Advent begins this week and marks a time when the Christian church prepares for the birth of Christ.  Celebrating Christmas is common in Western cultures, and beyond, regardless of religious affiliations.  We prepare for this holiday in all sorts of ways.  We decorate our homes, listen to our festive playlists, watch our favourite seasonal movies, attend concerts, buy gifts, bake special treats, gather with friends and loved ones. There is much to do, much to get ready.  It is an exciting time and one that many of us treasure.

As I was thinking about which hymn to look at this week, I was actually mildly surprised to find that we had arrived at Advent again.  There is something about the past years of pandemic time that leaves me wondering where we are.  It doesn’t feel like this state of strangeness we’ve been walking through started very long ago, and yet it feels like it’s been forever.  For many of us, this may be the first almost normal Christmas season we’ve had in three years.  For some the pandemic is a distant memory, for others it is an ever present concern.  We are in many different places.  Preparing for something becomes unusual in this context.  We need to accommodate those who are excited to reinstate all their traditions, while caring for those that remain cautious, and sometimes bound by fear.  The balance of this preparation is challenging.

O come, O come, Immanuel, and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.

O come, the Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here.Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight.

O come, thou Wisdom form on high, and order all things far and nigh.To us the path of knowledge show, and cause us in thy ways to go.

O come, desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind.Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease.  Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

When I read through the words of this haunting hymn written more than six hundred years ago, I was struck by the clear understanding of the contrasts to be found in our communities, our world and our hearts.  We are lonely, in exile.  Trapped, yet aware that there is a way out. We are overwhelmed with darkness and death’s threat, but can see the possibility of daylight cheering our spirits. We are aware that wisdom can guide and that the peace found in working together can put an end to our quarrels.

Preparing to celebrate anything requires us to acknowledge the challenges that we face each day, the challenges that may never cease.  Celebrations that attempt to eliminate these challenges can feel quite thin and a bit artificial.  These words and the sombre music beautifully acknowledge that truth.  It was not a picture perfect world that this Christ child entered, it was a flawed one.  There isn’t a decoration, gift, event or jingle bell that will change that.  The beauty we seek at this time of year will never eliminate the pain, the struggles or the disappointments that we all encounter.  Nor should it.  For it is our moments of loneliness and the times we spend in darkness that give us the opportunity to really see the depth in beauty when it is offered.  As difficult as the act of choosing this view may be, allowing beauty to enter in despite our realities is also a powerful act. Beauty serves to offer us hope and inspiration, and in that way can become the ransom for our exile.

Perhaps that is why we can rejoice after singing through these melancholic words.  Perhaps that is why we prepare.  Perhaps that is why we celebrate – whether we are of this particular faith or not.  Understanding that there is joy to be found amidst the rubble of this world is important.  It gives us hope.  It renews us.

So we prepare.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

I seem to have inadvertently wandered into the Psalms on this latest bout of hymn exploration.  It wasn’t intentional, but it might be a path to follow for a while.  When I think of Psalms, I think of several things – our prayers, our praise – our need for comfort.  Through words and poetry, we find much in the Psalms: guidance, desperation, joy, hopefulness, suffering and peace.  Psalms are our sacred songs, offering us a way to sing the experiences of our souls.

Teach me, O Lord, thy way of truth, and from it I will not depart;
That I may steadfastly obey, give me an understanding heart.

In thy commandments make me walk, for in thy law my joy shall be.
Give me a heart that loves thy will, from discontent and envy free.

Turn thou my eyes from vanity, and cause me in thy ways to tread.
O let thy servant prove thy word, and thus to godly fear be led.

Turn thou away reproach and fear.  Thy righteous judgments I confess.
To know thy precepts I desire.  Revive me in thy righteousness.

This hymn is about learning.  About finding a way to walk fully in line with God’s commandments.  These words may seem a bit extreme in their use of concepts like obedience and righteousness – ideas that make us bristle in our era of self-care and individualism.  But, for me, there’s more to this poetry than the negative associations we can sometimes carry of religious imposition and rigidity.

These words are about the lifelong endeavour of being true to what one believes.  They are about learning to be driven by the integrity that keeps us on the path we choose to walk.  For some of us the struggle to find what we believe occupies a big chunk of our lives.  If we manage to find it, we are then challenged to live accordingly.  Both of these pursuits are hard.  It is clear from these words that the Psalmist also struggled, carefully outlining the challenges.  Seeking an understanding heart, anticipating joy that has not yet arrived, removing envy, avoiding vanity, releasing fear and being revived.  These are not the requests of someone who has found their way easily.  These are the requests of someone who understands the need to be constantly vigilant, constantly working.

