Hymn Blog - February 14, 2010

February 14, 2010 – Transfiguration Sunday

MV 42 – Praise God for This Holy Ground. Words and music are by John Bell, an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland and a member of the Iona Community. After a period in the Netherlands and two posts in church youth work, he became employed full time in the areas of music and worship with the Wild Goose Resource Group. He is a past convenor of the Church of Scotland's Panel on Worship and the Committee revising the Church Hymnary. In 1999 he was honoured by the Presbyterian Church of Canada and the Royal School of Church Music which bestowed a Fellowship on him, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow. He is a fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. He is a frequent visitor to Canada, and will be in Toronto to teach a credit course and lead a continuing education event at Emmanuel College in June, 2010.

MV 80 – Beyond the Beauty and the Awe. The text is by American Episcopalian, Carl Perkins Daw Jr., who taught English at the College of William and Mary prior to theological studies. He was ordained a priest in 1982, and served as a pastor in Virginia and as vicar-chaplain at the University of Connecticut.   He served from 1996 to his retirement in 2009 as the Executive Director of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. He was made a fellow of the Society in 2007. He is a widely published hymn poet, with six of his texts appearing in Voices United and three in More Voices. The setting for this text, ROFINOT, is by Patrick Michaels, Director of Music at St. James's Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts and also Director of Chapel Music at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge.

MV 15 – Holy Sacred Spirit. Our prayer response is by Monica Brown, one of Australia's most highly respected Christian composers and workshop facilitators. Monica is a teacher with additional studies in spirituality, pastoral guidance, liturgy and creative arts. She has been awarded a Masters Honours Degree in Education from the Australian Catholic University, having completed her thesis on spiritual development and the integration of creative process. Her expertise is in religious education, worship and ritual, and scripture story telling through the integration of creative process. Her highly acclaimed book, ‘Embodying The God We Proclaim - Ministering as Jesus Did'  reflects something of the depth of spiritual insight that typifies Monica’s ministry.

VU 104 – We Have Come at Christ’s Own Bidding. This text by Carl Daw (see MV 80, above) was published in his first collection “A Year of Grace: Hymns for the Church Year” (1990). The setting is ABBOT’S LEIGH, composed by Cyril V. Taylor one Sunday morning in the spring of 1941 for the text “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken,” as an alternative to the tune AUSTRIA, the German national anthem. Taylor was serving as assistant head of the wartime headquarters of the Religious Broadcasting Department of the BBC, and produced the tune in the village of Abbot’s Leigh, near Bristol.

VU 962 – May the Blessing of God Go Before You. This beautiful sung blessing is by Miriam Therese Winter, Professor of Liturgy, Worship, Spirituality, and Feminist Studies at Hartford Seminary. A Medical Mission Sister, Winter has been writing and publishing songs and hymns since Vatican II in the 1960’s. Her early recordings with The Medical Mission Sisters were widely popular, bringing a fresh, dynamic musical context to bible stories and simple songs of faith. Many of her later texts bring feminist theological perspectives to our hymnody, in beautiful poetry and melody. “Mother and God” (VU 280) and “Wellspring of Wisdom” (VU287) are two of her hymns in Voices United which we have frequently used at TSP.