new song for Advent

Yesterday we had our last meeting as the writing team for the Advent 2009 worship materials for Leader magazine. What a wonderful crew to work with!

The song I wrote as part of our work is again - for me, at least - rather unusual... considerably "darker" than most worship songs that I associate with Advent and Christmas... it's keying in on the first few verses of the first Gospel text for Advent 2009 (Luke 21:25-26)... an "apocalyptic" text, which is an interesting way to frame the coming of Christ as a baby in Bethlehem... and, it seems to me, very descriptive of our context today (and, I expect, next December as well). The song picks up on this apocalyptic tone and imagery and expands on it in the context of climate change and ecological crisis, and moves to an understated but (I hope) evocative sense of the cosmic calling of the church as depicted in Ephesians 3:10... with a refrain of hope taken from Isaiah 12:2... all of which are part of the cloud of lectionary texts for Advent 2009.

I'm thinking I'll include this song in the November "delivery of songs" to the members of my CSM ("Community Supported Music") initiative... should be interesting to hear people's feedback on this one.