June brings an end to our regular church year, as well as transitions both happy and bittersweet. We say goodbye to folks we love, and send them off with all our heartfelt appreciation and good hopes for the future. And we look forward to summer vacations and new beginnings in the fall. Today’s music reflects these transitions, and celebrates our love of community.

“The Bridge Builder” is written to an inspiring poem about an old man on a journey, who comes to a chasm with a tide of water flowing through it. He navigates the chasm and then builds a bridge over it, despite already having crossed. A fellow traveler asks “why build the bridge?”, since the old man will never return. The man responds that he is doing it for a youth who is coming behind him and may find the passage difficult.

As we create our ceremonial bridge next week for our senior youth transitioning to their next life pursuits, we will be helping to create a bridge for them — and living the generosity of spirit reflected in this song.

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fresh-faced youth* may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

*  “Fair-haired” in the original poem
Source: Father: An Anthology of Verse (EP Dutton & Company, 1931)

“Down to the River to Pray” is a song that has seen many iterations over time, the oldest known version being from a book of “Slave Songs” from 1867. Some versions have the words “down in the valley,” and others “down in the river” (or “down to the river”).

Part of what may account for this, according to Wikipedia, is that “many songs sung by victims of slavery contained coded messages for escaping. When the enslaved people escaped, they would walk in the river because the water would cover their scent from the bounty-hunters’ dogs. Similarly, the ‘starry crown’ could refer to navigating their escape by the stars. And ‘Good Lord, show me the way’ could be a prayer for God’s guidance to find the escape route, commonly known as the Underground Railroad.”

Other versions of the song are more clearly in the vein of a Christian folk hymn and were used at baptisms. For us now — and in the context of our service — we can hear this music as a call to mutual support and purpose. The particular arrangement the choirs are singing today, by Philip Lawson, allows for a truly multigenerational experience, with combined voices of all ages encouraging us to join together, whoever we are, in our prayer and in our journey toward freedom.

 

—Shaylor