Thursday, April 25th Sing-along Café Review

Earth Day was our theme. The Beauty of the Earth. So, songs about nature, about appreciating and saving the beauty of our planet were the focus. Love and peace are always themes when we sing, and we always enjoy the surprise of seeing the words of songs that we thought we knew. We listened to two versions of a few songs, appreciating the different impact and moods of the different voices and arrangements.

Here's the list of songs we sang and listened to:

• For the Beauty of the Earth by Barlow Girl
• All Things Bright and Beautiful by The Countdown Kids, and by The Cambridge Singers
• What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong, and by Anne Murray
• Colors of the Wind by Judy Kuhn, and by Vanessa Williams
• Big Yellow Taxi by Counting Crows 
• Mercy Mercy Me by Marvin Gaye
• Everything is Beautiful by Gaither & Gordon Mote
• That's the Way of the World by Earth, Wind & Fire
• Radioactive by Pentatonix & Lindsey Stirling, and by Imagine Dragons
• 4 Minutes by Madonna
• How Far I'll Go, by Auli'i Cravalho, and by Alessia Cara
• Earth Day Every Day by John Denver
• Cool an' Green an' Shady by John Denver
• Rocky Mountain High by John Denver
• Annie's Song by John Denver
• Thank God I'm a Country Boy by John Denver
• After the Gold Rush by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris
• This is My Father's World by Amy Grant
• Where Have all the Flowers Gone by Chris de Burgh, and by Peter, Paul & Mary
• Indescribable by Chris Tomlin
• Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawinwo'ole
• Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
• Morning has Broken by Cat Stevens
• 100 Years by Five for Fighting
• From a Distance by Bette Midler

Were you surprised by the number of John Denver songs on the list? We could have listened to more! He sang so much about the beauty of nature that even his love song, Annie's Song, was about how much he loved nature: "You fill up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in springtime...". And, we know and enjoy so many John Denver songs; that surprised us too. We appreciated Denver's gentle, fun, and loving messages, and of course his beautiful voice. Maybe those songs can inspire us to protect the environment. Songs like Big Yellow Taxi and Mercy Mercy Me, and Radioactive make us feel the need to, the urgency. We were disappointed at how old some of those urgent songs are. 

We were not surprised by the number of hymns and Contemporary Christian songs about the beauty of the Earth. Of course, we want to sing how grateful we are to the Creator for this magnificent planet. We are compelled to extol the glory of the mountains, valleys, trees, flowers, rain, snow, all the animals, and even all of our siblings, not just because we're Christian, but because they are awesome in the true sense of the word. 

People are a part of creation and we're sustained by, reliant on, nature and the environment. So are all of our siblings all over the world. So, we headed into the theme of peace, and inclusivity, love. 

We wondered about the reasons that people might have for not worrying about climate change and not doing anything, not even wishing and dreaming about saving the environment. Do we take it for granted (think of the word), and maybe expect an all-powerful God to take care of it? Our feeling was that the story of Adam and Eve tells us that we are responsible, have to make good choices, it's in our hands, as stewards. That's what we've learned at church. But, we're busy with the various dreams in the seasons of our lives: of friends and fun, then lovers, children, houses and cars, jobs and money. We're busy? We can do better.

We will continue with this theme next week, Thursday, May 2nd, as we ran out of time with a few really good songs we wanted to sing, and we'll add Peace to this theme. I've updated the playlist already to include Peace. Here's the link to the Earth and Peace Playlist. We also wanted more la-las! So, next week we will sing more of those. 

I baked cinnamon apple muffins to go with our tea. It was a lovely evening in lovely company. 

Here's a nice video for you to watch, made by National Geographic for Earth Day, featuring a song by Andy Grammer called Jump.