Spirit, Holy Gift of the Father

Spirit, Holy gift of the Father,
Gentle witness to Jesus,
Bright burning fire

You lingered affirming the work of redemption,
You descended with gifts for the Lamb’s chosen ones.
Effecting the work of the Son and the Father
Bringing to memory the words of the Son,
Bringing to memory all He has done.

Spirit, Holy Gift of the Father,
Gentle witness to Jesus,
Bright burning flame.

I think I have been a commissioner to presbytery about a year and a half, probably for about nine meetings. I can’t really remember, but the point is we have sung a particular song about five times now. It has a nice melody but the words remind me of Hegel’s idea of the spirit moving and evolving through history helping humanity progress to greater heights and “bold new decisions.” (And, yes, Hegel would have mentioned the cross and the stable.)

The song is politically correct. It’s the women who have visions; it seems the men need to “clear their eyes.” Hegel’s spirit is not really biblical and a lot of false philosophy and theology have been perpetrated on his philosophical foundation. This song has potential; but for what? However, a wonderful thing happened as we sang the song this last time.

Have you ever read a good English novel where as the plot thickens a great storm intercedes tearing everything apart so that the author of the story can put it all back to rights. Or think of C.S. Lewis’s The Hideous Strength where at the end you have ancient Merlin appearing speaking in a strange ancient language and with him a great catastrophe wipes out everyone’s plans. That is every one's plans except for the main character Ransom and all the benevolent Powers of heaven. It’s really a wonderful English tradition.

So, back to the event. Well, I am not actually sure what was wrong but it seemed like the organist wasn't playing the right notes at the right time. Or maybe he was just playing the refrain all the time as we were singing both the refrain and the verses. Most of the words never got sung although we tried to sing the whole song. Anyway it was like a good English novel or mystery, but it caused me to think about the words and how I would like to write a different version. But of course I have no sense of meter or much musical background so I have just began writing a kind of poem song as you can see at the beginning of this post.

It is my attempt to say what I wish the song was really about:

Spirit, Holy gift of the Father
Gentle witness to Jesus
Bright burning flame

I’m still working on it as you can tell.