When Günter Schlechter, a friend who conducts a choir in Schleswig, asked me for a hymn for St Martin’s Day 2018, I was moved, not least because I had been wondering how Germans would keep the centenary of the end Read More …
* This hymn has grown from thinking about Rebekah’s difficult pregnancy and the birth of the twins Esau and Israel. The matriarchal womb.midi COMMENTARY The beginnings of this hymn lay in the suicidal feelings of Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, 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 …
*** Facing up to inconvenient and unpalatable truths provides the background for this hymn. If Jeremiah featured in the Christian Calendar of Saints, this hymn could be sung on his feast-day. Sovereign of each unfolding hour.midi COMMENTARY A fully-formed hymn, it is often Read More …
*** This hymn is a prayer for weapons disarmament and the promotion of divine love as the means to establish world peace. COMMENTARY A celebrated prophecy envisages divine intervention on behalf of God’s people who have long suffered from violent Read More …
*** This hymn echoes a Scriptural call for real, not token, fasting. COMMENTARY This hymn offers an unfolding of the prophetic call to repentance in Isaiah 58.1-12. The prophecy is concerned with social justice and with building communities of mutual Read More …
*** This hymn is based on two Scripture stories that tell of highly significant pregnancies. Brooding love, creative breath.midi COMMENTARY In Isaiah (A) young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. Matthew says that Read More …
I first met this hymn, to the great tune KINGS LYNN, as a student, and it moved me to want to serve almost more than any other. For a dramatic presentation in Lent 1974 I intentionally gave Chesterton’s words a Read More …