Meridian Magazine :: Hymns of Thanksgiving

Hymns of Thanksgiving
By Orson Scott Card

Editor’s Note: This was supposed to have run during the Thanksgiving holiday, but it somehow got overlooked during all the festivities. However, giving thanks is never inappropriate. And yes, there will be another Thanksgiving this year.

There are thanksgiving hymns, and then there are Thanksgiving hymns. The former are general expressions of gratitude to the Lord; the latter would be occasional hymns designed to be sung the Sunday before or after the American or Canadian Thanksgiving holiday.

The hymn that we use most for that particular holiday is Henry Alford’s “Come, Ye Thankful People” (93 in the hymnbook). “Raise the song of harvest home,” says the first stanza. “All is safely gathered in /Ere the winter storms begin.”

The link between harvest and Thanksgiving is an appropriate one; it’s the reason why the holiday was placed in the autumn in the first place. Even though we are no longer an agricultural society, it’s good to remember that the Lord’s bounty, which makes our whole civilization possible, is founded on the natural cycle of the growing season, and all that we have is built on a foundation of plentiful harvests.

Another hymn often used at Thanksgiving is also appropriate throughout the year. “Now Thank We All Our God” (95), written by Martin Rinkhart and translated by Catherine Winkworth (which makes her the actual author of the words we sing), could be a prototype of the hymn of thanks. It begins with gratitude for specific blessings that everybody has received, and ends with a prayer: “Oh, may our bounteous God / Through all our life be near us.” The anthem-like music gives it strength and fervor.

The only hymn that has the word “Thanksgiving” in its title is, however, not really a hymn of thanksgiving. “Prayer of Thanksgiving” (93) begins “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing.” In other words, it is not a hymn of thanks, but a prayer for a very specific blessing. And the blessing prayed for is victory in conflict.

Written in the Netherlands and translated by Theodore Baker, the hymn clearly dates from an era of persecution. “The wicked oppressing / now cease from distressing” is the wish of the singers of this hymn; when the hymn does thank the Lord, it thanks him specifically for triumph over their powerful enemies.

So despite its title, this hymn is not really appropriate for the Thanksgiving holiday, except in times and places where the Saints are persecuted and praying for relief. Most of the time, we should thank the Lord that we don’t need to sing this hymn.

Praise As Thanks

Our supply of hymns of thanksgiving increases greatly if we realize that hymns of praise are, by implication, also thanksgiving hymns. Take, for instance, “Praise Ye the Lord” (74), by the greatest of all hymnists, Isaac Watts.

While he begins by talking about praise itself, and how he is determined to spend his life doing it, when he gets to the actual business of praising God, he comes up with a list as full as any thanksgiving hymn: “His truth forever stands secure. / He saves th' oppressed; he feeds the poor; / He sends the troubled conscience peace / And grants the captive sweet release. / The Lord gives eyesight to the blind; / The Lord supports the sinking mind. / He helps the stranger in distress, / The widow, and the fatherless.”

To thank someone is to praise him, and vice versa; the difference lies in the tone and the audience. When you speak to someone about his good works, you thank him; when you speak about his good works to others, you praise him.

So when our voices ring out in James Allen’s “Glory to God on High” (67), we are praising God because we are singing about him; if we were singing to him, this would be explicitly a song of thanks. When we’re looking for thanksgiving hymns, or even for Thanksgiving hymns, we should not overlook the hymns of praise.

This means we have a lot of hymns of thanks in our hymnal; do we need more?

In Search of Universality

Obviously I think we do, or I would not have been writing them. The reason there is room for more such hymns is that each one provides its own list of things a congregation can be grateful for. I add my hymns to the mix because I felt a need to give thanks for gifts that are not mentioned in the present hymns.

“Hymn of Thanks”
by Orson Scott Card

O Father, for this mortal life,
This tabernacle made of flesh,
For father, mother, husband, wife,
For children we protect and teach,
For truth to learn, lost sheep to save,
For love that yearns beyond the grave,
We thank thee, Lord of Light.

O Father, for the sacrifice
Of thy Beloved in the flesh,
His blood that paid our mortal price,
His pain that grants the sinner's wish,
The blind who see, the lame who walk,
The church on revelation's rock,
We thank thee, Lord of Truth.

O Father, for our fellow saints
Who labor with us in the flesh,
Who share with us to meet our wants,
Whom we can also serve and bless,
Whose free forgiveness lifts us up,
Whose lips receive the bread, the cup,
We thank thee, God of Love.

This hymn does something that few if any other hymns attempt: In it the singer thanks the Lord for the other members of the Church who are singing with him, including thanking the Lord for the fact that those other Saints forgive him for his flaws. Obliquely, then, in this hymn we give thanks to the Lord for the Church itself, which allows us — or requires us — to associate with brothers and sisters who are as flawed as we are, but who, like us, come to the Lord for forgiveness when we take the sacrament.

