Precious five the senses are
A hymn by Kim Fabricius
Tune: Humility – without refrain (any suggestions on alternative tunes would be welcome)
Precious five* the senses are,
how we find our way around
God’s creation, near and far,
lengthways, sideways, up and down.
And we, using hearts and minds,
sounding depths and scaling heights,
logic-bound or unconfined,
navigate our way through life.
Conscience too directs our ways,
outer law and inner voice,
through the endless moral maze
with its agony of choice.
Yet with all these human skills,
sense and sensibility,
still we can’t do what we will –
impotent ability.
Is there no way to release
old creation from its vice?
Look at what the Lord, by grace,
now has done in Jesus Christ!
God in peace invades the earth –
free at last from Satan’s grip! –
triggers new creation’s birth:
cruciform apocalypse!
* The title of a poem by W. H. Auden
Hmmm... most anything 7777. So how about Gott sie Dank or The Call?
Tune - may I suggest "Song 13" by Orlando Gibbons?
Dear Kim,
I really hate myself for sitting here throwing spanners like this!
BUT, anyone who has studied autistic spectrum disorders and tried to investigate the way that people with this condition perceive the world in different ways from the rest of us will have come across the fact that there are seven senses, not just five. They are the five we all know about (vision, hearing, tactility, olfaction and gustation) plus two others: proprioception and vestibulation. Proprioception is the sense of where the different parts of the body are in relation to one another, and vestibulation is the sense of where the body is in relation to its surroundings.
So a hypo-proprioceptive person (one with a reduced sense of the relative positions of the different parts of the body) may have a weak grasp (habitually drop things) or habitually seem floppy (lean or droop on furniture or walls) or stumble through not lifting feet enough when walking; and a hypo-vestibular person may get addicted to swings and merry-go-rounds and theme-park activities (roller-coasters and so on) as s/he tries to self-stimulate to increase the sense of where s/he is in the world.
I haven't a notion of how to put this into song! And, of course, "Precious seven" wouldn't have the right allusion in your first verse!
Yours in Christ - JOHN HARTLEY.
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