Personal Favorite
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STLT#205-206, Amazing Grace
This is the second of what I realize now are three times when the same lyrics are applied to two different tunes. Now in the case of Light of Ages and of Nations, and later, O Little Town of Bethlehem, they are actually two completely different tunes. But here, we have two distinct versions of… Continue reading
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STLT#185, Your Mercy, Oh Eternal One
This is a devotional prayer if ever I heard one. And I suspect this text, by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, would make some Unitarian Universalists squeamish, this whole-hearted surrender to the Divine. Yet it is a vital theological perspective found in our congregations – even if those who adhere to it might not say it… Continue reading
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STLT#163, For the Earth Forever Turning
I am a little bit excited to get to this hymn today. First, because it’s just so beautiful. It’s sweeping and lush in its composition, and similarly sweeping and lush in its lyric. Written for Paul Winter’s Missa Gaia, Kim Oler captured something here that is a bit ineffable even as it is grounded and… Continue reading
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STLT#159, This Is My Song
This hymn, y’all. First – we’re already into the Peace section; Labor and Learning was short, sweet, and to the point. Second – I am not Finnish. Nowhere in my family’s known genealogy is there any Scandinavian blood; we’re all German and English, with a dollop of Dutch and a dash of Irish. Yet this… Continue reading
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STLT#158, Praise the Source of Faith and Learning
I’m a little more in love with this hymn today than I was yesterday. I’ve used it several times – often with services about the arts or knowledge and reason. But even then, I don’t know that I actually meditated on the lyrics, written by Thomas Troeger, now a professor of preaching at Yale (officially… Continue reading
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STLT#155, Circle ‘Round for Freedom
This is a great piece – best sung a capella, with three strong song leaders to help fill in the rich harmony. I often forget about it, this sweet song written by cantor Linda Hirschhorn, and I’m not sure why. So when it comes up in conversation or I hear a snippet of it, I… Continue reading
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STLT#146, Soon the Day Will Arrive
I was hoping Jacqui James would bail me out today. I was really hoping there would be some long explanation of the origins of this song – that the lyricist, Ehud Manor, had written this in response to a particular moment/tragedy/event that I could expand upon, or that the composer, Nurit Hirsch, had discovered an… Continue reading
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STLT#128, For All That Is Our Life
I have learned that when I particularly like or dislike a contemporary hymn, I stir up some level of controversy, usually on Facebook (although some of it shows up in the comments here too). I don’t like Bring Many Names, but you would have thought I’d killed a basket of puppies when I said so.… Continue reading
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STLT#127, Can I See Another’s Woe?
This one nearly speaks for itself – it asks the question many of us ask of those who seem to take a perverse joy at the suffering of others. Over and over, in the face of laws and judgments that seek to punish the victims, the oppressed, the suffering, we ask of those people: what… Continue reading
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STLT#126, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
It feels a little like cheating that this was our closing hymn yesterday, and I’ve had it as an earworm for 24 hours – and it’s been on my mind since I first chose it for this service weeks ago. And in this case, I don’t even care that only verse one is original, and… Continue reading
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links
Learn more about my ministry at The Art of Meaning
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