Change

ALL THINGS EXIST IN FLOWING CHANGE

Tune:

EVOLUTION 8787D
Melody: William L. Wallace
Harmony: Thomas Strickland
 

1. All things exist in flowing change,
   All things are ever moving,
   The rocks all hold a quantum world
   Whose dance is ever changing.
   Each living thing will one day die
   Except the myst’ry’s greatness
   That has no starting point or end
   And holds all cosmic fullness.

2. All things are still evolving now
   Including flesh and thinking
   Despite our dreams that change will end,
   Despite all our false learning.
   When faith has lost it’s trust in facts
   It lacks the power of coping
   And joins conspiring leaders now
   With dreams shaped by sick thinking.

3. When all the “timeless” standards fail
   In ethics, faith and fine art
   They are replaced by other codes
   With complex ways we now chart.
   The woven-ness is now affirmed
   As two-ness fades from viewing.
   Diversity is then espoused
   To help us find wise knowing.

4. We all have need to nurture now
   Compassion that’s expanding
   That helps us see behind the words
   And open ways of caring.
   New thought needs sensitivity
   To people’s varied growing
   In ways their heart can shape their faith,
   For nurture and unfolding.

5. So let us give each new born thought
   Respect from our discerning
   And worship myst’ry more than words
   With awe that passes learning.
   We then will make a oneness space
   That can replace all envy,
   For all things from the myst’ry came
   And to it all shall journey.

Text and Melody © William Livingstone Wallace
Harmony © Thomas Strickland
 
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Click Here for Full Index to William L. Wallace’s Series

Hymns “Cosmic Mystery”

 
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William (Bill) Livingstone Wallace is a retired New Zealand Methodist Minister and one of our most prolific contributors. Bill says that his work springs from communicating with the fire in his gut and his observation of both the internal and external aspects of the Cosmos. Since an early age, he has been both sympathetic to and critical of the church, announcing at the age of 13 his belief in evolution. In his youth, he struggled with the disconnection between art and spirituality in his own and other denominations and with the way in which all of the liturgies prior to the sermon were regarded as preliminaries and longer sermons were viewed as superior to more concise ones.

He holds a B.A. in philosophy and a Dip. Ed. and is the author of nine published collections of his hymns as well as other resources on our website. His aim is to help people be empowered by the divine within them and the Cosmos and to work to overthrow the forces of personal and institutional greed which destroy both the ecosystem and human society.

Click Here for a Full Biography of William L. Wallace

Click here for a complete list of his work on ProgressiveChristianity.org