing a rehearsal for a community musical, I told one of the altos, "Just think of it like another melody." The next week, she told me this one remark had changed how she thought about singing: "You're the first person to teach me how to sing." Last night, she gave me a Mary Kay brush set in thanks. I am able to apply my eyeliner with precision because of Mr. and Mrs. Hansen.

Our hearts are full; nobody ever really leaves.

So—not WHAT got you started in music, but WHO?

Happy Valentine's Day, Like, Jesus-Style

2006-02-14T04:56:00.000-08:00

In a comment under "At the Name of Jesus" 1, "The Leper" remarks that the sentimental 19th-century hymns penned by men and women alike are examples of the popular "Jesus Is My Boyfriend" style.

Since this is Valentine's Day, I'd like to share Bob Webber's phrase for these types of songs: "Valentines to Jesus."

Roses are red, violets are blue, God died for me, He died for you too.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone--and you too, O Untouchable and Anonymous Leper. Why don't you run out and HUG somebody in honor of JESUS. Don't forget to ask them, "Is Jesus YOUR boyfriend, too?"

Real Life Intrudes

2006-02-13T05:07:00.000-08:00

Quick update--I've still been THINKING about hymns but not WRITING about them! So sorry. My husband and I are buying a house and have to move in over a period of about two weeks because of my crazy rehearsal schedules. Paperwork and packing are taking over our lives right now, until March 5. But I'll try to find a few minutes here and there for shorter posts in the next couple weeks. Thank you for your patience and for your comments, that keep coming on older posts.

"At the Name of Jesus" 2: Unlike the Greeks

2006-02-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

I'm especially interested now in the fifth stanza:

Bore it up triumphant with its human light,
Through all ranks of creatures, to the central height,
To the throne of Godhead, to the Father's breast;
Filled it with the glory of that perfect rest.

The idea that God can change is contrary to the Greek concept of unchanging perfection and to a common piety that misinterprets the passage "Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday, and forever."

Once there was no human in the Godhead; now, for all time, there is a human in the Godhead. God has changed. He is still perfect—and we are made perfect with Him.

"At the Name of Jesus" 1: Chronological Order

2006-02-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

The eight stanzas of "At the Name of Jesus," my #13 in the 100 Hymns Project, has a chronological and poetic order I didn't understand from the "selected stanzas" version found in most hymnals—if the hymnals keep this song at all.

The first stanza sets the theme, drawn principally from Philippians 2:5-11 and John 1: "At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess Him King of glory now."

The second stanza echoes the Nicene Creed and is set in the relationship of the Trinity before Creation.

The third stanza tells of creation in a breathtaking echo from another ancient text, the Liturgy of St. James as set in "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence."

The fourth stanza sums up the entire life of Jesus, Philippians 2-style, emphasizing again the Name of Jesus.

The fifth stanza is set after the resurrection, when Jesus takes His Name and human body up "through all ranks of creatures" to the "throne of Godhead."

The sixth stanza is our response, part one, as we fulfill the theme by naming Christ in worship.

The seventh stanza is our response, part two, as the Name is enthroned not only in heaven but in our hearts.

The eighth stanza foresees the return of that Name in glory, when not only our tongues but our hearts "confess Him King of glory now."

I would be VERY curious to know if these eight stanzas are the only original stanzas. The author seems intelligent and aware enough to have chosen eight stanzas deliberately—in which case we begin to enter overtones of the perfect-seven-plus-one—the eighth day of creation, the day of resurrection, the day of the world to come.

Order, order everywhere—and artistically satisfying references as well.

Hymn Festival on Apostles' Creed

2006-01-31T13:58:00.000-08:00

Following please find the program of a hymn festival I conducted at a small Baptist church on Sunday night. They let me pick the theme. Vividly in mind were all our recent conversations on the creeds, so I chose the Apostles' Creed and told how it related to early baptisms.

You know, every time we do a hymn festival, concert, or service for a small church, we have a choice about how much work we put into it. Nothing, of course, can ever be perfect, so there comes a point at which we have to call it "good enough." But balancing that there should be an attitude of reckless joy, of pouring perfume on Jesus' feet, of giving our very best for whom some may consider the very least--in this case, people who love Jesus but don't know much about the history of hymnody.

In choosing this program, I also tried to balance hymns from their own Baptist hymnal with unfamiliar tunes (most drawn from an Episcopal hymnal), both to show how the congregation's own heritage depicted themes from the Apostles' Creed and to expose them to some delightful material and fresh perspectives.

Another thought was to vary congregational with solo music; sung music with played music; and speaking with singing. On "For All the Saints," for example, I asked the congregation to keep their hymnals closed. I taught them just the refrain ("Alleluia, alleluia!") and then read the stanzas as a poem, with the congregation coming in on each refrain. (I did get carried away and sang the last stanza; irresistible.)

After each section, the congregation was instructed to declare the quoted part of the creed when I gave them a downbeat, like choir and choir conductor. After the resurrection, the congregation led ME in speaking the quoted part, while I responded with the appropriate music; they heard that it symbolized their authority because of the restoration of the image of God.

A further use of symbolism in this service was to have the congregation sit during the stanzas of "I Am the Bread of Life" and rather aerobically stand whenever they sang the refrain--"And I will raise them up...."--to show their belief and hope in the resurrection.

Enjoy.

#20 Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above (MIT FREUDEN ZART)
st. 1 and 2—soloist
st. 3 and 4—congregation

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth."

* * *

#251 Of the Father's Love Begotten (DIVINUM MYSTERIUM)
st. 1—congregation
3 middle stanzas—soloist
st. 2—congregation

"I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."

* * *

Tell Out, My Soul, the Greatness of the Lord! (WOODLANDS)

"He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary."

* * *

Beneath the Cross of Jesus, arr. Ken Medema
As Jacob with Travel Was Weary One Day (JACOB'S LADDER)

"He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried."

* * *

1 Peter 3:18-20

Psalm 139:7-8
Leader: "Where can I go from Your Spirit?"
Congregation: "Where can I flee from Your Presence?"
Leader: "If I go up to the heavens…"
Congregation: "You are there."
Leader: "If I make my bed in the depths…"
Congregation: "You are there."

