Showing posts with label All things bright and beautiful. Show all posts
Showing posts with label All things bright and beautiful. Show all posts

Sunday, 30 August 2015

My least favourite hymn, and why

Years ago, I won a competition in the Guardian for writing an alternative, non-green version of We Plough  the Fields and Scatter. I won a Christmas pudding (which arrived in the post, rather flat. But it was a prize, and I quite like Christmas pudding in small doses).

 I always thought All Things Bright and Beautiful could benefit from similar treatment. I hate that hymn, not least because it's so selective. It only includes the nice things, and leaves out everything else. (People choose it for weddings, and we sing at quite a few weddings as we are both in the church choir, so I've had a lot of time to think about it.)  Here's what I mean:

But wait! Who made the cockroach?
The bugs that cause disease?
The locust and the clothes moth,
The house flies and the fleas?

All things base and horrible,
All slimy things that crawl.
All things bite- and stingable -
Well, someone made them all.

See?