Thrice Happy Shall His Welcome Be

Happy New Year to the church!

We celebrate the First Sunday in Advent today, the beginning of the Christian church's liturgical year.  Though Christmas preparations have been going on in the secular world for weeks now, we are called to a different kind of preparation.

The readings for this day usually point us to the second coming of Christ, rather than the birth of the baby Jesus in the manger.  This second coming, or second Advent, will bring the reign of God to earth, where justice and equity will prevail.

Today's hymn is from a new discovery of mine, a collection of hymns called Advent Songs (1916) by Dr. Simon Nelson Patten.  Subtitled A Revision of Old Hymns to Meet Modern Needs, you can probably understand why it interests me.   Dr. Patten believed that the standard hymns of the church were too focused on the past, with language from European sources, talking about kings and lords and subjects and war, and did not represent the ideals of modern (early 20th century) Christianity.  He goes on in the introduction:

My main endeavor has been to avoid the expressions of war, depravity, and woe upon which the emotional value of earlier hymns depends. (...) At a recent baccalaureate service, the large audience, after listening to a convincing peace sermon, sang energetically, without a qualm of conscience, The Son of God goes forth to war. Our national and religious life must be reinterpreted...

Advent Songs includes several familiar hymns, such as A mighty fortress is our God and Love divine, all loves excelling, with Patten's reinterpretations, altering words and lines much as the hymns I have presented here for the last several years. He has also written  a number of original texts on subjects he considers important, such as womens' suffrage. His third category is somewhere in between: hymns with original texts but that are suggestive of other, familiar hymns.

Today's hymn is from that category.  Appropriate to the Advent season, it expresses our hopes for God's coming reign. I believe that it was also intended to remind its singers of an earlier hymn: O for a faith that will not shrink by William Hiley Bathurst (though in a different meter altogether).

O for a faith in boundless love
To open wide the realm above,
Where life is God and God is life,
Reviving souls cast down by strife.

O for a faith that growing youth
Shall keep the path of living truth,
Ours is the night, to them the day,
If now we show the onward way.

O for a faith that men are good
And, given strength, do what they should,
A growing faith that womankind
May equal man in skill and mind.

O for a faith that greed shall cease
And commerce follow ways of peace,
When neighbors fair with neighbors deal
And each regards the other's weal.

O for a faith in brotherhood
To batter down the walls that stood
Between the races of the past
Behind the feuds of clan and caste.

O for a faith that Christ may come
To end the work he has begun,
Thrice happy shall his welcome be
And great the joy of victory.

O God, give us a faith like this,
And help us feel the perfect bliss
That noble effort always brings
To those who hope for better things.

Simon N. Patten, 1916; alt.
Tune: CANONBURY (L.M.)
Robert Schumann, 1839; adapt.

Patten was clearly influenced by the theology of the Social Gospel movement that was active in his times. His hymnwriting efforts may not have been as accomplished as those of Frank Mason North or Walter Russell Bowie, whose equivalent texts are still widely sung today, but this work was clearly important to him. 

In some ways he was probably ahead of his time. Today, his ideas about the language of hymns seem less radical, and revisions are more numerous.  In the 1970s, the Ecumenical Womens' Center took on the same concerns (with the addition of inclusive/expansive language), revising familiar hymns, writing new ones, and also writing texts that suggested or could be substituted for earlier ones, such as Ruth Duck's Lead on, O Cloud of Presence (for Lead on, O King eternal and Arise, your light is come (for Rise up, O men of God).  Television evangelist Robert Schuller and his wife Arvella Schuller rewrote many hymns that were sung at Schuller's Crystal Cathedral, incorporating some of the same concerns as Dr. Patten. And, of course, as explained here before, there were the efforts of the committee that produced worship resources for the Metropolitan Community Church, from which many of the hymns on this blog are taken.

So, another Advent.  As before, we will avoid the carols of the Christmas season until we actually get there (maybe it's time for another CWS Twelve Days of Christmas - go back and check out the entries here from December 25, 2009 - January 6, 2010).  There's an Advent introductory video on YouTube that says if you're too stressed about Christmas to appreciate it when it gets here, you probably didn't do Advent correctly.  We'll try to do it the right way here.



