Category: Theology

Hiroshima Day – a possible hymn

Hiroshima Day is marked every year on 6 August, the day in 1945 on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. 
The film Oppenheimer explores some of the ethical questions related to this event. Others have questioned its rights and wrongs since 1945.

The following poem/hymn was written  in response to the photo of a little boy rescued from a bombed building in Allepo in Syria. Equally it is evocative of children everywhere suffering whenever we settle our disputes through war or violence.

It speaks as much to our vision of a destroyed city as to the cries of a single child:

A bloodied child foreshadowed by a cross,
both share their taste of evil and of loss,
and when will people ever live and learn
that hurt and harm is all that war can earn?

We hold our breath in horror as we view
this scene forever old, forever new;
amid the dust and rubble strewn around
a child cries out and parents can’t be found.

How long, O Lord we cry, each hollow word,
our pleas of peace increasingly absurd?
Good God, forgive us when inaction’s voice
speaks loudly of our violent, hurtful choice.

Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 18 August 2016 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, 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.
Metre: 10.10.10.10.
Suggested tunes: these words were written with the tune EVENTIDE (StF 141) in mind. Singing the Faith plus suggests these alternatives: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP (StF 640) and – perhaps surprisingly – WOODLANDS  (StF 186)

Scientists pick up shock waves from colliding galaxies – a hymn…

‘The observations were made by studying signals from dead stars called pulsars. These rotate and send out bursts of radio signals at extremely precise intervals’. BBC News. This hymn references pulsars and was published 32 years ago. Available in Blinded by the Dazzle, Stainer & Bell.

1	The God of cosmic question
	Surprises by his birth,
	Not in some new dimension
	But on this ravaged earth!

2	In quasars, quarks and pulsars
	We seek the cosmic truth:
	The ground of our existence
	That set creation loose,

3	And human senses lead us,
	Through all they analyse,
	From arrogance to wonder,
	To spiritual surprise.

4	But senses have their limits:
	Unanswered still there lies
	The single, deepest question
	Our intellect supplies.

5	Yet history proffers insight:
	The Christ of time and space
	Speaks of a God incarnate
	Born in a squalid place.

6	Alive within our compass,
	Upon this ravaged earth,
	The God of cosmic question
	Surprises by his birth!

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
© 1991 Stainer & Bell Ltd 
7 6 7 6 Iambic

Peace – a hymn reflecting on Jesus’ words to his disciples

Peace…

Easter seems long past, but at a time when our minds are still being drawn to Ukraine, and politics at home feel uncertain, my thoughts have drifted back. When Jesus come to his disciples after his crucifixion he came, not with condemnation, but with peace. Perhaps we still need that assurance of peace in our own, our present time. But  step back for a moment to that upper room…

He speaks of peace while all inside 
disciples' minds are churned about; 
their memories haunt their waking time, 
while day and night are fused by doubt.
He speaks of peace while all the world 
will clamour at our open door, 
while shards of music sing and break 
with light in discord on the floor.
	
Into this chaos spirit spills,
a calming notion, 'God is good', 
and real as life, the Christ was there,
the Christ they'd hammered to the wood.
This God it is who offers peace 
to bound disciples held by fear, 
who breaks impossibilities, 
who makes the clouded way seem clear.

Into this calm we'll step and stay, 
in love's assurance find God's peace 
with those whose feet had turned to clay, 
we'll find that fear will stop, will cease.
And in this moment, in this time 
within a world so torn by death, 
again we'll try to live out peace, 
with every lasting, living breath.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2012 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 8 8 8 D
Tune: YE BANKS AND BRAES