The "Great Space"

Four years ago we climbed to the top of the Anglican Cathedral tower - the views are stunning, and the walk past the bells very impressive - even if the steps are very hard on the calf muscles! This year they open the towers until 20.00 so you can see the views in the changing evening light. Highly recommended.

Today we attended worship and I went into the main body of the cathedral for the first time. It is quite extraordinary and I can understand why it is called the Great Space.

For a Protestant attending worship on the 15 August which is the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary it was a strange service in parts - I'm fairly sure that I sang a hymn whose theology I really don't agree with at all at the beginning! For a service in praise of Mary and where the sermon focused in part on extraordinary women honoured in the Lady Chapel it struck me very forcibly that there were no women clergy with a role at the service. More about that at a later point though.
I was challenged by the way the Cathedral sells itself or opens itself up as a space - for arts and events, as a Liverpool space. Wonderful as the space is, knowing that it was built in the 20th century it does also come across as a bit of a folly - so huge, so few people now worshipping there ... yet somehow glorious.
And I loved singing Timothy Dudley Smith's glorious Tell out my soul ... at the end of the service. I was pleased that Fred Kaan's version of the Magnificat also got quoted in the sermon.
At the end of the service as the cross was processed out and the clergy and others officiating followed the whole congregation turns to face the western door. We received the final blessing as the clergy stood in the great space in perfect abd beautiful formation, an icon of worship soemhow ... I'm not normally into such things but today in this setting it worked well. It's good to go to church on holiday.

God of Kiwis and Kangaroos and the Dolphin Christ

At morning prayers this morning Lucy D'Aeth wrote us some wonderful prayers - including a great blessing which had the phrase "God of kiwis and kangaroos". Her prayers of intercession were good too. Full liturgy here. Jill Hawkey led prayers and Peter Prove preached a great sermon, about which more in a later post.

We also sang two wonderful hymns I've never sung before. Singing of them made me think once more of Erik Routley's wonderful phrase "hymns are the folk tunes of the church militant". The first was called Where Mountains rise to open skies by Shirley Erena Murray. Here's an extract:

From broken word, from conflict stirred,
from lack of vision, set us free
to see the line of your design,
to feel creation’s energy.

The second new hymn to me is by Colin Gibson and called Where the road runs out
It spoke to me deeply today as we sang it but it also made me smile, I love the line "be the dolphin Christ"

Where the road runs out and the signposts end,
where we come to the edge of today,
be the God of Abraham for us;
send us out upon our way.
...
When the coast is left and we journey on
to the rim of the sky and the sea,
be the sailor’s friend, be the dolphin Christ;
lead us on to eternity.

You can find more details of New Zealand hymns here.
Hymns are the poetry of the church so often today they are replaced with songs. It was good to sing hymns this morning and be enlivened by words and music.

Linking all things ...

Everything is linked - Per Harling

Every breath is sacred.
Each pulse is the beat of everything.
Each step is a step together.
Each individual case is universal.
Each wound is everyone's pain.
Each cry is everyone weeping.
Each cry of giving voice to the earth,
for its sorrow and lamentation.
Everything is linked; earth with sky, I go.
Everything is linked; the life of the body with the life of the soul.

Sometimes, somewhere out there there is great solidarity. This ad hoc translation of one of Per Harling's Psalms was sent to me over the weekend. Along with reading detective fiction and teaching the young people it has helped to lift my spirits and encourage me to face the new week. It is good to have friends.

Open letter about Margot Kässmann to all congregations of the Hannover Church

Today a letter about Margot Kässmann's resignation was read from the pulpit in many of the congregations in the Hannover Church. You can read the full text here. You can also read comments on the letter over on evangelisch.de.
It ends as did Kässmann at her press conference on Wednesday with the words from Arno Plötzsch - they can be sung to the melody of "Bleib mit deiner Gnade bei uns" and are often used for eternity Sunday. The words are reworked in calligraphy for a gravestone on the graphic pictured here. I must try to sing them at some point to have any hope of translating this poetically. Translating poetry is really not my forte.

"Du kannst nicht tiefer fallen als nur in Gottes Hand,
die er zum Heil uns allen barmherzig ausgespannt.
Es münden alle Pfade durch Schicksal, Schuld und Tod
doch ein in Gottes Gnade trotz aller unsrer Not.
Wir sind von Gott umgeben, auch hier in Raum und Zeit,
und werden in ihm leben und sein in Ewigkeit."

However low you fall God's hand is always there ...

"Toi qui gardes le silence" a hymn from Switzerland

I first sang the hymn "toi qui gardes le silence" at a ministers' retreat on the French shores of lake Geneva. We were looking over the water in the evening to the Swiss Canton de Vaud which is where the hymn origintated. There are not many hymns in French which take up a theme of social responsibility or offer new images of God and I was immediately drawn to this hymn written by the Commission jeunesse of the Eglise réformée du Canton de Vaud. It has a wonderful minor key melody by Olivier Nusslé - no MP3 available anywhere I'm afraid, I'm going to have to try and record it sometime.
I'm writing about it today becuase I have at last had a chance to read through the hymnbook that was produced for the CEC assembly, Gloria Deo. A rather good English translation of Toi qui gardes le silence is included in it - done by Isabelle Bousquet and Karina Graham.
One of the problems with the ubiquity of English is that it is very often English-language culture that gets exported and this is also very often true of spirituality and of hymns - Graham Kendrick is more likely to get translated than Claude Fraysse or writers from another language or culture. (If you also don't like "Shine Jesus shine" just try singing one of the other language versions where the lingusitic triteness is shall we say often further enhanced by translation!) So I was pleased to see this small effort in the opposite direction.
I was also glad to see Federico Pagura's wonderful Tenemos esperanza in Gloria Deo. Bishop Julio Ernesto Murray the President of CLAI, the Latin American Council of Churches, sang a verse of the hymn at the end of his hope-filled address to the assembly. Unfortunately one of the few hymn books on general sale which has Tenemos esperanza in it is currently out print - Agape published by OUP is a great resource so here's hoping that they will reprint soon.
Meanwhile here's the last verse of Toi qui gardes le silence in English - not quite the same without the great music but here you go:

Your world calls us to commitment
For your cause Lord we strive
In a world disintegrating,
your love, reinvigorating,
makes us new. You are strong.
We will follow you, our song.

