Product Description

If there is one simple phrase that lies at the heart of this moving tribute to the pleasures of singing hymns, it is this: "Only joy." Bill Henderson, a tough man with a gentle vision, found community and religious grace as a middle-aged man while lifting his voice in church. In a book that will inspire readers to share his passion, he writes of his love of traditional hymns and how he sought to learn about their origins. This is a much-needed book about the songs of our lives and will be warmly welcomed by thoughtful people of many faiths, especially those who reject the narrow orthodoxies of religious fundamentalism.

For Bill Henderson, the researching of his favorite hymns became more than fact-finding. As the author went about his research, he learned that he had cancer. Someone slipped a note into his typewriter: "Only Joy," it read. He adopted that phrase as a motto for writing and for life. While Simple Gifts is partly a memoir, it is a work not about one man's health but about his pursuit of godliness. That the joy of congregational song aided Henderson in his recovery he has no doubt, but he offers a wider vision, one that is truly life-enhancing.

Bill Henderson grew up attending a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia with his quietly religious family. He left his faith as he became a teenager and didn't rediscover it until many decades later. What brought him back to church was the sheer pleasure he found in singing old familiar hymns with others. Some of these hymns moved him to tears, and so he decided to immerse himself in the history of Christian music.

With three themes under consideration -- Songs of Simplicity, of Wonder, and of Love -- the author begins with a look back at plain chant; the songs of Martin Luther, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and others; and the emergence of modern church music. "Simple Gifts," the great Shaker hymn, opens the Songs of Simplicity section, which includes "In the Garden" as well as many Christmas carols like "O Holy Night" and Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter."

The amazing story behind "Amazing Grace" leads into the Songs of Wonder chapter. Also appreciated here are "Be Thou My Vision" and "How Great Thou Art." With the Prayer of St. Francis as a pretext, Henderson discusses Songs of Love: "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace," "There Is a Balm in Gilead," and "Abide With Me."

Henderson believes that many of these old hymns are in danger of being forgotten as "modern" churches have adopted rock-based music or watered-down, politically correct verses. More important, he meditates on the hymns' values as he tries to understand his own relationship with God, even as they inspired him through his bout with a life-threatening illness.

While this book celebrates mainstream Protestant hymns, it is by no means sectarian. It is about songs of the heart, songs that move us, the songs of our lives. It is about joy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1223310 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
It's almost more truth than I can bear to express," writes Henderson about a line from "Amazing Grace" in his brief meditation on the importance of hymns in American Christian life. Henderson, the founder and editor of the Pushcart Prize series, considers several hymns, but pays most attention to the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts," the classic "Amazing Grace" and the lesser-known "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace." Hymns' appeal, Henderson says, owes to their pleasing musicality and to the way they support a spiritual purging: "we sing to each other of our pain, loneliness, and fear, topics we would hesitate to admit flat out in gatherings after services." In writing about the trials of his own life, especially those dealing with his intensely religious and pathologically shy father, Henderson weaves together his story with those of the hymns' creators. This is most powerful in his brief histories of the Shakers and of John Newton, the lyricist of "Amazing Grace." The narrative pauses on several occasions to allow Henderson to rail against lifestyles that "[rely] on stuff and self as the center of the world," but these clumsy moments are far outweighed by Henderson's thoughtful consideration of his life and the role hymns have played in it. (Apr.)
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Review
"Hymns are to the ear what incense is to the nose: a sense of something beyond rational experience. If this is as true for you as it is for me, you will love this book."

-- Peter J. Gomes, The Memorial Church, Harvard University, author of The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

About the Author
Bill Henderson is the author of a novel, The Kid That Could, and three memoirs, including, most recently, Tower: Faith, Vertigo, and Amateur Construction. He is the publisher and founder of PushcartPress and editor of the acclaimed Pushcart Prize series. He lives on Long Island and in Maine with his wife and daughter and is an elder in the Springs Community Presbyterian Church on Long Island.

Customer Reviews

liberal thinker loving conservative hymns
touching personal encounter with hymns as related to writer's personal experience. Had gumption to take on old chestnuts such as "Just As I Am" and Graham evangelism. Threw some new light on traditional hymns. Easy read I didn't put down.

This Is a Terrific Book, Written by a Tough Writer Who Fought His Way to His Love of Faith in Hymns
Bill Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Prizes to honor works by small presses, has produced an inspirational book that's gutsy and appropriately small.

This is a smart, tough guy who once told a friend in a bar that he was fed up with preachers who describe God as a hair-trigger Sadist. This God doesn't make sense. It's "Life Everlasting" vs. "Eternal Damnation," he muses. Then, Henderson asks his buddy in the bar, "Is this God a moron?"

Yet, somehow Henderson's odyssey takes him from that coarse skepticism to an appreciation of faith and hymns that prompts him to write: "Oh! When it hits! When a great old hymn reaches way down inside where you live: then the problem is not shall I sing, but can I sing at all. I choke up and stumble over words and notes. Nothing can mean so much as a classic hymn. Such hymns go to a source in us beyond our control and leave us overwhelmed with joy and recognition."

Hey, I want to go sing hymns in Bill Henderson's church!