Hymn Blog - January 29, 2012

January 29, 2012

VU 892 – Who Comes from God? This text is based on the 7^th chapter of the book of Wisdom in the apocrypha. Holy Wisdom is personified as a female figure (Sophia in Greek) who does what God does: creates the world, frees the Hebrew people, and guides the faithful. Author Patrick Michaels is Minister of Music at St. James’s Episcopal Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Director of Chapel Music at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge.  He developed this text to fit a favorite childhood hymn tune, SALVE REGINA COELITUM, associated with the Marian hymn of the same name.

MV 159 – In Star and Crescent. This is a beautiful interfaith hymn. The text, with its stunning imagery, is by Mary Louise Bringle of Brevard College in Brevard, NC, where she is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and French, and chair of the Humanities Division. A teacher at heart and a theologian by training (with a Ph.D. from Emory University and an assortment of publications in pastoral theology), she turned her hand to hymn text writing at the turn of the millennium. Since 2000, she has won a number of hymn writing competitions, been featured as an “emerging text writer” by The Hymn Society in the US and Canada, and had her first single-author collection (Joy and Wonder, Love and Longing) published by GIA, for whom she is now translating Spanish language hymns into English. She is a past president of The Hymn Society. The tune, AMITY, is by Jane Best, a church musician at All Saints Anglican Church in Gore Bay, Ontario, on Manitoulin Island. She has a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Toronto and many years' experience leading music in United and Anglican churches.

MV 165 – There is a Time. Words and music are by American Carolyn McDade, who is well known for her songs of personal and social transformation.  She is a lover of language and sound. A writer of sound, she is committed to the power of the human voice singing and speaking truth to move society to just and liberating transformation. Through song and singing she helps us deepen human consciousness and understand ourselves as part of a living planet. For over three decades she has brought circles of women together to sing songs rooted in women's experiences. A social activist, she weaves together the spiritual and the political - integrating personal, social, planetary, cosmic. She describes herself simply as a woman of faith seeking with others to touch what matters. Carolyn's recorded music dates back to the early 1970's. Over the years she has organized 13 recording projects that grew out of her singing circles. Each project involved activist women and a growing body of gifted and accomplished professional musicians. This arrangement is by Lydia Pederson, former music director at Royal York Road United Church, and active member of the Hymn Society.