So we say so long, adieu, au revoir, auf wiedersehen… Vera Lynn’s anthem affirms, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…”

            In a more raucous format, so did Bill Haley’s “See you later alligator. “

            Except that at my age, there may not be a next time. 

Hungering for a ritual

            I keep feeling that I need some words, some ritual, to acknowledge what this person has meant to me. 

            Just in case, y’know. 

            Some routines aren’t necessarily helpful. 

            Anne Edison-Albright described a military couple’s unconscious ritual: “A week or two before Bob had to leave for his next deployment, Bob and Barb would start fighting. As the deployment date neared, one or both would anticipate the grief of parting and pick a fight to make saying goodbye feel a little easier.”

            That’s not what I want. 

            Nor do I want gushy tributes: “I’ll always be grateful to you for….” 

            For teaching me fly fishing. For introducing me to literature. Or classical music. Or Mexican food. For going camping or hiking or boating. For loving me even when I wasn’t very lovable.

            Should you deliver a eulogy every time you say goodbye?

Adapting existing texts

            I looked up some famous parting lines in the Bible: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you…”

            And the cautionary separation, between two shysters: “The Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from the other.”

            But neither of those expresses gratitude for our human relationship. They’re about you and God, not about you and me. 

            Judaism’s Hadran Alakh was formulated to say goodbye to a sacred text one has been studying. Rabbi Knapp wondered, “What if we reconstructed our understanding of sacred texts? What if we are sacred texts?”

            If so, an adapted Hadran Alakh might say, “We will return to you, holy sacred ones, and you will return to us; our mind is on you and your mind is on us; we will not forget you, and you will not forget us.”

            A prayer found in the journals of Dag Hammerskjold, after his UN flight was shot down in the Congo, says simply, “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.”

            I wondered about modifying his words: “For all that we have meant to each other, thanks. For whatever comes next, our bond will remain unbroken.”

            Or maybe that’s getting too complicated. Maybe a sincere hug or handshake is enough, with the words, “Just in case…”

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Apparently quite a few of you had never known what those “metrical index” numbers on hymn tunes meant, before last week’s column. 

            For example, Isabel Gibson wrote, “Well, live and learn. I never knew that about hymn notation, although I've felt vaguely aggrieved when the organist struck up the Wrong Music for a familiar hymn. I expect there's a YouTube channel devoted to this sort of thing.”

            JT: Is there such a YouTube channel? Does anyone know? It would certainly be fun to explore.

Sandy Warren, too: “I could picture immediately the metrical code numbers you explained. I've always seen them and have never asked what they mean. It's fun trying to switch the words to a different tune. Some are surprisingly difficult -- I can get started, but then after the first few words I realized I'm back into the 'right' words, the ones I've always known to go with that tune. The one that keeps making me laugh (and will still be in my head hours from now) is the Doxologysung to Hernando's Hideaway. It will make me smile in church tomorrow too.”

“Wow!  I had forgotten about Hernando’s Hideaway!” Louise Burton wrote. [JT: Perhaps you have to be of a certain age to remember it?] 

            Louise went on, “While in Young Peoples during my university years, we were expected to take leadership of one evening service each winter. We tried to be wildly progressive -- but in thinking back we only slightly tweaked all the regular stuff, and Hernando's Hideaway was the offertory!  We had it end with a resounding Amen! Some of the Sunday evening regulars weren’t really impressed.”

John Bird, who wrote the Wood Lake book The Spirituality of Music, has a favourite music switch: “Amazing Grace to the common tune for House of the Rising Sun. The effect is quite powerful. Less appropriate, but amusing nonetheless, is to use the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.”

Priscilla Gifford offered another switch: “This column kept me busy for a while.  Thanks. On a similar note, in The Music Man the rune for Goodnight My Someone is the same tune as its theme song Seventy-Six Trombones, but played in a slower 3/4 time .

Duncan Jeffrey has been practicing changing hymn tunes for years: “As a recently retired Presbyterian minister, I was never blessed with Presbyterian organists: Anglican, African Methodist Episcopal, Seventh Day Adventist were my chief musicians. So I have always selected praise and (where necessary) switched tunes thanks to the mysteries at the back of the Book of Praise, and, (you might enjoy this): The Search Page for the Presbyterian Book of Praise assembled and maintained by Heather Patey, a dedicated organist in Newfoundland that plays midi files of any tune (in the BP).  As Common Meter governs the majority of our hymns -- they can also be sung to blues tunes. Both the Lord's my Shepherd and Amazing Grace can be sung to The House of the Rising Sun.”

Tom Watson focussed on the earworm experience: “Earworms can trigger memories, be fun to play with, or can be just plain exasperating. Recently, I watched an 8-episode Netflix miniseries called "Safe" based on a novel by Harlan Coben; the song that began each episode was Barns Courtney's song Glitter and Gold. It fit the story, but the dadblasted song kept in my head for a week afterwards.”

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Psalm paraphrase

Psalm 104 comes up every year for Pentecost Sunday. I have four paraphrases of it, but I think I like this one best.

Millions of species, billions of galaxies –

Numbers become meaningless chains of zeroes.

The more we explore the universe,
the more amazing, the more astonishing,
becomes the complex unity of our relationships.
Just because we cannot see things doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Unaided, we cannot see beneath the surface of the oceans
where life teems in myriad forms.
Without a microscope, we cannot see
the life teeming a drop of water.

Macro- and micro-, astro- and nano-,
all in their own way warp the fabric of space/time.
The loss of any element changes the equation, 
tilts the equilibrium,
forces permutations and combinations to re-order themselves.
We are at once diminished and born anew. 

The universe will outlast us
but even it will not last forever.
Entropy or implosion will wipe creation clean.

Meanwhile, let us rejoice
in a welcoming smile,
in the dew on a sunny morning,
in the discovery of a species, a particle, an idea.
Let our hearts sing and dance
like the quantum packets of energy
whose vibration forms the mountains, the trees, the stars,
and us.
May our awareness of our interconnectedness raise our threshold of awe
for the life that breathes in us and into us,
and for the original flame that still burns within us.

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

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                  I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

                  And for those of you who like poetry, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry I posted several new poetic works there a few weeks ago. If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

                  I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)