Tag: ground of being

Humanity in harmony?

Humanity in harmony?

Human in harmony?
Yet we have broken peace with our anger, 
best left unspoken.

God, help us share as one in humanity
Cool us, calm us centre our sanity.

One earth: 
our cradle of nature and nurture.

Sharing one goal, 
each neighbour, each searcher: 

home of existence destroyed at our peril: 
Crisis?  Destruction? Goodness or evil?

God, give us the courage to love one another,
sister and mother, 
father and brother;
now hold us in anguish and catch those who fall, 
Ground of our being and parent of all.

© Andrew Pratt 4/10/2025 Please use freely with acknowledgment.

Use for reflection or responsorially.



Hymn inspired by Romans 5 – God of consistency

Hymn inspired by Romans 5 - God of consistency - Suitable for Aldersgate Sunday

1	God of consistency, love without limits, 
	ground of all being and all that will be, 
	compass us round with compassionate kindness, 
	higher than mountains, as deep as the sea.

2	God of all graciousness, walking beside us, 
	there at our birthing, yet on beyond death,
	God of transcendence, unrivalled, majestic, 
	God beyond knowledge, yet closer than breath.

3	God in all being, yet ground of existence, 
	God beyond grasping, unbounded by law,
	while we are moved to sing loud alleluias,
	here would we worship in silence and awe.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2014 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
Tune: STEWARDSHIP (Ruddle)

A hymn for Trinity Sunday – ‘We cannot understand…

Sunday the 4th of June 2023 is marked as Trinity Sunday. 

I have never found the descriptions of the Trinity easy to accept – they focus on how you can have three persons in one God. My own resolution of this is less to focus on the how and simply to say that we experience something of God in and through creation, God is the ground of being, of all that exists. Jesus shows us how God would be if God was human. When our lives are an image of that of Jesus then we are living with the same Spirit. 

The thread is that of Love – in creation, in Jesus and in ourselves. And so, a hymn…

We cannot understand them,
the things we’re bid to say;
our creeds seem so confusing:
yet this is what we pray:
God’s Love was the beginning,
before all life began.
This Love became incarnate,
to last a human span.

The paradox of mystery:
the image we refine
at once divinely human,
though humanly divine.
Yet death can signal ending, 
but Love still lingers on: 
perpetual, holding Spirit
when even hope has gone.

Andrew Pratt 29/5/2023 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: 7.6.7.6
Tune: CRUGER (Hail to the Lord’s anointed)

This is our mother – Mothering Sunday hymn

This is our mother, the source of all being,
sharpening starlight, then raising the dawn,
singing forth sunshine, then playing with laughter,
scattering teardrops, in passion newborn.

Mother of oceans, so careful with splendour,
ground of creation and centre of life,
love in abundance, all caring, all seeing,
counter to conflict, now staying our strife.

This is our mother, the God of our parents,
source of the hope that has brought them to be,
present to hold us, then leading us onward,
loving, renewing, and setting us free.

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..
11 10 11 10
Tunes: WAS LEBET WAS SCHWEBET; EPIPHANY HYMN

Hymn responding to Dr Cecilia Medupin’s Seminar for Bramhall Methodist Church Climate Change Series

Dr Cecilia Medupin
Dept of Earth and Environmental Sciences, 
University of Manchester

Dry, cracked and crazed the water-bed lies empty, 
the earth is thirsty, rain is slow to come, 
this news is hidden, floods have filled the headlines, 
the prophets now, not heard, might well be dumb.

This is the earth the ground of life, our being, 
our home to share, to nurture and protect, 
a gift of God for us and all God’s creatures, 
to use our knowledge, work to good effect.

As people wait, the wells of life are barren, 
how long, O God, before your people learn 
that we must live and love and work together, 
to answer needs that science can discern.

The brightest light of wisdom dims in sadness, 
if we ignore the needs of all the earth,
if selfishly we dominate creation, 
deny the love once given at our birth.

Great God, earth mother, father of creation, 
we plead and cry that you will hear each voice, 
then motivate your people, bring fresh waters, 
till earth can sing and once again rejoice!

Andrew Pratt 18/6/2021 Words © 2021 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 
Tune: INTERCESSOR  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX0q8eBGE7A)

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