I, the Lord of sea and sky   

Dan Schutte (b. 1947, Daniel Laurent Schutte ), the author of this hymn and composer of its music, entered the Society of Jesus after graduating from high school in Neenah, Wisconsin.  He went to the Jesuit St Louis University, where he joined with four others to become the “St Louis Jesuits,” a group of seminarians who composed and performed folk-rock music for the Roman Catholic liturgy following the promulgation of Novus Ordo by Pope Paul VI in 1969.  He later taught in a high school on the Sioux Reservation in Red Cloud, South Dakota, before earning a degree in music from Seattle University, where all five of the St Louis Jesuits had moved.  Both as a group and as individuals, they have made many recordings of their songs.  

 

Schutte wrote “I, the Lord of sea and sky”  in 1979, when he was enrolled at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (now of the University of Santa Clara, part of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California).  A fellow student asked him to write a hymn for the ordination of a third student to the diaconate only three days later.  The request was that the text include references to the word of God, the light of Christ and the elements of the Eucharist.  Schutte has recorded his anxiety about writing the hymn in such a short time.  With the counsel of his fellow musicians he changed the opening line of the refrain from “Here I am, Lord, here I stand, Lord” to “Here I am, Lord.  Is it I, Lord?”  

 

Schutte scored the hymn for solo voice and guitar—he names Simon snd Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary as influences—and it bears the aura of its time.  In 1983 Schutte and others copyrighted an organ accompaniment, and later an instrumental one.  The structure of the hymn suggests that a single voice or perhaps a small semi-chorus should sing the verses (the voice of God) and a larger group respond with the refrain.  Schutte has recorded it that way.  Otherwise the importance of dialogue may be lost.  The  dialogue of the hymn repeats the dialogues in the biblical stories of Isaiah and Samuel on which the hymn is based.  Isaiah’s vision of God “in the year that King Uzziah died” ends with the prophet’s volunteering to go out into the world as God’s emissary: “Here am I, Lord.”   Samuel hears God’s call “in the night” and responds, “Here am I.”  The hymn’s three stanzas are loosely structured on the Trinity.  Stanza 1 speaks as God the Father Creator, stanza 2 as God the Son, who suffers and loves, stanza 3 as God the Holy Spirit, the Lord of Pentecost, who comforts and provides.

 

This hymn was published in 1981. Since writing it Schutte has written nearly 200 hymns, though no others have had the popular appeal of this one.  (It has also had its detractors.)  Schutte left the Jesuit Order for personal reasons in 1986; since then he has been Composer-in-Residence at San Francisco University.