Thank you to Andrew Donaldson from Toronto, a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, who has agreed to my sharing his hymn 'How Can We Sing, Our Souls Aghast and Shaken?' here. It is particularly appropriate at this time, I feel.
1. How can we sing? – our souls aghast and shaken?
Sing, when our hope has broken like a bone?
Long-whispered schemes now rise up, proud and open.
Tyrants and kings, tyrants and kings
Now rule us from a throne.
2. How can we sing? What good will come with praises?
Songs fill the air; they soar, then soon are gone.
Hordes overturn our safe and sacred places,
Leave not a trace, leave not a trace,
Nor stone upon a stone.
3. How can we sing? – for who will hear our voices?
Why does a lie sound wiser than a psalm?
Shrewd powers lead from crisis into crisis;
None care to hear, none care to hear
Your shepherd’s voice of calm.
4. How can we sing, yet how can we stand silent?
Long-silent tongues have sung us to this day:
Saints voiced a hope both holy and defiant.
Breathe through our song, breathe through our song,
O Holy One, we pray.
Words: Andrew Donaldson
© 2025 GIA Publications, Inc. # U01906T
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your Copyright Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to GIA Publications, Inc.
Andrew suggests the following tune COMMENT VOULOIR QU’UNE PERSONNE CHANTE
French Troubadour melody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifxGjuldIko
Andrew also notes that the words fit to GENEVAN 12, but only if you don't repeat the phrase in the fourth line of text.
Category: Poems
How can we look, and not be moved by lives
4:18″The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed…
1 How can we look, and not be moved
by lives that end and eyes that plead,
where parents cry while families part
amid their last despairing need.
2 Once we were distanced from the ones
that suffered while we stood to stare.
God give the gift of empathy
that we might offer more than prayer.
3 If all the world could live as one
then we would feel another’s pain,
we’d feel each death as if our own
like links within a human chain.
4 When death and misery abound,
when illness strikes the human race,
God strengthen, fill us, with your hope
and bind us with your love and grace.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2014 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd
Metre: 8 8 8 8
Tunes: BRESLAU; ABENDS
A hymn for renewing our Covenant – God’s love can never be undone
As Methodists enter a season of renewing their Covenant with God, this hymn is a reminder that, whatever might befall, we cannot be separated from Love.
1 God's love can never be undone,
the covenant be broken,
God's mercy never fades or ends,
the source of grace has spoken.
2 No disobedience demands
a final separation,
whatever we have said or done
brings us no condemnation.
3 Our history shows a God of love,
not one of crass rejection,
audacious love is ours because
of God's divine affection.
Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2011 © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Metre: 8 7 8 7
Tune: ST COLUMBA (Irish)
When the weeping of the nations – a hymn at the turning of the year
1 When the weeping of the nations
fills our hearts with holy dread,
when a devastated city
cannot bury all its dead,
God is in the conflagration,
crying where our children bled.
2 Dust will settle on the dying
cradled in a mother’s arms,
fearful faces meet the camera
knowing human hatred harms,
knowing only humane kindness
brings the peace that heals, disarms.
3 God remove our warring blindness,
give us grace that we might see
through the mists of mortal malice
how we fuel life’s agony,
how inaction, sullen silence,
marks our own complicity.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2016 Stainer and Bell Ltd.
8 7 8 7 8 7
Tunes: GRAFTON; PICARDY
Holy Innocents Hymn 28th December
Harassed, haunted child of Mary – Holy Innocents
1 Harassed, haunted child of Mary
ran before he learned to crawl,
filled with horror, those who loved him,
those who gave to him their all,
tore him from his bed and birth place,
blown before the sudden squall.
2 Doubt and danger dogged each footfall,
normal sounds now raised their fear;
noises in a cobbled courtyard:
Herod's minions drawing near?
Or the waking sounds of morning?
Nothing now is safe or clear.
3 Out of this endangered childhood,
rootless, no asylum found,
grew the strength of God to greatness,
yet with thorns his brow was crowned:
clothes divided, scourged, derided,
suffering without a sound.
4 Dare we beautify the image
when Christ's heirs still walk this earth,
when our children, harassed, hounded,
suffer death before their birth,
while their parents' haunted hunger
speaks of their discarded worth?
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2000 Stainer & Bell Ltd
Words © 2000 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
8 7 8 7 8 7 Trochaic
Tune: PICARDY
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