As I sit in my study writing and doing other work, I often listen to the New Age station on an internet radio service. It’s the only time I listen to this style of music. The acoustic and piano melodies form a background that enable me to focus more clearly on my work.
Occasionally, I’m caught off guard when I find myself humming the tune to one of the pieces of music. It draws me from my work to attend to the song. To my surprise, the music that catches my attention are new age arrangements of a traditional Christian hymn. Interestingly, some very traditional hymns, often with lyrics mired with guilt-ridden theology, make their way to these light and airy arrangements.
One classic melody I hear a few times each week on this New Age stream is an American folk tune known as Nettleton, found in John Wyeth’s 1813 Repository of Sacred Music. The lyrics associated with this tune were written in 1757 by twenty-two year old pastor, Robert Robinson. You may know the hymn: Come, O Font of Every Blessing.
While hearing the melody pulls me away from my work, it’s often a moment of quiet refreshment in the midst of work. I can’t hear this particular melody without singing the hymn to myself. Several lyrics touch me deeply and remind me that my spiritual journey is not so different from those who have gone before me.
The hymn begins with a simple prayer:
“Come, O Font of every blessing, tune my heart to sing with grace.”
This line draws both Christian and Buddhist references for me. On the one hand, its focus is on the Transcendent One, the One who is the source of every blessing: life, hope, love, equanimity, and compassion. It’s a prayer of deep yearning to be mindful: to tune one’s inner most being to gratitude for everything received by being alive. I hear in this lyric critical themes for my spiritual life: maintaining mindfulness in the present moment; living with gratitude for life as I actually experience it, rather than as I want it to be; and my need to be open to love and compassion while living moment to moment.
Perhaps even more significant to me is the first line of the second verse of this hymn:
“Here I pause in my sojourning, giving thanks for having come.”
To sojourn is to live or reside somewhere temporarily. Pilgrims sojourn. They stay a while and move on. Similarly, I sojourn on Mother Earth: making a temporary residence here, in this realm. The term itself causes me to remember not only life’s impermanence, but also life is always changing and evolving. I am on Earth for a relatively short time and during that time, I change and so does the world. Even though life is short and in another twenty or thirty years I will pass away, I can pause today to give thanks for simply being here. Again, this present moment, with it’s wonder and grace, is what we have to acknowledge and for which we can give thanks.
The beauty and flow of the melody remind me how my sojourn is meant to flow in a way that is characterized by gratitude and grace. There’s an ease in the melody which helps to remind me that by staying focused and with a grateful heart, I am able to continue to sojourn along life’s paths, making my way with simplicity.
Perhaps there’s no other way to share something of the way this traditional hymn inspires me than to simply ask you to take a moment to listen to this instrumental arrangement of Come, O Font of Every Blessing.
