SYRIA

Thinking of Syria; At its core, the teachings of Jesus call us to love our enemies, seek justice, and serve the needy.

Hymn for harmony in a world of many faiths

1 Faith works, but how can love be shown
within a world of complex care?
Between each nation, in each town
how can God's love be focused there?

2 A different language, creed or dress
can build a wall and damage life;
and ignorance or fear of faith
could break our trust and fire our strife.

3 How can we legislate for peace,
or work for human harmony,
within a world of disparate needs,
maintaining our integrity.

4 God give us confidence to see
your face in people all around
that, in a world of many faiths,
your seeds of love may find rich ground.

Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
© Andrew Pratt 20/4/2006
8 8 8 8
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

Paris attacks - hymn

At least 18 people have been killed in several shootings in the French capital, Paris, as well as explosions near the Stade de France (BBC) 2254hrs 13/11/2015

This hymn written earlier this year has, sadly, been adapted in the light of today's attacks.

Hopeless to help in this violence, this crisis,

here in the focus of bloodshed and fear,

common humanity binds us together,

love at the centre, not hatred's veneer.

History repeats in this city of beauty,

here amid elegance: danger’s embrace.

Love is our purpose when those filled with hatred

break down relationships, nullify grace.

Give me your hand, then let peace grow between us,

let us rebuild what distrust might destroy.

Now in this moment we'll make a commitment,

love is the weapon we'll use and deploy.

© Andrew Pratt 20/1/2015 & 18/1/2015 & 13/11/2015
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

Mohammed Emwazi (AKA Jihadi John)

In the light of the suspected death of Mohammed Emwazi (AKA Jihadi  John), the following hymn originally written at the time of the death of Osama bin Laden might be pertintent - see below or follow the link
http://hymnsandbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/osama-bin-ladin-hymn.html

REMEMBRANCE & PEACE - A HYMN - How do we heal the horror

How do we heal the horror:

the aftermath of war,

the sharpened, hurtful questions

we wonder what it’s for;

the tears that feed each memory,

the pain, the hurt, the fear,

the images that haunt each mind,

that always seem so near?

How can we unlearn hatred

that undermines our peace,

that hurts beyond our healing,

God, will it never cease?

How can we sound the purpose

that severs limb from limb,

that escalates the tension,

that sounds a war-like hymn?

No God can end this murder,

this futile loss of life,

this endless mutilation,

this pointless human strife,

for every generation

must learn to love again,

to mine the seam of healing,

to end this ceaseless pain.

© Andrew Pratt 7/11/2015

Tune: AURELIA

Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

Migration continues to exercise the politicians and people of the UK and Europe - a hymn

Sometimes the footfall seems incessant,

a challenge to our selfish greed,

how can we clothe and house such numbers,

our fear wells up to veil their need.

Yet every living person coming

should have a share of all our wealth,

but dare we give without a limit

to meet another’s need of health?

This is the challenge set before us,

to greet each stranger as a friend,

to share God’s love, that knows no limits,

until all fear and hunger ends.

© Andrew Pratt 4/9/3015

Tune: ST CLEMENT
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

They’re carted off like cattle - Reported this morning - 70 found dead in a lorry in Austria

They’re carted off like cattle,

yet we’d refuse a bed

to those who flee from carnage

now drowned, or lost or dead?

Christ said accept the stranger,

how can we bar the door

to those both poor and hungry

who wait beyond our shore.

How can we guard our comfort

or fear what we might lose

when those who are more needy,

we punish and abuse.

God, must we wait for judgment?

Will nothing change our face

from sneering denigration

to smiles of love and grace?

Good God forgive the selfish,

the ones who bind the free,

who now withhold salvation.

Begin right now with me!

© Andrew Pratt 28/8/2015

Reported this morning - 70 found dead in a lorry in Austria.

Tune: CHERRY TREE CAROLCL return if you have one

 Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

More than Hymns - Words for a Lyrical Faith - NEW HYMN COLLECTION - Andrew Pratt

More than Hymns - Words for a Lyrical Faith – Stainer & Bell Ltd http://www.stainer.co.uk/shop/b944.html

ISBN 0 85249 944 3

A creative spirituality is the essence of Andrew Pratt’s continuing affirmation of the role of hymnody in contemporary faith, through a corpus of lyrics for public worship that are amongst the most relevant of recent contributions to the form. No less than with his very first texts, dating from the late 1970s, the goal in this fourth and latest collection is to make sense of language, living and worshipping in a way that also acknowledges the shifting and often contextual nature of our words and of our world. One important influence in More than Hymns has been the discipline of writing hymns for three years of the readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Another has been his response to the problem of evil as manifest in the crises and conflicts of the last decade. There are challenging insights into familiar Biblical themes, and a number of refreshing items, each a pièce d’occasion arising from the author’s varied pastoral work.

