This is not an mp3 blog, Lord knows, but here's a music file. I made it, although I didn't write it, and my rendition does it no justice. This is possibly the strangest sacred music I've come across. Of course I'm in love with it. It's a hymn about Science! Atoms! Satellites! Research! It's glorious.

It's "God of Concrete, God of Steel," by Frederick R.C. Clarke, or, in that funky "hymnody" notation, CONCRETE 777777.

(That means that this hymn can be sung to any other melody that fits the 777777 meter -- six lines of seven syllables each. You can sing it to RATISBON or DIX or to something I couldn't find called MINTERNE or something everyone knows calls TOPLADY, which is the name of the melody for "Rock of Ages" ((and if only I could go "da-da-da-dum, da-dee-daaa!" online, I would, because you really have heard this one over and over again, whoever and wherever you are)). But that's not the music that was written for these words. These words of praise -- technological and awestruck praise of a Gleaming God of Science -- were meant for this utterly gorgeous, angular, dissonant melody, CONCRETE.)

You would not believe how long it took me to find this music and then figure out how it goes. Special thanks to the man with the scans, S. Matthew Stolte.

You'd like to sing this at home. And in church. And possibly on public transit. So here are the words, by Richard Granville Jones:

[from The Hymn Book of the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada (1971 edition)]

God of concrete, God of steel,
God of piston and of wheel,
God of pylon, God of steam,
God of girder and of beam,
God of atom, God of mine:
all the world of power is thine.

Lord of cable, Lord of rail,
Lord of freeway and of mail,
Lord of rocket and of flight,
Lord of soaring satellite,
Lord of lightning’s flashing line:
all the world of speed is thine.

Lord of science, Lord of art,
Lord of map and graph and chart,
Lord of physics and research,
Word of Bible, Faith of church,
Lord of sequence and design:
all the world of truth is thine.

God whose glory fills the earth,
gave the universe its birth,
loosed the Christ with Easter’s might,
saves the world from evil’s blight,
claims us all by grace divine:
all the world of love is thine.

I'd like to dedicate this entry to the former members of the Dover School Board. Sing it in their memory.

And have a happy epiphany!