From the hymnal · By the Riverside
Come Up New
Track four from our baptism record — the coming-up half of a song Sister Petra wrote on the drive to the river. No shadow in this sky and no rival on this shore: only the bank, the cold water, and the long folding tables after. We print it as we sang it the morning we rented the tent.
We parked by the river and carried the chairs,With towels in the trunk and the casseroles paired;The water ran cool over concrete and stone,And the whole congregation came down on its own.
One at a time they waded out slow,Pastor Connie beside them, the current below;She asked them the questions, they answered them clear,And we hummed on the shoulder so they'd know we were near.
Then under the water and up to the light,Hair flat and eyes shining, the morning gone bright;We clapped with our hands and we wept with our eyes,And handed up towels near the size of the skies.
We dried off our feet and we folded the chairs,We ate in the canopy, said the day's prayers;The river kept moving, the casseroles thinned,And we drove the vans home with the windows let in.
Refrain
Come up new, come up wide,Up where the gentle and grateful abide;Whatever you carried, you left in the wave —You come up belonging, you come up made brave.
A note for the folding chairs
By the Riverside (2017) is our baptism record, and "Come Up New" is track four of it — the companion to "Go Under Gently," which comes just before. Sister Petra wrote both halves on the way over, on the back of a parking-permit envelope, and would not let us change the key between them, so the whole thing stays in the one key of D. We did rent the tent — a twenty-foot canopy returned clean and folded on Monday — and we tracked the record across a single weekend, the way we always do. There is no quarrel anywhere in this one and no neighbor's name to fold away; there is only the going-under, the coming-up, the towels, and the tables afterward. If you have been meaning to come down to the water, the tent is figurative now but the welcome is not. Bring a dish. Bring a towel. Stay for decaf.
Hymn three of eight albums' worth — and the first printed here with no quarrel in it. Back to the hymnal — “We Held the Volume” →