We seem to be living in a time without graciousness.  A time where the intensely felt pain of some is used against them as weapons for others’ agendas.  It is disheartening.  And, although my intention with this project was to look for the positive, it is sometimes very difficult to avoid the negativity that we are swimming in. There is a great deal in the news this week about courageous women.  Women who have bravely put themselves in the position of publicly telling very personal stories.  Stories that are humiliating and deeply traumatic.  Stories that involve challenging pillars of our society – those with power.  Stories that, ultimately, can save lives and bring about change.  It is with a heavy heart that I read and hear responses to this bravery.  What is behind our inability to offer a collective graciousness to these countless souls who have been battered and compromised?  To these countless souls who have carried the weight of our society’s great shame and are emerging as a strength we should be celebrating?

This idea of offering graciousness to those among us that we have seriously neglected and discarded has been on my mind as I have watched and listened this past week.  The graciousness of being kind, delicate and generous of spirit.  The graciousness of avoiding hurtful words and thoughtless deeds.  So, in a kind of childish attempt to find a hymn to understand these thoughts, I flipped open my hymnbook and found these words.  First flip.  Divine intervention?  Luck? I don’t know, but this text speaks to what we could be, if we chose to look beyond protecting what is, and moved towards protecting those that are damaged by what is; towards changing our culture for the better even when there is something to lose for those that currently hold the power.

Gracious Spirit, dwell with me:
I myself would gracious be,
and, with words that help and heal,
would Thy life in mine reveal,
and, with actions, bold and meek
for Christ my Saviour speak.

Truthful Spirit, dwell with me:
I myself would truthful be;
and, with wisdom kind and clear,
let Thy life in mine appear;
and, with actions lovingly,
speak of Christ’s sincerity.

Silent Spirit, dwell with me,
I myself would silent be;
quiet as the growing blade,
which through earth its way has made,
silently like morning light,
putting mists and chills to flight.

Mighty Spirit, dwell with me:
I myself would mighty be,
mighty so as to prevail
where unaided I must fail,
ever by a mighty hope,
pressing on and bearing up.

Holy Spirit, dwell with me:
I myself would holy be,
break from sin and choose the good,
cherish what my Saviour would,
and whatever I can be
give Him who gave me Thee.

There is nothing in these words about protecting those with power.  Nothing about saving reputations or assuming that a victim is a liar with ulterior motives. These are words about truth and action.  They are heart wrenchingly commanding.  Listen. To be gracious is to:  be filled with words that help and heal; to take up actions that are both bold and meek; to express wisdom that is both kind and clear; to be truthful; to be silent as we observe growth of that which was previously buried in the dark, emerging into the sunlight; to bear up with hope and might; and to choose what is good.  Our task is one of powerful kindness.  Active kindness.  We do not need to rescue or protect how things have always been.  We need to listen to those who say they are in pain and be gracious.  We need to hold them, care for them – and do what is required to protect them from ever experiencing this pain again.  We need to believe what is true and stop thinking it can’t possibly be that bad.  It surely is that bad and we are culpable for this fact.

The word gracious comes from the Latin word for good will.  Are we as a society offering good will to those who bravely tell us we’ve hurt them? No.  We are avidly protecting our cultural norms.  This is a kind of avarice.  And it is a deadly sin.  We must do better.

This was not a particularly familiar hymn to me before this week, and I must admit some discomfort with the title.  The imagery elicited of God as a master, with all its problematic implications, is one I find distasteful.  But one of my personal reasons for delving into these old hymns is to come to terms with the language of context and try to pluck out bits of wisdom and truth despite my discomfort.  It is easy to toss out that which can justifiably be viewed as outdated, irrelevant or even offensive.  It is difficult to look upon our past and glean the good amongst the unpleasant; the insight amongst the ignorance.  So, my understanding of the Divine is not that of a master, but I choose to learn from these words nonetheless.  In an era where we spend so much time looking at ourselves, losing sight of our various histories can lead us dangerously towards endless repetition of our many, many mistakes.

