To help in preparation for the Lambeth Conference of 2008, hymns were asked for. The context of the conference was extremely painful, and there were fears that the Anglican Communion might break apart. This hymn was my submission. To shape the text, Read More …
I had been accompanying contralto Eileen Wetherell for some years, during which time she was accepted for ordination training. Following the General Synod vote in November 1992 to accept women as priests in the Church of England, and after Eileen’s Read More …
The music of this setting of the Nunc Dimittis was composed in 1973 as a song with original words for the old man Simeon in Luke 2.29-32. I adapted that song as solo Nunc Dimittis for the funeral in 2013 of Read More …
An unfolding of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus, as you travelled (midi)
I made this song – ‘a Priest’s Prayer’ – to mark the ordinations in 2007 of Rosalind Paul in Truro and John Horton in Coventry. The repeat verse uses the first person plural (“Burn up all our deadly wounds”) to Read More …
* This text from 2002 was my offering to a ‘hymnsearch’ promoted by a church in the USA, who asked for ‘A hymn to call the Church to affirm gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, and to celebrate their gifts and ministries’. During the course Read More …
*** This hymn, a kind of conversation with Paul, aims to help him be better understood by his readers. Those who bring good news of Jesus.midi COMMENTARY The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.[1] Read More …
*** This hymn is based on a passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. In that passage Paul is addressing his readers, but in the hymn those readers (us?) become the singers. The letter is famous for its warm and affectionate tone, Read More …
*** An achingly beautiful melody, hauntingly harmonised, to express an attempted response to Jesus’ comment on the seventh Commandment. COMMENTARY This hymn responds to what may be presumed to be one of Christianity’s most deeply felt conversation-killers: You have heard Read More …
* This hymn for Mothering Sunday comes from the conviction that ‘Christ’s love makes mothers of us all’. Conceived within the womb of Christ.midi COMMENTARY Some people attending a service for ‘Mothers’ Day’ were baffled by this hymn’s insistence that it Read More …