Come Thou Fount | Pride Invocation
“But here’s the thing, “Come Thou Fount,” at its core, is a story about being sought. For queer folks, how powerful to hear and know that God is looking for us! Not to punish, but to love and uplift.”
Britt Kusserow
This Pride, we are exploring the intersection of worship, music, and what it looks like for us as LGBTQ+ Christians to Play It Proud. This year’s theme emphasizes our joy in our community, in our communal worship of the Divine, in our gratitude for unconditional love, and in our collective expression of who we fully and freely are.
Today, QCF Community Member and artist, Britt Kusserow, takes an old familiar hymn and arranges it in a way that centers God seeking of us – all of us.
I have a terrible habit of missing Pride celebrations nearly every June because of (drumroll please): church camp. In recent years God has taken mercy on me, and changed the hearts of the organizers of both Los Angeles Pride AND our beloved Dyke Day, that they might schedule these events in a way which accommodates my travel plans. Nevertheless, I am very used to focusing my June not around Pride, but around a small weeklong Episcopal camp in Indiana, whilst my loved ones are cheerily cutting the sleeves off their flannels and creating the ultimate playlist for that congested train ride into the city.
Camp is one of the first places I came out, and was met with love, affirmation, and honest curiosity. The story of my coming out, and the Diocese’s subsequent shift from an era of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” to a vocally open and affirming stance, is a long and complicated one, which gave way to an environment where kids trust that they can be their truest selves, and know that they are beloved by their community and their God.In 2017 (as previously established) I missed L.A. Pride (and, more devastatingly, Dyke Day) to trek to Indiana camp. A patriarch of our community had died some months before, and it was hard to exist without him. I found myself struggling to connect to the land, to the people, to the song which usually came so easily.
And yet from the depths of that uneasiness, an old familiar hymn returned again and again to my mind. I’ve spent years as a church musician rejecting traditional hymns on the basis of their often dubious theology, their use in justifying “holy wars” and colonial brutality. So the gentleness with which this particular song found its way into my heart during this particular camp week was, honestly, surprising. But here’s the thing, “Come Thou Fount,” at its core, is a story about being sought. For queer folks, how powerful to hear and know that God is looking for us! Not to punish, but to love and uplift.
For this arrangement, I made a few intentional changes to the lyrics, with the goal of centering that idea of being sought. I borrowed the line “mount of thy unchanging love” from Sufjan Stevens, to emphasize for our campers the steadfastness of Creator, rather than promote a modern idea of “salvation.” For this same reason, I changed the line “interposed His precious blood” to “interposed that precious Love.” Many Christian traditions do not and have not required a literal understanding of resurrection or transubstantiation (although I know for some, these are important cornerstones). I also added the line “fill this world with light,” a nod toward a song written by one of our clergy, a reminder of the gift of our agency.
And this, I think, I hope, describes the quiet, daily summons from my God. I am called to focus on how my ancestors lived. To focus on how I live. For as much as we spend our time reminding others they are loved, encouraging others to live (particularly those of us coming out of church traditions, for better or worse), we can quite frankly suck at embracing this idea for ourselves. So, this June, I offer an invitation: allow yourself to be sought by the author of Love, embrace what it might mean to live.
