Ages since I did any blogging!
Thought I might write some things about songs.
Love is the Law is an early one. The tune I heard on Steeleye Span’s album Hark the village wait (their first?). The song was Copsawholme Fair, a jaunty piece. Like so many of the songs I do, the tune often subconsciously links with the words. While this song has tension in it – ‘it’s always a struggle between right and wrong’ – it finally arrives at Love winning over Law. It’s one of those songs that some more conservative people have problems using, especially the last verse. It’s too free, has too many inbuilt contradictions. Unfortunately, I agreed to one or two small changes in the verse when it was published in All Together Again. I prefer the original:
We thank you, our Father, for freedom to slip,
for freedom to stumble, for freedom to trip;
Christ is our brother & Christ is our King.
Love is the song he has taught us to sing
Like quite a few of my early songs, this compares us humans with the natural world – ‘O how I wish I could be just like the sun’ – & reflects that we don’t measure up. But with ‘the promise of God’ & the encouragement to love, maybe we can become what we really are.