Ephesians 4:7-10 (Psalm 68:18)

"He descended into hell."

* * *
Lord of the Dance (SIMPLE GIFTS)

"The third day He rose again from the dead!"

* * *
"He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."

At the Name of Jesus (KING'S WESTON)

* * *

"I believe in the Holy Spirit."

Le Soir, Reinhold Glière
O Breath of Life (SPIRITUS VITAE)

* * *

"I believe in the holy catholic church."

#384 We Are One in the Bond of Love
#383 We Are God's People
st. 1—soloist
st. 2, 3, 4—congregation

* * *

"I believe in the communion of saints."

#355 For All the Saints (SINE NOMINE)

* * *

"I believe in the forgiveness of sins."

What Wondrous Love Is This, arr. Larry Shackley

* * *

"I believe in the resurrection of the body."

Christ, the Victorious (RUSSIA)
I Am the Bread of Life (I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE)
And I will raise them up,
And I will raise them up,
And I will raise them up on the last day.

* * *

"I believe in the life everlasting."

#517 Jerusalem, My Happy Home
Simple Gifts, arr. Mark Hayes

* * *

(from #449 All Praise to You, My God, This Night)
Leader: "All praise to You, our God, this night, for all the blessings of the light. Keep us, O keep us, King of kings, beneath the shelter of Your wings."
Congregation: "Amen."
Leader: "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise Him, all creatures here below; praise Him above, ye heav'nly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
Congregation: "Amen and amen!"

100 Hymns Project: The First 10

2006-01-27T09:30:00.000-08:00

I broke my own rule.

I picked twenty-nine hymns for the 100 Hymns Project instead of waiting to memorize the first group of ten before picking the second group of ten. Sheer gluttony. Not a whit of self-control.

Oh well. That rule wasn't one of the Ten Commandments, thank God.

The first twenty-nine are all hymns that have been floating through my mind for the past months, a phrase here, a phrase there. After this, I shall become more deliberate and choose either an era, an author, or (most likely) a theme for the next group of five or ten.

Here are the first ten:

1. Like a River Glorious (WYE VALLEY)
2. This Is My Father's World (TERRA BEATTA)
3. Abide with Me (EVENTIDE)
4. He Is the Way (HALL)
5. Alleluia! Sing to Jesus! (HYFRYDOL)
6. Hope of the World (VICAR)
7. How Lovely, Lord, How Lovely (MERLE'S TUNE)
8. I Bind Unto Myself Today (ST. PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE and DIERDRE)
9. How Bright Appears the Morning Star (WIE SCHÖN LEUCHTET)
10. All Things Bright and Beautiful (ROYAL OAK)

The tune names themselves are evocative. Ancient names, hidden places, old ways. I feel like pronouncing myself a Guardian of Congregational Song. Let the tradition flow through us.

Creeds of Make-Believe

2006-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is in response to the comment left by Nan two posts ago, under "Community of Individuals." Be warned: I care very much about this particular subject, and got carried away.

***

Thank you for the detailed info, Nan!

Horrible "creed". You're correct to put it in quotation marks because it's an interpretation of a creed, rather than a creed itself. An orthodox creed (literally, a creed of "right praise") is founded on historic facts--on God's saving deeds in history--rather than on our interpretation of those facts. Interpretations change; God's deeds are set. What He does for us must always flow out of what He did; sermon, music, and prayers may direct us to what He does from the starting point of what He did, but we have lost our bearings if our creeds forget what He did. God knows where we'll end up then.

Furthermore, a guiding purpose of the creeds was to tell what God was NOT, to safeguard us from heresy, rather than to define what He was. Thus the Nicene Creed speaks of Jesus as "God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God", protecting us from the idea that Jesus is somehow less than God but not really letting us in on who God is, apart from what He does.

Your instincts are right, to question what is "not there", what has been left out. When we begin to use our creeds to define our own understanding of what God is, we risk leaving out a very important attribute. For example, in the creed you offered, in the bit about the Holy Spirit, the H.S. breathes, draws on us, encourages, exhorts, comforts, nourishes, and inspires. It sounds like an exhaustive list and suggests that it is meant to be read as an exhaustive list, but it entirely leaves out that the H.S. also judges, rebukes, reveals, glorifies God, etc., etc. Your creed's list is deceitful. It could misguide people in a number of ways.

It also insults the Holy Spirit. Usually, when people get it into their heads to make up their own creeds in order to glorify God, they end up diminishing God. That is because their creeds tend not to focus on God's saving deeds in history but on their own extremely limited understanding of what those deeds mean.

By the way, it is the same situation in marriage vows. When we make up our own words, new and fresh and unique and individual for every new and fresh and unique and individual pair, we end up shrinking the meaning of that marriage from the transcendent and universal to the mundane and particular, what it is for John and Jean, a miniature world unto themselves. It's also dangerous: people vowing magnanimously and recklessly to "always be there for each other" or to be the other's "shoulder to cry on" and "friend to laugh with" are thumbing their nose at God. The God who witnesses their vows cannot be pleased when they inevitably turn away instead of "always being there." It behooves us not to promise too much, or too little.

100 Hymns Project

2006-01-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

One of you readers has asked for more detail on this 100 Hymns Project. Glad to oblige!

A few months ago I got tired of hearing fragments of songs flit through my mind, but being unable to recall the full text and tune of these favorite hymns. So I decided that having 100 hymns deliberately and thoroughly memorized was a reasonable goal.

Here's the strategy:

1) Choose only the first 10 hymns. Choose the next set of 10 after the first set has been thoroughly memorized.

2) Select which version of the hymn to memorize. (I usually research the original lyrics and then pick the most agreeable tune.)

3) Copy out or photocopy that version. This is helpful for (a) punching holes in the hymn and sticking it in a three-ring binder for handy review, and (b) marking recurring phrases, synonymns, alliteration--all to help me memorize and get a fuller meaning of the text. (I do this with psalms from the Bible, too, although I'm rarely so careful about photocopying them before marking up the sacred page with my own system of underlines, boxes, circles, and squiggles.)

4) Mark the date of memorization next to the title in the expanding table of contents (in the front of the three-ring binder). This not only encourages me to see the progress, but keeps me from getting too ambitious with other memorization projects, since I note I have been memorizing only about three hymns per month (starting #13 this month!).