It is this humility that I appreciate in these words.  Yes, they are in a context of a specific belief and reflect a particular set of guiding principles that we may or may not hold to or agree with.  But they are also encouraging in how they acknowledge both our weakness and our strength.  We can learn and grow if we choose to, if we seek ways to do so.  People have turned to these words for a thousand years – perpetually knowing that we must keep trying.  We must continuously seek knowledge and ways to live our beliefs; ways for our hearts to understand and our paths to be clear.

We live in a time when focus on our own thoughts, views, experiences and beliefs is constantly present.  We surround ourselves with like-minded people, we criticize others intensely.  We desire inclusion, but are masterful at excluding with our well-honed skills of judgment.  We are both vain and jealous, fearful and bold.  It is a strange time.

And yet, we can become much more.  These words remind me that when we commit to being taught, we open ourselves up to learning the vast wisdom that exists beyond ourselves.  Be it the wisdom found in faith or elsewhere, the act of seeking brings us closer to truth.  The act of seeking.  The knowledge that we do not have all the answers nor have we arrived, is powerful.  It requires us to learn.  It requires us to move.  It requires us to relinquish our fears, our envy, our vanity and our judgment.  And then, it revives our souls and opens our hearts.

One of the challenges I have faced when looking at hymns is how to reconcile the past with the present.  Old words; modern ideas.  Historic errors and wrongs; current perspectives and visions for the future.  Age old wisdom; fixation on all things new.  The evolution of language; the poetry and beauty of artfully crafted texts. The inconsistencies sometimes found in faith practices; the search for spiritual guidance that addresses concerns and inspires positive recognition of all. The good, the bad and the ugly, as they say.

It is an obstacle course, to be certain.  A delicate wander through places of discomfort, but also places I find deeply resonant and replete with wisdom and joy.

This familiar hymn has somehow escaped my gaze over all these years of hymn exploration.  I’m not sure why, as it turns out I quite like it.  The words are lovely.  I can only imagine that the image of a shelter in a stormy blast is one that is appealing to all.  It seems to me that is the entirety of what most of us are seeking throughout our lives – be it spiritual or literal; in our relationships of all kinds.

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home;

Under a shadow of thy throne thy saints have dwelt secure.
Sufficient is thine arm alone, and our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God, to endless years the same.

A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever rolling stream soon bears us all away.
We fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day.

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home.

When I read through these words, I find within them a beautiful reassurance that something great cares for us.  Past. Present. Future.  That is a remarkable gift.  To be cared for through a thousand ages is a mighty thing.  It implies our value – long before we were here.  Long after we are gone.  Time ceases to matter as it continuously rolls along, carrying upon it all those who came before and after.  We are all worth a great deal.

Sounds lovely.  But challenges remain.  For whom is this help intended?  The saints alone?  What about those who find themselves drenched in storms – without shelter and completely insecure?   What about those who seem to receive no help?  What about those who find the concept of God repugnant or unbelievable?  Whose God gets to be the hero in this story?

I suspect my modern mind is imposing these question – inserting challenges into these words.   Valid, I think, because we should question our belief systems and institutions.  They have been at the root of countless horrors throughout history – in some cases, they continue to wreak havoc.  We desperately need to clean our spiritual and religious houses.  But we also need to find ways to gain the sustenance that gives us the strength and courage to do the hard work of making amends, of moving forward, of adjusting and evolving.

These old texts need not be taken literally.  Like all written words they are of their context, planted in their own time.  They are as imperfect as we are – judged for their flaws as we will be judged for ours a hundred years from now.  But, they are beautiful nonetheless.  They are able to express beliefs, desires, needs, fears and sorrows.  For me, the value of that is immense.  Knowing that Isaac Watts wrote so eloquently about what sustained him – in 1719 – and that these words continue to represent things we’re all looking for, is remarkable.  We need shelter from storms.  We need help, we need home.  We are all aware that our time is finite, but the cycle of life carries on beyond us. Consquently, how we live and interact with others and our planet matters.

