Hymn of the Month
We Gather Together GTG #336
TEXT Attr. Adrianus Valerius c.1626 trans. Theodore Baker 1894
MUSIC Nieder-landtscg Gedenck-Clank, 1626; harm. Eduard Kremser, 1877
1 We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
he chastens and hastens his will to make known;
the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.
2 Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
so from the beginning the fight we were winning;
thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine!
3 We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
and pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
During the month of Thanksgiving, I can’t think of a better hymn that encapsulates the spirit of gratitude than this stirring text and melody.
Here are some beautiful thoughts on Thanksgiving from Henri Nouwen who was a Dutch Catholic priest, theologian and writer. He is one of my favorite writers to go to for spiritual guidance.
To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives – the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections – that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.
Diana Butler Bass, in her wonderful book: Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks states:
…we can celebrate together: food, the bounty of the earth, the gifts of life and work, the pleasures of relationships, the real unity of community, peace and interdependence, and a call to serve others as we have been served. We celebrate a day when we can turn history on its head and say that Thanksgiving is not about colonists taking from Native peoples, but about the abundance of a beautiful land, a land bountiful enough for all, that it is a day marking humility, forgiveness, appreciation. These things are worth celebrating. Heck, they are worth shouting from the rooftop, singing about, and whooping it up in the streets. ….Thanksgiving needs to go global. The whole planet could use a day to say thank you. Maybe on September 21, World Gratitude Day, which was started in Hawaii in 1965 and has since been adopted by the United States. “THANK YOU!” Let’s have a great big global celebration to recognize the gift of life we share, to respond with humble thanks, and to recommit ourselves to serve nature and neighbor. Let it be a day of gratitude from every corner of the earth!
Sources:
Bass, Diana Butler, Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks. Harper One Publishing. Copyright 2018. Harper Collins. Pg. 130-132.
Henri Nouwen, “The Spiritual Work of Gratitude,” Henri Nouwen Society, January 12, 2017, http://henrinouwen.org/meditation/the-spiritual-work-of-gratitude/.
Here is a video I made during Covid in November 2020. Neil Harmon’s lovely and sweet arrangement of this timeless hymn.
