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Sometimes I use too many words. Here, the lines are—I believe—short and simple, as both indicated and mandated by their poetic meter: 2.6.6.2.6.6.6.3.3 When writing a hymn I try to craft words and phrases that carry particular meaning for the commissioning body, yet are open to wider Christian use. Thus, in stanza 1, "from the shore to the hills, from the hills to the plain" suggests a typical kind of journey but also hints at the sometimes forced migrations of the first "latter day saints." Other phrases with a double reference include "to the worship of force and the praise of revenge Christ Jesus teaches peace"; "Christ sings...in a people reborn, reconciling, re-named"; and "in communion feast and community praise Christ Jesus makes us one." PastorAs a pastoral poet, I am called to offer hymns through which a congregation can express itself as a body of Christian believers. In 1968 I was, literally, pastor ("minister") of the Congregational Church in Hockley, Essex, England. Ten days before Easter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Neither I nor anyone else in that congregation had visited the United States, but the Civil Rights Movement had gripped our attention and gained our admiration because of the justice of its cause and its well-organized non-violent methods. We were shocked and saddened by Dr. King's death. I knew that I could not go into the pulpit on Easter Sunday morning and say nothing about it. The immediate Sunday was too soon, and the Good Friday worship service was not an option, because it was a neighborhood ecumenical service, and I was not the preacher. So I began to work on my sermon, trying to find Easter hope in what had happened. As I worked, I looked through our hymnal, Congregational Praise. Though good for its time, it did not meet every need. All the Easter hymns seemed to be about a great triumph, long ago, far away, and high above. There was nothing that suggested Christ could be alive among us now, giving hope in the midst of our sorrow and loss. I therefore decided to write a new hymn, to be sung to the well-known joyful tune, Truro. As preacher, I had the duty of saying what I thought needed to be said to the congregation. As a pastoral hymn poet, my task was to craft words that we could all sing together with integrity. As I wrote, I imagined myself stepping down from the pulpit, sitting in the congregation, and asking, "What do we need to sing together, today?" As always, I looked for words and phrases appropriate to the occasion, yet not tied to it. Here is the text, as revised in the early 1990s:
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