Category: Poems

Rebuilding starts with weeping – Amanda Udis – Kessler sung by Reba Sigler

Amanda Udis-Kessler (Colorado Springs) words, on the prompting of John Churcher (United Kingdom), have now been recorded by Canadian, Reba Sigler, who is also an opera singer. The wonders of internet communication! The recording can be found here - Reba Sigler sings Amanda Udis-Kessler's Rebuilding starts with weeping.

US hymnwriter and sacred music composer Amanda Udis-Kessler wrote the text just after the 2020 US Presidential Election and has re-shared it following the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. I have asked and been granted permission to reproduce it here. It is pertinent in the US context but also in the UK and Europe through pandemic and Brexit. Do visit her site - link below.
Rebuilding starts with weeping, with tears that fall like rain,  
With full and honest grieving for years of loss and pain,  
For suffering and sorrow that never had to be.  
Rebuilding starts with weeping for all who are not free.  
  
Rebuilding starts with praying, with hopes allowed a voice,   
With visions for our country, with reason to rejoice.  
We offer up our spirits, our hearts and minds and hands.  
Rebuilding starts with praying for strength to heal our land.  
  
Rebuilding starts with loving, with care for every soul,   
With yearning in compassion that all may yet be whole,  
That enemy and neighbor may know a better day. 
Rebuilding starts with loving, for love will show the way 


It is most often sung to the Bach Passion Chorale.

Amanda’s many other inclusive hymns, worship songs, and rounds are freely available for listening and download at https://queersacredmusic.com. 

God’s on our side

When will we ever learn…I have posted this hymn before but sadly I return to it without apology.

In 2001 the USA, and with it the world, was shaken with the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. This exacerbated the polarisation of faith traditions and ideologies across the globe. Tensions increased and an ‘us and them’ mentality, already present, was exaggerated by political posturing, understandable, to a degree, in the light of what had happened.

Broken bridges have still not been rebuilt. Walls have been erected.  Today those labelled enemies in Western nations are as much within as outside our borders inhabiting postions of influence and leadership. Ideologies are in tension with each other, not diminished by the experience of a global pandemic. International cooperation has never been more necessary. A hymn I wrote in 2001 within 24 hours of 9/11 is perhaps still pertinent…those we label or sense to be enemies inhabit the fabric of our own politics. Their actions are becoming obvious…trust is at a premium…

1 God's on our side, and God will grieve
 
at carnage, loss and death;
 
for Jesus wept, and we will weep
 
with every grieving breath.
 
 

2 God's on their side, the enemy,
 
the ones we would despise;
 
God quench our vengeance, still our pride,
 
don't let our anger rise.
 
 

3 God's on each side, God loves us all,
 
and through our hurt and pain
 
God shares the anguish, nail scarred hands
 
reach out love must remain.
 
 

4 God show us how to reconcile
 
each difference and fear,
 
that we might learn to love again
 
and dry the other's tear.
 
 

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
 © 2001 Stainer and Bell Ltd., please include any use on your CCL Licence return or contact Stainer & Bell via www.stainer.co.uk. Administered in the USA by Hope Publishing. 
Tunes: AMAZING GRACE; BASIE (Kleinheksel)

Some of the poetry in Words, Images and Imagination are perhaps pertinent to this situation…

For a continuing time of COVID – HYMN/PRAYER – When the weeping of the nations

 When the weeping of the nations 
 fills our hearts with holy dread, 
 when a virus rings with pity 
 those who cannot reach their dead,
 God is in our consternation, 
 weeping by each sufferer’s bed. 
  
 Distanced, lacking human comfort,
 no more in a mother’s arms, 
 fearful faces peer through visors 
 watching, even breathing harms, 
 knowing only humane kindness 
 brings the peace that heals, disarms. 
 
 God bring strength in human weakness, 
 give us grace that we might see 
 through the mists of mortal blindness 
 how to live through agony, 
 how through quiet compassion, silence, 
 we might mark our empathy.

Andrew Pratt 31/12/2020
Words © 2021 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England. http://www.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: PICARDY    Metre: 87 87 87
  

New Year verse reposting – Ring out wild bells (adapted)

 1 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
 the flying cloud, the frosty light:
 the year is dying in the night;
 ring out, wild bells, and let it die.
 
 2 Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
 for those that here we see no more;
 ring out the feud of rich and poor,
 ring in redress for humankind.
 
 3 Ring out each slowly dying cause,
 archaic forms of party strife;
 Ring in a new regard for life,
 with open borders, fairer laws.
 
 4 Ring out false pride in birth and creed,
 the civic slander and the spite;
 ring in the love of truth and right
 ring in the end of human need.
 
 5 Ring out the curse of poverty.
 Ring out the grasping lust of wealth.
 Ring out those things that harm our health,
 Ring out old wars, bring unity.
 
 6 Ring in a time when all are free,
 a time when none will fear to stand
 when all are welcome in this land.
 Ring in the Christ that is to be.
 
 Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) alt. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
 © 2014 Stainer and Bell Ltd.

An unmarried mother gave birth in a stable

 
  1 An unmarried mother gave birth in a stable, 
 some saw a fulfilment of all they had heard, 
 to others this story, the birth of the Godhead,
 was more than amazing, was frankly absurd.
 
 2 Some delved into scripture and said that a virgin, 
 was destined to carry a child who would grow 
 to be a Messiah, salvation for nations, 
 and others would question how history could know.
 
 3 So back to the story, now Bethlehem beckons, 
 a carpenter-pawn come to sign for the state, 
 the bureaucrats needing a list for taxation 
 and everyone hurries before it's too late.
 
 4 A legend would grow up of shepherds and magi, 
 no snow at this Christmas beneath a night's sky. 
 A man who would die as a crucified preacher 
 was born with sparse shelter as people passed by. 
 
 5 And so came the story of birth in a stable, 
 of Bethlehem's journey, a virgin and child. 
 And lost is the essence, the mystery and wonder, 
 of God born among us abused and reviled.
 
 6 Much later a soldier saw God in this prophet
 a man  who would love to his very last breath 
 the dying, the hopeless, those outside religion,
 and all those beside who had shared in his death.
 
 Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
 © 2018 Stainer and Bell Ltd.
 12 11 12 11
 Tune: STREETS OF LAREDO; ST CATHERINES COURT