Blood runs in the streets. Where shall we place the blame when blood is blood, and death is death? We descend into the flame. “Abandon hope, ye who enter.” We did that long ago, it seems. Lucifer is our landlord; we mortgage our bedraggled dreams. Rage is our handmaiden and violence our chosen part. We know these paths; the weary way from Ferguson to Charlotte And on, God help us, on and on to killing fields as yet unknown. Shoot first and question later is the moral of the gun. When we look into another’s eyes and see their hate or fear, is it not our own reflection that seems to us most clear? PAUL HOOKER is a teaching elder member of New Covenant Presbytery and associate dean for ministerial formation and advanced studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. … [Read more...]
Woodwork
It’s about the blood — joining boards at angles, edges are negotiations, prone to pinch, and nails pierce like talking points, splinters burn like lightning beneath the skin — red stains in the palms of hands. It’s about the blood — a lifetime of little cuts saw-blade nicks chisel slips on turning lathes scrapes from roughened surfaces in rapid motion, currency to pay for chalices and tables, for chair legs in church parlors, and for crosses. Always crosses. It’s about the blood smeared on every lintel, doorpost, pulpit, pew — forensic faithfulness: a wound for every wonder. Impassive as a judge’s smile, the paschal lamb has nothing more to say after the planer’s blade has smoothed the ragged faces of the cross, and with every hammer-blow the blood sinks deeper in the heartwood unseen and silent, until all that’s left is argument, quid pro quo. Leave the dead behind in the night when angels pass, and head for parted water. But it’s about the … [Read more...]
Silence Falls – Advent hymn
A new hymn for Advent by Paul Hooker. Your hymn purchase includes downloads of a PDF of the lyrics scored with the music for a half-page regular sheet of paper, a second PDF of the lyrics scored with music for a half-page of legal-sized paper (large print) and a document with lyrics only. You have permission to print as many copies as needed for your use. Click here to purchase "Silence Falls" for $10. PAUL HOOKER is a teaching elder member of New Covenant Presbytery and associate dean for ministerial formation and advanced studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Silence Falls NOEL NOUVELET (“Sing We Now of Christmas”) Silence falls in moonlight on a manger bare in the gath’ring midnight, ‘ere the shepherds’ care; in darkness waiting, still in death’s own fold, we anticipate the ancient story told. Silence falls in whispers, trembling in fear; hearts will quake at this: the time is drawing near. Though kings may plait for him a crown … [Read more...]
A prayer before Advent (hymn)
This hymn is free for congregations to use to support recovery efforts for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. It is based on Mark 13:24-27 and was written to be sung to the tune, THAXTED (#341 in Glory to God). In the wind that howls, the deep’ning dark, when rains begin to fall and the hopes we cherish most in life are shrouded in their pall, then at last we lift our vision; then at last we strain our ear for the word of sweet deliv’rance: our rescuer draws near. Teach us, Lord, to rescue others, and to find as we are found, until all your people reach the shore and stand on higher ground. O that you, O God, would tear the skies and to the earth descend ‘mid the trembling mountain’s tumult, ‘mid fear that knows no end. Though the stars may leave their places, constellations cease to be, though the world we know and all we love lost to memory, still we wait, Lord, rapt in wonder, ‘til morning’s sun shall rise, ‘til the clouds are rent … [Read more...]
The thirty-two-foot principal
When called for, or at the organist’s discretion, at the end of lines, or when otherwise the melody pauses, as though gathering itself before plunging on to whatever denouement awaits— in those moments of blessed silence there lingers a shaking in the rafters, a rattling in panes. Foundations quake, assumptions rearrange. The thirty-two-foot principal, low C. Neither note nor sound, but wave, a cosmic rumble, as if the bowels of earth are in distress, as if somewhere not all that far away a newborn thunderstorm is forming, as if it has occurred to the Eternal that one could draw a breath to speak a word that might become the jussive of creation’s grammar and separate the darkness and the light. Low frequency high amplitude vibrations seem to the ear like oceans made of air; we rise and fall on surging tidal swells of sound and not just sound but something more. Between compression and rarefaction lies the Truth, and in the Truth, the Trust that sunk below the deep … [Read more...]
The Space Between
There is a space between one word and another, a gap that yawns between truth and truth, between hands reached out to aid the crossing and those who cross in peril or in hope. Explorers on a glacier, balancing on ladders above a deep crevasse — blue-black well-shaft to the world’s dark frozen heart — we teeter from word to word, from fingertip to fingertip. God help us lest we fall between, the meaning lost and frozen. Inured to the space between, we trust our eyes to skip from rung to rung without thinking of the abyss till it lurches up between to snatch and send us hurtling to oblivion. It cannot be otherwise, lest we venture neither ice, nor word nor touch, lest we never dare to make the journey to the pole. This space between that bears up foot or tongue or heart along this frigid trek, is it not love — that fills the hungering chasm between the words, between the you-and-I between the now-and-then, between heartache and heart’s desire — is it not … [Read more...]
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