Seven (Liturgical) Years Ago: Lo! Christ comes with clouds descending

Six (Liturgical) Years Ago: Jesus came, adored by angels

Five (Liturgical) Years Ago: Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates

Four (Liturgical) Years Ago: The King shall come when morning dawns

Three (Liturgical) Years Ago: Once he came in blessing 

Two (Liturgical) Year Ago: In the Advent light, O Savior

One (Liturgical) Year Ago: Hosanna! now through Advent

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., both physician and poet, was born today in 1809.  He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1835 after a brief consideration of law school, and also having already published one of his most famous poems, Old Ironsides, in 1830.  He went into private practice, but during the first year of that practice his success as a poet was even greater. This did not enhance his reputation as a serious medical professional to potential patients, and eventually he moved into teaching and lecturing in medicine, first at Dartmouth and later at Harvard Medical School, where he taught until 1882.

Friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged a parallel career as a poet and he published his first of several collections of poetry in 1836.  Twenty years later he was asked by his friend, poet James Russell Lowell, to assist him in editing a new magazine, the Atlantic Monthly (still published today) and Holmes's frequent writings in the magazine, both in poetry and prose, contributed to the success of the new venture.

His father, Abiel Holmes, was a Congregationalist minister, but Holmes became a Unitarian, perhaps due to the influence of his Harvard education.  His views seem to have been even more liberal than many Unitarians, and John Quincy Adams supposedly once accused him of preaching "wild atheism."  Several of Holmes's poems have been used or adapted as hymns, such as today's text, originally written for the fortieth reunion of his Harvard class of 1829.

O gracious Power, whose mercy lends
The light of home, the smile of friends,
Our families in your arms enfold
As in the peaceful days of old.

Will you not hear us while we raise,
In sweet accord of solemn praise,
The voices that have mingled long
In joyous flow of mirth and song?

For all the blessings life has brought,
For all its sorrowing hours have taught,
For all we mourn, for all we keep,
The hands we clasp, the loved that sleep.

Thank you, Creator; let your grace
Our widening circle still embrace,
Your mercy shed its heavenly store,
Your peace be with us evermore.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1869; alt.
Tune: CANONBURY (L.M.)
Robert Schumann, 1839; adapt.

I made one significant alteration to this text, attempting to adapt it for modern use.  In the final stanza, Holmes wrote "our narrowing circle still embrace," which was appropriate for the original occasion, the reunion of an aging community of colleagues then approaching the twilight of their lives.  But after reading some of his other works, I think he would approve of the reversal, and agree that a worshipping community should be open to wider experiences and influences, as he was.

The line that may be remembered from one of his famous poems, The Chambered Nautilus (1858), opens the final stanza: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. The whole poem uses the spiral shape of the chambered nautilus as a metaphor for the constantly-expanding lives we live, if we are open to the experience. The final line of the poem is Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 



P.S. - The Chambered Nautilus was set to music in 1908 by Amy Beach for women's voices and can be heard in a partial performance on YouTube (though the chorus's diction is not to be commended).



Seven Years Ago: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Three Years Ago: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Streams For Thirsting Souls

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday in many churches and if yours is one of them you have probably already heard more than one version of Psalm 23 either read aloud or sung, and a sermon on top.

There are many hymn texts derived from this psalm; some of which we have already seen here (click on the tag below). Two of the most familiar of them were listed last year on one grouping of "the ten best" hymns. Here's one more for today, and I think I could go on for several more years with one more each year.

I shall not want: in deserts wild
Thou spread’st a table for thy child;
While grace in streams for thirsting souls,
Thro’ earth and heav'n forever rolls.

I shall not want: my longest night
Thy loving smile shall fill with light;
While promises around me bloom,
And cheer me with divine perfume.

I shall not want: thy righteousness
My soul shall clothe with glorious dress;
My heav'nly robe shall be more fair
Than garments kings or angels wear.

I shall not want: whate’er is good,
Of daily bread or angels’ food,
Shall to my longing heart be sure,
So long as earth and heav'n endure.

Charles F. Deems, 1872; alt.
Tune: CANONBURY (L.M.)
Robert Schumann, 1839, adapt.

Charles Force Deems led the Church of the Strangers in New York City when he wrote this hymn. It was a nondenominational Protestant congregation, founded in part by a $50,000 gift fron philanthopist Cornelius Vanderbilt, and its pastor was feeling a bit overwhelmed with the many individual needs of his parishioners. Meditating on those concerns, the words "I shall not want" from the psalm spoke to him most directly and the hymn soon followed.

The tune CANONBURY which still appears in many hymnals is arranged from a melody by the German composer Robert Schumann in his solo piano work Nachtstucke, Opus 23 No. 4.

Two Years Ago: Samuel Webbe

One Year Ago: Austin C. Lovelace