This, Our Joyful Hymn of Praise

The first time I sang John Rutter's "For the Beauty of the Earth" was in about 4th grade.  We sang it at a choir camp I went to many years when I was in school.  I googled it, and the camp is still going on (and it actually started two years before I was born!).  Same camp director too, one of my heroes (literally...he once saved my life!).

I love this arrangement.  It's simple, and a lot of choral geeks turn their noses up at it.  The harmonic language isn't complex, nor is the rhythm.  The notes are easy to find (although to make them move lightly can be a challenge!).  I have some colleagues who would say there just isn't "a lot of beef there," and they are right.  But that's part of the charm for me.  The idea of lifting a hymn of praise to God in thanksgiving for all we have been given shouldn't be hard or severe.  It should roll of our tongues easily, as if we are making it up as we go along.

Others don't like the piece because it's overplayed.  That may be true.  But I love it so much I could listen to it every day...and twice on Sunday.  It's not just the lilt in the accompaniment.  It's the way the warmth of the piece builds from beginning to end along with the text.  What begins as a fairly simple and somewhat detached verse about the earth and the skies and the love around us moves through the joy of human love (brother, sister, parent, child) to the profound gift of God's Self to us and "Graces human and divine."

It's curious, too, that this piece, clearly a song of thanksgiving to God, does not include the word "thanks" even once.  The text by FS Pierpoint simply provides a list of things for which we are thankful and then says, "Lord of all, to thee we raise this our joyful hymn of praise."  That refrain is a little tweak of the original text, actually.  The original text is "Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise." That change, to me, is magic.  Because thanksgiving, at it's heart, should be a joyful act.  Too often we are driven to thanksgiving by a sense of obligation.  But the best thanksgiving really is a bubbling over of joy that can't be contained.

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Two days ago I was at the store looking for some Halloween candy.  The Halloween seasonal aisle had been relocated to the front of the store in the discount bins, and Christmas merchandise had taken its place.  I know the appropriate time to decorate for Christmas is hotly debated, and especially in 2020 perhaps a little early holiday cheer could be helpful for us all.  But what if--what if we took a moment to give Thanksgiving its due? Not just as a holiday (though it's probably my favorite holiday)...as a way of life.

I worry that we have collectively forgotten what it means to be thankful at the deepest levels of our hearts, and it's evident in our gliding gracefully from the indulgence of Halloween to the saccharin of Christmas (moving from one sweet thing to the next, if you will).  We've forgotten the joy of thanksgiving, which I guess was inevitable when the holiday became more about food than anything else.

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In my mind, thanksgiving is the last and most important step in healing.  Being thankful means that you have reconciled, but it means more than that.  It means you have begun to see the tapestry of life from enough distance that you can appreciate how the threads compliment each other and work together to weave a compelling story. I know I have healed when I look back on an experience or a relationship and see past the hurt and suffering to the ways it has brought me to who I am--and I begin to consider the ways I am better for it.

This conception of being thankful is something I return to from time to time.  I keep rediscovering it like a Journey album from high school.  Or like a piece of music, learned long ago and sung many times throughout the years in different churches with different friends along the way.  For those friends, for those experiences, for this journey...

...Lord of all, to thee we raise this our joyful hymn of praise.