...ancient splendors fling

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold,

when with the ever-circling years comes round the age of gold;

when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing.

---Edmund H. Sears, 1849

I won’t lie. The complete text of this hymn, written in 1849 by Massachusetts minister Edmund Sears, is one of the most incisive studies of peace, and how we destroy it, that I have ever read. Almost no hymnal includes all the verses, but you can find them complete on several internet sites, and I encourage you to do so (along with the entire text of ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’, from Longfellow’s poem  ). Their power will affect you deeply; and in our world of commonplace, numbing un-peace, we need the angels’ song to shock us out of our complacency.

This verse looks forward to a time when the world will be set right, in tune with the song of the angels, at peace. Imagine, a time when peace, personified, flings its splendors over the whole world; a time when warring and internal turmoil cease around the globe; a time when we mortals can forget our war-cries and shouts of hate and fear, and fill our mouths and hearts to echo back the peace song the angels have sung all along.

Lo, the days are hastening on…and I can’t wait.

...created for together

O that with yonder sacred throng we at His feet may fall!

We’ll join the everlasting song, and crown Him Lord of all.

--Edward Perronet, 1779

I drove in that sort of half-mindless reverie that long sunsets and lonesome backroads inspire, far enough from the few small towns I passed through that I met few headlights or taillights. My NPR station crackled with enough static that the quirky voices of the show hosts teased me with nearly-full statements of great import. Then, all of a sudden and also at long last, I found myself on a long stretch of road, aimed at the dying-sun sky, with the held-breath world embracing me from either side of the road. And there, and then, I sat up. I took notice. I slowed my breath. I turned grateful eyes, heart toward the Creator of this exquisite moment.

Perhaps you have experienced those instants of solitary adoration also. They echo in the soul (and if I’m lucky, and prepared, my camera roll) far after the moment passes. And they are important. But they are not the only holy moments.

The moments when the pieces fit, and we match our voices to the lasting song, and to our beloved family—across the aisle, around the world—hold their own glory, and offer us a chance to join in a sort of worship we will never experience on our own.

Not because we are not good enough, alone. But because we are created for together.

...for ALL the saints

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,

And hearts are brave again and arms are strong.

Alleluia!

---William Walsham How, 1864

Some weeks just wear you down. Your good intentions are misconstrued, your to-do list is filled with didn’ts, your best effort isn’t good enough. The half-inch of restoring rain is forgotten in months of choking drought. The dream job you studied for and fought to land has turned into the shackles and chains that threaten to drag you under with the weight of stress and pressure. The last-minute, miracle touchdown drive is replaced in memory by your opponent’s last-second pass-that-defied-logic, and you lose…again.

What keeps me coming back to this place, week after week, when the world doesn’t always make sense? It’s the song I hear in the distance, peculiar to this place---this place filled with the spirits of those gone on before, and the spirits of those in the pew next to me. The song is one of triumph; and our hearts, mine and yours, are brave again, and our arms are strong.

Just in time to tackle another week in the real world, strengthened by the song I hear in this place, among these saints.

...the song goes on

Lo! The apostolic train joins your sacred name to hallow;

prophets swell the glad refrain, and the white-robed martyrs follow.

And from morn to set of sun, through the church the song goes on.

---Ignaz Franz, 18th century

I haven’t spent much time up north, where lots of mighty rivers originate. I have heard that even the Mighty Mississippi begins as a tiny trickle somewhere up in Minnesota (or, #controversyalert, South Dakota!), before growing to one of the most powerful rivers in the world down south. I am reminded of its slightly more northerly section, and its building power, when I think of the heartbreaking scene in Huckleberry Finn in which Huck and Jim desperately try to resist the flow of the swollen Mississippi in an effort to navigate onto the Ohio, and freedom. But you can’t fight the current of a river that big.

And I’ve actually stood in the headwaters of our own ‘mighty Chattahoochee’ in the mountains not many hours’ drive from here. What starts small is added to by the trickle of tens, of hundreds, streams---until it is flowing with a calm force that will not be denied.

The song of praise that all creation sings had its genesis, well, you know, at the beginning. Can’t you imagine the first elements of creation finding voice and offering that gift up to Creator? And on, through the love story of God and God’s creation, the song has grown---tens, hundreds of trickles and rivulets merging and mingling to create one song that will not be denied.

Do you hear the people sing?

...wage peace

Through war-torn streets where hope is dead,

Fly bombs and anger ‘round our heads.

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through homes where love cannot to be found,

And violence spreads the fear around,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through lands where food just will not grow,

And streams of water never flow,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through minds where illness takes first place,

And wholeness longs for any space,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through challenges of this our time,

Through rage, neglect, greed’s paradigm,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

When things seem worst, we hear the song

Hope sings above the din of wrong:

The song of One who hears our plea.

Christ guides our feet in paths of peace.

---Leigh Anne Armstrong, 2005

tune: FERNDALE

By God's tender mercies,

dawn will break on high,

bringing light to us who sit in dark,

in the very shadow of death,

to brighten the way to the path of peace.

---Luke 1:78-79 (para. laca)

During my prayers and meditations this morning it passed through my mind that, though our individual and tribal agonies and tragedies seem freshly goring with each new wound, we have been hurting for a long time now. We have been needing peace, in our climate, in our world, in our homes, in our hearts and psyches, for so long. Most of the time we move through our days, numb to the violence around us, blind to the damage inflicted on our brothers and sisters by systems and power and pure plain meanness and evil. The world is engineered for numbness, for dulling the senses to the pain of others, even our own pain. 

