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Mothering Sunday/Mothers’ Day – Two Hymns and a Dramatic Monologue

Psalm 131

God, you hold me like a mother,
Safely on her knee;
God, you hold me like a mother,
Close to you but free.

God, you watch me as I wander,
Keep me in your sight.
God, you watch me as I wander,
Hold me day and night.

God, you hold me like a mother,
Teach me to be free.
God, you hold me like a mother,
Show your love to me.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 1995 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 © Also The Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes
8 5 85 Trochaic
Tune: GOD YOU HOLD ME

Luke 2:22-40

Monologue: Old folks!

Have you heard the latest about that batty old Anna?
You know - that old woman who thinks she’s a prophetess. Wanders round the Temple all day, praying all over the place. Eighty-four if she’s a day! Don’t know how she’s managed to live to that age – not with all her problems.
Did you realise that she’s been a widow for years and years and years?
It’s true. She married this man who only managed to survive for seven years and then he died and left her on her own. Mind you, if she’s always been as strange as she is now, maybe that had something to do with it.
Anyway, I was telling you the latest.
Apparently this nice young couple had brought their baby to the Temple to be dedicated. First-born boy, you see. Everybody has to do it. And they’d already had an encounter with that other strange character – Simeon, they call him. He’s one of those weird people who still believe the Messiah will come. Only he’s a bit more peculiar than the others because he believes it will happen before he dies. And it appears that he thought that day had finally arrived. I ask you!
Well, anyway, this young couple and their baby had just recovered from him praying and praising God all over their baby, when they turned round and there was Anna lying in wait for them. They certainly had their fill of odd experiences this morning.
She didn’t exactly leap out at them. Well, you wouldn’t at her age, would you? But she certainly made sure they wouldn’t get past her until she’d said her piece. At first I think they just thought she was one of those old dears who drool all over babies and say stupid things about how much they look like their fathers, or mothers. But she took one look and then started off on one of her praising God sessions and telling anybody who would listen that this child was a special one promised by God.
I ask you, those poor parents must have been lost for words. One old man tells them they’ve given birth to the Messiah, so he can now die happy and an even older woman starts telling the same story to anyone who couldn’t avoid her fast enough.
What a day they must have had. I’ll bet they’ll never forget it. It must be the strangest experience they’ll ever have in their lives.
But what do old people know about anything? They’re just out of date and past it. They live in a world of their own, while the rest of us get on with our business.
It’s such a stupid idea.
Fancy thinking that a child can make any difference! Whoever heard of such a thing?
© Marjorie Dobson

Hymn: Vulnerable presence of God in creation

Vulnerable presence of God in creation,
fragile, yes broken, in order to be;
cracking the egg of existence in birthing,
mothering God who is setting us free.

Vulnerable God source of nature, will nurture,
sharing our pain in the process of birth;
bloodied, yet beautiful, changed, yet unchanging,
passionate partner of love on this earth.

Vulnerable God found in human relations,
held as a baby, yes, suckled and fed;
yet an enigma, creating and feeding,
God is our parent, while being our bread.

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

Words and tune in Big Blue Planet & CD
Metre: 11.10.11.10
Tune: STEWARDSHIP

Lent 4 – Two poems and two hymns

John 3: 1-17

Poem: God so loved …

No complicated creeds,
or self-righteous rituals.
No holy huddles,
or raw judgements.
No insistence on conformity.

Only a call to turn around
to find forgiveness waiting.

For at the heart of all creation
and the core of our existence
there is the love of God
for errant people.

And one special human,
whose presence in the world
changed all our perceptions
of our relationship
with the God who loves us
so much that he gave …
Marjorie Dobson - from Unravelling the Mysteries © Stainer & Bell Ltd 2019; London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns where appropriate. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd

John 3:14-21

Hymn: Trust that God, who lit the cosmos

Trust that God, who lit the cosmos,
source and ground of all we are,
demonstrated love's dimension,
dying like the evening star,
softened, shaded, so diminished,
then extinguished, gone from sight,
yet the third day rose in glory,
bringing hope and shedding light.

From that day the crisis beckoned,
those who saw that light must choose
where to stand: with Christ in suffering?
To accept or to refuse?
Still that challenge stands before us,
God has given love and grace.
Will we take the love that's offered
or deride God in this place?

