A Very 'Kiwi' Song of Praise

As part of our Season of Creation liturgies, we have been using the Benedicite Aotearoa each Sunday during September. This is a uniquely New Zealand song of praise written by Reverend Bruce Keeley who is here with the wonderfully quirky story behind its journey into our Prayer Book.

At Holy Trinity Cathedral during the recent Season of Creation (the Sundays of September), with four excellent preachers and creation-centred liturgies, the ‘Benedicite Aotearoa’ was used each week, as the psalm of the day. This NZ-flavoured song of praise is to be found in the NZ Prayer Book on page 457, as part of the second Eucharistic liturgy. A longer version appears on page 63 as part of the Monday morning option in the Daily Services section.

As the original author of the Benedicite Aotearoa I have been asked to tell the rather quirky story of how it came to be published.

While studying for ordination at St John’s theological college in the mid-1970s, the various student tutor groups took turns in preparing and leading the mid-week College Eucharist. My group, under the leadership of lecturer The Reverend Dr George Armstrong, decided on a somewhat avant-garde liturgy, with each student member taking responsibility for one part. I put my hand up to write a psalm of praise, and decided to compose a Down-Under Kiwi version of the traditional ‘Benedicite, omnia opera Domini’ (Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord) a canticle found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and based on an Apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel (also known as the Song of the Three Children).

The Benedicite Aotearoa is a call to every part of creation to praise the Creator. It starts with the galaxies, and sweeps from the mountain peaks to the seashore and ocean’s depths, before calling upon all categories of people to join in the cosmic hymn of praise. In the longer version there is a slightly tongue-in-cheek (and in some cases now-outdated) call to ‘typists and teachers…. students and stock-agents’ to give their thanks and praise along with everyone else, finishing with ‘all children and infants, all people who play’.

And ‘play’ is the operative word, because back in 1977 this was written as a playful, one-off, never-to-be-heard-again piece of liturgical script. Or so I thought.

About ten years later I had a phone call from The Revd Dr Ken Booth, who had been my lecturer in church history and was now a member of the august Provincial Commission on Prayer Book Revision, responsible for creating what we now know as A New Zealand Prayer Book – He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa.

‘Do you remember’ he said ‘that Benedicite you once wrote for a College mid-week eucharist?’ ‘Yes, sort of’, I replied, ‘but I never kept a copy of it’. ‘Well’ said he ‘I found it in my bottom drawer, and would you feel OK if it was included in the new prayer book?’

And so it came to pass. Except that the prayer book, and all that it contained, must first pass the close scrutiny and thumbs-up from each diocesan synod. From that laborious process emerged the story that in the Dunedin Diocesan Synod, one rural member objected bitterly to the inclusion of ‘rabbits’ in the Benedicite Aotearoa because of their devastating damage to his farm.

But the bunnies survived the ecclesiastical trial, and the Benedicite appeared largely unscathed when the prayer book was published in 1989.

Reverend Bruce Keeley

Priest of the Auckland Diocese