Crying out from the ground

Adam's sons walking out to the field, 

Cain with rage, jealous rage, in his eyes,

Rising up, strikes with harm in his heart.

Abel falls to the ground and he dies.

See our God, from on high:

Hear the sorrow for his child; hear the sound.

Know that God, from on high,

Heard his blood crying out from the ground.

 

Through the years, countless numbers have died,

Shot or hung, all because of their race; 

It is sin, it is crime and much more

To see justice denied in each case.

See our God, from on high:

Hear the sorrow for his children abound.

Know that God, from on high,

Hears their blood crying out from the ground.

 

If we say we seek justice for God,

And the Spirit we seek to obey,

Then this wrong we can no more deny

And this truth can no more turn away.

See our God, from on high; 

Let this sorrow in our hearts now be found.

Like our God, so may we

Hear their blood crying out from the ground.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, February 2022.

MUSIC: Tune SWEET BY AND BY, Joseph P. Webster, 1868. 

 

 

Background: on February 19 I attended a Soil Collection Ceremony sponsored by a local remembrance group with support from the Equal Justice Initiative, an act of remembering the lynchings of five different individuals (one a child), from the 1880s to the 1920s, in the eastern towns of this county. Soil from roughly the lynching cites had been collected and added to two jars, one of which will stay in this county and the other will go to the EJI Legacy Museum in Montgomery. This text comes of taking in and processing this experience. (I will admit that placing this text, with its focus squarely on remembering wrongs done on this earth, with a tune associated with a rather heaven-as-escapist-fantasy song does have some satisfaction.)

Psalm 146 (a collaboration!)

 It's been a while since I posted here, but that doesn't mean I haven't written anything. This link will take you to Psalm 146, a paraphrase of that psalm written in collaboration with Greg Scheer. Folks who follow congregational song will likely recognize the name (his work does show up in Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal). 

Somehow he got my name, apparently from someone involved with The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, and he invited me to try out a psalm for him to set. Psalm 146 has been my favorite psalm for a while, I think, and no one else had claimed it, so I gave it a shot.

If you actually look at the hymns I typically post here, you'll know that virtually all of them are written to existing hymn tunes (or the occasional folk tune or other), and Scheer's style is typically different. This was the occasion to stretch myself, which I should probably do if I intend to continue writing words for congregational song (which feels like a calling at this point, so...). 

Permissions for use would need to come from Scheer at this point, if that is something anyone would intend to do. For me, it's been a new and enlightening experience and one I'd be happy to do again, if I'm not getting interrupted by travel and medical exams and other stuff. 

That isn't the only thing I've been working on; I'm trying to do English versifications of Japanese hymns, if you can believe that. But I feel something of my own coming on, so perhaps it will show itself before the end of the month.