We Will Draw Near

An interpretation of Karl Jenkins' Adiemus

Brother, may the Lord be with you
Like a shepherd in the field
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May that mean the whole world to you,
God's world ever given to you,
Blessing you no matter where you are.

Sister, may a world of peace be
With you everywhere you go,
Everywhere the meaning of Immanuel.
May it mean that God will hold you
Like a mother holds her child who
Looks into the eyes of loving care.

Refrain:
And may God's face shine upon you
With an everlasting smile,
Giving you the meaning of Immanuel.
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
May you know that God is with you everywhere.
(We will draw near.)
Immanuel! 
Immanuel!

(Repeat Refrain)

Child, may the grace of God be
Something you will come to know
Living in the meaning of Immanuel.
As you wander through the fold and
Grow beyond the mother's hold, may
You still know you are a child of God.

(Repeat Refrain)

May the hands of the father bless you.

(Immanuel!)

May the arms of the mother keep you.

(Immanuel!)

May the face of God shine on you.

(Immanuel!)

May the grace of the Lord go with you.

(Immanuel!)

May the peace of the world be in you.

(Immanuel!)

May you know God is always with you.

Immanuel!

Immanuel!

Simple Prayers

Simple prayers, each beginning the same.

   For the sparrow reluctant to sing (an introduction to Melodia):
      Thank you God for all that you give us.
      Thank you God  for everyone among us.
      Thank you God for being here with us.

   For the daily song discovered (an introduction to My Walking Song):
      Thank you God for walking with me --- teach me to pray.
      Thank you God for talking with me --- teach me to listen.
      Thank you God for telling me what I need to hear --- help me to remember.

   For untangling our lives (an introduction to Denouement):
      Thank you God for the fields around us.
      Thank you God for the winds that lift us.
      Thank you God for letting us go.

   For sanity beyond suffering (an introduction to A Starry Night):
      Thank you God for the ground and the sky.
      Thank you God for lights familiar.
      Thank you God for places beneath the stars.

   For the sun that rises over us all (an introduction to An Open Field):
      Thank you God for languages and perspectives.
      Thank you God for place and time,
      Thank you God for poetry and possibility.

   For unexpected moments (an introduction to The Pecatonica):
      Thank you God for the winding river.
      Thank you God for times together.
      Thank you God for the banks that rise above us.

   For all that we have to learn (an Introduction to Montrose Harbor):
      Thank you God for small sanctuaries.
      Thank you God for lakefront dawns.
      Thank you God for everywhere our journey leads us.

   For hope beyond the grave (an introduction to Mimus Polyglottus):
      Thank you God for chances to smile.
      Thank you God for lives to celebrate.
      Thank you God for songs to keep singing.

House

This is our new house, same as the old house,
Where we once lived before moving away
Into the next house, the house before this house
Ran out of room for a family to stay.
We thought the next house might be the last house
To live out our days in an ambient way
But this is the next house after the last house,
Where we once lived before moving away.

We thought the last house might be the best house,
And it was nice for a year and a day:
It was a new house, a nothing-to-do house,
All we could want for the price we could pay,
And it was a big house, a two story tall house,
A dream house for those who like dreaming that way;
At least it was newer and bigger than this house,
And it was nice for a year and a day,

But we missed our old house, our used-to-be-cold house,
And found our way back to a place we can say:
      "A house that is old is a house that’s well settled,
      A house that is small can be comfortably warm,
      And the house that is ours at the end of the day
      Is the house we return to, the house we call home."
This is a good house, the house we remember.
We’ve found our way back to a place we can stay.

Filling in the Blank

Theistic evolution,
that god plus evolution equals now
is your answer, and all that remains
is deciding who God is.  Yes,
and who are you and what is now
and where are we going from here?
I believe — do you want to know what I believe?
Not really, you say.  Clever little
conversation stopper, and yet
you have learned that you can
tell everyone what you believe
if only you do not lead with a question.
Believe it and impose it.
But I believe you are right.
(Now do you want to know?)
Blank plus evolution is, you say,
and we fill in the blank with
Buddha, Christ, Mohammed.
Or godlessness, emptiness, chance.
You get to choose what leads you to now:
the blank is true, and beyond this
we may never know the empirical truth
but we will rest in our faith.
But I believe — a statement, not a question,
that I cannot rest in godlessness,
that Genesis is true, setting us free,
that God is the beginning and the end,
the Big Bang and the final Word,
the constant Grace and the now,
Immanuel.  This is what I believe.

And you can call me, as you call yourself,
a theistic evolutionist with a neat little formula,
and you can rest in this, but now read on.
Read the poetry of John
and the songs of David,
the trial of Job and the angst of Qoheleth
Read the Gospels and Acts
and the letters to the early churches.
Read Revelation, and argue with it all,
question if you must, but register
all the incompetent hyper-human
history of one corner of the world,
the bumbling children of God,
trying to get to now,
trying to understand.