5) Decide on some system of review. Every couple hymns, I review all the other hymns in groups of 2 to 5. The review alone takes a week or two. When I know I've missed a word or when a phrase comes too stiffly, I jot it down with the hymn title and stanza number on a piece of scratch paper. The next day, I review only those sections jotted down on the paper, before proceding to the next review group or new hymn. (I like to keep the scratch paper until the next time those hymns pop up in a review session, to see if I'm still missing the same things or if the memory gaps have changed.)

If you try this yourself, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE LOW OR NO EXPECTATIONS about how long this project will take to complete. People memorize at different rates and have different standards for how well something should be memorized, for how securely it sits in their brain. They also have varying demands on their time and varying abilites for self-motivation.

If you haven't memorized anything in years, you may want to start with 1 hymn, 5 hymns, or 10 hymns--or even 1 stanza of 1 hymn. Baby steps, darlings, baby steps.

More on the actual hymns I chose later.

Please let me know if any of you have tried this in the past, are trying this at present, or are suddenly inspired!

Contemporary Church: Community of Individuals?

2006-01-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

One of the great ideas I took away from IWS was: there are other people LIKE ME! No kidding. You all in the blogosphere are becoming my friends, but chatting with you via our keyboards is different from worshiping with you (I would never be content with attending a church of the 'net.) From the first song--a praise chorus, "He Is Exalted"--to the closing hymn, an original text sung to the tune "Gift of Love", I felt the presence of other believers who cared not only about worshiping God but about figuring out how God would like to be worshiped.

Furthermore, they had had several years of practicing this. They were the kinds of people who say creeds and memorize songs.

Feeling ourselves part of a community is important to our spiritual balance. But we also represent something to the world, to the "rulers and principalities", and to God Himself when we are able to join our voices and gather in one place for worship. We represent something very particular when we say together, instead of in the privacy of our rooms or alone in some outdoorsy "worshipful" setting, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth...."

What do you think it means, this trend to make up our own liturgies and our own songs? Not as a devotional exercise, but as a subsitute for the historic liturgies and songs. I was intrigued by the strong reaction of one of this blog's readers, when her liturgical leadership made up some prayers again. Why are people reacting so strongly to creativity in the service? Are there good and bad kinds of creativity when it comes to worship?

IWS: Episcopalians, Anglicans, and a Flag

2006-01-09T05:22:00.000-08:00

More than the studies, an actual worship service packed the most emotional wallop these last few days.

Friday night, Grace Episcopal Church, the host campus of IWS, became Grace Church (Anglican) in a two-hour service of disassociation from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and a realignment with the worldwide Anglican communion under the province of Rwanda.

The tenor of the service was sober and sad, in keeping with the title “Solemn Acts of Disassociation and Realignment”, yet also gracious and full of hope. We opened with “The Church’s One Foundation”—especially poignant in the line “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed”—and closed with “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus!” in its conviction that the church will be reunited. The “songs of holy Zion [will] thunder like a mighty flood.”

The point at which I gave in to tears was when an ex-serviceman and an Eagle Scout took down the Episcopal flag and folded it in front of the altar, in preparation for this week’s delivery of the flag, church registry, and account book to the Episcopal diocese. I wasn’t a member of the church; I’m not even Episcopalian. But I suppose I identified with these people through the very particular symbol of a flag. When I’m overseas, it does my heart good to see our stars and stripes hung as a courtesy in some government building or included in some decorative scheme. A flag is a symbol of participation and belonging, and of where one’s heart resides. In the silence, seeing the Episcopal flag folded in a tight little triangle and laid like a bundle on the rail was like beholding my own secession from the United States of America.

Then, while we sang Rich Mullin’s “Step by Step,” a light blue banner of the worldwide Anglican communion was carried up the center aisle and placed in front of the lectern. It was embossed with the words, “The Truth Shall Make You Free.”

IWS: Reason and Experience

2006-01-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

For two days I’ve been here in Jacksonville, the days booked solid with classes and meetings until 9 PM.

There are nineteen of us beginning the doctoral program, fifteen men and four women from varied denominations. We meet in a Sunday school classroom of a local church and the teachers sit to speak or stand to scribble on a blackboard with half-inch stubs of chalk. Around us rise the murmurs of other students farther along in the program, in other Sunday school classrooms. Since we’re in a Worship Studies program, I pretend these murmurs are chants and I’m sitting in a monastery—an ironic pretense since every one of the students in this “cohort” is married. But we are possibly as committed as the monks to the glory of God through the pursuit of academic studies and the renewal of His worship. It’s a good crowd.

The first day was spent with personal introductions, course overview by my professors (Lester Ruth and Andy Hill), presentation by Robert Webber on “An Ancient Evangelical Future” and his conveniently numbered 39 Articles, and oh-so-informed worship services.

The second day was spent with more worship services, communal meals, Q-and-A on issues in the Episcopal/Anglican churches in America, and two chunks of classes, morning and afternoon, on a historical overview of Christian thought (Biblical period to postmodern), ancient Biblical themes, and ways of reflecting on 20 centuries of Christian worship.

The most interesting point was that in the Modern era (1750-1950’s), Christians began to think of their faith as provable in terms of reason or experience. The rationalists set out to prove the existence of God, the physical reality of the resurrection, etc., as if faith was primarily about a set of intellectual beliefs. This led, of course, to worship services that were heavy on the preaching. The experientialists focused on the individual experience of salvation, for example, the ability to say that I was saved on such-and-such a date, which led to worship services with a strong revivalist tinge and songs like “I Serve a Risen Savior”—“you ask me how I know He lives; He lives within my heart.”

Besides determining the structure of worship services, both of these views can lead to anxiety about one’s personal salvation: “Am I really able to believe this stuff? And do I understand enough about Christ’s work for me in order to be saved?” or “Have I really felt the love of Jesus? And do I feel loving toward God?”

Bob Webber remarked that both of these views put the burden of salvation on the individual rather than on Christ’s saving work, regardless of how we feel or whether we exhaustively understand.

Do your churches focus on reason or experience or something else? What have your backgrounds focused on? How do you think this has affected your understanding of God?

