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God, to you all hearts are open, to you all longings speak, and to you no secret thing is hidden. I beg you—purify the intentions¹ of my heart through the unspeakable² gift of your grace, so I can love you with all I am and praise you for all you are. Amen.

God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.

Kindness

This past weekend the Very Reverend Gary Jones, Interim Dean at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, invited me to give some talks, lead an experiential, I did Centering Prayer, and preach twice at 9 and 11. So I did. Gary is exceptionally kind and wise, also brilliant and a contemplative. Those are a combination the world needs more of. Thank you, Gary. He and his wife, Cherry, are so welcoming, as was the whole community. Thank you, everyone, for giving me such a warm welcome. I can’t (yet) say in words how much it meant and means—thank you for gifting me with such genuine dialogue, much appreciated.

So I took a copy of the Cloud of Unknowing and of Practice of the Presence with me. It was the fifth Sunday in Lent, where the community reads about Lazarus being raised from the dead, and I’m always happy to consider resurrections, personal and societal, and for nature, injured as this wonder is by greed.

At another time I will write about my time behind the rood screen and among the mirrored skyscrapers where the blue sky and white clouds were reflected. It was a kind of resurrection for me, for diverse reasons. First I want to have digested the experiences fully. I’m still ruminating on them gratefully.

Right now I want to sing again what I did in the 11am service, known to me as the Prayer for the Preface to the Cloud of Unknowing. For a long time I’ve sung it in Middle English, over ten years now, in fact. But I’d never sung my Modern English translation of it. If you want to see me sing it there in Modern English and listen to my 15-minute sermon, you can go to vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/809526246 “3/26/23 Acevedo Butcher: The Fifth Sunday in Lent.” I so appreciate that they included both my last names.

The song or tune for this prayer was inspired by my preparing as I do by reading and thinking, watching CCC’s third week in Lent’s service (where Bradley read it, in fact, from the communal prayerbook, and that sparked in me), and many times praying “What should I do?” as I walked through the marsh, holding this prayer.

How that song came about was the same as with the Middle English. I start out saying it in lectio divina, on a note card on which I’ve written it. And eventually somehow it becomes singing, sung, a song. Sometimes it sounds one way and then another and eventually it settles into a sort of way that is repeated and now I can sing it in that settled version.

It started, this song, in the marsh. Among egrets flying and squawking plus ducks, geese, red-tailed hawks, swallows, pelicans, too. I sing it first in Modern, then in Middle English, and after that read the two footnotes from my translation of the Cloud. You could also substitute for “God” here “Love” or even “Kindness,” since that’s the heart of all major religions and wisdom traditions—kindness, to ourselves and to others—connecting with our True Self, which is/who is Kindness.

Here are the footnotes from my translation:

1. The Cloud author uses the Middle English entent (“intent”) often, reminding us that his theme is the exercise of “stretching” towards God. See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, line 3. With his background in Latin, he well knew that the word entent (our intent)comes from the Latin in-, “toward,” and from tendere, “to stretch,” so to be “intent” on something is literally “to stretch towards it.” This anonymous monk shows us how we can “stretch” our minds towards God in contemplation and grow spiritually, becoming people who “make peace” (James 3:18). Intense, tendon, attention, attend, attentive,and extend share this Latin root for “to stretch.”

