children – Page 2 – hymnsandbooks

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.

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)

The children would follow the peal of your piping – Hymn – Matthew 11: 16 – 17

A hymn inspired by Matthew 11:16-17 Jesus said, “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn'”.

The children would follow the peal of your piping,
the ring of your reason, the joy of your love,
the children would follow, and none would deter them
from plateaus so barren to mountains above.

And those who are childlike still follow your calling;
a calling to suffer, yet dusted with hope.
The way to fulfilment, to peace and to plenty.
is fissured and rutted but still we will cope.

God's joy is the centre of all that we hope for,
a calling for everyone, not just for some;
the music is moving, can't stop ourselves singing,
still Jesus is piping and still people come!

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2006 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: 12 11 12 11
Tune: STREETS OF LAREDO

God is crying mid the carnage – a hymn at the time of Ukrainian Christmas

God is crying mid the carnage 
of a thousand broken bones; 
in the dust and fallen rubble 
of our long discarded homes.
 
Where our children play out stories 
of the visions they have seen, 
God is weeping over losses, 
knowing just what might have been.
 
What if love instead of horror 
filled the passion of our lives, 
could these stories be re-written 
where humanity survives?
 
God still with us, God among us, 
sow new seeds of love through grace; 
help us look at one another 
building hope in every place.
Andrew Pratt (8/1/2023)

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

Metre: 8.7.8.7
Tunes: CROSS OF JESUS (Stainer); LAUS DEO (Redhead)

Written after listening to the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Service on 8/1/2023 ‘The message that Ukraine is trying to convey to the world as it celebrates its own Christmas Day’.

The programme posed the question, 'Where is God' in this war?

See also We hear the news in anguish
- Thoughts on pacifism
- God's on our side

Kyries for Holy Innocents – Herod’s high and mighty stand

1	Herod's high and mighty stand
	Showed the power at his command,
	Slaughtered children in the land:
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy on us. 

2	Mary wept, she understood,
	Wept as every mother should,
	Ramah's echo, death to good:
	Chorus 

3	Surely force has had its day,
	Brutish whim and power's display;
	Yet our actions hurt betray:
	Chorus 

4	Seen on every paper's page,
	Words of hate and fists of rage,
	Signs of greed in every age:
	Chorus 

5	Anger still inflicts the pain,
	Each excuse is seen as lame,
	Yet again we bear the shame:
	Chorus 

6	Till through this and every time
	People cease from heinous crime,
	Till with peace their actions rhyme:
	Chorus 

VERSION IN SONGS FOR A NEW MILLENIUM (7 7 7 D and refrain) 

1	Herod's high and mighty stand
	Showed the power at his command,
	Slaughtered children in the land:
	Mary wept, she understood,
	Wept as every mother should,
	Ramah's echo, death to good:
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy on us. 

2	Surely force has had its day,
	Brutish whim and power's display;
	Yet our actions truth betray:
	Seen on every paper's page,
	Words of hate and fists of rage,
	Signs of greed in every age:
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy on us. 

3	Anger still inflicts the pain,
	Each excuse is seen as lame,
	Yet again we bear the shame:
	Till through this and every time
	People cease from heinous crime,
	Till with peace their actions rhyme:
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy, 
	Kyrie, Lord have mercy on us. 

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
From: Whatever name creed, No.28 (1999) & Songs for the new millennium.
Words © 1999, 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: HOLY INNOCENTS (Ian Sharp) Whatever name creed, No.28