praise – Mind Journeys

Psalm 96 for Australia

⁷Ascribe to the Lord, Australians and West Australians,

ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!

⁸Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

bring an offering, and come into his breathtaking gorges!

⁹Worship the Lord in the splendour of holiness;

tremble before him, all Australia!

¹⁰ Say in W.A., “The Lord reigns!

Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;

he will judge the peoples with equity.”

¹¹ Let the Milky Way be glad, and let the South West rejoice;

let the Indian Ocean roar, and all that fills it;

¹² let the golden canola fields exult, and everything in them!

Then shall all the jarrah trees sing for joy

¹³ before the Lord, for he comes,

for he comes to judge our nation.

He will judge us Sandgropers in righteousness,

and all Australians in his faithfulness.

Based on the English Standard Version

http://www.esvbible.org/Psalm+96/

Isaiah 42 for Western Australia

Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people on it
and spirit to those who walk in it:

6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,

7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.

8 I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to carved idols.

9 Behold, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth
I tell you of them.”

10 Sing to the Lord a new song,
his praise from one side of Australia to the other,
you who go down to the Indian Ocean, and its leviathan surf,
you who explore the wave-carved gaps and blow-holes of Torndirrup National Park.

11 Let the Sandy Desert and places up north raise their voice,
the towns of the Great Western Woodlands cry out to God;
let the wild-flowers of the south-west sing for joy,
let the climbers shout from the top of the Stirling Ranges.

12 Let us give glory to the Lord,
and declare his praise in Geographe Bay.

– Isaiah 42:5-12 based on ESV

Laudato Si’

My hymn

re-posted from https://franciscanhymns.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hymn-of-saint-francis/

to honour Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’

Praise to Most High for sun so warm,
for moon and stars so bright;
praise to Most High for all that form,
the universe of light!

Praise to Most High for sparkling dawn,
for sunset splashed with gold;
praise to Most High for rich red soils,
and surf majestic rolled.

Praise to Most High for rain and wind,
for making new things grow;
praise to Most High for Mother Earth,
and safe through death to go.

Praise to Most High for Jesus Christ,
His present power to heal;
praise to Most High that he was raised
and still his love falls real.

Praise to Most High for those we love,
and who are kind to us;
the gift of love we least deserve
is your sure sign to us.

Praise to Most High who shows the way:
love, joy, humility;
praise to Most High himself the gift,
our kindly Trinity.

8686 Tune “Nativity” TIS 204

St Francis praises God outside the Roman Catholic church in Collie, W.A.

From David’s Harp to Praise Songs in the 21st Century

Tim Dowley, Christian Music: A Global History, Oxford: Lion Hudson Plc (2011)

ISBN: 0745953247 / 9780745953243

263 pages, illustrated, hardcover from $AU 29.50 online.

In Australian Libraries: http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/203573249

Reviewed by Ted Witham

Tim Dowley is a church historian who has written biographies of J.S. Bach and Robert Schumann. Christian Music is an historical survey of everything musical in Christian worship from David’s harp to 21^st Century praise music. It covers contemporary Christian music on every continent, including Australian and the Pacific, and every style of music from choral to hymns to instrumental.

It was good to be reminded of the rise of Christian rock and the banning of early practitioners like Larry Norman, 1970s pioneer of “Jesus Music”, and to see his place in the development from Gospel to praise music.

The strength of this book is its breadth, and the clarity with which such a wide range of music is described. It is beautifully and generously illustrated adding a further dimension of understanding: depictions of early instruments with comments on their accuracy are a great aid to understanding a little better how the music of each period sounded. A few screenshots show the development of musical notation and its impact on composition without drowning the reader in technical description, and sensitive portraits make the viewer ponder the sensibility of individual composers.

Seven specialist contributors take the reader to places where Dr Dowley was not so familiar: Dr Mark Evans is the guide for Australia and the Pacific, Lisbon-based Orthodox priest the Reverend Dr Ivan Moody explores Orthodox music.

Of course, breadth leads to mistakes of over-simplification. Gustav Mahler, for example, whose music has a complex and intentional Christian dimension, is dismissed in a sentence: “Gustav Mahler, a convert to Catholicism, confessed he could not compose a mass because he could not affirm the Credo.” (p.165). In contrast the sceptic Verdi and the Jewish Mendelssohn rightly receive one page and three pages respectively for their efforts in writing music around Christian themes (p.162, pp.159-161).