Teilo Sant and Jack Dobbs

I learnt last week of the death of Jack Dobbs. I was blessed to know Jack when he began his retirement by studying for a doctorate on the history of the Religious Society of Friends at Mansfield College at the same time as I was training for the ministry. It was through Jack that I began to understand a little more of my own denomination's links with the Quaker tradition.
Jack worked with the Erik Routley on hymn tunes for Congregational Praise. As we students began to research Jack's work we would occasionally sing Thomas Binney's Eternal Light to the tune Jack had written for it called Teilo Sant - whenever I sing that hymn to other melodies it just doesn't feel the same. Jack also encouraged a hymn-writer amongst us and wrote music for his hymns.
Now reading the short obituary in the Guardian I realise that there was much, much more that I could have learnt from him. Sometimes education really is wasted on the young, I wish I had know then of his wide international involvement and commitment to music education. There are further obituaries here from the International Society for Music Education and from the Times.

"In 1956 Jack became director of the Malayan Teachers Training College, Wolverhampton - developing a lifelong connection with Malaysia and Malayan music. In 1960, he joined London University's Institute of Education, building his interest in Indian music and encouraging his students to look beyond the western classical tradition.

In 1967 he became director of music (and later deputy principal) at Dartington College of Arts, Devon. There he developed a music degree that focused on a practical understanding of Indian music and later the Indonesian gamelan - the first such course in the country. The course's sitar teacher was the great Imrat Khan, then on his first visit to the West.

Jack published many influential books on music in education (some with Roger Fiske) in the 1950s and 1960s, including a history of music written to accompany records made by Yehudi Menuhin, and The Slow Learner and Music (1966). In 1960 he chaired the newly formed British Society for Music Therapy, and that interest led to a pioneering music therapy programme at the Guildhall School of Music in 1967 and to his becoming a governor of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre."

And here's the first verse of Eternal Light:

Eternal Light! eternal Light!
How pure that soul must be,
when, placed within thy searching sight,
it shrinks not, but with calm delight
can live, and look on thee.

Soundtrack to my life

I'm just a non-conformist lass at heart. This doesn't mean I have a taste for the avant garde in music nor that I'm particularly anti-establishment, just that I'm one of those Daughters of Dissent (just realised though that would be a great name for a band).
At least part of my family is very musical - my mother is a violin teacher. But when I think about the soundtrack to my own life it really is desperately limited, plebian, out of date and dull these days. The downloads on my ipod shuffle consist so far entirely of radio podcasts, the spoken word, the spoken word and more spoken word. Since my wonderful Technics stereo gave up the ghost years ago I have hardly ever played music regularly. My great collection of vinyl is still down in the garage and even our more limited collection of CDs can't be used since the demise of the CD player we bought for a birthday party a decade ago.
So the soundtrack to my life is not music that I listen to but rather music that I sing, or remember singing, so you can guess that this means I am completely limited to stuff I sing in church or chapel. Oh dear this really is not hip is it?
At least when I was younger there was a bit more variety to the soundtrack to my life, real concerts, records, discos and even oh horror musical theatre - Gilbert and Sullivan anyone? Oklahoma? The Desert Song? - I warn you the list could go on. My exposure to this was such in my youth that I thought it strange that in real life people did not seem to break into perfect song and dance routines in the street. It did seem rather dull by comparison!
These days my inner soundtrack is less Blue Heaven and you and I than ubi caritas et amor. And let's face it either is pretty sad! If I were ambitious I would try to take my musical education in hand a bit, but as it is I spend a nice evening at home listening to more talk radio and reading the hymnbook.
I console myself with a quote from the great departed Erik Routley "Hymns are the folktunes of the church militant". Get people to hum the music and they'll remember the words and imbibe the theology (unfortunately often dubious in many hymns). And the path to Christian unity is fraught with problems of singing words to the right tune - I am almost physically ill if I have to sing "God of Grace and God of Glory" to Cwm Rhondda rather than to Rhuddlan (In fact I've even refused to put in a link because all the cyberhymnals are US dominated and that is the tune always used there!). Singing an Easter hymn in French yesterday to the tune of "While Shepherds washed their flocks by night" was also a bit bizarre.
I warned you it was sad. I can talk not only about the first line of hymns but also about hymn tunes, new words to Merthyr Tydfil or Leoni anyone? In France and Germany hymn tunes don't have names, so I am sadly deprived.
Anyway just in case anyone else is interested my favourite hymn is currently one I only learnt a couple of years ago for the WCC assembly in Porto Alegre. It is called Tenemos Esperanza written by Federico Pagura during the dictatorship in Argentina, it has a tango tune and is great fun, you can find it in the Agape hymbook with a great English translation.
It vies for first place with the wonderful "Break the bread of belonging" by Brian Wren - find it in Praising a Mystery.
So any hints on how to improve my musical education gratefully received. The soundtrack to my life needs some renewal, if not transformation!