Those who were following my previous blog ('The Raynville Rambler') in 2021 will remember that I chose that year, beginning with the second Covid lockdown, to set a challenge of singing a different hymn or worship song every day as part of my prayer time. The project was planned in conjunction with Revd John Hartley, who played the same song most days in his own online prayer video through the lockdowns. We worked our way through the hymnbook 'Sing Praise', commenting briefly on my blog each day what that song meant to me. The 339 songs in that book worked well for a song every weekday (Mon-Sat), omitting Sundays as we worship in song in church on Sundays anyway. As far as possible I chose songs relevant to the liturgical season (Advent, Lent, Easter, Pentecost Creationtide, etc.)

Since then, I have relaunched my blog on a different host site, and unfortunately the old posts are all lost, though the text still exists on a backup disk should anyone be interested.

This year I have decided to do something similar again, and have chosen the hymn book 'Common Ground' (see below). There are two big differences: Firstly, there are only 150 hymns in this book, so I am only picking three every week rather than one every day. I will aim for Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but the exact date of blogging may vary slightly depending on other commitments. If you're interested, I suggest you come back to the blog every few days to see what's here! I start tomorrow with a setting of 'Agnus Dei' by Scottish composer James Macmillan (whose antiphon 'O Radiant Dawn' I referenced in my Christmas Eve sermon).

The other difference is that compared with 'Sing Praise', 'Common Ground' has far fewer hymns tied to particular seasons of the year. On the other hand it has more psalm settings and more personal or 'devotional' songs. These are distributed at random through the year in my planned schedule.

If you want to know the schedule in advance, let me know and I will send it to you (as an Excel sheet unless requested otherwise). As most of the hymns are in copyright I will not be able to post the full text on the blog, but you may find the text and/or performance online: I will give the author etc. each time.

'Common Ground' was published by St Andrew Press in 1998, ISBN 0 7152 0753 9, probably out of print now but you may find used copies on sites such as Amazon and AbeBooks. It gathers a wide range of lesser-known material from Christian traditions around the world (either written in English or with an English translation provided), along with a selection of well known hymns such as 'Amazing Grace', 'The Lord is my Shepherd' and 'How great Thou art'. My copy was a leaving gift from the Scargill community in 2002, as we had used songs from the book in chapel many times.

"Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." Habbakuk 3:18
"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice." St Paul in Philippians 4:4
"He who sings prays twice" - St Augustine.