2

John wrote: this was Andrew’s random choice
for a moment of devotion, my sound request
in the midst of anger, vespers to escape
the disorderly storm...
and the soundless stream of consciousness
that flows into matins the morning after,
Where it is silent if not peaceful.  I write
as the children sleep.
I read: the Word, capital W.
I underline: the Word of life,
the Life made visible.
I know: we saw it, we share it
and now I write, small w,
that joy may be complete:
yours, ours,
we share this Life, capital L,
as we live in each other’s lives.

And now I am writing to you, son,
because your sins have been forgiven,
this is true, and I am writing to you, daughter,
because you have come to know the One,
the creator and the forgiver
who has existed since the beginning.
I am writing to you, children,
because you have defeated the darkness
and come to know the Father of all fathers
I am writing to you now
because you are strong
and filled with the Word
and continually filling in the blanks,
discovering the One
who has existed since the beginning,
sharing the One who forgives, the One
who first said, “Let there be Light.”

Beautiful choice, Andrew.
And Kirsten, beautiful premise.
There will be anger and insolence
and there will be times of silence too,
But you, each of you, are beautiful
and you complete the Joy, capital J,
that helps me fill in the blanks
Of my own life.

Sweet Charity

I watched a play, Sweet Charity, so full of social choreography and the edges of emotion, so typical a musical with everything on display, pleasantly raw, that I forgot for two hours, even more, that I was there alone.  Intermission reminded me, temporarily, while the house filtered into the lobby and the actors were left stuck in an elevator in the dark, but fifteen minutes later I sat down and got right back into the play, naively sweet yet cloyingly real how he was afraid to kiss her and she as avoiding the backstory.  And I admit, I was even close to tears, close to feeling my feet in their shoes, until the ending, oh.  An artless set of lies, an unrelented pause in the music, and awkward, beatless moves from stage left to stage right, until...  an hour later I'm alone, and painfully aware.

May 1

Originally there was a song in my head
    It was not sweet, like candy,
but fresh, like wind through the trees.

Once I was drawn to the songs of birds,
    until I began to hear the harmonies
of leaves, dancing ---

    less, I suppose, what the birds
        were singing about
    than where they were singing from.

Word

1

I begin with the premise that there is a God.

In the beginning: we start all over,
Where every good book must begin,
And not with “at” or “from” or “once upon,” but IN.
This is the story, the truth of God,
And here is the first thing we ought to know:
There is no moment where God did not exist.

God is the beginning, the action, the whole creation;
There can be no single point at which or from which
God the great I AM began to be.  God was 
In the beginning, as God is 
In the present and in the ever after, 
Not “to,” “until” or “of a time,” but IN.

And notice: it is the same beginning
In the days of Adam as in the days of Jesus.
Now is the spark of our creation,
And now the start of our salvation: 
God is in our birth and in our redemption,
The beginning of being and the stretch of eternity,
The breath of our formation and our resurrection,
All at once, our first day and our seventh day.

Evolutionists may stumble over the number of days,
Skeptics might question the progression of things,
But those who believe in this beginning
Know the same beginning can continue
From chapter to chapter, can be on every page:
God, who is, can be in our every hour,
Can breathe and beat with us forever,
Part of the conversation and in our endless prayer.

This is the premise I begin with:
And God said, and God saw what God created, 
And it was good.  Another day.

2

So in the beginning was the Word,
And what a beautiful word,
Capitalized and turned into poetry,
Written by Moses, thank you,
And John, thank you,
And God, thank you that every word
I write down, every word I hear and read
Is so wonderfully preceded.

And the word was with God,
And the word was God.
May the words of my mouth be pleasing,
And they will be, of course,
As long as I remember where they came from,
As long as we return with this respect:
We give thee but thine own.

This is my premise:
God is the word, my word,
The being in the beginning,
The presence of I AM, through which 
All other beings began:
Without God there is nothing;
God is always and everything,
Life over emptiness, light over darkness,
The life and light of every being,
The beginning of us all.

As sunlight pours into a darkened room
And changes everything,
So does the light and life of God
Shine into the universe: the darkness cannot win.
In the beginning, God said,
Let there be light,
And there was, and it was good.
God was in the beginning, 
Pouring light into the void and giving life
Now and ever after.  


3

See, and listen, this is my premise:
There is a light that gives
Its light to everyone,
A light coming into our world of darkness,
And light changes everything.

And everything changes with this:
God, Word, light, shining upon us.
Living in our world, walking with us,
God in the flesh, God with us,
Immanuel!

And anyone who recognizes receives,
And anyone who receives the light believes
That God is with us and we are living
In God’s world: IN God’s world
Anyone who sees the glory of this,
The grace and truth and fullness
Of God, the one and only Word
In the world, this is our privilege.

No one can see God, but anyone 
Can see what God makes known,
And by seeing, we are privileged
To be born of God, children of God,
Willed and determined by God alone.
I begin with this premise.