So I’ve blogged for ages and ages about retooling sung worship, and adding more of the earthy and mystical and poetic and ancient and future into the lyrics, melodies, etc…pretty funny ’cause I’m not a songwriter per se.
As I said recently on Dan Wilt’s blog:
I’d love to take a lot of the practical developmental wisdom from Christian writers in the contemplative/mystical tradition, when they wrote of the disciple’s spiritual ’stages of ascent’ toward the ‘renewing of the mind’ and one’s conscious union with God. (Also the East Orthodox tradition of ‘theosis’ or ‘divinization’) I’d like to take some of this poetry, this wisdom, from writers from Meister Eckhart to Hildegard von Bingen (herself a composer) to Francois Fenelon to Evelyn Underhill, and put it to music, put it to worshipful poetry that will itself be a transformative contemplative experience, by God’s grace.
Well, now I’m putting my moolah where my mouth is, and am showing you, with fear and trepidation, a reworking/word-play of a revered hymn hagiographically attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux. I emphasise that this is a rough cut; it’s probably off-meter and incoherent and heretical and in need of cuts, rearrangements, and additional verses. If it helps you with the tune, read along with the instrumental video, below. Give me your thoughts – and additional/reworked verses! – in the Comments below. We’ll write us something good, uh-hunh.
O Sacred Wound, Now Headed
O sacred Wound now headed, with momentum unbound
Here so fully sustaining, G-D’s absence presence now
How thin the lines of aging, on his receding face
Molecules rearranging, in every moment’s grace
My G-d, what abyss endured, within her hollow eyes
Plunge in the darksome cavern, its here we realize
How long do we see faces ‘ere facing what we see
Vouchsafing quiet courage, for Others simply Be
Omega, now receive thee, G-dhead from you does pour
Lo, here we fall, Redeemer! Plunged outward and before
Our outstretched hand does meet yours, in emptiness delight
Our glasses flicker dimly dissolving light from light
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