Common Ground Song 88 ‘Mothering God’
Words: © Jean Janzen / Music: © Janet Peachey
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvO8QTa7API
Featured image: Copyright unknown. Source page.

The authors of Common Ground chose to use a tune that had been composed specially for this song by Janet Peachey. It is a four-part arrangement, hauntingly beautiful, but not at all easy to pick up, and if sung in unison the melody line (treble) is actually a bit boring. If you want to hear it sung, try this recording. The one linked above is one of many I found online that use the same alternative setting of an existing hymn tune (usually sung to the words 'Jesus the joy of loving hearts'), which is easier to follow.

The form of the hymn in Trinitarian: the three verses beginning ‘Mothering God’, ‘Mothering Christ’ and ‘Mothering Spirit’. While it is common nowadays to recognise the Holy Spirit as the feminine aspect of God, it is still less common to find the Creator addressed in the feminine (although clearly the Creator is all that it is to be masculine, feminine and more). And to address Christ as Mother, given that he took flesh as a man, is much rarer.

That aside, the hymn covers various aspects of the created order: in the first verse we sing of light, breath, rain, wind and sun (the conditions that gave rise to life on earth). In the second, we sing of the plants that give us food, more specifically the ‘grain and grape’ that become the bread and wine of Communion, in which we share the body of the ‘mothering Christ’. And int the last verse, the imagery is that of growth, as the Spirit is addressed as the ‘nurturing one’, who allows us to ‘root, grow, flower and know’. On this World Environment Day, it is good to be reminded that the word ‘environment’ refers to all that is around us and that enables us and all other creatures to exist, grow and thrive.

The very last line of Jean Janzen’s lyrics is the odd one out: ‘Until I flower, until I know’. Know what? The editorial notes tell us that the words are based on the writings of the medieval mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich. Presumably what she meant was ‘until I know God’. Knowing God is something we can only aspire to and never fully reach in this life, but the thoughts expressed in these verses are perhaps a guide to how me might make our partial knowledge of God greater: recognising God as our creator provider and sustainer; accepting his ‘food’ (the words of the Bible and the bread and wine of Communion); and letting his Spirit ‘hold me close in arms of patience’ (i.e. in meditation and prayer).