Mood: Haunting/Mystical
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STLT#352, Find a Stillness
I love this prayer. Seriously, this meditative, prayerful hymn – lyrics by Carl Seaburg, set to a Transylvanian folk tune – is absolutely in my top ten list. I love the haunting, minor key of the tune as well as the phrasing. Some might say the third phrase is too high, but that’s what transposition… Continue reading
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STLT#336, All My Memories of Love
It’s a Hymn by Hymn miracle! Today is September 1st, and the hymn today mentions September! The hymnal is right on schedule, pretending it hasn’t had me sing Christmas songs in spring and summer songs in winter and Easter songs at General Assembly. I hardly know what to make of it. What I do know is that… Continue reading
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STLT#334, When Shall We Learn
One of the cool things about this particular hymnal is that the commission had some remarkable 20th century poetry set to music, like this poem, “Canzone” by WH Auden. The downside, of course, is that most of those poems – including “Canzone” – are far longer and intricate than we have breath for in a… Continue reading
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STLT#319, Ye Earthborn Children of a Star
I’m not sure if it’s the muscle relaxers and anti-viral meds I’m on because of a weird virus that hit me late last week, or Charlottesville, or something else, but I just can’t grok this hymn this morning. I don’t get the tune (by Dede Duson, commissioned for this hymnal), and while I intellectually understand… Continue reading
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STLT#296, O Ye Who Taste That Love Is Sweet
Confession: sometimes I sing a hymn and all I really have to say is, ‘yep, it’s great’ and then I look for more to say. I love this hymn. It’s great. The melody, a late 15th century French tune by Franciscan monk Jean Tisserand, is lush and a bit bittersweet, and provides a perfect mood… Continue reading
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STLT#279, By the Waters of Babylon
This round evokes in me another, which we’ll get to in November: Where does it come from? Who wrote it? Why is it in here? Where does it come from? How did it get here? Mystery. Mystery. This hymn’s a riddle and a mystery. Okay, so not all of it is a mystery – it… Continue reading
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STLT#212, We are Dancing Sarah’s Circle
I want to tell you a story about why this song means so much to me, but I want to get two bits of “hmm” out of the way first: First: There is a long tradition in folk music – and hymnody – of writing new words to familiar tunes, or adapting old words and… Continue reading
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STLT#211, We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
Later this morning, I am leading our congregation’s Teach In on White Supremacy, joining over 600 Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country in examining the larger cultural systems that even progressive organizations like ourselves don’t realize we’re perpetuating. In this service, I am preferencing the words of people of color, letting their words inform and… Continue reading
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STLT#164, The Peace Not Past Our Understanding
This tune is apparently a magnet for messed up rhymes. Now to John Holmes’ credit, his lyrics generally rhyme in a comfortable ABAB structure, but goodness, we got off to a rocky start, as ‘tablecloth’ does not rhyme with ‘truth’ … and while we’re at it, the tune does not support the correct pronunciation of the… Continue reading
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STLT#104, When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land
I’m going to let you down, dear reader, because there is a distinct lack of content today. I feel like I have a lot more work to do to understand this song’s actual origins, the history of its use by Harriet Tubman as a code song for the Underground Railroad, and its use today. I… Continue reading
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