CHARLESTON, FRANCE, TUNISIA - A DIVIDED WORD - A HYMN

A world once rent by turmoil

will suffer once again,

the memories once buried

have surfaced with our pain,

the hatred that enslaved us

has found another dawn,

while love and grace are tattered,

bedraggled, lost and torn.

Once Christ had shown through living

the way to human life,

to cut through human hatred,

confronting human strife,

when those who made religion

an idol to defend,

stood fast against oppression

until life's very end.

God give us strength to covet

the love that makes us whole,

to claim again your promise,

the value of each soul.

God give us grace to cherish

your love above each creed,

to value every neighbour

through thought and word and deed.

© Andrew Pratt 27/6/2015 andrewpratt48@gmail.com

Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

NEPAL EARTHQUAKE - POEM

Canyons heave and mountains tumble,

earth beneath will shift and rumble,

quaking buildings tilting and falling

will God never head our calling?

Like some hell afire with trouble,

children buried in the rubble:

seems there is no hope or reason,

fear unleashed, death finds its season.

Here in utter desperation

harmed by nature's harsh mutation,

will we ask 'is God against us',

seeking to deny or test us?

When, O when, as life is rattled

and we feel dislodged, embattled,

will an avalanche of praying

turn a God bent on betraying?

Then when rubble ceases moving,

still God's grace, it seems, needs proving.

All our trust and hope is waning,

faith is taut, near breaking, straining.

Yet, as neighbours, sharing grieving,

let us bring God's love, relieving

fears that leave the world unsleeping

seeding trust, God's grace unceasing.

© Andrew Pratt 12/5/2015

 ITEMS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY BE USED FREELY LOCALLY WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. TO PUBLISH FOR PROFIT PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR.

Open letter to the Prime Minister fomr Mike Walsh

Mike, a URC Minister wrote and open letter to Prime Minister Cameron after the 2015 election. It begins:

Dear Prime Minister,
I don't know if you will ever read this, but I have some things I wish to say to you.
You have won the General Election and command a majority in the House of Commons, and as such will feel you have a legitimate mandate to govern. However, you must also know that you don't command a majority of the British people.
Although our political views are very much at odds on many issues, I'm willing to believe that you are a good man, as sure of your ideals as I am of mine, and believe your plan is what's best for us all. You said today that you will govern for the whole country and bring back together that which has clearly fractured. I hope you will.

Thanks to Mike for this - a timely word

Read the whole of the letter here

https://www.facebook.com/revd.walsh?fref=ts

MIGRATION HYMN - hymn response to reports of more than 800 people drowned off Libya's coast

Idyllic beaches break the waves

as bathers line the shore

This view of peace is now disturbed:

an aftermath of war.

The ones who fled from lives they knew

have gone in fear and dread,

the ships that offered hope to them

are sunk with many dead.

And where is God amid the swell

where tides still ebb and flow,

unfeeling of this loss of life,

as others come and go?

The commerce of the world goes on.

Can we ignore the pain?

It is as though we're blind to see

Christ crucified again.

The ones who drown are ones we own

as neighbours we should love,

how can we turn our eyes away,

avert our gaze above?

For when our politics conspires

to shut the door to grace

it is as though we turn away

from Jesus' tortured face.

© Andrew Pratt 22/4/2015 Please include on your CCL return if you have one

Tune: ELLACOMBE or KINGSFOLD

The challenge of migration: In response to reports of more than 800 people drowned off Libya's 

coast on Sunday 19th April 2015, bringing the number of deaths this year to 1,750.

Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

A HYMN BEFORE THE ELECTION - If we claim to love our neighbours

PLEASE NOTE; The copyright notice for this text should now read: © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd and NOT  © 2015 Andrew Pratt. The text is available using a CCL Licence.

1          If we claim to love our neighbour
            while the hungry queue for food,
            are we prey to self-deception?
            Is perception quite so crude?
            If we sit beside our neighbours,
            begging for the things they need,
            we might share their own injustice
            in a world that thrives on greed.

