"Accidental" hymns can give you peace, love, even understanding

My wife was a soloist at our church one Sunday morning recently. Marty sang “The Summer Knows,” by Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Michel Legrand.

The summer knows, the summer's wise
She sees the doubts within your eyes
And so she takes her summer time
Tells the moon to wait and the sun to linger
Twists the world 'round her summer finger
Lets you see the wonder of it all

No, it's not of hymn, certainly not in the “Rock of Ages” sense, but it evokes the wonders of creation and the endless rotation of the seasons beautifully. It's typical of the ostensibly secular music that regularly finds its way into our church’s services.

Just in the last couple of months, I've heard music in the sanctuary by composers as diverse as Sly Stone, Charlie Parker, Tracy Chapman, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, The Wailin’ Jennys, and Mongo Santamaria.

The anthem one Sunday was “Alfie,” a Burt Bacharach-Hal David song. As you may recall, it’s from a movie about a womanizing cad, but it begins with deeply philosophical questions: “What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment that we live?”

Even more spiritual are the declarative final lines:

I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you've missed, you're nothing, Alfie.

It’s not in the New Testament, but it could be.

I should point out that our “church” is a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which is a wee bit less conventional than Methodist or Presbyterian, much less Baptist.  The congregation includes Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists and Jews, both lapsed and practicing.  The eclectic music choices of Amber Fetner, our choir director, and Neil Golden, the pianist who leads our “house” trio, represent the tastes and beliefs of fellowship members who are caring and loving but don't necessarily feel comfortable with old-fashioned hymns.

“Some UU congregations are stuck in the older model of Eurocentric classical music, with the occasional folk song from the ’60s, but most are embracing a wider aesthetic,” Amber told me.

She said having a rhythm section “allows us to have a new soundscape that is familiar to most folks. Some miss the classical music -- which we have every once and a while—but it's important to have music that is pushing UU's away from the dominant Eurocentric culture and elitism.”

I love the UU eclecticism for somewhat different reasons. I grew up in the Methodist church, and even as a child I loved the music. Our Wednesday night prayer meetings were often as not just group sings. Hymns like “In the Garden” and “How Great Thou Art” are ingrained in me. I love their poetry and way they sound when sung by a full congregation.

But I'm also uneasy now with the patriarchal bent to many of those hymns, the master-servant relationship that doesn’t so much reflect the teachings of Jesus as the class distinctions of the much later eras in which they were composed.

There’s also the matter of grisliness. Take “There Is a Fountain,” written by William Cowper in 1772.

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Emanuel’s veins

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

Sounds like something you’d encounter in David Cronenberg film.

And so it came to pass, many years ago, that I decided I would seek a more expansive notion of spiritual songs. Even before I started attending the UU fellowship and started hearing music that is very apt but not traditional, I was noticing what I like to call accidental or inadvertent hymns.

“What a Wonderful World,” written by Bob Thiele, George Douglas, George Weiss and most famously recorded by Louis Armstrong, is an obvious example. It’s a litany of marvels large and small.

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is another. Other than Paul McCartney’s “Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah,” no song’s chorus has ever been sung by so many so enthusiastically as Cohen’s.

But there are many songs by hardcore rock 'n' rollers and secular singer-songwriters that are deeply spiritual to me.  Along with “Pinball Wizard” and “I Can See for Miles,” Peter Townsend of The Who, to cite a great example, has referenced his spiritual questing in wonderful songs such “The Seeker” and “Keep Me Turning.” Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” is every bit as redemptive as you’d expect from an on-again, off-again minister.

I would flesh out my playlist of serendipitous spirituals with songs such as Paul Simon’s “Peace Like a River,” Jackie DeShannon’s “What the World Needs Now, Is Love” Crowded House leader Neil Finn’s “All That I Ask,”  Steve Earle’s “Nothing But a Child,” Carole King’s “Beautiful,” Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” James Taylor’s “Shower the People,” and Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,”

And then there’s “Even in Reunion,” a song you’ve likely never heard by Ann Reed, a Minnesota singer-songwriter. Mysterious and evocative, sung a cappella, it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever written:

Like a feather riding on a river
Passing by then floating to the dark
A single moment having been delivered
& even in reunion there is parting

A circle 'round & 'round made up of mem'ries
& as we finish then again we start
& at the end we're back at the beginning
& even in reunion there is parting

Like watercolors bleed red into blue
One day into another love will travel with you

Like a feather riding on a river
& as we journey friendships of the heart
Are carried close within 'til the time we meet again
& even in reunion there is parting
They're carried close within 'til the time we meet again
& even in reunion there is parting

Hearing songs like these, that’s my idea of church these days.

Oh, and just so you know, the Sly song was “Thank you (falettinme be mice elf agin).”

Hallelujah.

Noel Holston is the author of Life After Deaf and the forthcoming As I Die Laughing.