Presence – Wisdom Chant

Here. Now. Here. Now.
Here. Now. Here. Now.
Here. Now… is the presence of God.

Listen

Intended as another stilling chant, this one arose spontaneously out of my own Centering Prayer practice. On occasions when I felt too distracted and ill-at-ease to start I used to sit down and repeat “Here, now…” to myself as a mindfulness exercise to bring me into the present moment. God is not to be found in the joys and grievances of the past, nor worries about the future but right here, right now. Over time the lyric above gradually crystallised out of this practice, so I set it to music.

While harmonising it I caught a glimpse in my mind’s ear of a more sparse and purer sound. I tried to capture this using three parts where the soprano and bass are the same as the four part version but the alto line is new. This should match the resources of an average prayer group more closely and, given the simplicity of the chant, enable you to get singing in harmony quite quickly.

Note that the playback does not articulate the portato symbols correctly. There should be the briefest of silences at the end of each note thus marked to separate it from the following one. The effect is to give the words “here” and “now” equal weight and hence emphasis.