To produce a book like this, charmingly presented, wide-ranging and clearly written, of course involves many choices about inclusions. It is too easy to nit-pick on the basis of what has been left out. What has been left in covers a huge range of material placed in a narrative which reveals the dynamism, inventiveness and beauty of music inspired by Christian faith and used in Christian worship.

It will remain on my shelf as a reference and a companion to treasure.

Psalm 34 for WA

Psalm 34:1-10 for WA

I will bless the Lord at all times:
his praise shall be in my mouth.

Let my soul boast of the Lord:
The battlers shall hear it and be happy.
O praise the Lord with me:
let us lift up his name together.

For I looked for the Lord’s help and he answered:
and he freed me from all my fears.

Look towards him and be bright with joy:
your faces shall not be discouraged.

Here is a wretch who cried, and the Lord heard me:
and saved me from all my troubles.

The angel of the Lord places his mia mia behind me:
and kindles his campfire to protect me.

O taste and see that the Lord is good:
happy are they who find sanctuary in him!

Be in awe of the Lord, all you his holy ones:
for if you are, you will have all you need.

Dingoes may go without and be hungry:
but those who seek the Lord lack nothing good.

David Frost (A Prayer Book for Australia) adapted Ted Witham

Mia mia and campfire Photo courtesy noongarculture.org.au

Psalm 108 for Noongar country

My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed:
I will sing and make melody.

Awake, my soul, and awake, sticks and didj:
for I will awake the morning.

I will play the didj, O Lord, among the peoples:
its circle buzzing breathes our gratitude.

I will chip your clapping sticks among the nations:
its clicking claims your eternal praise.

For the dawn in the east rises in gold and scarlet:
robes of Easter and Pentecost overwhelm the sky.

Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds:
and the land is a body painted with white and ochre dreamings.

Be exalted, O God, above the southern skies:
and let your glory shine over Noongar country;

That all whom you love may be delivered:
Noongars and wedulahs, O save us by your right hand, and answer us.

***

(Acknowledging Professor David Frost’s version of Psalm 108 in A Prayer Book for Australia)

The ‘didj’ (didgeridoo) was technically not a part of Noongar culture before the arrival of Europeans, but they have adopted it since contact with ‘wedulahs’ (white fellas) has brought them into contact with other Indigenous groups.

My country of origin is Koreng country. I now live in Wardandi country.

Sing a new song to the Lord

Hymns – traditional hymns – have sculpted my theological and spiritual landscape. I’m happy to worship with Dan Schutte (“Holy Darkness‘), Graham McKendrick (‘Beauty for Brokenness’), George Bullock (‘The Power of Your Love‘), and all the other contemporary praise-singers, but they have not dripped steadily, obsessively and repetitively into my heart over 60 and more years as hymns have done.

There was a time in my life when I knew the number of every hymn in Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised. If I saw the number 372 on a bus or number plate, I would immediately think ‘Almighty, Invisible, God only Wise’, and often involuntarily blurt it out – to the amusement of friends.

Many hymns have been with me since childhood. I remember beefing out ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ (A&MR 165) at Tambellup Primary School Anzac Day services, and singing – very slowly, with my Mum on the harmonium, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (A&MR 160) in the little church of St Mary in Tambellup.

But there are other hymns that I remember by the person who introduced me to them: Irvin Phillips, organist extraordinaire at St Matthew’s, Armadale, thought my repertoire was incomplete without the tune ’Lucius’ and the lovely words of community that accompany it: ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord, // who joins us by his grace, // and bids us, each to each restored, // together seek his face.’ (TiS 442(i)).

David Overington, my mentor in the Franciscan Third Order, was surprised I did not know the tune ‘Blaenwern’. Together in Song suggests that we should sing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ to ‘Blaenwern’,(TiS 590) and, David was right, it adds a depth to that old crusade song that you don’t find with the usual tunes. David also recommended singing ‘Once to every man and nation // comes the moment to decide’ to this tune; and it certainly gives the words a drive towards decision that the curly Welsh tune ‘Ton y Botel’ lacks.

Michael Pennington, Rector of Applecross when I was his curate, introduced me to Samuel Stanley’s great hymn of re-dedication: ‘O thou who camest from above // the pure celestial fire to impart…’ Michael chose it for the 25^th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, now 15 years ago. It deeply touched my own determination to continue as a priest, offering my life as a sacrifice and knowing that service brings its own reward. ‘Still let me guard the holy fire,// and still stir up the gift in me, // ready for all thy perfect will.’ (TiS 527)

I probably will never know the depth of spirituality that hymns have given me. I will continue to explore new worship music, and I will try to give new life, by giving new words, to old tunes. But it is the old hymns I credit with sustaining my faith through difficulties (‘Great is your faithfulness,’ – TiS 154) and joys (‘Hail thee festival day’, or ‘Christians, lift up your hearts’ in TiS – 423).

