Blessed is the Spot, and the House

SMATB a cappella
5:31 approx.

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Blessed is the spot, and the house is a setting of a Bahá’í prayer with the same title. The text was written by Bahá’u’lláh — known to be the founder of the Bahái faith: a spiritual community that believes in the essential worth of all religions and unity of all people.

The constant shifts in harmonic center respresents our never-ending quest for truth, meaning, and spirituality — a carry over from my own Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice. This piece is an exploration of the constantly evolving meaning of what, where, who “God” is and what spaces are “sacred.” A house? A cave? Perhaps a city? Perhaps it’s everything and everywhere.

This work was commissioned by the Duke Chapel Choir and Dr. Zebulon Highben.

Blessed is the spot, and the house,
and the place, and the city,
and the heart, and the mountain,
and the refuge, and the cave,
and the valley, and the land,
and the sea, and the island,
and the meadow where mention
of God hath been made,
and their praise glorified.

-Bahá’u’lláh