En zolang de hemel bestaat - beurtzang voor een dode III = And So Long As The Heavens Exist - Antiphonal Song for a Dead Person III (Job 14:7-14), 1979 - 1981

Oosterhuis has again turned to the book of Job 14 for this text, a whimsical reflection about life and its vicissitudes. Verse 14 is described as an elegy on human misery, where Job interprets his own sufferings as the state of every human being, arguing that why should God devote attention to anything as insignificant as humanity. Misfortunes inevitably befall those who have remained faithful to God. The refrain is taken from Job 14:12, which Jerusalem Bible reads as But man, once in his resting place, will never rise again. The heavens will wear away before he wakes, before he rises from his sleep. This indicates that as yet, Israel had not reached any understanding of eternal life. Oosterhuis poetry, however, poses this perhaps not as a statement but as a question, shall they not awaken? Verse 1 is from Job 14: 7, 10; verse 2 from 14: 11; and verse 3 from 14:13-14. Huijbers once explained to me that Oosterhuis' regretful approach to death was because he had been on vacation in Spain when his own father had passed away, an occasion of continuous sorrow for him.

Huijbers' choice of melody, Type 4A, a common chant tone, was to preserve it from being forgotten, being traced back to medieval times. He has captured it in this setting as a somewhat joyful dance in the antiphon in 3:8 tempo, and despite their rather somber text, a free-flowing lyricism throughout the verses. On his own spiritual journey during the latter years of peaceful existence in bucolic Espeillac, Huijbers even wrote a selection of songs which formed his last recording, which he called Heimwee naar de toekomst - Homesick for the Future. Many had accused him of losing his faith when he left Amsterdam, but it was faith which nourished him in his quest of better understand the mysteries of the Cosmos, in quest of the Soul of the Universe. In this, he was influenced by fellow-Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, for whom the solidity of his birthplace, the Massif Central of central France, and the vastness of the open skies and ever-expanding Universe in his years of research on the Central Steppes of Asia, had opened his mystical vision of Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning (as an ongoing process) and the end (as the purpose) of everything. - Tony Barr