Well, I've thus far been unable to effectively wrestle the lines of my first attempt into a respectable, consistent meter. We'll see if it works out.
A couple lines of this were floating through my head last night. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and wrote them down....and still couldn't fall asleep. This is the result. Still some polishing to do, a few rough spots, and probably another verse to be written. Not sure if it's a problem that the verses are 8.6.8.6 and the chorus is 7.7.6.7. Any thoughts?
The Offerings of God
I offer you my careworn voice,
No longer full of strife.
You offer me the words of faith,
The words of love and life.
I offer you my feeble eyes,
To seek and save the lost.
You show me scenes of Calvary,
To help me see the cost.
I offer you my weakened hands,
And turn to serving you.
You offer me, in strength of love,
Your hands with nails pierced through.
I offer you my weary feet,
To walk the straightened way.
Your feet were wounded for a debt,
That I could not repay.
Chorus
My offerings are simple,
When compared to perfect love.
My sacrifices pale,
When compared to heav’n above.
Your offerings are greater,
Yet you asked me from the start,
For no more than my faith,
And a broken, contrite heart.
Well, there are many guys on here, but I got some contacts with RJ and Tim Stevens, Charli Couchman, and others. So if you need anything like that, I'll be glad to help. Once again, very good. My name is Colton McDaniel, btw.
Not bad for some rookies, eh? Josh gave me a hand building a new dining room table out of reclaimed barnwood that was taken from a barn that used to be on the property of one of the members of the congregation here in Rantoul. The wood started out pretty nasty. Completely grey and weathered, covered in dirt, all sorts of mouse and muskrat foulness. We turned it into something pretty nice after a few hours in the woodshop, a lot of sweat, and a gash on my forehead after pulling one of the legs out of a particularly tight mortise.
The top is all biscuit joinery. We weren't able to use a joiner to straighten the edges so we did the best we could sanding them down to make a tight joint. It came out pretty well. The base is pretty simple. I got the idea for it by looking at some pictures online and then adjusting it to suit our needs and taste.
I'll post some pictures here once I get it stained and sealed. We still need to decide on a color. I'm partial to keeping it somewhat natural, Kendra wants it a bit darker. Since we made it for her for our 5 year anniversary, I think we'll let her decide.
We're planning on writing some info on the bottom of the table with our names, date, etc. I think I'm also going to include where we got the wood. Shirley Chumbley, one of the older members here and who gave me the wood, was nearly brought to tears when I offered to have her over for dinner on it. Evidently her late husband had built the barn lots of years ago, tore it down and saved the wood to use in their home and on similar projects as our table.....I hope she's not disappointed in it.
I decided last night that I wanted to start working on hymn-writing. I thought I'd start by attempting some...I guess..."scriptural poetry". There may be something that comes out of if that can be polished into a singable hymn...we'll see. Here's my first attempt. It's a first draft that I'm not sure is finished, but feel free to comment and critique away!
The biggest problem I see right off the bat is primarily with meter. First, you have a very irregular meter - unless you already have music written, you're going to have a HARD time writing (or having someone else write) to such an irregular meter. Also, there are a handful of spots where you break your meter - primarily in the third verse.
You're not speaking Greek, you're speaking Jabberwock! He's giving me good feedback on TheHymnal. Keep it coming! I'm hoping to rework this until it's closer to being technically up to snuff, if for no other reason than for practice.
Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you should just throw them at someone...really hard. No, I mean it, you'll feel better..at least, as long as you don't throw them at me. Or Bo (he'd be scared).