And then sectarian and tribal violence turns into mass slaying of school children and college students. Or the pain of mental illness spills over into unspeakable tragedy on a massive scale. Or families have to take stock and rebuild love where it grows for their children. 

And through all of this, faint, is the song of hope. Not the kind of solid thing performed by a symphony orchestra with a festival chorus. More like the caught wisp of a melody, floating out of an open window on one of those rare, fine days when open windows might be acceptable in our part of the country. You might only catch a few notes, a rise and fall of phrase. But when you do. When you  do. It may just give you the courage to wage peace in this world, where all the violence seems continually new.

...open-eyed awe

My song rises from a thankful place;
a song accompanied on strings.
You cover the sky with clouds,
they grow heavy with rain 
you intend for the thirsty earth,
for the new grass reaching skyward 
on the hill.
This is the cycle you spun out of 
creative vitality
to provide the animals with their food, 
the young birds with what they need.
You take delight,
but not in the strength of power,
like a mighty stallion;
you take pleasure, 
but not in the feat of speed,
like a lithe runner;
your deep joy is in those 
who approach you with 
the open-eyed awe of children,
who put their hope in the 
steadfastness of 
your love.
---Psalm 147:7-11 (para. laca)

...might this please you?

I will speak the language of you
with music in my voice;
I will fill the space where you are
with expansive gratitude.
Might this please you more than an offering
of bloody carcasses, 
drug onto a pyre?
Perhaps those life has drug 
onto its own pyre will hear,
and hope;
perhaps they who have sought you
will renew their own songs.
For you have always heard 
the cry of the downtrodden and desperate;
and you, in your tenderheartedness,
could not look on your loved ones, bound,
and not grieve their chains.
---Psalm 69: 30-33 (para. laca)

...the place of your abiding

Lovely is the place of your abiding,
God of the stars!
The deep places in me respond 
with longing 
for the place you are;
the joyful song I offer is 
the gift of my heart and my body,
my all echoes your all.
The tiniest bird, least of all,
finds home, and sure security
for raising her young,
in the shadow of your altars,
my Own.
To dwell in your presence,
my being reverberating with praise of you,
wraps me in happiness.
---Psalm 84:1-4 (para. laca)

...overwhelmed, battered, bathed

My soul has found its low place,
lost to yesterday and yesterday,
so I labor to recall you from 
beautiful days, from times of 
close ease. I do remember you.
The deep places in me echo 
with the thunder of earth's  deep places;
I'm overwhelmed, battered, bathed
where the waters fall away.
By day, your steadfast love;
by night, your song;
my spirit returns to you.
---Psalm 42: 4-8 (para. laca)

I have found myself at my lowest when I have forgotten the track record of the One who walks with me. It is easy for us, I think, to get beaten down, or worn down, and forget to remember. And, once we get rusty at calling to remembrance, we lose our backward vision. We panic, and grope, and grasp for a handhold on this path, all the while feeling we must have been abandoned.

Then the thunder of yearning from the deep spaces of our souls is matched by the thunder of our filling; the provision, the meeting, and the cacophony batters us, cleanses us, restores us. We know the hesed, the steadfast love, that both nourishes and challenges us, by day. And by night, when darkness tugs at the edges of our awareness and threatens our tenuous, newly-reclaimed security, we hear faint strains of a song, the middle-of-the-night song that calms and soothes us back to sleep, safe in the arms of the One who loves us.

Emmanuel comes a-singing

To us, to all, in sorrow and fear, Emmanuel comes a-singing;
his humble song is quiet and near, yet fills the earth with its ringing;
music to heal the broken soul and hymns of lovingkindness.
The thunder of his anthems rolls to shatter all hatred and violence.
---Marty Haugen

I have a Tibetan singing bowl. To play it, I slowly and steadily circle a heavy wooden dowel around the rim of the bowl. At first, I would promise that nothing is happening. But I keep the dowel circling, slowly, steadily. And gradually I feel a vibration in the fingertips on which I balance the bowl. And then there is a low hum, the kind I wonder if I am imagining. But it is there, and it is steady and solid in some way. And the longer I circle the dowel, the fuller the sound grows, and I can hear it and feel it filling me.
I imagine Emmanuel coming, singing, this same way. We may not hear a song at first; may just notice a change in the quality of the air in the space. Then, the slightest hint of harmonic vibration; and as you stand very still, you realize the song the Savior sings resonates through every cell in your body, and rings in every corner of your soul. Overwhelmed with the music, you become the song the Savior sings.


...so here we stand, whoever we are,
bathed in the light of a star...

In Paths of Peace

Through war-torn streets where hope is dead,

Fly bombs and anger ‘round our heads.

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through homes where love cannot to be found,

And violence spreads the fear around,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through lands where food just will not grow,

And streams of water never flow,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through minds where illness takes first place,

And wholeness longs for any space,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through challenges of this our time,

Through rage, neglect, greed’s paradigm,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

When things seem worst, we hear the song

Hope sings above the din of wrong:

The song of One who hears our plea.

Christ guides our feet in paths of peace.