Cantica Sacra

About the Book

In the years of my ministry, as I was testing out ways to express my thoughts, I tried writing hymn texts. After a while, having fallen into a scheme I called Cantica Sacra, I found that the hymn texts I created were useful. On occasion, I would import them into worship, a text pertinent to what was being read as the scriptural basis of the day set to a familiar hymn tune; that made the transfer easy for the congregation. But they also served me well as a first reflection in one genre on the scripture from which I would be preaching a few weeks later. This book picks up that developing system twenty-odd years after the beginning, providing a settlement into the text and a resonance much like that which a hymn offers to one singing.

About the Author

I am a retired minister of the Christian church (Disciples of Christ), living in the hills of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. During the course of my ministry, I tested various ways of exercising my habit of writing. I indulged in more or less academic prose. I investigated poetry in a number of ways. I tried my hand—not very successfully—at drama. I developed a variety of devotional schemes. I evolved a way with stories. And in the middle 1980s, I investigated hymn texts. These hymn texts came to be verse reflections on an upcoming scripture lesson which I would be preaching, set to a more or less familiar hymn tune. I found the hymn texts, which I called Cantica Sacra, useful and helpful; as a result, they continue to invite my development regularly. This is all a part of my habit now as I live in retirement with my wife of forty-eight years, a pair of dogs, a handful of cats, and a pair of Pekin ducks.