Touching Down in the Sunshine State

2006-01-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

Thank you for your patience in waiting for a new post to come up. I ended up playing organ for eight hours on Christmas Eve--about four hours too many--which doesn't affect the hands as much as the back and shoulders. Anyway, I was very reluctant to do anything like playing the keyboard for several days--including typing for this blog!

We're going to do something a little different in this blog over the next week or two. I'm flying to Jacksonville, Florida, tomorrow morning to begin the Doctor of Worship Studies through the Institute for Worship Studies, founded by Robert Webber, guru of "Ancient-Future" worship fame.

Dr. Webber had piqued my interest when I was an undergraduate at Wheaton College and had to take some kind of History of Christian Thought class, for which he gave me a good grade but never returned my extensive notebook. I figure this three-year doctoral program will yield enough notes to make up for the loss of that notebook.

So this next week, if the campus has internet access, I'm going to be your embedded reporter and offer you some observations from the program. My husband says I should wear one of those white T-shirts that says in bold letters, "I'm blogging this," to give everyone fair warning.

However, since God comes down pretty strongly against gossipers and since I'll be working with these people for the next several years, the blog shouldn't be full of nasty little tidbits. We hope to aim for the amusing and the thoughtful instead.

See you in Florida!

Christmas Break

2005-12-20T07:37:00.000-08:00

The services of Christmas Eve are fast approaching. There are soloists to rehearse, choirs to organize, organ registrations to select, and last stanzas to embellish. I will NOT be blogging for a week or two.

Merry Christmas, everybody! Sweet dreams.

"Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" versus Paganism

2005-12-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

The best discoveries are sometimes made without intent, just from snuffling around in an area you like. I didn’t set out to look for the original lyrics to “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” I knew from coffee hour conversation that Wesley had written about a “welkin” instead of “herald angels” originally, but beyond that I had no idea I was missing lovely words. In poking through The New Oxford Book of Carols in preparation for a concert this weekend, though, I found several unfamiliar lines with the notation “adapted.” Our dear friend the Cyber Hymnal provided the original. Here ’tis:

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
“Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb!
Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate deity!
Pleased as man with men to appear,
Jesus! Our Immanuel here!

Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild He lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp Thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner Man:
O! to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.

Look at the themes!

“Welkin” means “vault of heaven, upper air, sky.” It refers to the PLACE where the rejoicing occurs rather than the BEINGS who make the rejoicing. This is extremely important to the interpretation of the hymn. In Hebraic poetry, if you mention “sky and earth,” you mean also “everything in between”—in other words, “the whole of creation.” Wesley, no idiot scholar of the biblical languages, would have been aware of this. What the sky begins, the earth joins. “Universal nature” in the concluding thought means more than “that which is common to angelic and human beings.”

I suspect it means “all nature.” It rings with Watts’ line from “Joy to the World”: “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse found.” Christmas is Christ’s coming to redeem the world, not just us humans. We as the stewards of creation are only the beginning of the glorious redemption of all the ladybugs and dinosaurs and parakeets. Redeeming us is a sign of the coming redemption for all.

It’s obviously important to the poetic thrust to keep the male gender intact: Wesley’s case for the power of Christ to redeem all of nature rests on Christ’s being the Second Adam, the fulfillment of the promise to the First Adam. (1 Cor. 15:22, 45: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. … Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”) If you delete the last two stanzas (as is standard in most hymnals) and change the male references (for example, “Pleased as God with us to dwell”), you dissolve the power of the promise, the historical link between our first parents and their lost vocations with Christ and our restored vocations. Salvation is reduced, once again, to sort of a personal fling with Christ, rather than the restoration of universal harmony with a creation that is seriously out of whack.

Poor Wordsworth! Remember his “Great God! I'd rather be / a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; / So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, / Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; / Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” He wanted to be connected to nature. So do most of the modern Pagans and Witches. Maybe they weren’t sung the full version of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” when they were young.

Evangelism in Christmas Program

2005-12-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

My church did a Christmas program last night. We had a small orchestra and maybe a hundred singers; we partnered with another church and held it in a high school auditorium. It was a great venue to reach unchurched people with the good news of Christmas.

However, somewhere back in the compilation of the musical the good news got a little mixed up. The narration stuck to evangelism but after the first couple songs, most of the music was straight-up worship: “Jesus, You’re beautiful to me”; “You’re wonderful, You’re powerful”; “I come to Bethlehem, I come to praise Him again and worship Him”; “If I can sing, let my songs be full of His glory.” As a member of the choir, I felt very self-conscious, like my personal piety was on display. I also wasn’t sure that a display of personal piety was the best way to evangelize someone, or to attract them to the gospel.

It was interesting how individualistic the worship songs were; maybe that’s what aggravated my feeling of “personal” piety. Maybe I have a different understanding of evangelism than the compilers of the musical do: I understand the good news as being welcomed into a family, as resulting in harmony with many people as well as with God. Also, because Christ created the universe that we inhabit but feel so displaced in, becoming reconciled to Christ further reconciles the Self with the Universe. We regain our ability to function as stewards of creation; we work toward harmony and justice in relationships with each other and with our environment; we gain integrity as we discover more parts of ourselves to turn over to the Lordship of Christ; we look forward to the peace of God (the Shalom) pervading all things in the new Kingdom. Therefore, our songs of worship express our reconciliation within the new community; we use the first person plural a lot in worshipping God—not primarily the first person singular.

It felt like the compilers of the musical understood Christianity as an individual reconciliation of the Self with God. Period.

In fact, towards the end of the musical, one of the narrators said, “If you’ve given Jesus that most precious of human gifts—your heart—then Christmas extends a second invitation. If you’ve received the gift of Jesus, you must leave the stable and open your arms to a waiting world. You must travel to the hills of the shepherds and to the cities of the kings. You must become a bearer of Christmas to a cold and lost world. You must bring them the wondrous gift of Jesus.” (Segue to the next song.)

The point of accepting Christ was here clearly stated as getting other people to accept Him, too. That made becoming a Christian seem pretty pointless, after all. “If I get reconciled to God, I try to get other people reconciled to God; what does being reconciled to God mean?” From the content of the musical, I think our imaginary questioner would conclude that being reconciled to God would mean having some warm feelings toward God and standing up in a Christmas show someday to try to get other people reconciled.

