A holy air

 I was talking with a friend earlier this evening when she burst out with the first few lines of a hymn from the Christian Science Hymnal with such fervour it almost took my breath away.

    "A holy air is breathing round" she began.

    "A fragrance from above" she continued.

We looked it up in the hymn book and found it is number 4!

We completed the verse:

    "Be every thought from sense unbound, / Be every action love."

The joy of the verse spilling out from my friend reminded me of a time, some years ago, when our little congregation in Sydney substituted the recitation of a poem for the usual sung solo in the Sunday church service. The result was uplifting and much appreciated.

The words of the hymn, called "Pater Noster" - "Our Father" - are by Dr. Abiel Abbot Livermore (1811-1892). The very useful Concordance to Christian Science Hymnal and Hymnal Notes (available in most Christian Science Reading Rooms) explains that Dr. Livermore "was a Unitarian minister of Keene, New Hampshire, who later became president of the Theological School at Meadville, Pennsylvania."'

The music, by Dr. Percy C. Buck, employs a "free rhythm melody". Dr. Buck "believed that here was an opportunity to advance the music [at Harrow, where he taught] beyond the square-cut form of the conventional hymn tune" (ibid p 177). "After he left Harrow Dr. Buck found that many of his old boys remembered these tunes and even asked to include them in other hymn books" (ibid).

This might encourage congregations to have a new look at Dr. Buck's hymns. And to revisit hymn 4! Thank you DJ.

Julie Swannell

Sympathy

 I’m reacquainting myself with a wonderful poem in Mary Baker Eddy’s autobiographical work Retrospection and Introspection. 

The poem begins:

Ask God to give thee skill

In comfort’s art:

That thou may’st consecrated be

It appears on page 95, and although Mrs. Eddy does not name the poem, I can state that it is called “Sympathy”.

 

Mrs. Eddy gives the name of the poet as A. E. Hamilton. Last year I read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and noted that he wrote poetry, so I wondered if this poem could possibly have been written by him. (The title of the book is simply Alexander Hamilton. It is a very fine read indeed. And there is a musical Alexander Hamilton!!)

 

As I have written next to the poem in my copy of Prose Works (by Mary Baker Eddy), my research told me that Alexander Hamilton did not write it. Annie Hamilton did. And that Annie was from Dublin, Ireland, and that her dates were 1843-1875. She died at Castle Hamilton, County Cavan, Ireland. She published under initials only.

 

And now I cannot verify that information through the internet!!

 

How the student of Christian Science yearns to be given the “...skill / In comfort’s art”, spoken of in the poem. He knows so well that “...comforters are needed much / Of Christlike touch.”

 

Let us never stop yearning for such skill. And appreciating the wonderful poem.

Joyce Voysey

Outcome and income

Many poems have helped me over the years. One is called “Mind’s outcome: income” by Steven Alan Avey, published in the May 1979 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

The poem employs a lovely rhythm and repetition that invite me to press on to the next idea and are helpful in memorizing. It also employs all seven synonyms for God found in the Christian Science textbook (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy). This encourages the reader to continue on to see the role of each of those synonyms in working out that our income is Mind’s outcome – what Mr. Avey calls “usable ideas that develop themselves into action”. I love this!

I couldn’t quite remember the name of this poem and thought it used the word “outgo”. (It doesn’t; it uses “outcome” instead.) Anyway in my search on jsh-online.com I found a lovely idea that seems relevant to the topic of income. Writing in the Christian Science Sentinel, 29 Jan 1979, Geoffrey Barratt states that “there is no "fixed income," because the "outgo" from God is not limited, the infinite good that floods from eternal Love is not frozen” (More than ‘millionaires’).

We can’t print Avey’s entire poem here, so here’s a morsel:

Mind’s outcome: income

Steven Alan Avey

Yield to Spirit, and

in come usable ideas

that develop themselves

into action.

 

Look to Love, and

practice kinder ways

of caring for yourself

and your community…

I hope everyone can read the whole poem and perhaps pop a copy up on their fridge, where it sat in our family home for many years.

Do you have a favourite poem? Please share it with us.

Julie Swannell