Carolyn Winfrey Gillette pens verses on gun violence to church hymn tunes
Carolyn Winfrey Gillette creates “sung prayers” for a problem that seems difficult to solve while also spurring people to end gun violence.
Her hymn “335,609 (I Cried to God),” sung to the tune of “Be Still, My Soul,” speaks of the number of people who died in the United States from gun violence between 2000 and 2010. It was sung in November at a United to Stop Gun Violence event at Washington National Cathedral. The fourth verse includes the phrase “Give us the strength to make the killings cease.”
“I’m hoping that I’m helping people find the words to sing, to find the courage to do what God wants them to do in this world, and that’s to work for a less violent world, a world where we have more justice and more peace,” she said.