This is an odd message of evangelism because most non-Christians I know claim to have warm feelings toward God; they believe He/She/It is Love and totally approves of them. (They do feel a vague anger about “things”, but usually they don’t assign that to God.) They insist that they already feel “reconciled” to God—in an individualistic way.

But they are not part of a community of people reconciled to God and they are not whole in their relationship to Self, Others, or the Universe.

Anyway, I sang this mixed-up Christmas message with my church because I am part of that community (and God knows finding a good Christmas musical WITH orchestrations is nigh impossible! Other factors which I have not considered went into selecting that musical, I'm sure). Their actions are sometimes clearer than their words: they work toward harmony and justice in practical ways, like giving me and my husband gift cards for groceries.

Singing with people like this gives me hope. Even when we mix up the message, surely God will bless the intentions of people whose hearts are open to Him.

But we can’t stop at good intentions….

Children's Sermons: Valid as Worship Education?

2005-12-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

Here’s a question for you: did children’s sermons do you any good when you were a child?

You know, the times when the pastor asked for “all the children to come forward,” and you all sat on the steps in front of the lectern, and the pastor crouched down too and spoke in an unusually mild and just plain unusual voice for several minutes.

I’m not asking about whether they do you good now, as an adult. In fact, children’s sermons seem entirely oriented toward the adults as they put on display “cute” answers blown into the microphone and the cute children themselves padding down the aisle and then wandering about the platform during their sermon. Who hasn’t giggled at the prim child who keeps raising her hand and the stagey child who keeps waving to his parents? Who hasn't experienced a thrill of righteous indignation against the particularly wayward child or its parents? I have enjoyed many children’s sermons as the best entertainment of the service. But do they meet any child’s spiritual needs?

My childhood was filled with object lessons from the children’s sermons. I remember sand pails and shovels, teddy bears and broken dolls, photographs of family members, paper hearts, paper shamrocks, rocks of many sizes, candy canes, doughnut holes, closed paper bags and empty paper bags—in fact, all the objects but none of the lessons. The moral of the lessons, based on my observations of children’s sermons as an adult, was something like “God loves you” or “Obey your parents” or “Be nice to each other” but was never presented meaningfully enough to sink in or change my behavior.

Mind you, these memories include many pastors and many denominations, too, whether my parents’ or people’s we were visiting—Christian Reformed, Covenant, Presbyterian (U.S.A. and Church in America), Baptist (American and Southern), Lutheran (Evangelical and Missouri Synod), Evangelical Free, non-denominational, Nazarene.

These lessons had three effects on me: (1) they intensified my smug sense of self-importance because I usually knew exactly where the pastor was heading and, if not, "Jesus" was a safe bet for an answer (I was the prim child); (2) they made me long to be dismissed to Sunday school; (3) they induced either a general sense of good will toward the pastor, if he produced doughnut holes or candy from the paper bag at the end of the lesson, or a general sense of resentment toward the pastor, if he did not.

What I really remember are all the Bible stories from Sunday school and every one of the songs from the Sunday school and the adult services. I can still remember the story of Zacchaeus and the accompanying song (“Zacchaeus, YOU COME DOWN, for I’m coming to your house today”), the story of Peter’s calling (“I will make you fishers of men, if you follow Me”), the lame men being healed in the temple (“Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I you; in the Name of Jesus Christ the Lord, in Jesus’ name, rise up and walk!”), and all the grown-up songs that I had to stand on the pew to sing out of my mother’s hymnal: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” “Holy, Holy, Holy,” “When Peace Like a River.” These songs and stories have stayed with me and enriched my life over the years far more than the object lessons and little talks with pastor up at the front of the church.

I believe that most of these pastors are of good will. I’m not accusing them of dismissing children’s needs when they struggle to create their “edifying” chats, but does anybody remember what it was like to be a child when they are crafting those dread object lessons? Has anybody surveyed children WHEN THEY ARE GROWN UP to see if the children's sermons stuck with them, or is the phenomenon of the children's sermon based merely on good intentions and the theory that children will remember an abstract moral message if it is linked to a concrete visual?

I have come to a decision; as an adult, I can make this difficult sacrifice: I could give up the weekly entertainment if it would free the children for Sunday school and singing.

"How Lovely Shines the Morning Star" 2: Scriptural Structure

2005-12-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

Disappointment set in. The more I sang “How Lovely Shines the Morning Star,” the more I missed the presence of a story line. Unlike Nicolai’s other "greatest hit" "Wachet Auf", this seemed to have no beginning, middle, and end. Every stanza, though beautiful in its own right, sat like a pearl on a necklace without a clasp, an unending circle of the beauty of Jesus. Without an obvious progression, it’s been very hard to remember which stanza comes next.

For several days, I said, “Fine, that reflects the seventh stanza’s depiction of Jesus as ‘Beginning without end, the First and Last, Eternal.’ I can learn to live with that.” From readings on the German version of Wikipedia, I knew too that Nicolai was a mystic—into blessed feelings of oneness and theological arguments about the absolute unity of God and man—so I guess that kept me from looking further for a while.

But about twenty minutes ago, the light dawned. Although each stanza is intensely personal and full of the first person no matter the scriptural references, the general structure seems to be based on the Old and New Testaments.

These references are not comprehensive, but are noted as evidence:

Stanza 1—references to the Old Testament
Morningstar, Jesse’s root, David’s son from Jacob’s stem, king and bridegroom
Stanza 2—Old Testament and Gospels all mixed up together
Mary’s son, highborn King, Gospel as milk and honey, King as heavenly manna
Stanza 3—Gospels
Part of the Lord’s body as branch is to tree
Stanza 4—Gospels
Lord Jesus as giving me Spirit/Word/Life/Blood
Stanza 5—Epistles
God the Father has loved me from beginning of world, I’m wedded to Your Son
Stanza 6—Old Testament, (possibly Gospels), Epistles
All instruments praise God, Jesus is my bridegroom, everyone should be jubilant and thank the Lord the King of all the earth
Stanza 7—Revelation
Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, He will take me to Paradise; “Amen, amen, come…do not wait long” (reminiscent of second-to-last verse of Revelation)

Whew. Nicolai takes us through the Prophets right up to Revelation, even touching on the historical books through his references to David. Only one thing he neglects: he doesn’t seem to mention anything about the Law. Hmmm....