All our songs are crass and empty,
all our worship hollow praise,
if we do not love our neighbours
that we live with in these days.
Simple acts of loving kindness
signal where we place our trust;
faith without these simple actions
slowly moulders, turns to dust.

Andrew Pratt
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 7 8 7 D
Tune: DIM OND IESUS

Poem: Light came …

If light is good
and darkness is bad,
why do we have such a longing
to run to the dark
when we see the light of God
entering the world?

Could it be
that we need to hide
and the darkness
is our only refuge?

Yet God persists
in flooding the world with light
and focusing its intensity
through Jesus.

Is it any wonder
that a new flame
burns in our hearts
and fires our enthusiasm
when we emerge from the shadows,
as we finally recognize
how much God loves us?
©Marjorie Dobson

Ephesians 2:1-10

Hymn: Into darkness and disaster

Into darkness and disaster,
swept along by what we’ve done,
making choices that determined
things we’ve lost and things we’ve won,
sometimes we reflect and wonder
at the people we’ve become.

Sometimes lost, sometimes despairing,
feeling there is no way back
to the way we wish we’d taken,
knowing all the things we lack,
we can feel so God forsaken,
prayer is dry, resolve is slack.

Yet within the depths of sorrow,
when there is no way ahead,
God will reach us, grace will show us
life beyond the tears we’ve shed;
God will lift us, heal, forgive us,
shield us from the things we dread.

God will build a bright tomorrow,
light a dawn of wider scope,
where our human strength has faltered
God will sow the seeds of hope.
Know that, even now, God holds us,
and will show us how to cope.

Wounded Healer

I heard the term Wounded Healer attributed to Ahmed Hankir in a BBC Radio broadcast – Start the Week – today 8th March 2021. I am not sure where the term ‘Wounded Healer’ came from originally but I quoted it in a poem/hymn written before 1993 and published in 1997 in my book Blinded by the Dazzle.

1	Will you join the wounded healer,
	Crucified upon the cross,
	Rising to the human challenge,
	Offering love through utter loss?

2	Will you live for liberation,
	Or, if need be, will you die,
	Not deflected from God's purpose,
	All deceitful art defy?

3	Wounded healers, men and women,
	Offer their humanity,
	Share God's mission: living, loving,
	Lifting, holding, setting free.

3A	Wounded healers, men and women,
	Offer your humanity,
	Share God's mission: living, loving,
	Lifting, holding, setting free.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 1993, 1997 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 Trochaic

Amanda Udis-Kessler has produced two items, one for Palm Sunday, the other for Easter

A Palm Sunday Hymn – Two Processions, by Amanda Udis-Kessler.

An Easter Extravaganzer – Love had a dream, by Amanda Udis-Kessler.

Clicking the links will take you to YouTube to watch and hear her work. More information can be found at here.

An extraordinary new hymn for the Passion/Easter season by Graham Adams – The people wanted soldiers

This hymn, by Graham Adams, arose from an ‘Empire’ module at Luther King House in Manchester last week. Graham says, “feel free to use as you wish!’ It connects with the Passion/Easter season. It was particularly stimulated by a discussion around whether ‘the alternative realm’ (God’s basileia/kingdom/empire) is ‘a quaint dream’ or something more ‘threatening’ – and the destabilising language of poetry spoke to this”.

The people wanted soldiers
so hope might come as curse,
to smash the occupation – 
but change turned up as Verse:
the poetry of yeasting,
the parabolic sword,
no match for Pax Romana* 
and yet this Lamb still roared.
 
Although it claims possession
of mind and heart and soul,
the Empire’s grip has limits – 
it can’t control the whole:
the surplus lives as Poem
for those with ears to hear,
resisting final closure,
declaring what is near:
 
This dream of re-creation,
this threat of life set free,
disturbing tame religion,
confounding how we see:
it won’t succumb to cliché
where purities abound,
but glimpsed in seeds’ potential,
it ruptures solid ground.
 
Where empires grow by violence,
where systems blame the last
and close down other futures
by editing the past,
the Poem can’t be silenced,
though quietly it dies,
and dances through the fissures
to teach us how to rise!
 
Graham Adams (2021) … prompted by the conversations during the Empire module   
Potential tunes: THORNBURY, CRUGER…
*Pax Romana is ‘the peace of Rome’ secured through military violence; if it’s easier to replace this with ‘crucifixion’, the meaning still works.