hymns, vol. 1, no. 3: be thou my vision

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THE WISDOM OF RIGHT NOW

When is the last time you laughed — a real belly laugh, a gasping-for-air, tears-in-your eyes kind of laugh? When’s the last time you wept, with uncontrollable tears that shake and rip the roots of your heart? How about the last time you got so caught up in the music of the moment that you truly danced?

The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, like so many of us, is on a search to find meaning in the midst of an otherwise meaningless existence. All things are “meaningless” (or “vanity”, depending on the translation of the Hebrew word “hevel”, which literally means “vapor”), declare the opening verses of this book of wisdom literature. Is meaning found in pleasure? in work? in knowledge? Is it graspable at all, or are we to despair in the futility of life’s seemingly endless search for meaninglessness? Or, so suggests the well-known third chapter of this book, is meaning to be found precisely in its elusiveness — in the passing of time, in the ups and the downs, in the ephemeral depths of each and every present moment?

Indeed, the writer declares, there is a time for everything under the sun: a time to be born and a time to die, a time for planting and for reaping, a time to embrace, a time to make war, a time to love, and a time to dance. So states the Teacher (in Hebrew, “qoholeth”): God has made everything “beautiful in its time”. Beautiful in its time, like a flower that blossoms and blooms even if only for a passing few days of spring. Beautiful in its time, like the golden hues of an aspen grove, nestled in the high mountains and hung in a shimmering moment of autumn before falling and returning to the earth. Beautiful in its time, like any human who has ever breathed and every human whose breath has ceased.

And yet, even so, the human heart is kissed with a whispered hint of eternity, a faint grasping for more and a longing for what will have been. It manifests itself in those quiet, sighing moments of remembering that all must pass and in the stinging hope that perhaps we were made for more. It’s found in the bittersweet awareness that we humans only ever exist in this moment and this now, carried along by the linear passing of time. And, if followed to its end (which somehow always leads precisely to where one began the journey!), it unfolds like a lotus flower and reveals the bejeweled wisdom that “there is nothing better . . . than to be joyful and to do good” — that “this is God’s gift to man”.

So, again, when is the last time you experienced this joy, this ecstastic knowing of the true nature of things? When is the last time you went so deep into the present moment that you lost yourself in the rapturous discovery of the Reality and goodness buried within? When is the last time you danced?

This arrangement of be thou my vision is an invitation to dance. It’s a joyful spinning of a song accompanied by the inherently percussive nature of the piano. The left hand sets the rhythm into motion like the laughing of an acoustic guitar, whose constancy invites the right hand’s melody to sing and spin and dance like a rolling banjo overbrimming with glee. The effect is that of a hymn that grabs you by the hand and gives you no choice but to join in its praise. It’s a swirling dance that simply must come from the heart, where it beats and breathes now. It’s a letting-go into the goodness of God revealed in this moment in time, and it’s an enthusiastic yes to his invitation to dance — right now.