2. In Middle English, this prayer reads: “God, unto Whom alle hertes ben open, and unto Whom alle wille spekith, and unto Whom no privé thing is hid: I beseche Thee so for to clense the entent of myn hert with the unspekable gift of Thi grace that I may parfiteliche love Thee, and worthilich preise Thee. Amen.” See Gallacher, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, 21, lines 2-5. Here we find a splendid example of the author’s play on the words “speak” and “unspeakable,” highlighting that God listens to us when “alle wille” (“all longings”)“spekith” (“speak”) to himand that he answers our articulated or “spoken” longings with “the unspekable gift” (“the unspeakable gift”) of his grace. We “speak” and in return are given an “unspekable” (“ineffable”) gift, his grace. This word play deftly suggests the mystery of a dialogue between our chatter and a profound silence. This prayer is also the short opening prayer (or collect) before the epistle in the Roman Catholic votive Mass of the Holy Spirit (Ad postulandam gratiam Spiritus Sancti), with one difference. The anonymous author has slightly changed the original Latin version. Originally, the prayer addressed the unspeakable gift “of your Holy Spirit,” not “of your grace.” The author revised it to focus on God’s grace. His use and revision of this liturgical prayer reveal his belief that grace and the Holy Spirit are closely related, that the Holy Spirit informs contemplative prayer, that grace is the sine qua non of contemplation, and that communal prayer is central to spiritual growth.

Thank you for being here and I hope these bring peace and joy to you.

“Cædmon’s Hymn” is a very early Old English poem, from around 650 to 680 CE, so 7^th century. Our only source for it and for Cædmon’s life is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede describes Cædmon very much like the wealthy churchmen of Brother Lawrence’s day described the “uneducated” friar. Bede says Cædmon was an illiterate herdsman who lived at the Whitby monastery on the northeast shore of North Yorkshire. If that is true, we know for sure that he suffered very cold winters there, taking care of livestock.

The story of Cædmon has many versions. One says he couldn’t make music and so never played the harp or sang during gatherings. But one day he had a dream, and in it a man ordered him to “SING” something. Cædmon protested, saying he didn’t know how to sing, but the man in his dream insisted and Cædmon then sang about the Creator and in praise of God. The song he sang very much reminds me of my early childhood days of being in a church choir, and we sang “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and round me rings, the music of the spheres.” I wish it had included “Mother’s world” and “Parents’ world.”

Cædmon had miraculously received the gift of religious song and became (like Brother Lawrence) widely known to the monks as a faithful, singing, and inspiring “lay brother.” According to Bede, Cædmon also composed other religious stories and poems which demonstrated his gift to the monks. But the only surviving one today is “Cædmon’s Hymn.”

Because no tape recorders existed in the 7^th century, I created a melody for it two decades ago (while swinging my children on the playground), and I’ve been singing it very often ever since. As meditation. It is calming and I love its theme of gratitude for nature. Every day I’m grateful for the miraculous gift of nature.

You can listen to me sing it on my YouTube Channel here.

After I sing “Cædmon’s Hymn” in Old English, I sing it in my modern English translation.

Nu sculon herigean      heofonrices Weard,

Meotodes meahte     ond his modgeþanc,

weorc Wuldorfæder,     swa he wundra gehwæs,

ece Drihten,     or onstealde.

He ærest sceop     eorðan bearnum

heofon to hrofe,     halig Scyppend.

þa middangeard     monncynnes Weard,

ece Drihten,     æfter teode

firum foldan,     Frea ælmihtig.

Now let’s sing everyday Mystery,

Maker’s matter and kind mindfulness,

our Parent’s gift of Creation and their Presence.

Our Friend made each wonder’s beginning,

first they shaped skies as a roof

for all the earth’s children.

Then sacred Shaper, present Friend

made the middle-world,

the solid ground

for everyone.

For these gifts we thank the kind Beloved!

This was recorded during an atmospheric river. So you hear the sump pump go off for a few seconds and also at the end you slightly hear some rain pattering down.

My translation makes the language more inclusive while cleaving to the original spirit and the words’ etymological roots. You can see the literal translation below if you wish.

Literal Translation:

Now we should praise the heavenly kingdom’s guardian!

The Creator’s power and His thoughts.

The work made by the Glory Father,

the eternal Lord, who established the beginning.

He first shaped, for earth’s children,

Heaven as roof, holy Maker.

Then the eternal Lord, mankind’s guardian,

next made the solid ground, almighty Lord!

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Tag: ancientsong

Kindness

CÆDMON’S HYMN