NEWS
Words
MUSIC
JUPITER SHALL EMERGE, for SSAATTBB
available now via VOCES8 Publishing
About the Piece:
Walt Whitman’s poem ‘On the Beach at Night’ tenderly depicts a father comforting his daughter after their view of Jupiter and the Pleiades in the eastern night sky disappears behind darkening cloud cover. He encourages her to ‘be patient’, to hold to the hope that ‘Jupiter shall emerge’ in spite of the momentary shadows.
All of us have had those rare instances of transcendent encounter in which everything seems to make sense, moments of beholding ‘Jupiter’. And yet most of our lives are spent between those moments, in the long, quiet seasons waiting for something meaningful to emerge again. It is within those indefinite stretches that remembrance becomes a sacred act of hope toward an as-yet unseen future.
I hope choirs might really reflect on bringing out the contrasts in the piece, especially letting the longer passages breathe by focusing on the warmth of the harmony and the way the intertwining solo lines interact with it.
Purchase here.
BOOKS
SENSING GOD, available now
Praise for SENSING GOD:
‘In a world where many acts of violence are called sense-less, this book lights the path toward a senses-full experience, now a necessary condition toward healing our fractured culture.’
~ Makoto Fujimura, from the foreword
‘In SENSING GOD, Joel Clarkson has given us a book which is both highly inspiring and remarkably down-to-earth. In Christ, the Word was made flesh, but too often, we disembody God and turn him back into abstract theology. The reflections in this book will help us to find God where He chose to be found, right in the midst of life.’
~ Malcolm Guite
‘…Joel Clarkson gives us a feast for our senses. Theologically rooted, artistically curious, and reflective, SENSING GOD can help us learn again how to taste and see that the Lord is good.’
~ Ashley Hales
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