This hymn was written in 1879 by Washington Gladden. Gladden was a minister in Columbus, Ohio and was a bit of an anti-establishment rebel, from what I can tell.  He fought against corrupt politicians and arbitrated for workers in various strikes, and he even criticized a $100,000 Rockefeller donation (a huge sum in those days!) to his church’s mission fund because he felt the money was “tainted” by misdeeds.  Quite a character.  The text of this prayerful hymn is a reflection of this man’s desire to do what is right. His actions indicate that doing what is right was more than a bunch of words.

O Master, let me walk with Thee
in lowly paths of service free;
tell me Thy secret; help me bear
the strain of toil, the fret of care.

Help me the slow of heart to move
by some clear, winning word of love;
teach me the wayward feet to stay,
and guide them in the homeward way.

Teach me Thy patience, still with Thee
in closer, dearer company,
in work that keeps faith sweet and strong,
in trust that triumphs over wrong.

In hope that sends a shining ray
far down the future’s broad’ning way;
in peace that only Thou canst give,
with Thee, O Master, let me live.

Our lives are filled with stresses, and based on this prayer, the writer’s life was too – 139 years ago.  It is a plea for the strength required to face these stresses, stand up for what is right and find peace.  Perhaps not much has changed, but I often wonder if what has changed is our impression that we can somehow eliminate these stresses and find cheerful happiness in some idealized world of our own imagining. We are inundated with suggestions for how to make our lives easier, more efficient and more successful.  We are promised happiness, wealth and freedom from stress.  Follow these simple steps and you will achieve…. whatever your heart desires.  And yet, many are still poor; still sick; still lonely; still heartbroken.  Many work hard and never achieve their dreams. Many are excluded from the opportunities that others enjoy.  Many achieve much, but appreciate little.  Many receive much, but always want more.

In these words, I find a man struggling.  Strain of toil, the fret of care.  Wayward feet, a slow heart, a sense that the path of service is lowly. This is not a man giving a motivational speech filled with the answers.  This is a man trying to triumph over wrong – despite his shortcomings and his obstacles.  This is about choosing to look for a ray of light that will guide him on a path towards peace.  Choosing this hope as a means of living in an often dark world.

We live in a dark world.  One in which we choose to surround ourselves with highly inflamed depictions of all we fear. We pit groups against each other – veterans versus refugees, well-known versus newcomer, old versus young.  We create opposition instead of compassion. And it doesn’t surprise me.  A culture that expects happiness and wealth to be the crowning achievements of life requires someone to bear the weight of that impossibility.  When we don’t get what we’ve been told is possible, is our right, we blame someone.   This is such a hard way to live.

As I reflect on this prayer, I can’t help feeling that Gladden was frustrated, maybe even sad. In a state that most of us understand. But what strength he must have had to make that choice to look for ways to achieve peace and hope in the face of challenge. Our birthright isn’t an easy life. Our birthright is a life.  One lived honestly and fully.  Facing the good and the bad.  No one is exempt. But we can look for the things that provide strength to face this dark world, rather than those that simply illuminate the darkness. We can be sad, afraid, discouraged and frustrated and still fight for what is right and live life well.  When we do so, our success or failure is much less important than the ray of light we become.  For there are always others looking to find that path of hope.  Peace is found in our brightness.  Whether we see it or not.

Despite the title of this hymn, which is usually used as a benediction or blessing at the end of something, I am not quitting a mere two weeks into this little project.  For some reason, as I was thinking about what I wanted to ponder this week, this lovely Ralph Vaughan Williams tune kept popping into my mind.  I have arranged it once before, but it spoke to me in a completely different way this time, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for this repeat hymn.  Actually, it strikes me that one of the great beauties of these songs is their ability to say different things at different times to different people.  There’s some special wisdom there.

September 21 is the UN International Day of Peace.   A day where the world celebrates the ideals of peace.  Well, I’m not sure any of us actually celebrate or if most of us even know this day exists, but it does.  I think about it every year at this time.  A small reminder that we value peace but we live in a world where it doesn’t exist in many places, on many levels.  It is both big and small, and its absence impacts greatly.

It seems we are quite comfortable with wishing for peace.  World peace.  Peace of mind.  It is good and we want it.  But I look around and see so much that is working hard against this thing we want so desperately.  Consuming the news these days provides blatant examples of how far away from the ideal we have strayed.  Our inability to reconcile this general desire for peace with our self focus, greed, wastefulness, distrust and disrespect is obvious.  Peace is simply not our priority.  For those of us with great privilege, this can be fairly easy to disregard. For those without, it is not.