The problem with this hymn is the first stanza, which gives thanks for family. While everyone has ancestors — “For love that yearns beyond the grave” — not everyone has a husband or a wife. Could an unmarried or widowed or divorced Saint sing this stanza?

I would like to think that with generosity of heart, such members of the Church could join in giving thanks even though they currently lack a spouse. After all, the doctrine is that all who are worthy of celestial glory will enter that state married; so can we not all give thanks, if not for a present spouse, then for a future one?

For me, the second stanza also strikes an equally dissonant note: While Jesus certainly healed the lame and the blind during his mortal ministry, and miracles are still possible today, my wife and I spent many years of our lives yearning to see our handicapped son Charlie rise up and walk. That blessing was never granted during his mortal life; but because we believe in the resurrection, we know that now he does walk in the spirit and will someday walk in the flesh.

During his mortal life, that stanza would have caused us a pang, of course; that’s why “Teach Me to Walk in the Light” was hard for us to sing or even hear, despite the fact that it was always one of my favorite hymns, precisely because walking was something our own dear son could not do. Yet we never resented the fact that others could sing that great hymn without pain — even then, we knew that in the Lord’s own time, Charlie would receive all the blessings that are in the Lord’s gift.

So even though a hymn of thanksgiving — all hymns, in fact — should strive for universality, it is probably impossible to write a hymn that will not cause someone in the congregation to feel pain or at least irony while singing it. Once, when I was a victim of vicious gossip in the ward I then lived in, we sang “Nay, Speak No Ill”; the words stuck in my throat. But it was precisely because of experiences like mine that the hymn needed to be sung!

Universality is the goal; but it is unreachable, and good hymns should not be banished from the hymnal because of it, as long as they can be sung wholeheartedly by the overwhelming majority of the members of a congregation.

Autumn Holiday

Universality should even be striven for in a hymn deliberately tied to the November holiday (or October, ye Canadians!).

“For the Harvest”
by Orson Scott Card

For the harvest of this year,
For all the work of every hand,
For the loved ones gathered here,
For all the joy our days have spanned

chorus
Father, wilt thou hear our prayer
Of thanks we have not words to say?
Here is how we will repay:
All gifts we have, we gladly share.

For the lessons we have learned,
Forgiveness of the wrong we've done,
Hope that was so dearly earned,
The gift of thy beloved Son

chorus
Father, wilt thou hear our prayer
Of thanks we have not words to say?
Here is how we will repay:
All gifts we have, we gladly share.

The hymn begins by referring to the harvest, but then goes on to include “the work of every hand.” Thus those who do not labor at farming are still included in our thanksgiving.

The next line, about “loved ones gathered here,” refers to the holiday again, but more directly: It’s a time when many families reassemble. But even those who do not have family members coming home for Thanksgiving, they can still sing this line, giving thanks for their beloved friends in that congregation or for their own family members still at home.

The second stanza is even more universal. No longer tied to the harvest of the farm, now the “harvest of this year” is stretched to include “the lessons we have learned” and then to the universal gift of the Savior’s atonement for our sins.

And the chorus, repeated after each verse, ends with a covenant of consecration: Because we can’t repay the Lord directly for his gifts, we will share them with others.

The promise changes meaning with the two stanzas, though. With the first stanza, it refers to sharing the gifts of the harvest and of the love and joy that come from being part of a community. But because the second stanza refers to forgiveness and the atonement, a promise to share these gifts is a promise to teach the gospel and to forgive others.

For the composer, this hymn poses the challenge that both verses are incomplete sentences: They must be completed by the refrain to even make sense, since it is the chorus that contains both the subject and verb of the sentence!

Thus the music for the verse should not close, but should flow on smoothly into the chorus, so that there is no closure until “we gladly share.”

Rhapsody

Sometimes, a hymn can simply be a rhapsody: A bursting forth of feeling.

“Beautiful Day”
by Orson Scott Card

What a beautiful day
The Lord has made,
To give us hope and light,
To bring relief.
            So our belief
            In Christ dispels the night.
            Be not afraid!
            His plans are laid:
            He is the way.

What a glorious life!
A daily gift
Of freedom, work, and dreams,
To learn of love.
            And from above
            The Lord’s compassion streams,
            A current swift
            To lightly lift
            The weight of grief.

Sons and daughters of God!
We all can show
The image of his face,
Our father’s eyes.
            For he is wise,
            And has prepared this place
            Where we could grow
            Until we know:
            Ah! Life is good!

But a hymn that is nothing but rhapsody will usually feel insufficient. The first two stanzas here are rhapsodic. But the third stanza changes, reminding one’s fellow children of God that besides our gratitude to God for his great gifts, we have a responsibility to be part of those gifts in the lives of others. Our lives should be emblems of his goodness.

