"I Believe"

Here's a postscript to my last post on the relevance of Christmas carols:

In the last few months, Chorus members wanted to learn "I Believe". Some of them, I suspect,  chose it because it was more like "ordinary singing" than Barbershop. However, our indefatigable Director prepared a great arrangement in barbershop style and I crafted scores for everyone.

The problem was, there's only one verse and just singing the whole thing twice through didn't seem to make an item, no matter how "lovely" people thought it sounded.

Personally, just about everything in this song represents a whole style of theology that I have long since relinquished, so when the possibility arose that one of us might write a second verse, I had a go. I wrote the following and nobody complained about it so we learned it:

I be-lieve that some-where in the heart of me a vis-ion burns;

I be-lieve that in the eyes of friends a-round I see hope yearns;

I be-lieve that some-where in a hurt-ing world some-one will go

To ease the pain.

I be-lieve, Oh, I be-lieve.

I be-lieve that in us all the fut-ure of the world is sure;

I be-lieve that we are those whose life and all its works en-dure;

Ev-ry time I hear a new born ba-by cry

Or touch a leaf or see the sky,

Then I know why I be-lieve.

But in the end of year Village concert by the Barbershop singers the other night, we were  apparently running out of time so my verse somehow got omitted! 

Oh, the trials of a Progressive in an alien world!