Wind of the Spirit, move us on – a hymn for Pentecost from Marjorie Dobson
1 Wind of the Spirit, move us on,
Drive us before your force.
We need that power to strengthen us
Of which you are the source.
Blow off the cobwebs of the past
And set us on your course:
O come Holy Spirit, move us on, move us on.
O come Holy Spirit, move us on.
2 Fire of the Spirit, burn in us,
Surround us with your light.
Destroy our sense of apathy,
Give us the will to fight.
That with our hearts on fire for Christ
We set the world alight:
Chorus
3 Voice of the Spirit speak to us,
Give us your words to say.
Inspire the language of your love,
Help us to preach and pray.
That all may hear of saving grace
Translated for their day:
Chorus
4 Christ, let your Spirit sweep through us,
Your serving Church renew.
Give us new hope and confidence
In all the work we do.
That those who seek for faith today
May find their way to you:
Chorus
Marjorie Dobson (born 1940)
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
Metre: 8 6 8 6 8 6 and Chorus 7 6 11
Tune: GOD REST YOU MERRY (London)
Tag: Pentecost
Audacious grace: a hymn for an Arminian, Wesleyan Pentecost
Audacious grace: to give without receiving,
to give expecting nothing in return
And through this grace, this moment still believing,
that love is something we can never earn.
This grace extends beyond our expectation,
for not a one is found outside its span,
this tender care, this steadfast loving kindness
has held the cosmos since all time began.
No word or action, prayer or contemplation
can lift us us from this earth to heaven’s height,
nor can the supernova’s startling brilliance
compete with God’s eternal, ceaseless light.
In faith we sing beyond imagination,
beyond the limits of our common sense.
We frame a vision out of time’s contention,
yet know its truth within our present tense.
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
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.
Tune: LONDONDERRY AIR
A hymn for this time and context -when a world calls out for healing – Christ’s Body has been broken
Toward Pentecost – when a world calls out for healing - Christ's body has been broken
1 Christ's body has been broken,
not bread but human lives,
each family has scattered,
just memory survives;
the parents cry in anguish,
the children cry in fear,
we label them as migrant,
not wanted over here.
2 These are our human neighbours,
relations from our birth,
each sister, child or brother,
as one on this wide earth.
If we claim God as parent,
'our Father' as we say,
when will we own the the meaning
of empty words we pray?
3 God, help us welcome others,
God break the barriers down,
that tears may turn to laughter,
and smiles displace each frown;
then may we live together,
forgiven by your grace,
the Pentecostal promise,
one Godly human race!
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2018 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 D
Tune: AURELIA
Incendiary God – hymn for Pentecost and Wesley Day
Incendiary God, your fire of love, ignites our hope, within this place when we allow the sparks to spread we know your presence, sense your grace. On through the stubble of our lives, love burns out hatred, kindles faith, beyond the fire-breaks of our doubt you sign our path, you mark and trace. Great conflagration fire our hearts until the world warmed by your breath, is spirit filled, infused with love that lasts beyond each human death. Andrew E Pratt Words © 2013 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.
Climate change…theology…iPad art… adapted from ArtServe Magazine Issue 33 Summer 2022
I was reflecting on creation and climate change, global warming. Tablet art enabled me to produce fiery images.
This would not be impossible with watercolour but here I was able to swirl colour together. If anything went wrong I had the facility to erase and correct. With watercolour this is more difficult. In the first image I went to Genesis 1 for inspiration the image of the earth ‘without form and void’. Science, cosmology, art and the Bible enabled me to envisage creation as a conflagration, a ‘big bang’, with interrelated matter and energy being brought into being. But then, on reflection, planets condense to spherical, or near spherical, form and so the first image is that swirling orb, formless but seeking an equilibrium and at the centre of the void will be Earth…or…
Without form and void…
As scripture unfolds, epiphanies, revelations of the divine, ‘the Other’, are described. They take many forms. One such narrative again brings together matter and energy in an enigmatic spectacle with no matter being consumed within an evanescent fiery, burning bush. ‘The Other’ has no name, utters no words, yet converts, forms and inspires humanity to action.
The colour palette of the creation image was retained for a burning bush. The flaming fire was ‘painted first’. Different tools allow the colours to merge in a variety of ways. The merge can be smooth, watery, bubbled or perhaps rough edged. The bush was then lined in over the fire and the ground finished last.
Beyond the life of Christ, through incarnation and resurrection there is further revelation of the nature of God. Pentecost offers that image of fire again, with its contradictory character of energy, warmth and destruction, yet power and inspiration.
The fire was, again, painted first. The black, square blocks were formed using a template like a page frame but then filled using a fill tool that you may be familiar with in photo-editing software. The sky was similarly filled in, as it had been in the burning bush image. Subconsciously the colour I had chosen for this was very much reminiscent of some of David Hockney’s choice of pigments.
In the same way that scriptural and human inspiration interact in forming the images, paradoxically for humanity, that same divine presence of fire in creation and revelation offers humanity the capacity for self-destruction as global warming engulfs what might have been the ‘City of God’.
And is this the anticipated end of humanity? ‘Ashes to Ashes’? And is this the end, not just of each of us individually, but of all creation? Humanity’s knowledge, grasping the divine gift obliterates humanity itself while creation collapses back into the void from whence it came…
For the final image I used a copy tool to take the first image. I then used a sandpaper tool to scuff and scrape at the ‘surface’ of the image. I darkened it, mixing and merging colour to suggest, not just our planet, but creation returning to void and chaotic darkness.
Ashes to ashes…
Text and images © Andrew Pratt 2022 adapted from ArtServe Magazine Issue 33 Summer 2022
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