Love, Love, Love

"They'll know we are Christians by our love" — that's how the song went.
I'm still waiting for it to be true!
Friends & family, don't get me wrong — I get more love than most.
Especially from Dorothy, the love of my life.
And any number of people care for me, pray for me, think of me.

But I have yet to be convinced that Christians are better or worse at loving than anyone else. Many pagans are just as good as many Christians at helping, caring, putting themselves out for others. And equally, many Christians are just as selfish, judgemental & anger-filled as any Muslim, Buddhist or atheist.

I got thinking about this when I was looking at the 2nd reading set down for this Sunday, 1 John 4:7-21. In the CEV it starts 'My dear friends, we must love each other' and, in the next verse, 'God is love, and anyone who doesn't love others has never known him.'

Definite stuff!

I've written quite a few songs about love, and the last collection, 'Intimate', was all about love. But writing about it and singing about it is one thing.
Putting it into practise is quite another.
So, as it says in 4:11, 'Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we must love each other.'

All Together CDs Replacing tapes

In 2 weeks time, May 15, CD sets will be available for the first 3 All Together collections: All Together Now, All Together Again, All Together Everybody (the green, blue and orange books respectively).
When the last 2 collections were released in 1996 and 2001, CDs were available straight away. I thought it wasn't worth transferring the earlier collections to the CD format, but a constant trickle of requests forced me to think again. And because there's about 3 hours of music for each collection, a set of 3 CDs will be available for each book. In Australia, they'll be $20 per CD, or $60 per set.
Not fresh recordings, not digitally remastered, but I think the original recordings stand up fairly well. The first 2 collections were simple (done on a 4 track Tascam recorder!). All Together Everybody got a much bigger recording cast and a full studio (as did the last 2 books). Most importantly they capture the spirit of songs.

Though fashions change, new songs are written, I still find that many of the 310 songs from these collections work well — in schools, churches, concerts.

You can order them on this site.