Thank you to Andrew Donaldson from Toronto, a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, who has agreed to my sharing his hymn 'How Can We Sing, Our Souls Aghast and Shaken?' here. It is particularly appropriate at this time, I feel.
1. How can we sing? – our souls aghast and shaken?
Sing, when our hope has broken like a bone?
Long-whispered schemes now rise up, proud and open.
Tyrants and kings, tyrants and kings
Now rule us from a throne.
2. How can we sing? What good will come with praises?
Songs fill the air; they soar, then soon are gone.
Hordes overturn our safe and sacred places,
Leave not a trace, leave not a trace,
Nor stone upon a stone.
3. How can we sing? – for who will hear our voices?
Why does a lie sound wiser than a psalm?
Shrewd powers lead from crisis into crisis;
None care to hear, none care to hear
Your shepherd’s voice of calm.
4. How can we sing, yet how can we stand silent?
Long-silent tongues have sung us to this day:
Saints voiced a hope both holy and defiant.
Breathe through our song, breathe through our song,
O Holy One, we pray.
Words: Andrew Donaldson
© 2025 GIA Publications, Inc. # U01906T
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your Copyright Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to GIA Publications, Inc.
Andrew suggests the following tune COMMENT VOULOIR QU’UNE PERSONNE CHANTE
French Troubadour melody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifxGjuldIko
Andrew also notes that the words fit to GENEVAN 12, but only if you don't repeat the phrase in the fourth line of text.
Tag: hope
Sunlight glinting on the water – a hymn of hope
For all its beauty snow and ice can be dangerous, or keep us in our homes. This week’s text looks back to memories and forward to hopes, to sunlight glinting on the water
1 Sunlight glinting on the water,
moonlight filtered by the trees,
nature constantly reminding,
spirit moving with the breeze,
God is present in creation,
God is here in such as these.
2 Holding visions in our memories,
cherishing all we have known,
things of beauty, scenes of wonder,
gifts of grace we cannot own,
all the joys that God has given,
all the love that Christ has shown.
3 Now we come to offer worship
for each heart and mind’s delight,
for all human care and friendship,
for the soaring spirit’s flight,
God we offer praise each morning
for your living, dancing light.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2015 Stainer and 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 8 7
Tune: RHUDDLAN
As we tread this Advent pathway – new poem/hymn
Travelling through Advent, a poem or, if you wish to sing, a hymn
As we tread this advent pathway – a reflective poem
As we tread this advent pathway
stepping through this mystery,
wonder fills each human heartbeat,
carves new ways through history.
Others walked this way before us,
in a different time and space,
spoke a language foreign, distant,
delving deeply through God's grace.
Now within imagination
art and science visualise
things beyond our comprehension,
truths we've yet to realise.
Here all language strains and fractures,
struggles to describe, inform
what our senses lay before us,
fail to offer shape and form.
Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble
reaching through the mists of time,
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.
As we tread this advent pathway – an Advent hymn
As we tread this advent pathway
stepping through this mystery,
wonder fills each human heartbeat,
carves new ways through history.
Others walked this way before us,
in a different time and space,
spoke a language foreign, distant,
delving deeply through God's grace.
Now within imagination
art and science visualise
things beyond our comprehension,
truths we've yet to realise.
Here all language strains and fractures,
struggles to describe, inform
what our senses lay before us,
fail to offer shape and form.
Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble
reaching through the mists of time,
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.
Andrew E Pratt 30/11/2024
Words © 2024 © 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: CHAPEL BRAE; SHIPSTON; STUTTGART
‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ – a hymn for Remembrance in a new millennium through Advent to Christmas
‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ a hymn for 2024
from Remembrance through Advent to Christmas
Drones, not angels herald horror,
children shelter without hope,
singing now, but hell will follow.
God, through grace, give strength to cope.
Here where human hearts are broken,
all cried out, no tears to shed,
prayers are held, for fear, unspoken,
shrouded now in clouds of dread.
God reach deep through hateful anger
bent on vengeance, recompense;
listen through our warring clangour,
re-enliven common sense.
Guide us through the dust and rubble,
where our blood has stained the earth,
turning fields where all is stubble,
seeding love that signs new birth.
Andrew E Pratt (4/11/2024)
Words © 2024 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
Tune: HYFRYDOL; SCARLET RIBBONS or, perhaps, BLAENWERN
A completely new hymn for 2024 reminding us how different war is now but, nevertheless, with comparable suffering. Suitable, perhaps, for Remembrance and through Advent to Christmas given the continuing situation in the Middle East, Ukraine/Russia and many other places.
Vocation, Ordination, Being Christian after an Election
Last Sunday (30th June 2024) Methodist Presbyters and Deacons were Ordained at the Annual Methodist Conference in the UK. Those in Leeds were able to witness and share in this in person. Some of us followed the preceding service on-line.
ALL CHRISTIANS have a vocation, a calling to follow Christ and to share God’s love whoever we are and wherever life takes us. This hymn was written FOR US!
1 We are the rainbow's colours,
the thundering sighs of love,
the shakers of foundations,
the seething clouds above.
We are God's chosen people,
from exile we are freed,
our common consecration
means liberty indeed.
2 A hope for every nation,
we come to bring God's peace,
the reconciliation,
the prisoner's release.
This is our sole vocation,
the reason for our birth,
to offer hope through loving,
to bring God's peace on earth.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2002, 2006 Stainer & Bell Ltd (alt 2024 by the author)
Metre: 7 6 7 6 D
Tune: PASSION CHORALE
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