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You have selected: AN UNEASY CAROL (words by Fred Kaan) from the Ron Klusmeier Anthology. Subscribers may download arrangements using the links in the right hand column. Log in at left (first link beneath "The Catalogue") to activate the columns on the right.

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Lyrics and Author/Composer Comments are below.

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Lyrics:

We come uneasy, God, this festive season,
afraid that all may be just as before;
so hallow, help us use, each restive reason
that makes us want to see through tale and lore.

We come uneasy, longing to be able
to look beyond the symbols and the signs,
to find behind our carols and our bible
the living Word, as read between the lines.

We come uneasy, asking for your leading
to take our distance from the manger scene
and go into our main streets for our reading
of all that can in people’s eyes be seen.

We come, uneasy at the thought of knowing
the child who suffers, all who die too soon:
you, earthy Christ, in human likeness growing
from cradle of the night to cross at noon.

We welcome you, uneasy at your coming,
but reassured that you have come to stay
to bind together your and our becoming
a sign of hope, a light to save the day.

Then free us from traditions that diminish
the glory of your Christmas to a farce;
make good our will, from yearly start to finish
to ‘see this thing that (daily!) comes to pass’.

Author / Composer Comments

• Author Fred Kaan, from his book The Only Earth We Know (Stainer & Bell / Hope Publishing Co., 1999, page 18): “This hymn owes its origin to what three of ‘my’ ministers (I was, at the time, Moderator of the West Midlands Province of the United Reformed Church) wrote in their church magazines in Advent 1980. I owe them a debt of gratitude. What concerns me so deeply is not just the commercial hijacking of Christmas, but the appalling lack of imagination and style with which so many churches seem to go through the motions in celebrating the incarnation.”