Spotlight on Sunday’s Anthem - God Be In My Head

For Sunday, June 29, 2025
God Be In My Head by K. Lee Scott

By David Jolliffe

The choral anthem at the 11 a.m. service on June 29 is “God Be in My Head” by the contemporary American composer K. Lee Scott.  Many congregants will no doubt recognize something familiar about the piece. 

First of all, the text has a home in the Episcopal hymnal in Hymn 694, with music composed early in the twentieth century by Sidney Nicholson, one of the founders of the Royal School of Church Music and a former organist and choirmaster at Westminster Abbey.  In addition, during the Eucharist service many worshippers tacitly refer to an abbreviated version of the text when the priest or deacon reads the Gospel passage appointed for the day.  As the reader announces the passage, these worshippers make a small sign of the cross on their forehead, then on their mouth, and then over their heart, asking God’s presence in those three locations.

The original text comes from a 1514 book called The Sarum Primer, a collection of prayers created for worship in Salisbury Cathedral and later used throughout England and parts of Europe until the end of the 16th century.  (Sarum is the Latin name for Salisbury, where the St. Paul’s choir will enjoy a brief tour on their way to Wells Cathedral on July 13.)  Here is the entire prayer:

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing.

K. Lee Scott was born in 1950 and lives in Birmingham, Alabama.  He holds two degrees in choral music from the main campus of the University of Alabama and has taught there as well as at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Stamford University.