P.S. Here is the most helpful article (in German) on Nicolai that I struggled through!

Hymnbook Holder

2005-12-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

A few years ago my husband bought me a most useful present--a cookbook holder. This is designed to extend from the shelf of a closed cupboard door and was intended to save me counter space in our tiny kitchen. I do use it for this purpose, but a few weeks ago, I thought of a new use: a hymnbook holder.

Now, I rig it up when I do the dishes, usually with a photocopy of whatever hymn I'm studying (to avoid the pages of an actual hymnbook getting wet).

This is a pleasant accompaniment to dishwashing, and really the only time I can fit hymn study into my present schedule.

"How Lovely Shines the Morning Star" 1: O Bother

2005-11-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

For the past three weeks, my plan to memorize 100 hymns in a year has been stuck. Number 9, "How Lovely Shines the Morning Star," has fewer stanzas than Number 8, "Prayer of Saint Patrick," but it's bothersome for several reasons.

1) It was composed, words and tune together, in German. Unlike "Patrick," it did not wait around for a versified translation before being paired with its tune. That means, for a purist like myself, that the full feeling of the hymn would come through better in German than in English. But it's more likely to be of use to congregations in English. So I mulled it over for a couple weeks--German or English? English.

2) But there are so many translations of it in English, even more, it seems, than of Luther's "Ein' Feste Burg" ("A Mighty Fortress"). I finally settled on a "translation, composite" from a Lutheran hymnal. Composite translations are so bothersome, because the unifying idea is the editor's rather than the translator's; you get even further removed from the purity of the original text. But, courage!--the Bible itself was brought to us by "translation, composite": the oral tradition passed through God-knows-how-many-people, then the various compilers and editors for the written form, then the translators for our English version, and possibly other steps I have overlooked in ignorance of the process. Singing "How Lovely Shines the Morning Star" from "translation, composite" is a great way of challenging my prejudices about the superiority of the individual artist.

3) The melodic rhythm of 1599 is slippery for 2005 ears to grasp, ears that have "cut their teeth" on sixteen bars of quarter notes. The Lutheran version, usually more rhythmically robust than the watered-down non-denominational hymnals, apparently preserves the original rhythms, guaranteed to wake up a stultified congregation. It lifts off with a phrase of mostly half notes, after which the second phrase echoes the melodic theme with a volley of rapid-fire quarter notes, then mixes up these rhythms in the third phrase. After two half-note rests in which to brace for the next round, the whole thing repeats. Then it glides into four beautiful half notes, poetically matched to words of one or two syllables, like cease-fires in the middle of the music, and bang! Off again into three measures of little black quarter notes, peppering the page, when you suddenly find yourself over a peaceful plain, wafting down on a beautiful descending phrase, the exact same rhythm as the opening line, that serves as a summation and cool-down stretches at the end of an invigorating workout. My mind is simply not used to this level of artistry in congregational song.

4) The text is uncomfortably personal. I found myself crying after the first stanza. The shimmering text, the beautiful melodic lines, the rapturous expansion of the idea of the "Bridegroom" now "filling all the heavenly places," like light itself, was overwhelming. What with crying after each stanza and then recovering and then reflecting on connections to my personal life prompted by this experience and then recovering from that and then thinking that maybe that's enough emotion for today, I'm having a lot of trouble getting through this song.

Women, Abuse, and Inclusive Language

2005-11-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

This is in response to JC, who left a comment under “Give the Dead a Vote” (other readers: please read JC’s comment first to get the context). JC, I don't know how you located this blog, but am delighted that you cared enough to read it and to comment. I decided that your argument deserves a fuller response than the “comment” section allows.

The quibble with "choice of language" doesn't originate with hymnody, but with the language of the Bible. The Bible is full of metaphors of "dark" for sin and "brotherhood" for humanity, from which hymnody is derived. My primary argument is that refusing to use these metaphors anymore means staying captive to our own prejudices and our own pains--confessing that our culture’s misuse of “dark” and “brotherhood” is too powerful and has overcome our congregation’s interpretive skills. The culture will continually misuse words, and if we keep giving ground to this, we will find ourselves in a very small corner of language indeed. I prefer to educate myself and my congregation about the true meaning of the biblical words--redeeming the language, if you will.

The Bible is replete with warnings to not be fooled by appearances, encouraging full acceptance of all people regardless of income or skin color or gender--and warning that Satan himself appears as an "angel of light". Part of my training in not being overwhelmed by peoples’ appearances is to not be overwhelmed by words’ appearances--to tease out the meaning of the biblical word rather than continually to read my own prejudices into it.

As a woman, I’d like to emphasize that educating myself at the level of the text, rather than constantly changing the text to match my current level of understanding, can be very healing. Most of the women I met during grad school were in favor of no longer referring to God as “our Father,” because of the abuse they or their friends had suffered at the hands of men and especially of fathers. However, although I’ve suffered at the hands of men, persisting in calling God “our Father” has redeemed the word “father” for me in a way that retreating from the word or burying it could never have accomplished. My heart aches for the women who are still trapped in feelings of rage, despair, and pain at the idea of “father” because they have been taught to see the word as evil rather than the particular manifestation of it in their lives. “Plenteous grace with Thee is found.”

When language is abused, when words are allowed to suffer violence and to be ripped from their context, people suffer, too. Rather than retreating from these wounding and wounded words, I have a vision of bringing healing to people through bringing healing to language--the language of our Bible and of our hymns.

Thanksgiving Break

2005-11-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a break for the week of Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Give the Dead a Vote

2005-11-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

Today a phrase popped into my head: "the democracy of the dead." My all-knowing husband informed me that it was from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Company, 1908; p.85).

The full quote has implications for church music:

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father."

As the body of Christ, we are composed of many millions who have gone before. We should think of our Christian family not only as those in the Sudan or Pakistan, across space, but as those who believed in the salvation God promised Eve, across time.

If only songs from our moment in time are called acceptable for worship, whether the latest hits in praise songs or the hymns with the most up-to-date language, we reject the worship of most of the body of Christ. "We don't need you. You're dead. You have nothing to say to us--and nothing to say to God with us." In refusing the music of past generations, we break the communion of saints.