2          If we punish those with nothing,
            blaming them for where they stand,
            is this love of friend or neighbour,
            do we still not understand?
            Love of neighbour is not easy,
            cuts us till we feel the pain,
            sharing hurt that they are feeling
            till they find new life again.

3          Love of neighbour sets us squarely
            in the place where they now sit,
            till the richness God has given
            builds a pearl around the grit;
            till each person shares the comfort
            of the love of which we preach,
            till we live as fact the Gospel:
            none can be beyond love's reach.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)

© 2015 Stainer & Bell LtdMetre 8.7.8.7.D

Tune: BETHANY (Smart)

Written during the Manchester & Stockport District Synod (in response to a Joint Public Issues presentation by Rachel Lampard & Paul Morrison). The hymn was sung at the close of Synod.

HYMNS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY BE USED FREELY LOCALLY WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. TO PUBLISH FOR PROFIT PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR.

BBC Radio Merseyside Acts of Worship

Having given notice to BBC Radio Merseyside that I am no longer willing to take Acts of Worship as part of the Daybreak Sunday morning religious programme some people have asked why this is. 

Firstly,

·       I am very happy with the people that I have worked with on a day to day basis for over a decade and I continue to hold them in high regard.

·       I still have the capacity to do this work and will, in fact, have more time from August 31st when I retire from full-time employment.

So why have I ‘given notice’?

During the autumn of 2014 presenters of the Act of Worship were invited to Radio Merseyside for a training session. Part of this related to Compliance. The gist of this was that each Act of Worship would need to be submitted for scrutiny on Thursday morning when it was to be presented live on a Sunday. In this process the script could be approved or amended and approved.

In principle there is nothing wrong with this.

The downside is that the whole script needs to be ready to be submitted at the end of Wednesday and cannot be significantly changed following this. In the event of local or national events taking place between submission and broadcast no changes can be made.

The week preceding February 8th was in some ways exceptional, but during this time two significant national news items related to child abuse, Lord Chilcot (reporting on the Iraq War) appeared before a Select Committee, a Parliamentray debate focussed on mitochondrial DNA, discussions were taking place at an international level relating to the Ukraine and Russia and ISIS displayed a video of a man being burnt alive. On the 7^th February a man was shot in Liverpool.

Had I been leading worship in a church I would have at least mentioned some of these in the prayers. In reality I might well have reflected on one of them in the act of worship. The BBC response is that these issues were dealt with elsewhere in the programme and, indeed, some were.

Another BBC comment was that there, ‘are the days when our contributors cannot come in live and so we broadcast a pre-recorded Act of Worship. This will not reflect the news of the day.’

It was added, ‘But that is not necessarily a bad thing’.

As I believe

·       that worship ought to reflect context,

·       that it is an act of worship that I am seeking to enable,

·       that context includes an awareness by the congregation (audience) of what is happening in the world,

then not to respond to events is to diminish the act of worship.

From this perspective in 30 years of ministry it has been my experience that people seem to find it helpful to reflect within worship on such things. I have sought to do this publicly and by writing hymns on issues as varied as tsunamis and the death of Osama bin Laden.

Not to make such links may not ‘be a bad thing’ but it is, for me, thoroughly unsatisfactory.

The rightness of my decision was underlined for me this morning (8^th February 2015) as I led an Act of Worship, broadcast live focussing on awe, wonder and hope without being able to relate to any of the things that had been a focus of the rest of the programme, or that had happened since submitting my script.

It is for this reason that I have indicated that I am no longer able to lead Acts of Worship on BBC Radio Merseyside with integrity.

PARIS SHOOTINGS - HYMN IN RESPONSE

Definitive - French Killings hymn - This version should be used from now to replace the previous version.

Hopeless to help in this violence, this crisis,

here in the focus of bloodshed and fear,

common humanity binds us together,

love at the centre, not hatred's veneer.

Jewish and Christian and Muslim together,

all the world’s people, we each have a place.

Love is our purpose when those filled with hatred

break down relationships, nullify grace.

Give me your hand, then let peace grow between us,

let us rebuild what distrust might destroy.

Now in this moment we'll make a commitment,

love is the weapon we'll use and deploy.

© Andrew Pratt 20/1/2015 & 18/1/2015

Tune: STEWARDSHIP

HYMNS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY BE USED FREELY LOCALLY WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. TO PUBLISH FOR PROFIT PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR.