Welcome

I'm not blogging here any longer, and I'm afraid I probably won't pick up on any new comments either. I'm now blogging at The Evangelical Liberal but I'm leaving these old posts up as an archive.

Friday 10 December 2010

A Christmas carol

After ranting on about Christmas in my last blog post, I thought it was time to contribute something (hopefully) a bit more positive. So here's a rough demo version of a new carol what I wrote. :-)

Into the dark of Earth's long night


Into the dark of earth's long night
Shines the star of heaven's light
Into the heart of winter sky
Rises this star so bright, so high
Guiding us with its quick’ning ray
Heralding long-awaited day
Into the dark of earth's long night
Shines the star of heaven's light

Into the dark of sin and shame
Blazes the light of heaven's flame
This flame which burns so pure and strong
Promising end to harm and wrong
Bringing to us love's holy light
Come to restore our broken sight
Into the dark of sin and shame
Shines the light of heaven's flame

Into our winter deep and long,
Sound the notes of heaven's song
This song which melts the frozen heart
Breaking its ice-bound chains apart
Making our souls and spirits sing
With the joy of coming spring
Into our winter deep and long
Sound the notes of heaven's song.

A bunch of my other songs and tunes are available here.

5 comments:

  1. Pretty good, Harvey. Would you envisage this being sung in a church service by the congregation or as part of a wider carol service?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Terry! Don't know really - hadn't got any further than writing it at this stage... what do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Harvey that is a good song. I don't know if it is a congregational song, but ther is no harm in trying. I think that Uileen Pipes would work pretty well on it but I don't know of any Uileen pipers around Croydon. A low whistle would probably work as well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I reckon a congregation could sing it, but because there are no explicit references to God, etc., I also reckon it would have to be part of a wider framework that does reference God, etc. This isn't because I think anything sung in a church service needs to watch its JPMs ('Jesus-per-minute'), but because imagery such as 'heaven's flame' need not have a christological reference.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes, that was sort of the point - to leave out explicit references to God or Jesus and let the imagery do the work.

    ReplyDelete