I have often found that these hymns remind me profoundly of how common our experiences really are.  Now, then, here, there.  Not the specifics nor the equity.  But the things that carry us.  It is this truth that offers inspiration.  It is this truth that requires us to both receive and provide help; to be conduits of hope for years to come.

It has been almost three years since I thought about a hymn. Well, sort of. In that time I put together a book of the first year of this hymn project (These Songs We Sing available at https://www.pandorapress.com/#/), so was reminded of the beginnings of this project. But, a lot has happened since those beginnings.

For many of us, the past few years have been life changing. The COVID pandemic has touched us all – in big and small ways. A couple of years ago, we were in the midst of it, at a time filled with unknowns. Now it feels like we’re sort of at the end of it – even though it continues to impact many. The way we live our lives is different, somehow, even if we can’t quite define how. If I look at my own life, it is simply not the same. As a musician, some things temporarily derailed have returned, others have not. Some activities remain altered, some are back to normal. Some things have been casualties of the emotional and psychological impact of these strange times; casualties of people’s inability to recover from the fear, the devastation, the pain they encountered along the way. Understandable, yet difficult for those touched by these ongoing struggles and the behaviours and actions that can emerge.

I will admit to feeling a bit out of sorts lately as a result. Feeling a bit like the life I had has been replaced by one that resembles it, but isn’t quite as it should be. There are losses that will not be regained. There are things gained that I wouldn’t trade. I suspect this is common. I suspect we are all looking to find our bearings at a time when the ground we walk on is extremely bumpy, maybe even a bit unstable.

So, I return to the words and songs of old. I have found comfort, wisdom and beauty in hymns in the past and I am certain I will find something of value again. I do not seek religious answers, I seek those nuggets of gold that are woven through time; bits of treasure found in the ideas left to us by those who have walked before. I am not concerned with the literal, but with the spirit of this kind of beauty that can sustain and inspire. I wish the same for you.

How to begin. After looking at so many hymns over the past eight years, I’m running out of favourites – both mine and those of friends and family. So I went on a bit of a random scavenger hunt. I came across this old hymn with a text based on Psalm 39, written by Isaac Watts in 1719 (the tune doesn’t have a known composer as far as I can find, but is listed as being in The Brethren’s Tune and Hymn Book, 1872. It was new to me until this week!). The words are a powerful reminder of the fleeting nature of life, and all within our lives.

Teach me the measure of my days, thou Maker of my frame.
I would survey life’s narrow space, and learn how frail I am.

A span is all we can boast, an inch or two of time.
We are but vanity and dust in all our flow’r and prime.

See the vain race of mortals move like shadows o’er the plain.
They rage and strive, desire and love, but all the noise is vain.

What should I wish or wait for then, from creatures, earth, and dust?
They make our expectations vain, and disappoint our trust.

Now I forbid my carnal hope, my fond desires recall.
I give my mortal int’rest up, and make my God my all.

These ideas are not new to any of us. The idea that our lives are about more than the trappings of day to day life is commonly taught. The idea that our focus should be on God (or whatever ideal/spirituality one holds to) is basic Sunday School teaching. We all know that nothing lasts and that we age and that the rushing around of our lives becomes meaningless if done at the cost of all else.

What struck me in these words was the way Watts describes our time. The narrow space; the inch or two. We are not here for long. We are, in the grand scheme of history, not that significant. And yet, how we live our lives can be remarkable and can have a lasting impact. These words are, after all, 300 years old.

As I ponder what this means in my own life, I am acutely aware that the details of what I accomplish are actually not that important. It can be very easy to get caught in the standards of this world – the idea that some accomplishments are better than others, or more important, or more valuable. We make these distinctions all the time. Some jobs get more attention, some pay more, some have prestige. In fact, almost all of our judgments on people’s successes or failures are employment, recognition and money related. We care very little for the notion of a vocation or the simple gifts, like kindness, as a valid life’s work. We evaluate our inch of time based on a fairly short list of easily recognizable and measurable factors.

But.

Life is short and really can only be measured in terms of the day we arrive and the day we depart. How we fill the intervening years is about something more than a resumé or profile or accolades or bank account. It is about the wisdom with which we walk in this narrow space. It is about the wisdom with which we adjust for our successes and failures, adjust for things we cannot predict.  It is about the wisdom with which we make ammends when we need to, and celebrate when we are able. We are frail and we are strong. When we learn to measure our days by both of these realities, we begin to live fully. And, we have much to offer.