May the Lord grant me the joy of continuing to sing hymns; I do hope that they will be one of the options for praise in the eternal worship of the saints.

Beholding the depths

Once a week in Morning Prayer I recite the Song attributed to the three young men Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego as they walked unharmed in the fiery furnace. They sing, ‘Blessed are you who behold the depths’. I’d never thought about that phrase before last Saturday. I hunted out the Greek, which is as close as we can get to the original. (The Aramaic has been lost). A literal version of the Greek is: ‘Blessed are you who look compassionately on the unfathomable.’

Behind ‘Blessed are you’ is the Aramaic and Hebrew, ‘Berakah ata’. This common opening to prayer is praise for the blessings God brings. Every time the refrain of ‘berakah ata’ rings out, it is a celebration of life, because life is the first blessing God pours out on the universe. Every time we say ‘berakah ata’, we celebrate love, God’s driving force which makes of our universe not a meaningless hell but a place of wonder and joy.

The Three then sing that God is ‘looking with favour’ (epiblepon). God holds steady God’s gaze on all God has made, and surveys it with favour. ‘It is good. It is very good,’ Genesis reminds us. God holds in high regard that which God looks upon.

And in this verse, the Three celebrate God’s compassionate regard for the ‘abyssos’, the unfathomable. Thrown into the flames of the fiery furnace Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, must have believed that they had arrived in the abyss. The abyss was not only the place of the dead, but paradoxically it was also the bottomless container for the waters under the earth: a place of annihilation. God looks with favour even on the abyss.

God looks with favour, we would say, on black holes. God’s hands, so to speak, hold these most dangerous of phenomena, and God enjoys their power, their blackness and their oddity. God delights in the mathematical underpinnings of the black hole, and in the petite particles, quirky quarks and microscopic molecules which flit in and out of existence in the complex flux of the singularity.

From the macrocosm of dying stars to the abyssos of the inner lives of human beings: God looked with favour on (epiblepon) his handmaid, Mary. She too knew the encouraging gaze of God on her. God looks compassionately on the depths of our selves. God embraces us – at our heart – with joy. Like the black hole, our lives are a complex of forces, many destructive and many creative, braiding together to create unique individuals. I too am a singularity, as you are. And the good news discovered by the Three in the fiery furnace is this: God is on our side, God looks on us with favour, blessed be God.

When God looks with favour, light, as John points out in his Gospel, pours in and the blackness dissolves. There is blessing even in the darkest of pits, even in the tangles of the human soul, because God gazes with love.

Earth Hour

Our Bible begins with an extraordinary poem of praise for the Universe which God creates for us. ‘In the beginning, God created…’ For the wonders of each day, Genesis claims, ‘And it was good.’ The lines of this poem sparkle with praise for light and dark, day and night, sun and moon and stars, earth and sea, plants and animals and for humanity.

The resources God provides are there for our use, but within God’s generosity there are limits: things should be used for the purposes God intends. There are some animals and plants which should not be used by human beings: the wild things are there to signal God’s life-giving fecundity. They, like everything else in creation, lead us to praise.

We notice Genesis 1 these days because we notice the world around us for the wrong reasons. Since the beginning of the industrial era, human beings have over-used the provisions God has made for us: water, oil, arable land, have all been gobbled up in a race driven by our greed. We now face a crisis as we number seven billion souls. Can we continue to feed ourselves? Will our industries collapse as the oil begins to run out? These are sobering questions.

On this Saturday night, March 31, we are invited to turn our lights and electrical appliances off for the hour 8:30 – 9:30 p.m. to mark Earth Hour. Cities, towns and households around the world have signed up for Earth Hour. It may be that the electricity we save by switching off is token; the purpose of Earth Hour is to invite us to reflect on our use of the world’s resources.

As Christians, we can turn off lights and television and go outside to revel in the wonder of the Universe in the night sky, to praise God for the generous provision God has made, and to confess our greed in using them.

Our confession will be a true confession as we then reflect on how we can amend our usage of power, oil, water and food and live with a smaller footprint on this wonderful planet.

More information about Earth Hour is at http://www.wwf.org.au/earthhour/

Reposted from Dunsborough Anglican Parish web-site http://www.dunsboroughchurch.com/)