Lied voor bijna ierderen = Song For Almost Anyone, 1971 - 1989

This song is and adaptation of the first of two settings of this Oosterhuis text, written for a Dutch royal event. As a result of Oosterhuis' friendship with Prince Klaus, he was commissioned to write a text to honor the 1969 birth and christening of the newly-born prince, Johan Friso Bernard Christiaan David, held in the Utrecht Domkerk. At the time, it as newsworthy that a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest had been asked to write a text for a Calvinist ritual, but in The Netherlands the ecumenical spirit of Vatican II was perhaps more alive than in other places. Although written for royalty, it became so popular that Oosterhuis presented Huijbers with a revised text of each chorus to replace the four names of the prince, yet to adhere to the original music formula. He subsequently wrote another, shorter setting of this piece.