New Hymn Text - Empires Rise from Rotting Roots
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First, apologies for the unplanned hiatus. Between the end of the semester, marshaling our commencement ceremony (the only time I get to use “give you marching orders” very literally), and finishing up grading, there wasn’t much brain space for anything approaching creativity. I also accidentally deleted a draft, which is pretty impressive because you literally have to type “delete” into a textbox and then hit delete, all of which I somehow managed to do for the wrong post. Anyway, to the new hymn text!
On the aforementioned class trip to France this past October, we took a break from the Parisian museums and artist lectures to visit the palace of Versailles. The palace began as a modest hunting lodge for Louis XIII and was remodeled, expanded, and finally inhabited by his Bourbon successors (all the other Louis’s) until Louis XVI was forced to return to Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution. There is obviously artistic and architectural beauty in the design, but the feeling I came away with was…unsettled; the phrase that came to mind…a lot. Too much muchness. Eloquent, I know, but every square inch of the place seems aimed at displaying opulence—each piece of furniture covered with embroidery or embellished with tassels; each surface gold-plated; each wall hung floor to ceiling with dead-eyed portraits and mirrors. If there was a lily, you better believe it was gilded.
Along the tour, we also read a bit about what led to the demise of the long line of Louises. While the kings were constructing their 2,200 room edifice, many of the French peasantry continued to eek out a living in a feudal system little changed since the Middle Ages. They also bore the brunt of increased taxation that was used to finance international wars (e.g., the American Revolution—thanks for that solid, France) and fund the lavish lifestyle of French nobility. Finally, when the price of bread skyrocketed, a group of women revolted, collecting weapons and allies as they marched to Versailles (the original Women’s March) and forced Louis XVI and his family to return to Paris where they were eventually executed. The violence and oppression that helped build the palace finally came for the inhabitants who falsely believed they could control or suppress it. Or as the muck-gathering anarchist peasant in Monty Python eloquently shouts, “Come and see the violence inherent in the system!”
Upon exiting the labyrinthine main building, we were given about an hour to wander the equally immaculate gardens. As I walked, I couldn’t help but think of these two narratives running side-by-side: grandeur, opulence, top-down power, and empire on the one hand; simplicity, poverty, grassroots power, and resistance on the other. No doubt Louis XIV believed he was constructing a palace that would house the heirs of his empire for countless generations, but in a little over a century his monarchical line would be overthrown. This seems to be the way of empires. Built and sustained by violence, they can’t help but eventually fall under that same weight. Perhaps this is why the biblical narrative imagines another reign that stands in stark opposition to empire—not the greatest but the least, not the center but the margins, not the warhorse but the lamb, not the palace but the stable, not the sword but the plowshare.
This is the good news. No violent empire is immune to collapse, even those that seem inexorable—from Babylon to the current empire of militarism and late capitalism. As Ursula LeGuin declaimed in her incredible National Book Award acceptance speech in 2014, “We live in capitalism. It’s power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” And we are given a storehouse of counter-symbols from our sacred texts to spark our prophetic imaginations toward resistance and transformation.
Perhaps inspired by the gardens around me, I sat down on one of the neatly manicured lawns and tried to write a text that compared the rapid and toxic growth of empire to the slow and healing growth of God’s reign. In the last stanza, the repetition of “at last” is meant to bring to mind Dr. King’s own dream of that reign: “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!”
Empires rise from rotting roots,
each one a toxic weed
that spreads and bears infected fruits
of violence and greed.
Yet when no signs of life are found
in tyranny's domain,
a sprig of hope springs from the ground
of God's relentless reign.
Empires fall beneath the strain
of cruelty and lies,
for all their triumphs yet contain
the seed of their demise.
But as they crumble into dust
the sprig of hope still stands;
and as their weapons turn to rust,
the dream of peace expands.
Empires rise and empires fall
but God will never fail
to draw abundance from the small
and courage from the frail.
At last the sprig of hope will bloom
into a mighty tree
where all are fed and all find room
and all, at last, are free.
© 2024 GIA, Inc.
The meter is just slightly unusual (one syllable off from CMD for those who observe; in a text about empire, I wanted the first syllable to be accented), so I knew I needed a tune composed for it. Thankfully, I knew just the person: the incomparable Kate Williams. I love what she came up with (with a melodic tip of the hat to The Milk Carton Kids, one of our shared musical loves), and when she records her version (which will play all the right notes and be sung much better!), I’ll share that too. Meanwhile, listen to me trying not to go flat the entire time I’m singing those ooh’s.
As always, you can purchase the music at GIA Unbound.
Wonder-ings
If you haven’t listened to Ursula LeGuin’s acceptance speech, stop what you’re doing and watch below. She does NOT like Amazon, and I’m here for it.
In poet Philip Metres’s wonder-filled essay, “Let Us Be Attentive!: How Wondering Leads to Justice-Seeking,” he deftly mixes insights from philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil and poets Mary Oliver and Gerard Manley Hopkins to argue that attention and wonder are key virtues for humanity to cultivate if we are to be fully alive to ourselves and our neighbors in need. Of course, looking through my own liturgical lens, I was immediately drawn to the humorous example he drew from the liturgical life of the church:
“I recall my delight, attending a Melkite (Eastern Catholic) Mass, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, hearing the call sung out before the Scripture readings: ‘Wisdom! Let us be attentive!’ I love its formality. ‘Hey!’ I imagine some contemporary version going, ‘you want some of the good shit? Listen to this!’”
Like the Eastern tradition itself (a tradition fond of calling our lives outside of Sunday worship the “liturgy after the liturgy”), Metres uses this call not only as a summons to pay attention to the wisdom found in scripture but also the wisdom that is all around us for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. (Meister Eckhart: “Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God, and is a book about God.”) Whether in worship or the world, remember: You want some good shit? Be attentive!
“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us: white campion, self-heal, bryony, vetch.”
-Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
May attention and wonder lead you to imagine new ways of living in the world—ways that enliven you, your neighbor, and the world toward justice and peace.
Peace,
Dave