The one who made us saints in the first place, the Holy Spirit, is also the one who inspires expressions of praise. It's extremely odd that Christians who insist they sing only contemporary music or drastically edited hymns in order to "get into the Spirit" or to praise the Spirit "better", refuse to look for the Holy Spirit or learn how to honor Him in His work of the past two thousand years. I think the Spirit just got slapped in the face.

"Prayer of St. Patrick" 3: No Tolerance for Evil

2005-11-16T08:27:00.000-08:00

The sixth and seventh stanzas of "Patrick's Breastplate" are especially intense. Where most of the other stanzas began with a musically forceful, "I bind," these ones begin with "Against," making my opposition to evil as firm and pronounced as my assent to the good.

The vigor with which Patrick denounces "the demon snare of sin, the vice that gives temptation force, the natural lusts that war within, the hostile men that mar my course" and the seriousness with which he considers evil's power, a power capable of yielding him to "the deathwound and the burning", hold me steady when I'm tempted to minimize my own attraction to sin.

In addition, I'm relieved to hear Patrick identify the very things that bother me the most--the vice, my inner conflicts, the nasty attitudes of some of the people around me--acknowledging that these are real obstacles to peace and that I'm not alone in my struggles against them.

We need bold, forceful songs like this one, that name specific evils and that pray for protection against them. A constant diet of happy songs about Jesus or vague terms for the darkness we confront just doesn't keept us strong.

"Prayer of St. Patrick" 2: A Bit o' Binding

2005-11-14T08:15:00.000-08:00

The lady who versified the "Prayer" from English prose translations of the Old Irish, about 1500 years later, was Cecil Frances Humphreys Alexander, married to the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland--Patrick's ecclesiastical successor.

She used the phrase that scared me so much as a teenager--"I bind unto myself"--as a motif to begin or end most of the nine stanzas. Confronting my fears, I pulled out a magnifying glass and looked up "bind" in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary. I think this definition makes the most sense in this context: "To fasten round, to gird, encircle, wreathe (the head, etc., with something)...." That fits beautifully with the idea of Patrick forging himself a breastplate of prayer. ("Bind" was also used with this meaning in a poem by Tennyson in 1870, about 20 years before Mrs. Alexander picked it up for her own poem, so it may have been a fashionable poetic word.)

But what are we to do about Patrick's binding to himself all sorts of things other than the Trinity, like "the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks"?

A key phrase here is the fourth stanza's opening line, "I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heavens." I remember from philosophy and theology classes that "virtue" is sometimes used to mean "power."

I suspect Patrick saw the glad power of the Creator in all these things. He wasn't worshiping the wind or rocks as gods themselves, nor was he attributing the power within them to some World Consciousness, but to Christ, the god with a name, a face, and a distinct personality who allows other personalities and forms to exist by His own power. (In some ways, Christ is the height of tolerance!) The whole song, especially the eighth stanza, sounds like an interpretation of one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Colossians 1:15-20. Christ's virtue in all things: we in harmony with Christ are restored to harmony with all things.

"Prayer of St. Patrick" 1: Spells and Incantations

2005-11-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

This week I've been singing the "Prayer of St. Patrick," a.k.a. "St. Patrick's Breastplate." It's on my personal list of 100 Hymns to Memorize. It surprises me that in my late 20's, I'm singing the "Prayer of St. Patrick," because in my late teens, I wouldn't have anything to do with it.

It begins with "I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity." It sounded creepy, like reciting an ancient spell. I wasn't sure if Christians ought to be saying things that sounded like incantations. It went from bad to worse. By the fourth stanza, St. Patrick was intoning, "I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven," like nature-worship or something really weird. If I sang this, would I be inviting demons or God's wrath, or would I be on a slippery slope toward paganism and dancing barefoot in a loose white dress at the Vernal Equinox?

It's quite the opposite.

Apparently, on Easter Sunday, March 26, 433, the druids of Ireland, already provoked by some bonfire incident on Easter Eve, caused a magic cloud of "Egyptian darkness" to fall around Patrick and his people. Patrick prayed, and the sun's rays broke through. Then the Arch-Druid Lochru levitated himself with demonic power--I don't know whether he came after Patrick or just spun around in the air--but after Patrick again prayed, the Arch-Druid remembered gravity and was "dashed to pieces" on a rock. And you thought Easter egg-hunting was exciting. After this spectacle, Leoghaire, the Supreme Monarch of Ireland, granted permission for Patrick to preach the Christian faith throughout the land.

Patrick had prepared himself for this spiritual battle against paganism much as ancient Israel did--through prayer. "St. Patrick's Breastplate" survives as a memorial of that prayer.

More to follow....

Voting on Topics

2005-11-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

Some topics I've thought about covering in this blog include:

Overview of select hymns (AND praise choruses) with a study of their poetry and/or how their words relate to their musical settings

Definitions of hymns

Hymns arranged by topics

How particular hymns have been edited over the years, with speculations on why

Really bad hymns

Which topics would you enjoy reading about? Is there any particular hymn or question that's piqued your curiousity over the years? I'd be happy to do the legwork and check into it for you.

My goal is to keep doing this blog for at least a year. It's wonderful therapy--having to write every day or every other day should whittle down the proverbial "log in the eye" of perfectionism. Writing a blog is very different from writing for a newsletter or a professor because it's more conversational and, no matter how much you research the content that goes into a particular post, the actual writing and reading of blogs happens on the fly. There really isn't time to make every word perfect!

My husband, a professional writer and also a blogger for about a year now, chuckles. He's very encouraging, but curious to see what happens in a household of two bloggers.

Intro 6 (The Last Intro!): Emotions in Hymns

2005-11-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

C.S. Lewis wrote: "If [a schoolboy] is an imaginative boy he will, quite probably, be revelling in the English poets and romancers suitable to his age some time before he begins to suspect that Greek grammar is going to lead him to more and more enjoyments of this same sort--but the grammar learned as a boy will lead to a deep adult enjoyment ("The Weight of Glory," from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, reprinted in The Essential C.S. Lewis, ed. Lyle W. Dorsett [New York: Collier Books, 1988], 363).

