As if you were not there

The beginning is startling, but hardly more so than that of Psalm 74. This striking hymn by John Bell and Graham Maule has a Psalm-like starkness and honesty dressed in late-20th-c expression. It was published in 1989 in Love from Below—Bk 3 of the Iona Community’s series of Wild Goose Songs. Like others of its kind, with expressions beyond the range of conventional hymnody, it needs sensitive use and careful introduction. If it creates surprise in the congregation, a greater surprise may be the lack of more hymns like it; the classic hymns on providence remain foundational, but sometimes (as on occasions of national or global disaster, and as in the Pss) a text with sharper focus and more direct challenge may be required.One notable forerunner was Faber’s 19 stzs of Oh, it is hard to work for God (1849) with the lines: ‘He hides himself so wondrously,/ as though there were no God…It is not so, but so it looks…[but] God is on the field when he/ is most invisible’, etc. Linda Mawson has arranged the tune ILICH, which was adapted from the late-19th-c music of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, set to these words by their joint authors and published with them in 1989.

b Kilmarnock, Ayrshire 1949. Univ of Glasgow (degrees in Arts and Divinity after one false start and an interval working as a volunteer in London and Amsterdam). He was then ordained in the Ch of Scotland. His work with the Iona Community (where ‘there is no dualism between politics and piety’—JLB) began with youth ministry in 1984; with Graham Maule he initiated training programmes for young people committed to inner-city work. The Wild Goose Worship Group arose from this, subsequently publishing many collections of new hymns and songs in a folk idiom (with prayers and other worship material) and texts relevant to contemporary concerns. Based in Glasgow, his ministry takes him across the UK and Ireland, and abroad for much of the year, to Australia, Japan and the USA etc, as well as working nearer home with those on the edges of church life. But he dislikes ‘celebrity-style’ events and the general move from participation to performance. He has addressed the (British) Hymn Society and led sessions at Greenbelt; he was Convenor of the editorial group for the Ch of Scotland’s Common Ground Hymn Supplement of 1998 (for which he also compiled a companion booklet), and the major Church Hymnary 4th Edn (2005) which features some 60 of his texts and versions and nearly 100 tunes and arrangements. These include several of the ‘Short Songs’ which comprise the book’s penultimate section (preceding the Doxologies), comparable with those in HTC and CH2004 but in source more international and in style more liturgical. 22 of his texts are in Sing Glory (1999); 32 including single-stz texts in >i>Sing Praise (2010), and several others in the Methodist Singing the Faith planned for 2011. His newer compilation God Comes Tomorrow (book and disc) comprises ‘20 familiar and unusual Advent and Christmas resources’ which he has selected. Committed to a simple lifestyle and the quest for peace, he is a frequent radio broadcaster; the Irish bishop and hymnal editor Edward Darling said in 2006 that in reflecting a national folk culture, ‘John Bell has done for hymnody in Scotland what Vaughan Williams did [in EH] for hymnody in England’. Text nos.576, 910, 948; tune nos.428, 948, 1260.

b Glasgow 1958, d 2019. An architectural student in Glasgow who turned to full-time youth work, first at parish level and then with the Iona Community. There he teamed up with John Bell, qv for notes on Iona. With JB he co-authored many songs first published in the ‘Wild Goose’ series of contemporary folk-style collections. Several of these now appear in mainstream hymn-books: 7 in Rejoice and Sing (1991), 8 in the Irish Church Hymnal (2000), 13 in Sing Glory (1999) and 24 in the Scottish Church Hymnary (CH4, 2005). As a mature student he gained a Master’s degree in Fine Art (Sculpture); followed by his PhD. He contributed art-work and design to Iona publications. In 2004 he addressed the Hymn Society’s conference in Edinburgh. Nos.576, 910, 948, 1260.