A quiet chill that freezes expectation, the hope of love seems distant and remote as war and hate are whirling all around us, we wait for light of which the prophets wrote. There is no peace, no reconciliation as factions fired by hatred seethe and kill, when will it end, this constant devastation, when will we learn to listen, to be still? [When will we listen to each other, share one will?] This advent season, dawn of love’s foundation is born in darkness of eternal night, and yet a flicker bids us hasten onward, as purple shadows hint at morning light. And in this moment in our preparation let’s put aside our fripperies and fear, to make new space for gracious re-creation. Come God, in love at last, come now, draw near. [Come God infuse your love in us, O come, draw near.] Words Andrew Pratt © 2023 © 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: 11.10.11.10 Tunes: INTERCESSOR, [LONDONDERRY AIR] Note: Using the tune: INTERCESSOR sing as a four verse hymn. Ignore words in [square] brackets. Using LONDONDERRY AIR combine verses 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 to make a two verse hymn using the use the words in [square] brackets for the last line of each verse.
Category: Poems
Body Bag, Body Bags
22 years old, dead in a bag.
‘Just down there’ casual words from a ‘reception’ desk.
Cold.
But, then, a mortuary is a chilling place.
‘Chill out’, we say.
Then rows of babies follow where my son has gone.
He departed by train at night.
Limp hands, recognisable like my own.
Cold, lifeless.
An accident.
None to blame.
But these babies, gone before time?
No excuse.
Death by choice, of the vulnerable and truly innocent.
Few are truly innocent.
Time compounds circumstance and reason
to churn us into who we are.
Some curdle, I suppose.
But death at birth has no rhyme or reason.
Don’t multiply your guilt by pointing fingers.
Don’t seek to assuage hell
by washing your hands of your complicity.
Wringing your hands won’t dry the blood of your hypocrisy.
But remember also, neither will it erase the all encompassing love
of the God you claim to worship,
yet who through obscene action you blaspheme at every turn.
Copyright Andrew Pratt 19/11/2023
Lament for Palestine and Israel – unknowing babies sleep now
A Lament for Palestine and Israel
Unknowing babies sleep now,
exhausted without food,
while mothers cry in anguish –
this lottery is crude:
when missiles, ‘with precision’,
seek targets, hid, unseen,
as leaders point the finger
so consciences are clean.
Amid this dust and carnage
where human life is cheap,
where body parts are scattered
we turn our heads and weep,
yet this is soon forgotten,
the image fades, has gone,
another channel chosen
we sing a soothing song.
In this we are immersed now,
our pain will soon be lost,
the anguished cries diminished,
we need not bear the cost.
A distant drum is beating,
we’re deaf to hear its sound
a tiny body buried ,
in seared, unhallowed ground.
And mothers still are sobbing
while fathers shed salt tears,
and lives are marked by hours now,
yet mem’ries seethe for years.
How long, O God, can terror
be harboured in a mind?
How long before Your children
are nurtured to be kind?
© Andrew Pratt 14/11/2023
Words © 2023 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.
Tune: NYLAND H&P 478II, REJOICE AND SING 529
Hymn for Remembrance
Hymn for Remembrance: This fragile, passing beauty
This fragile, passing beauty,
this autumn, red and gold,
a season’s recollection:
love never will grow cold.
The seasons change and fracture,
the leaves of green turn brown,
as life seems tinged with sadness,
as petals flutter down.
This time of our remembrance
that reaches back to pain,
the chill of recollection
can open wounds again;
But this we must remember
that human war and hate
are matters of our choosing
and not some random fate.
God let this time of grieving,
of memory and regret,
enable reparation,
in case we just forget.
Fill human hearts with courage,
frame human words with grace,
that love might flow among us,
make Earth a sacred place.
Words: Andrew Pratt © 2019 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Metre: 76.76.D
See Notes from Singing the Faith plus: Written with a lovely Norwegian folk melody in mind:
“Bred dina vida vingar”. This is widely available online and in Andrew Pratt’s own collection, Reclaiming Praise: hymns from a spiritual journey No.142. Arrangements of the tune can be heard at https://youtu.be/V6dDt3OJf6Q (violin).
An offered alternative is Aurelia (StF 690); but for a tune whose key change reflects the mood shift half through each verse, try Wolvercote (StF 563i).
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.
God still needs prophets – old hymn perhaps for now?
God still needs prophets who will rage,
against discrimination,
who speak God’s words amid despair,
to this and every nation;
who reach again with nail scarred hands,
into the pain we’re feeling,
to hold us when we weep at loss,
who bring a hope of healing.
God still needs prophets who will hold
a mirror to our blindness,
to show us, each and everyone,
how hollow is our kindness;
how empty are our words of love
when shrouded in derision,
how clever words can’t justify
unloving indecision.
God still needs prophets who ignore
religions that confine us,
who magnify our words of love
through actions to refine us.
May we be prophets through our words
and in our hands of healing,
that others might see Christ in us
while Christ to us revealing.
Andrew Pratt 23/11/2008
Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Pleaseinclude any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All widerand any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
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