It's time to get rid of the notion that praise choruses allow us an emotional connection to God while hymns afford us an intellectual understanding.

Every word we sing has meaning and yields either an emotional connection or the potential for it. With hymns, the potential may take longer to realize; the more words we sing, the more meaning we may need to process. The fuller meaning of so many words sung in one breath may fly by us in the first dozen or so times that we sing, and then begin to soak in.

Christians talk a lot about not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewal of our minds--but isn't our worship conforming us to our present culture of impatience for meaning with its quick fix of flashing images and sound bites and brief choruses?

The emotional connection is present. It is deep. It is waiting for us. I am convinced that the Spirit Himself is waiting for us in the hymns.

Intro 5: Wall Calendars for Hymns

2005-11-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

3) We should consider with great care the core hymns that our particular congregation should know, and then plan how to teach these hymns over the course of a year or ten years.

After choosing the hymns and considering how to introduce each one, it's a good idea to hang a year-long calendar on the wall to keep track of how many times a particular hymn has been sung.

We can allow the hymn to mean more if we also take care in how we introduce it.

Examples of introductions include: a) a verbal explanation of a hymn's possible meaning or key words or biblical references, from the pulpit; b) a written explanation of the same in the bulletin or church newsletter; c) a Hymn of the Month that the congregation comes to expect to sing for four weeks (with reviews planned by the worship leader); d) a choral arrangement of the hymn in the week prior to the congregation's singing it, or a choral presentation of the first stanza before the congregation joins in; e) a lengthy piano, organ, orchestra, or band introduction of the tune, whether as a prelude to the service or as a simple introduction before the congregation sings.

Combinations of these methods can work very well.

Intro 4: Editing Hymns

2005-11-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

2) We should be slow--to the point of inertia!--to change the words of hymns, whether for personal preference, enlightened theology, or updated language.

Hymns accrue meaning over lifetimes and generations; they cannot be yanked around without upsetting a congregation's or individual's memory and emotional connection to them.

Imagine what would happen to your, your family's, or your congregation's Scripture memorization if you traded in your Bible translation every few years for current, up-to-the-minute language, or switched to an alternate translation for your regular devotions rather than for an occasional refreshing perspective.

Intro 3: Kids Sing Hymns

2005-11-03T10:55:00.000-08:00

Practical Implications for Music Ministry:

1) We should not have merely graded music for the different stages of life, trading in nursery songs for praise choruses for hymns as the members of our congregation age.

For either Scripture or hymns to have binding power over our lives, the power to integrate the many parts of our past with our present, they must span time and be spoken, sung, and memorized over a lifetime.

It doesn't matter whether we understand all the words or can sing the difficult parts perfectly at first. We grow in understanding as we grow in faith.

Intro 2: Growing Into "Silent Night"

2005-11-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

A good hymn has the power to integrate our childhood with our adulthood, our past with our present, if we have sung it over many years.

Think of "Silent Night" and the candles glowing in the dark church on Christmas Eve. You sang it before you could anticipate that high note, before you understood what "virgin" meant; before you had a theological understanding of the holiness of the infant, you experienced it with your family and neighbors. When you are ninety years old and leaning on your neighbor for support, you will still be singing "Silent Night" and you will have a sense of the vastness and eternity of your life measured through all the Christmases past and all the Christmases to come. It is the Spirit's Christmas gift to you.

Now imagine that you have memorized hundreds of hymns, singing them by yourself and with your neighbors, over those past ninety years. You let them sink in more deeply with every new experience, as you come to understand their words in many new moments and apply them in many new situations, allowing the Holy Spirit to interpret and apply His Scriptures to you through hymns about working, raising children, being lonely, suffering agony, enjoying nature, falling in love, giving up a loved one to God, playing with your pets, planting flowers, surviving a terrorist attack, doubting God's presence.

(For the curious, I can propose off the top of my head: for working, "New Every Morning" by John Keble [KEDRON]; for raising children, "Commit Thou All That Grieves Thee" by Paul Gerhardt [HERZLICH TUT MICH VERLANGEN]; for being lonely, "God Is Love" by Timothy Rees [ABBOT'S LEIGH]; for suffering agony, any hymn about Jesus' cross that has a somber rather than a peppy rhythm; for enjoying nature, "All Creatures of Our God and King" by St. Francis of Assisi [LASST UNS ERFREUEN]; for falling in love, "Morning Has Broken" by Eleanor Farjeon [BUNESSAN]; for giving up a loved one to God, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" by Isaac Watts [ST. ANNE]; for playing with your pets, "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Frances Alexander [ROYAL OAK]; for planting flowers, the same; for surviving a terrorist attack, "By Gracious Powers So Wonderfully Sheltered" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as adapted by Fred Pratt Green [LE CENACLE]; for doubting God's presence, "When Our Confidence Is Shaken" by Fred Pratt Green [LAUDA ANIMA]. Of course there are dozens, if not hundreds, of hymns for most of these categories. These are simply the first ones that come to my mind in this particular moment.)

Every new moment can become deep and familiar and charged with meaning, a continuation of our story rather than an unmanageable challenge or dull interlude or bewildering experience, through repeating a familiar song that instant.

This is the Spirit's refreshing of our souls, and it can be the beginning of heaven in His redemption of our tired lives and moments.

Intro 1: Fuller Humans, Fuller Prayers

2005-11-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about hymns--what they are, what they do, how they get under our skin. In exploring hymns, we may also learn how to play them better and, especially, how to pray them.

I'm concerned that we not become shriveled Christians, our prayers limited to the few phrases that have sunk in through our choruses. The choruses can be drops of rain to our spirits, but the Holy Spirit has also provided a river, a full river of prayer, to satisfy our thirst through our hymns.

Hymns can become our prayer in a deep way, engaging not only our minds and intellects, but joining the "inward groaning" as we wait for our adoption as sons, and even the "sighs too deep for words" of the Holy Spirit Himself (Romans 8). Hymns have the power to integrate the many parts of our humanity--our need for the felt presence and emotional connection with God as well as our need for deep thoughts and tricky turns of phrases that challenge our intellects and imaginations--so we may offer one prayer from our many parts to God.