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)
Tag: ground of being
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) More information click here
The depth of interstellar space – a Cosmic Christmas Carol
The depth of interstellar space,
the ultimate beyond,
the cosmic span of all that is
with Christ the common bond:
Word before world’s had come to be,
our common source and ground,
we stare into this starlit void,
that stellar craft will sound.
We fashion answers, look with awe,
and seek to understand
our place within this finite time,
this time in which we stand;
countless millennia plot the course
down to the present day,
but who can chance or even guess
what more may come in play?
Through this continuum of time
we surf on history’s wave,
we long for answers, never found,
that generations crave.
When will we settle trusting still
that peace is found through grace,
while all is relative in life –
and can love fill this place?
Andrew Pratt 5/11/2019
News that Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 had left the Solar System and are ‘exploring the outer reaches of our cosmic neighbourhood ‘. BBC News November 4th 2019 – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50289353 accessed 5/1/2019
Words © 2019 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: CHRISTMAS CAROL (Henry Walford Davies) Available at https://hymnary.org/tune/christmas_carol_davies;
Metre: CMD
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