This second hymn I’ve
written had an odd genesis. (My first hymn was “O
Lord the Invisible.”) My choir was a visiting choir at Trinity
Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh on January 25, 2004. The sequence
hymn was “O Christ, the Word
Incarnate.” This hymn appears as number
632 in The Hymnal 1982 in
the “Holy
Scripture” section, along with a handful of other hymns. As I was singing, it occurred to me that I could not think of a hymn that
extols not only Scripture, but the trio of Scripture, tradition, and
reason, the classic three-legged stool of the quintessential Anglican
theologian of the sixteenth century, Richard Hooker. This was a
significant observation, as the conservatives who are now so disrupting
the Episcopal Church regularly appeal to Scripture (and perhaps
tradition), but never do they seem to appeal to reason, to believe, as some
put it, that God can “do a new thing.”
As a result of the
loudspeakers near the choir stalls not working, the sermon was completely inaudible. This seemed to be the Lord’s
message that it was time to fill a gap in Episcopal hymnody. I began
writing a hymn, expecting to produce verses about Scripture,
tradition, and reason. I thought I might conclude with a fourth verse,
though I didn’t know exactly what it might be about. Because the hymn
we had just sung was probably the most popular Episcopal hymn about
Scripture—this may not be saying much—I chose to write a text that
could be paired with its usual tune, “Munich,” which is seventeenth
German. By the time the sermon was over, I had a first verse and half of
a second.
Over the next few days, the
poem went through several revisions, some of them quite extensive. A
conversation with the Rev. J. Peter Bercovitz—now, sadly,
deceased—inspired me to write verse
four, which emphasizes what is even more important than Scripture,
tradition, and reason. (Peter, who never quite warmed to this project
but who was nonetheless helpful, has his own very interesting Web site,
primarily about the Apostle Paul, As
Paul tells it....)
In the revisions, I discarded most of the
original first verse, which originally read as follows:
|
We thank you, God, for
Scripture,
That lamp unto our feet
That teaches of
salvation
And what is right and meet
To claim our place in
heaven,
To do your work on earth,
To make our lives most
holy
In sadness or in mirth. |
|
There were many reasons for
discarding this verse, but I leave it as an exercise for the reader to
figure out what they all were. I
thought I had finished writing the hymn when I began to match carefully
the words to the music, only to discover that “inspired,” which I had
unconsciously construed as
having three syllables, in reality, has but two:
|
We thank you, God, for
Scripture,
Inspired words that
tell |
|
The second line should have had
six syllables, of course, not five. This was not a problem when setting the words
to music, but a poem should scan properly when read simply as a poem.
This glitch was extraordinarily troublesome to fix. I tried many
approaches to whipping the line into shape, but I spent most time on
searching for a one-syllable, unaccented word that could follow
“inspired.” Eventually, I rejected “fine,” “glad,”
“true,” “kind,” “brave,” and “pure.” I resisted the
substitution of “inspiring” for “inspired”—a real
three-syllable word—because it changed the meaning to a true, but less
powerful, assertion. The final version of the line is less idiomatic
than I might have wished, but it is not outrageously strange, and it sings
well.
Some explanation of verse two
may be helpful. It is
apparently not obvious to everyone that it is we who are
constantly renewed by traditional teachings and customs. Also, in this
verse, I changed the last two lines several times, returning them, in
the very last revision, to their antepenultimate version.
Finding a title was difficult.
The one I selected will do, but, in fact, hymns tend to be referred to by their
initial phrases. This may be inevitable, though it would certainly be
misleading in this case. I chose the title after I thought I had finished the
hymn, on January 29. (The fix for the second line of verse one was not
made until February 4.) The next day, I began to consider whether other hymn
tunes might work better than “Munich.” The meter of the text is a
common one, so that there are many tunes that work well with the hymn.
My favorite alternatives are “Ellacombe”
and “Llangloffan.”
I encourage visitors to let me know what tune they feel works best.
I am greatly indebted to Steve Kinsel
of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Murrysville, Pa., for doing most of the work of producing a MIDI file of
"Munich" and a PDF version of the words and music, either of which
can be had by clicking on one of the buttons below. The music is a PDF
file. Click on the logo if you need to download and install the free
Adobe Reader to view or print this file.
I want to encourage
people to sing this hymn, but please write me before using it in a
public service.
|
 |
Download MIDI |
|
|
 |
View Music (PDF) |
|
— LED, 9/3/2006
|