The very last line may be too rhapsodic, however, especially because “Life is good!” is a sentence people often use for the petty triumphs and gratifications of mortal life. A hot cup of cocoa after coming in from the snow can prompt us to say “Ah, life is good”; such quotidian uses of those words might weaken their effectiveness at the end of a hymn of thanksgiving and praise to God.

Or — and this is my hope — their very familiarity might well extend the meaning of this hymn to include all those moments of joy, large and small, which come to us because of God’s great gifts to us.

Another slight problem comes in the third stanza. Some people might be troubled by the idea that “we all can show / the image of his face, / our father’s eyes.” While there is no doubt that we are created in the image of God, this stanza implies that by righteousness, we bring others to see God in us. While I stand by this idea, as metaphor at least, I can foresee problems with getting it past the Correlation Committee; their job is to guard against even the implication of false doctrine, and they might well balk at the idea of suggesting that God is somehow “in us,” with its Nicene or pantheistic implications.

So that line could easily be changed to the slightly less effective but also less misleading line “Our lives can show / the image of his face.” Now it is clearly a metaphor, and it is our actions, not our actual bodies, that show God’s presence to others.

Thanks without Thanking

It is not necessary for a hymn ever to say anything about thanking the Lord to be a hymn of thanksgiving.

“All That the Earth Can Yield”
by Orson Scott Card

All that the earth can yield,
All that seeds can hold,
Sheep within the fold;
            Fruit of a heavy field
            Or fallen from tree and vine:
            They are already thine.

All that I think I own,
All within my hand,
House and plot of land;
            All that I've reaped and sown
            And all that the world calls mine:
            They are already thine.

All of the dreams of youth,
Memories of age,
Life at every stage;
            All that I know of truth
            And all that is sweet and fine:
            It is already thine.

All of the trust I've earned,
All the tears I've shed,
Hungry souls I've fed;
            All of the love I've learned,
            Lord: what is truly mine,
            It is already thine.

This hymn is a list of things that I — and everyone — can certainly be thankful for. But instead of saying so, what the hymn asserts in every stanza is that everything I have belongs to God; it came from him, and returns to him.

The progression, however, follows the harvest-hymn progression. It begins with the literal harvest of farm, herd, orchard, or even what is gathered or gleaned.

The second stanza remains tied to the physical possessions of life, but with the third stanza we move to “possessions” that are held only in memory and imagination: Our hopes, our experiences, our learning, our joy.

And the final stanza makes this even more explicit, including griefs, good works, and love. And here the singer asserts that these things — trust, memory, good works, love — do truly belong to him; but even at the moment of asserting that these are the possessions we can take with us into eternity, the singer offers them up to the Lord, asserting that even what is “truly mine, it is already thine.”

This was one of the earliest hymns I wrote, and one of the few I have treated as a poem — it was published in The Ensign in 1981, and appeared in my collection of poetry, An Open Book. This is because, while remaining more or less universal, it is very specific in its language; and also because it may well be the best hymn I ever wrote, or will ever write. I wasn’t yet thirty years old when I wrote it, and had no idea what my “memories of age” would be, or what tears I would shed in my life; but it feels truer now to me than it did when I wrote it.

Yet it is no surprise that in all these years that this text has been available to the public, no one has set it to music. It offers real challenges to the composer. The rhyme scheme is a complicated ABBACC; each line has only three beats; each stanza has six lines. These don’t form a recipe for ease of hymn-writing.

But the biggest problem is probably the fact that this hymn is so relentlessly first-person. It feels private, not public. It should be spoken on one’s knees, not in a congregation. Another first-person hymn, “I Stand All Amazed,” is intensely personal — but it is addressed, not to God, but to other people, telling about the mercy of Jesus.

Still, I have hopes that the right composer will find a way to set my best and most poetic hymn to music that can let it be sung by a congregation.

(For those who are serious about studying hymns in order to write your own, it’s helpful to look at hymn texts separately from the music. In writing these columns, I have been greatly helped by the website “Resources for LDS Organists” at http://www.geocities.com/ddstone48/index.htm.

(From the home page, click on “Resource List for Organists,” and from that page, scroll down and click on “Hymn Texts.” I only wish the hymn texts were searchable, so I could find a particular hymn by looking for a phrase I remember instead of scanning the titles group by group.)

Post your comments — but not your own hymn texts, unless you wish to surrender copyright! — here on Meridian. And don’t send hymn texts to me! I’m not a music publisher.

However, if you’re a composer and wish to set one of my hymns to music, don’t ask for my permission first. I hereby grant you permission to use my hymn text free of charge in your own musical setting, as long as you don’t publish or sell the result.

In other words, you can perform your hymn as much as you want. But the moment you want to publish it or record it or charge for it, then we need to talk — I’ll need to hear your hymn and decide if I approve of it before you can publish, record, or charge for the combined work. I can be reached at http://www.nauvoo.com or http://www.hatrack.com.

And if I deny permission, then you can simply write your own words to fit the music you wrote. You won’t lose a thing.