This post continues the Obsculta Preaching Series, sponsored by the Obsculta Preaching Initiative at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. In these posts, our authors engage a variety of ways in which scripture, preaching, and liturgical worship interact with the life of the faithful.
My 2020 setting of Psalm 23 entitled “Shelter Me” came into existence in a way totally unlike my usual compositional process. As you probably recall, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 a “public health emergency of international concern” on 30 January 2020 and for the first time referred to it as a pandemic on 11 March of the same year. Along with many others I watched with horror, fear and sadness the frequent news reports of the devastation wrought by the pandemic.
I awoke from a deep sleep sometime ca. 2 AM early that March with a single line of text and melody in my mind: “The way ahead is dark and difficult to see.” Rather quickly I realized that this might be made part of a refrain for a song of comfort in the midst of the medical emergency we were all experiencing. I immediately got to work, first crafting what would become the refrain:
O shelter me, O shelter me.
The way ahead is dark and difficult to see.
O shelter me, O shelter me.
All will be well if only you would shelter me.
I then searched for scripture that might be appropriate as verses, settling on Psalm 23, then creating a paraphrase of that biblical text. Verse one addresses the past with its experience of God’s journeying with me/us:
Shepherd and sheep, my God and I:
To fresh green fields you led me steps in days gone by.
You gave me rest by quiet springs
And filled my soul with peace your loving presence brings.
Verse two recounts the experience of feeling separated from God, especially by the threat of imminent death evoked by fear of contracting COVID-19:
Yet now I tread a diff’rent way;
Death dogs my path with stealthy steps from day to day.
I cannot find you peaceful place
But dwell in dreary darkness, longing for your face.
Verse three expresses the confident hope that feelings of distance from God would ultimately be overcome by God’s graciousness:
I will look back in days to come
And realize your faithfulness has led me home.
Within your house I’ll find my peace,
Trusting that in your mercy you have sheltered me.
The basic melody-line plus keyboard accompaniment score was finished by 10 AM that morning. I realized that I had created a metrical paraphrase of the psalm for both refrain and verses in 8.12.8.12 meter with aaaa end rhymes for the refrain and aabb end rhymes for the verses (using slant rhyme for the final verse).
Hoping that this song might be used in worship beyond English-speaking congregants, I contacted Santiago Fernandez, a fellow member of the Liturgical Composers Forum, to create a Spanish-language version of the text; his masterful idiomatic translation is a true gift. GIA Publications, Inc., agreed to publish the song, foregoing any copyright payments for a year. This led to a variety of recorded versions uploaded to the internet. Among them is this performance, sung and played by Spiritu, a music ministry group based at Nativity parish, St. Paul, MN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3KifN7Jfpc
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