Not a clue how to spell it, but it's a great word, and one some of my folk heard for the first time ever today when I used it in vestry prayers!  Thankfully, my prayer was answered and people seemed not to be too discombobulated by sitting cafe style.  But I was - before, during and after the event - by the hymn I'd selected to end the service.  BPW 308 'God is our strength and refuge.'  It sits there looking inncouous in the hymnbook, and the words, based on Psalm 46 are terrific.  The tune is well known, rousing, powerful and... well, here's the rub.... discombobulating.

The Dambuster's March - for many it conjures up images of torches played on tent ceilings and hands twisted to make goggles.  For others it speaks of triumphalist nationalism.  For some it speaks of heroism.  For some it speaks of the brutality of war and human inhumanity - dams breached and civilians drowned or made homeless, a nation crippled by ostensibly collateral damage.  I guess we all know the long term impact it had on Barnes Wallis.

I was uncomfortable (don't want to wear out the lovely titular word) singing these words to this tune at the end of our harvest service when we'd thought about the ongoing struggles in Indonesia.  And yet...

And yet, I think it was good to be disturbed, uncertain, troubled by what I was doing, because in some small measure it reflected the tensions that the psalm requires us to acknowledge.

I don't know why Richard Bewes chose to write his hymn to fit this tune.  Maybe he just liked it; maybe he thought it had potential beyond the confines of a war film; maybe, just maybe, he was playing with a bit of irony, reclamation or discombobulation of his own.  If anyone knows, I'd be delighted to learn the 'story behind the hymn.'  In the meantime, I live with the tensions and am glad that God is present within them.