I've been listening this morning to a 2017 performance of "Amazing Grace" posted last week to the San Francisco Gay Mens Chorus web site along with other material as the group widens its virtual outreach during a time when public performances are not possible.
It's a lovely arrangement by Mark Hayes of that grand old hymn --- words composed in 1773 by John Newton when he was curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, given its most popular setting (the traditional tune, "New Britain") in 1835 by William Walker, popularized first during the Americas' second "Great Awakening," now with almost universal appeal.
Although still popular among Christians, it's transcended the sometimes narrow confines of that accumulation of sects.
I especially appreciate hearing it from the mouths of fellow outcasts who have claimed it for themselves.
The point, I suppose, is that the grace of what theologian Paul Tillich termed "the ground of being" is accessible to all who open themselves to it --- and is not the property of the lesser gods created within the human family to guard the gate to what sometimes is called "salvation."
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