In a particular way, tonight's song is the key to understanding tonight's prayer...
I asked a friend, Lord:
When do you know for sure that fall has arrived?
And he answered:
When I hear the crunch and taste the tart sweetness of an apple I picked, fresh from a tree, a tree I've been picking since I was a child...
I think of that tree, Lord:
the shade it has given,
the fruit it has shared
and the joy it brings to my friend...
And for how many years?
For more than six decades
and loyally so
- in season and out...
Not to mention the blossoms
whose honeyed scent and simple beauty
bring springtime glory to soften the roughness
of bark and branch...
I think of the tree that feeds my friend
and I think of you, Lord Jesus Christ:
my apple tree, my friend and my shade
whose fruit supplies my peace and my joy...
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
laden with fruit, and always green:
the trees of nature fruitless be
compared with Christ the apple tree*
Protect me, Lord, while I'm awake
and watch over me while I sleep
that awake, I might keep watch with you
and asleep, rest in your peace...
Amen.
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
arranged by Elizabeth Poston
sung by Ensemble Altera
* The text of this carol, 'Jesus Christ the Apple Tree' is a poem first published in 1784 New Hampshire in a collection prosaically titled 'Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians', compiled by Baptist minister Joshua Smith. Whether its provenance is English or American is still the subject of debate, but the transcendentalist beauty of its narrator communing with the divine through nature is not. Elizabeth Poston sets the deeply personal text without affectation in a quiet, almost shape-note hymn style. - Christopher Lowrey
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