So, where does this hymn fit into all of this?  It struck me as I read through the words, that, once again, there are within them such clear instructions of how we take on the great responsibility of being peace makers.  Because peace is made, it doesn’t just turn up.  It requires effort and sacrifice and kindness and joy and strength.  It is a creative act in the truest sense of the word. We must be the creators of this dream.

God be with you till we meet again;
Loving counsels guide, uphold you,
May the Shepherd’s care enfold you;
God be with you till we meet again.

God be with you till we meet again;
Unseen wings, protecting, hide you,
Daily manna still provide you;
God be with you till we meet again.

God be with you till we meet again;
When life’s perils thick confound you,
Put unfailing arms around you;
God be with you till we meet again.

God be with you till we meet again;
Keep love’s banner floating o’er you,
Smite death’s threat’ning wave before you;
God be with you till we meet again.

These words may seem like they are all about what will be done for us, but I kind of think they are encouraging us by showing us what is needed.  Encouraging us to be the earthly actors that can guide, uphold, care, protect, provide, love, face death and put unfailing arms around those we meet.  What a challenge.  Imagine if that was our world’s priority?  We’ve all seen or heard about examples of people who lived their lives with this perspective, the Mother Theresa and Ghandi types.  We are always impressed.  But what if it was also our own personal philosophy?  I suppose it sounds simple and a bit naïve, but I can’t help wondering if it would make a huge difference.  Maybe not to the whole world, but to ourselves.  Creating peace in our immediate spaces would be a powerful act of defiance.  We live in a culture that is currently thriving on negativity, on insults, on denigration, on comments that are often hard to read and hear.  The act of peace-making defies this trend.  It requires us to stand up to disturbingly common injustice, addictive negativity and simple rudeness with the tools of kindness, compassion and strength. Walking on this path paved with fearless love and a belief in what is good – in the face of all that we find disgraceful and painful, in the face of those who seek different rewards – takes us to where peace can be found.  It is a difficult path, but it is filled with beauty.

When I read the words “God be with you till we meet again,” I find myself unable to look upon the recipient of the words with anything other than warmth.  In amongst all the instructions for behaviour in this text, that is what sticks out for me.  If I sing that line to your face, I am wishing care upon you – be it from God or whatever other source is meaningful.  It is very difficult to wish care upon someone and remain filled with hatred or disdain.  And that really has nothing to do with whatever has been done, and everything to do with what I am willing to send out into this world; with who I choose to be.  I choose to be kind.  The recipients of my kindness may choose differently, and that may make me angry and may require action, but I still choose to be kind.  Because peace is found in living life at its most generous, and I hope the horrors of this world do not deter us from trying to plant its seeds.

God be with you till we meet again.

There are some hymns that are so familiar, I almost forget that they exist.  This is one of those.  When I played through it this week, it was as though I had been transported to the Sunday School of my childhood.  The tune is a 17^thcentury English melody but the words were written in 1848 by a woman named Cecil F. Alexander.  She was a well-known hymn writer at the time and penned nearly 400 hymns and poems, this being one of her most popular.

All things bright and beautiful, 
all creatures great and small, 
all things wise and wonderful, 
the Lord God made them all.

Each little flow’r that opens, 
each little bird that sings, 
God made their glowing colours, 
God made their tiny wings.

The purple-headed mountain, 
the river running by, 
the sunset and the morning 
that brightens up the sky.

The cold wind in the winter, 
the pleasant summer sun, 
the ripe fruits in the garden: 
God made them ev’ry one.

God gave us eyes to see them, 
and lips that we might tell 
how great is God Almighty, 
who has made all things well.

This is clearly a hymn about the Creator and all that is found in this beautiful world of ours. Such lovely imagery to describe how very good everything is – flowers, birds, mountains, rivers, seasons and the food we harvest.  I suppose it should have directed me to think about the value of our environment, the treasure that is this planet of ours.  But somehow, my mind went another way.

