Several years ago, when I was in an Eco-Process Theology course at Claremont School of Theology, I composed this hymn as a midterm creative project. It basically summarized our semester to date.
We were reading textbooks exploring ideas from process theology, ecofeminist theology, and the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
I thought the ideas expressed were so inspiring that I wanted people to be able to sing this theology. I believe strongly that we will never change how we think about God, the world, and ourselves until we can sing about it.
Bad theology is written into so many church hymns, and if we keep singing that theology, the theology that is preached - even if radically different - will not move the needle.
The beginning of this hymn I imagine as a choral chant. And it tells the scientific story of the universe. The verses then express the kinds of insights that have been shared by mystics for centuries.
I’ll soon be breaking down each of these verses in posts and on YouTube.
We All Are Related
by Sheri D. Kling
(Choral chant)
Fiery brilliance, cooling gas, condensing gravity
Atoms forming stars and carbon-fueled diversity
Earth with sky and oceans, molecules then multiply
Stardust is the mater of the cosmos and all life.
(Congregational verses)
We all are related, woven as threads in earth’s tapestry
A kinship creation, depending on all in deep harmony.
Internally formed by each other, creative and free
We all are related, wholly and actively.
The world is becoming, the future of God is luring us there.
Grace within chaos, the pow’r of the new, holiness bare.
The Singer is singing the Song we are yearning to share.
The world is becoming, process is everywhere.
God is embodied, Word become flesh, in all that we see.
Deeply incarnate in every bird, in every tree.
In the heartbeat of billions of bodies just wanting to be.
God is embodied, soul of the world, breathing in me.
All things have value, all the way up and all the way down.
God is redeeming the lowliest stone and the glorious crown.
Christ is the pattern in every atom around.
All things have value, whispering Spirit Sound.
We need liberation from seeing our world as dead-matter machines
All creatures as neighbors, a healing embrace, so held we are free.
Entraining our rhythms to the heartbeat of Life consciously,
We all are related,
In a world that’s becoming,
Where God is embodied,
And all things have value,
We are liberated, affirming the world we see.
© 2011 Sheri D. Kling, Waking Woman Music
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