Over the summer, I wrote about a favorite Community of Christ hymn. Without repeating the entire post here, one of my favorite things about it is that it was never written as a hymn. Rather, it was a song written by a folk song as a call for peace that got adopted into the Community of Christ hymnbook in 2013.

I thought about these details last weekend as I was listening to Ici-bas, a favorite song by French Canadian folk rock band Les cowboys fringants—I figured that this song would make for a pretty good hymn, too, even if it probably has a bit more swearing than your typical hymn. I’ve taken inspiration from this song for quite a while. Back in May 2022, I actually submitted the following story to Community of Christ’s Daily Bread series of morning devotionals (though it has not yet appeared, so maybe folks at World Church don’t agree with my evaluation):

As I’ve written before, one of my favorite things about the Day One journaling app is the “On this Day” feature that lets me remember moments from my past—often moments I might have forgotten if I hadn’t journaled about them.

This morning, Day One reminded me of a hymn service my local Community of Christ congregation held a couple of years ago. I had been invited to share a memory of a favorite hymn. It’s been a lot of fun to learn new hymns (and new versions of familiar hymns) during my adventure with Community of Christ, but the hymn I chose to speak about was Peace Salaam Shalom, which you can listen to in the video below: