Category: Creation & Ecology
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In the Beginning
As waters rise due to environmental devastation, our situation has similarities to the flood story. This time, we’re the ones bringing the flood. How might God’s presence and promise help us now? This text emerged in a shape that didn’t fit any traditional format. I’m grateful to Kate Williams for creating a wonderful tune that…
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Come Join Me Now
We are never without the presence of God and Thea accompaniment of God’s creation and the saints. The great Maya Angelous said, “one of the things I do, when I step on the stage, when I stand up to translate, when I go to teach my classes, when I go to direct a movie, I…
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Come, Watch For the Green
Encouragement to hold onto hope and continue to praise in difficult circumstances
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You Grow Like the Moss
The natural world is always changing, but that change is often extremely slow—hard to measure in human lifetimes. What would it be like to trust in the gradual unfolding of God’s desires within us and around us on this kind of timescale? The Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, devoted to both theology and science, wrote…
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I Dream of Your Heaven
While staying at the Notre Dame Spirituality Center in Ipswich, Massachusetts, I was struck by the beautiful stained glass in Our Lady Queen Chapel designed by Vincent De Paul Curran, SNDdeN (pictured here; trust me that my photo does not do it justice!). The glass depicts the scene from Revelation 22 with a glorious tree…
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The Seeds of Grace
This text is an exploration of the parable of the Sower found in Matthew 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, and Luke 8:4–15. What is our response to the bountiful seeds of grace God scatters and nurtures in our midst? The text is paired with the beautiful Irish folk melody DURROW. It could also be used with a more familiar…
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People of the Earth
This is good place to confess with pride that my Mom is a paleontologist. Her work honors the fascinating diversity and development of life past and present. I have heard her comment more than once that God must have a particular fondness for beetles, given their great abundance! Humanity is a very small fraction of…
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Let There Be Rest
This hymn began as an exploration of the commandment to rest and to ensure rest for the people, animals, and land around us. I was inspired by ongoing conversations about rest as an issue of justice including the work of Tricia Hersey, the “Nap Bishop,” who teaches that rest can be both resistance and reparation.…
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Morning Breaks
In October of 2022 I was a bundle of nerves as I prepared to attend a conference for aspiring hymn composers and text writers hosted by The Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. I was totally fascinated by the prospect of hymn writing and I had been spending more and more time experimenting,…
Hannah C Brown 