Perhaps you are a believer in God the Creator, perhaps not.  One thing that is clear to me is that, either way, we are living in and amongst wonders that are valuable beyond measure.  This hymn reminds me of that.  Reminds me of the immense variety of beauty that we have access to – the tiniest wing, the grandest mountain.  And when I start to think of this, somewhere very deep within me, I know this is a metaphor for all who live together on this planet.  We are beautiful.  Deeply and richly beautiful.  All of us. In our differences, in our sameness. Solely because we are part of this vast creation.

The concept of beauty is a tarnished ideal.  It is a difficult word to define and I don’t mean it as a superficial or temporary state. Beauty, to me, is about something that inspires us to look beyond our own perceptions and be awed by what is revealed. Nature often does that – as does art and music.  Pushing us into some other realm where we find all kinds of feelings and experiences.  One of our most difficult tasks as humans is to do this with those that are different from us – those with different experiences of this world, those with different practices, those from different places.  And especially, those that tell us that we’ve hurt them.  But we must be willing to see the beauty that lies in that which makes us uncomfortable because it is there.  Disregarding it reveals our ugliness. It makes our world very small and one thing I know most certainly, is that our beautiful world is anything but small.

So, in this time of building walls between us and them, of turning our backs on them in favour of us, I hope we can find a way to look past our insecurities and fears to find the beauty that exists within every living soul.  We protect nothing of our selves when we express hatred and ugliness, when we exclude and ignore – we simply tarnish our own beauty, and that is a tragedy. My beauty and yours may vary immensely, but so what?  We are mountains and rivers, summer and winter, sunsets and sunrises.  We are given eyes to see each other.  To see our beauty.  Look deeply and be inspired to feel and engage with the diversity that is humanity.   For we have truly been made well, all of us creatures, great and small.

Way back in 2014 I spent a year with hymns.  Challenging myself to think about and arrange a different hymn each week and then, despite my own insecurities, share these thoughts with others.  It was an extremely revelatory experience.  I learned a great deal and was quite moved by the many responses I received.  I admit that by the end of the hymn project, I was a bit weary of the process and the self-imposed pressure to meet a deadline, so I mostly let this activity of hymn exploration go by the wayside.

But life has a funny way of asking us to do things for reasons we didn’t originally intend. When I started out I was simply looking for a project.  A way to understand and explore where I came from musically and spiritually, and a means of forcing myself to be creative.  Today I think there is value in embarking on another year-long challenge. It has been floating through my mind for months that I wish there was something I could do to counter the incredibly negative energy that has blanketed our lives in the past couple of years.  I am often overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of disturbing news, behaviour and events that I read about each day.  I am baffled by our desire to take in these things; to share them, to discuss them, to allow them to dominate our lives.  I wonder where the line is – when is it obsession and preoccupation with the information; when is it rising against injustice and being aware.  It seems we’ve lost something in our ability to work for good, rather than just be outraged and paralysed by the bad.

Now, hymns are not the answer.  Obviously. I don’t have any idea what the answers are, but what I do know, is that finding solutions comes far more easily from a place of shared strength and support than when we are helplessly flapping in the wind.  I haven’t much to offer, but I can do this.  I can look for words of wisdom in these age old texts.  I can attempt to soothe by providing sounds that try to fill our spaces with beauty.

So we begin another year of song.  These songs represent my heritage, my experience and my childhood.  These kinds of words and music have been a constant in my life and have become a part of me.  They are a starting point for me and do not necessarily represent all I am, or all I believe.  But, they have stood the test of time and I hope to find ways to understand them in a broader context – meaningful to many, despite our different experiences, circumstances and beliefs.

I want Jesus to walk with me;
I want Jesus to walk with me;
all along my pilgrim journey,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

In my trials, Lord, walk with me;
in my trials, Lord, walk with me;
when my heart is almost breaking,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me;
when I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me;
when my head is bowed in sorrow,
Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.

I have always liked the idea that Jesus should be viewed as an example of the power of kindness. An example of how we should treat people.  Perhaps you have another figure that provides that example – be it religious or otherwise. Find that example.  We need these examples.  I read these words and think we are in trouble and we all need someone to walk with us.  We are in trouble and we all need to walk with someone else.  Wherever we find ourselves, we are on one or the other side of this equation – sometimes both.  So my desire for this second year of song is to walk with you all. Whether heart breaking or head bowed in sorrow, we walk together.  We walk in kindness.  We walk for good.