Drifting fog on a Saturday morning
For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God.
For his gifts to every nation, thanks be to God.
For the plowing, sowing, reaping, silent growth while we are sleeping,
future needs in earth's safe keeping, thanks be to God.
Words: F Pratt Green; Hymn tune: "East Acklam," Francis Jackson
The sequence hymn at Trinity Cathedral yesterday morning has continued to draw my attention, the words above being the first stanza (1). Although I consider myself a student of the Episcopal hymnal, I cannot say I have ever even noticed this hymn. It certainly takes a confident music program to include a piece so unfamiliar in the congregational singing on a Sunday morning. It's an example to my mind of a just-right combination of words and music, each one improving the other and producing something very special in the process. The singing of that hymn both takes me back and urges me forward.
I go back, in this instance, a single day -- to the early morning walk Belle and I enjoyed on Saturday after Tal left for fishing with his son. The air was damp and slightly cool. There was a drifting fog that made the little part of the world in which she and walked dreamy and soft. In this photograph which I made during that hour I can see, I think, what the poet, F Pratt Green, was striving to express. I cannot get out of my mind the line: "future needs in earth's safe keeping." What a beautiful safe-keeping box this scene is. Serene, but alive.
So much goes on out of our sight. I never ceased to be surprised, for example, with the emerging crocus in the dead of winter. When everything is silent, brown, still, the earth is pushing to the surface those wondrous first flowers, long before spring. What we need is being prepared. Indeed.
I am also urged into the future, wondering about more than what is forming up, rallying for its moment to break forth from the earth, as rich as it is. There is activity going on in me and in Tal and in us all, as well. What was born with us that we've not yet discovered? What is being nurtured that I don't yet perceive? What might those hidden stores actually be capable of producing? Will I be brave enough to let something new and different break the surface and come to light?
I'm extending an invitation to myself to find out. What about you?
(1) "For the fruit of all creation," Hymn #424, The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated)
I go back, in this instance, a single day -- to the early morning walk Belle and I enjoyed on Saturday after Tal left for fishing with his son. The air was damp and slightly cool. There was a drifting fog that made the little part of the world in which she and walked dreamy and soft. In this photograph which I made during that hour I can see, I think, what the poet, F Pratt Green, was striving to express. I cannot get out of my mind the line: "future needs in earth's safe keeping." What a beautiful safe-keeping box this scene is. Serene, but alive.
So much goes on out of our sight. I never ceased to be surprised, for example, with the emerging crocus in the dead of winter. When everything is silent, brown, still, the earth is pushing to the surface those wondrous first flowers, long before spring. What we need is being prepared. Indeed.
I am also urged into the future, wondering about more than what is forming up, rallying for its moment to break forth from the earth, as rich as it is. There is activity going on in me and in Tal and in us all, as well. What was born with us that we've not yet discovered? What is being nurtured that I don't yet perceive? What might those hidden stores actually be capable of producing? Will I be brave enough to let something new and different break the surface and come to light?
I'm extending an invitation to myself to find out. What about you?
(1) "For the fruit of all creation," Hymn #424, The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated)
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