Category: Hymns

At Lakewood UCC we’re very concerned that the words to our prayers, hymns, and anthems all use inclusive language for humanity and expansive language for God. That’s a deep statement, and if you ponder it for a bit — inclusive language for humanity…expansive language for God — you might glimpse how our language for humanity in the past may have been exclusionary and our language for God, restricting. I asked Rev. Wells for suggestions for hymns during this week when we’re celebrating Earth Day. This Is My Father’s World was one of her suggestions! When I queried her about the patriarchal language of the title, her response was, as always, enlightened and compassionate. Here’s what she said, “Many of us grew up singing This Is My Father’s World and know it. Yes, it uses masculine language for God, but we do our best. Don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Or become legalistic.” It’s great working for someone who really thinks things through.

Here’s words to the hymn so you can sing along: https://hymnary.org/text/this_is_my_fathers_world_and_to_my.

This is a simple rendition, just piano and a string pad. It’s what I would have heard at night as a child as almost every night my mother (violin) and father (piano) would play together in the front room while I feel asleep on the couch. I assume they treated my sister to the same pleasure, but I don’t remember as she’s about 10 years older than me. They favored a romantic style of rubato, improvisational playing of the Fritz Kreisler sort. Guess that accounts for my eclectic tastes.

There is probably no more archetypal Thanksgiving Day song than this. It should easily be the quintessential Earth Day song as well.

It’s a song every child probably knows by hear. As such, it deserves a simple, childlike, reverent simplicity. That’s what I’m shootintg for her with organ flute stops and a woodwind quartet.

To sing along, here’s a link to a representative text of four verses: https://hymnary.org/text/for_the_beauty_of_the_earth.

 

 

The title in the New Century Hymnal is To You, O god, All Creatures Sing, #17. It has 6 verses. The only representative texts I could find only have only have 5, so when/if you sing along, and I hope you do, you’ll have to improvise that final verse!

The descant I use on verse 4 is the one given in the NCH. I don’t mind using my own descants, but I also like to use given ones because they become favorite, personal pleasures of soprano and tenor members of the congregation…so why deprive them of their guilty pleasures–indulge, indulge!

In verse 6 I put the tune in the pedals and inverted the counterpoint in the hands. The harmonization of this magnificent tune, is of course, by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

This morning’s Earth Day hymn is this famous Native American hymn. #3 in the New Century Hymnal, both verses are given in the original Dakota language as well as in an English translation. Hymnary.org gives just the English translation.

The NCH suggests the 4 quarter note drum throughout. I debated using that since I don’t want to err in the direction of tasteless cultural approbation any more than I already have by using this hymn. But…it seemed to work if done very softly and it gives a sense of forward motion.

The footnotes in the NCH give Joseph Renville, 1842, as having adapted the tune and James Murry, 1877, as having provided the harmonization. Renville helped establish the Lac qui Parle mission in Minnesota and Frazier, a Native American, was a Congregational minister.

This week, and the coming Corona Sabbath, is Earth Week at Lakewood UCC. So in celebration there’ll be a daily hymn about the beauties of creation. There can’t be any hymn more arch-typical of the topic than this first one, All Things Bright and Beautiful, the melody of which is ROYAL OAK, a traditional English Melody, adapted by Martin Shaw, 1915. That link gives 5 verses plus the refrain, but I’ve stuck with the 3 versus and refrain of the New Century Hymnal.