All things bright and beautiful

08 July 2010

I forgot to include this when I was writing my Canada Diary: in Sunday church we sang that old favourite hymn and just when I was drawing breath for ‘The tall trees in the greenwood’ etc., we launched into the far superior Canadian version:
The rocky mountain splendour
The loon’s wild haunting call
The great lakes and the prairies
The forest in the fall...

Excellent. I shall launch a campaign for the spiritual appreciation of the loon in the UK. I wonder what their call sounds like? I thought a loon was a ducklike affair, but would hardly call a mallard’s quack ‘haunting’, more ‘honking’. Which is less lyrical.

We should all contextualise our songs. Cowplain could be something like
The cycle lanes and bus routes
The privet hedges tall
The miles of brickpaved gardens
I think God loves them all.

And Sue Avery writes:

Hi Lucy,

Glad to read that you've had a great trip to Canada. I was reading the blog about contextualising the songs and that is something we do at Cholsey all the time. As our congregation is still pretty young we've adapted or changed the words. Just as an example this month we're doing Jonah and one of our songs is 'He's got the whole world in His hands' but our verses go
Vs1 He’s got the whole world (as usual)
Vs2 He’s got you, me and Jonah in His plan x3
He’s got the whole world in His plan
Vs3 He’s got big and little fishes in his hands
He’s got the whole world in his hands
Vs4 He’s got all of Messy Church
He’s got us safely in his hands.

This might be useful for other messy churches. We've also done
'The Ten Commandments' to 'Frere Jacques'
'Moses in a basket' to 'My Bonnie lies over the ocean'
'Let's plant a seed in the soil deep down' to 'The Wheels on the Bus'
'The Plagues and Red Sea Crossing' to 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'
'The Lost Sheep' to 'If you're happy and you know it'
'We are marching around Jericho' to 'We are marching Siyahamba' ( a favourite!)

As you can see we've done the Old Testament this year. I think John the Baptist in November will be interesting!

Love
Sue