All you need is love…

…so says the old Beatles song. The message in this mornings service was based on the well known passage from I Corinthians 13, and which I have in part portrayed here in a plaque which hangs in our breakfast room. Our pastor David is still recovering from knee replacement surgery, so it was his father Gene, who was formerly a pastor at the church, and was designated Pastor Emeritus, who was giving the message this morning. The Praise Band song was Reckless Love by Cory Asbury, the chorus of which goes
“Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the ninety-nine
I couldn't earn it, and I don't deserve it, still, You give Yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God, yeah”
The theme of the mornings service brought to mind a quote I had seen and photographed earlier in the week at Christ Church Cathedral, by Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, and poet

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”

If only there was more love and less hatred and greed in this world!

Later in the afternoon, we went down to an organ “recital” at Hyde Park United Methodist church. I’ve put “recital” in quotes, since this was a rather different performance. The organist was improvising to The King of Kings,
a 1928 American synchronized sound epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. De Mille, which portrays the last weeks of Jesus’ life before his ceucifixion. While the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the RCA Photophone sound-on-film process. We were interested to discover that the organist was British, though he now lives in New York. At the age of 17, he obtained his FRCO (Fellow of the Royal College of Organists) diploma. From 1981-84, he was Organ scholar at Kings College Cambridge university. Subsequently he won several prestigious awards, and held positions at Hereford, Truro and Gloucester cathedrals. He performs over 50 concerts a year in North America and Europe, and is also a prolific composer. So quite a different but fascinating afternoon.