I wonder sometimes if I’m overthinking these things.
You see, I first looked at our lyric – another one by Ken Patton – and at first cheered at having an artsy doxology text, since I am an artsy minister. Yay, loveliness! Yay all arts, all songs, beauty! Yay all the other stuff! Yay! Ours be the poems of …wait, of all tongues? Ours? Huh? Who is us?
And now I don’t know what to think. Here’s the lyric:
Ours be the poems of all tongues,
all things of loveliness and worth.
All arts, all ages, and all songs,
one life, one beauty on the earth.
I’m a little confused. Are we taking an imperialistic tone here, or are we saying that all of humanity’s artsy stuff belongs to all of us because we’re all human? And if that’s the case, isn’t that a bit too much “I don’t see differences”? Or… is this meant to be a “thanks, God, for giving us all this artsy compulsion and this artsy, lovely planet to be artsy on”?
Seriously – I may be overthinking this one and may need help to get out of my head. Because I don’t want to be suspicious when I encounter praise for artsy-ness, and I’m feeling that way today.
