What of the stanzas we never sing?

It was a silly conversation between myself and my mentor some 40+ years ago. We were sitting in his study just a few hundred yards off Princes Street in Edinburgh, and the conversation began quite serious concerning the “after life” but as it progressed with both of us trying to reach for words that didn’t exist, and as we tried to explain the unexplainable and comprehend the incomprehensible, my mentor to lighten the moment said “if I ever come back, I would never want to come back as a verse two of a hymn” I asked “why” and his reply “they are always getting cut”! Laughter prevailed! My apologies to Lutherans who only ever sing all the verses of the hymns, regardless! We never sing verse 2 and 3 of the British National Anthem nor do we ever sing more than the first verse of the American National Anthem – so go figure! I much prefer the hymn This is my song, to the tune Finlandia –

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are ev’rywhere as blue as mine.
So hear my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my prayer, O God of all earth’s kingdoms,
your kingdom come; on earth your will be done.
O God, be lifted up till all shall serve you,
and hearts united learn to live as one.
So hear my prayer, O God of all the nations;
myself I give you; let your will be done.

Limon’s poem strikes many good lines. As we move into the summer season my “posts” will certainly be very random as over the next four months I will have the opportunity to travel near and far. Pause, ponder and pray.

A New National Anthem

The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough? Ada Limon

Prayer:
Lord God, of all nations and of all peoples,
hear the prayers we offer, even as we call you
by different names. Yes, O Lord we treasure and
cherish the land of our birth even though we may
now call other other lands home. Help us to sing
our songs in a way that never drowns out the
songs of others. Together may our songs
though different in key sound out a harmony
of peace and grace, love and friendship, to native
and foreigner. Amen.