Post-death Interviews with Shirley Erena Murray and Colin Gibson
Gillian and John Thornley. hosts for the weekly radio programme of Wesley Broadway, Palmerston North, using the studios of the Manawatu Peoples Radio (MPR), held conversations with the late and great hymnwriters of Aotearoa New Zealand. It was quite a rare and unique ‘one-off’ occasion. Heaven doesn’t often open its door to allow temporary visas to earth.
The partnership between the local Methodist church and Manawatu Peoples Radio has many programmes of hymns by Shirley and Colin on its database. These two post-death interviews were something different! In the course of the interviews, light is shed on the theology of Shirley and Colin, and a sample of the writer’s hymns available on CD recordings was shared.
But first, here’s three quotes from the interviews, highlighting the unusual angle of the programme:
Interviewer: How does it feel to attend your post-resurrection interview?
Shirley: Great. One gets a wider, bigger audience post-death.
Interviewer: Colin, do you recall your hymn ‘Fancy Noah sailing in the Ark?’
Colin: Sure enough. When Shirley and I want to recall good times on earth, we sit aside each other in our heavenly home, and quietly sing it through.
Interviewer: It’s a hymn that gets my foot tapping, and encouraging me to get up and dance around. Can you do that in heaven, Colin?
Colin: A holy dance is totally acceptable. Noah might like to join in, if he’s not too busy looking after the animals.
Interviewer: Colin, let’s talk about your traditional hymn ‘Praise the All-Sustaining Word’.
Colin: I remember it well. Not only did it appear in our collection Hope is our Song but also in a Cantata titled ‘The Spirit Within’. Singers of Wellington performed it in Wesley Church on Taranaki Street, Wellington. I’d glad the church folk have kept the pohutukawa trees. From our heavenly home we can see their blazing red flowers.
Interviewer: A post-earthly life gives the hymnwriters more opportunity to reflect on the deeper meanings in their hymns. They can talk about their theology. We’ll quote a reflection for each writer.
First, from Shirley:
Interviewer: I asked you about your use of the word ‘body’ in relation to ‘God’, ‘Church’, ‘World’. Did the body of Christ refer to the ‘Church’ or the ‘World’?
Shirley: I can easily recall my words. That’s heavenly power at work for my listeners. My meaning was certainly in ‘the world’ as the ‘body of Christ’. Since you have picked me up on this, I’ll try to explain what I mean in terms of my hymnwriting. For a start it has to be with the parameters of reality being defined by the World, not the Church, in the broadest sense. I suppose I grew up believing that the Church tells you what the World is. That is, Church as ‘good’, the World as ‘evil’. The world has to be brought into the church in order to ‘save’ it. Now I live in a world where all the parameters are being pushed out. Hymns convey the Church’s theology in a very profound way. People remember hymns much better than sermons because they sing them and the singing engraves them in memory. Hymn liturgy is probably more important than church membership classes, the creeds, the manuals, the confessions of faith.
Second, from Colin
Interviewer: Your hymn goes further than a dance track, Colin. Tell the listeners a little about its origins.
Colin: The song became popular at an annual Methodist Church conference in Christchurch 1996. I wrote these words to go beyond Noah and the rainbow story. While the narrative of the hymn is biblically based, its theme is the joyous unqualified acceptance of all humanity before the face of God. The vision it offers is of a rainbow world populated by rainbow people of every kind of ‘colour’, including by implication, every kind of sexual orientation. The rainbow is both the symbol of God’s covenant with all life on earth and the adopted sign of the movement for equality for gay people within and outside the church.
Andfinally, the music.
A radio programme or podcast shares recordings of our expansion of New Zealand hymns since the 1960s. Four collections were published between 1996 and 2009: Alleluia Aoteroa, Carol our Christmas, Faith Forever Singing and Hope is our Song.
Three hymns appear on the Interview with Shirley Murray: ‘God of the Galaxies spinning in space’, a carol ‘Set the sun dancing. New life has begun’ and ‘Loving Spirit’.
Three hymns appear on the Interview with Colin Gibson: ‘These Hills’, ‘Praise the All-Sustaining Word’, ‘Fancy Noah Sailing in the Ark’.
For a secular radio station Manawatu Peoples Radio would hold the largest database of New Zealand hymns than any of the other eleven community radio station. Their collection even includes the twenty-four tracks from the 1999 Songs of Praise from Aotearoa, fronted by Graeme Thomson – sadly no longer on the airwaves. The Wesley Broadway programme is played on other community radio stations.
Note
In the Manawatu, Wesley Broadway’s half-hour programme airs live each Tuesday and Saturday at 11 o’clock on AM Frequency 999. Online:mpr.nz/show/wesley
For copies of hymns (music and words), in print/CD/digital formats, contact Philip and Heather Garside Publishing: www.pgpl.co.nz.
-- John Thornley