Songs My Grandma Sang by Michael B. Curry

Author:Michael B. Curry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

32. “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910).

33. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, London Sermon, 1933.

34. Parade, Sunday, September 10, 2000.

CHAPTER 7

A Song Seldom Sung

For many years, Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments was shown on television either on Palm Sunday or Easter. My grandmother, like other folk in her world, would watch as faithfully as she watched Gomer Pyle, Bonanza, Billy Graham—and Martin Luther King, Jr., any time he appeared on the screen. My sister and I would often watch with her, even into our teenage years. Invariably, at some point during the film’s telling of the biblical story of the freedom struggle of Hebrew slaves long ago she would say at least once, “God moves in mysterious ways.” She said it on other occasions, too. Where that came from for her I never asked. Though it was a hymn, I never heard her or anyone else in the world I grew up in actually sing it, but the words were recited often as a kind of creed-like affirmation.

When I was a young priest serving in my first congregation in Winston Salem, North Carolina, I selected the hymn to be sung one Sunday. It had been suggested in a guidebook for pairing hymns with the readings assigned in the lectionary for any given Sunday. The words clearly fit the biblical texts for the day, but I never scheduled the hymn again. No one knew the tune, though everyone seemed to know the words of the first stanza.

Say the words, “What a friend we have in Jesus,” and a tune comes to mind for generations of folks raised by or near my grandmother’s world. Say the words, “Just as I am, without one plea,” and a song starts singing in my consciousness. Say the words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” and music comes to mind. But say, “God moves in mysterious ways,” and no melody makes its way into my mind. I am aware that in other places in the English-speaking world the hymn has some resonance, but not so much in the southern U.S. even though the opening phrase was once recited like an old familiar song.

Like many hymns, it had its origin in a poem that captured the Christian imagination for many. It was written by William Cowper (1731–1800), the author of several poems that are now hymn texts. He was a person of deep and complex faith, an English evangelical associated with John Newton (“Amazing Grace”) and others involved in both the evangelical movement and the movement to bring an end to the slave trade. In a time with limited therapeutic and medical treatment he, like so many, struggled mightily with depression. Just knowing that adds some depth to what otherwise could be misread as piety born of superficial spirituality. Invoking the lofty poetry that John’s gospel uses to introduce Jesus, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” Cowper titled the poem, “Light Shining Out Of Darkness.

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