New hymns blog

I got an email last night from Richard Hurst, deacon and (a rather talented) liturgist at Universalist National Memorial Church, my immediate former pastorate, asking me to note his new blog. I do, gladly. You may know him from his now-dormant blog, Universalist Sundays. The new blog is Hymns of the Week, which keys liturgical texts (Revised Common Lectionary, it looks) with hymns in Singing the Living Tradition and Hymns of the Spirit Three.

Hymns of the Spirit Three, wha?

I think he’s on to bigger things. (Ask Scott Wells to promote your blog and you get a review.) Hurst also writes Hymns of the Spirit Three, which I suspect gets its series number from the joint Universalist-Unitarian “red hymnal” and the earlier, nineteenth century Unitarian hymnal each entitled Hymns of the Spirit. But the enterprise lacks documentation (hint) so that’s only a guess. In it, he promotes and recasts hymns for the current age. I can’t say I like all his choices, but where I awkward constructions others will find consistently gender-neutral lyrics. Take that as you wil. Note, too, there’s some Spanish, which could prove quite useful and (bonus) he has three ways to download the score. These have a license for non-commercial use, but I would rather see a well-established license (such as one of the Creative Commons licenses) to help it integrate with other similiar efforts. (The last thing we need is a hundred projects with a hundred licenses, and something I’m considering adding to my sites, by the way.)

Philocrites writes hymns, and now there’s Richard Hurst’s contributions. My small helps in hymnody have largely been administrative (though Hubby and I help harmony-impaired congregations when we can by singing the bass line.) More of that soon.
Last, the domain, hos3.com, hasn’t anything in the top directory. This suggests room for “homesteading” for other projects, which is very encouraging.