The Four Letter Word
Pretend it is the 1960s. You are in a band, a monumentally, successful band, and you come to your main songwriting collaborator and say, “I have a new song that I think worth a go. You add “In the coda, in the end, we sing and echo a line for several minutes (with a couple of surprise interjections) more than thirty repetitions of the phrase, in all.” Your colleague says in his Liverpool way, “Sounds good, mate. Let’s have a listen?” You’ve no way of telling from that, but I am referring to the Beatles hit, All You Need Is Love.
What is a song about if it uses the word “love” fifty-two times? If I had never heard it before and looked at just the three verses, I might think it an odd combination of Taoism and an inside-out version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Richard Bach’s short story Seagull came out in the era of the Beatles song. Bach’s story seems to posit that all things are possible—fantastical idealism. I wonder if the John Lennon lyrics are some form of sardonic pragmatism, stating it is in the doing of a thing, that you know it can be done.
The line that sounds Taoist to me is “There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be” In each main stanza is three declarations followed by the line, “It’s easy.” Then, over and over again “All you need is love” Is this said sardonically too? What love? Love from where? “It’s easy: All you need is love”—when, pray tell, is love easy?
Look at these selections of lines plucked out: Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung | No one you can save that can’t be saved | Nothing you can see that isn’t shown | It’s easy | All you need is love. The neo-pragmatism, if that is the stripe of philosophy ringing through stanzas, is eclipsed, all told, by the repetition of the refrain, all you need is love, and the endless repetition of its inverse, Love is all you need. It comes off like a mantra. Fun fact from the Beatles website: The song was “first performed by the Beatles on Our World, the first live global television link. Watched by 400 million in 26 countries, the program was broadcast via satellite on 25 June 1967.”
There is no space to go into it, but put this alongside the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song popularized by Jackie O’Shannon and later, Dionne Warwick. Sing it with me: “… Lord, we don't need another mountain | There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb | There are oceans and rivers enough to cross | Enough to last until the end of time | What the world needs now is love, sweet love | No, not just for some but for everyone” Don’t let that tune get stuck in your head now for the rest of 2020.
So, we have included Rock and Pop, what about Victorian poetry? Seriously, I said all that to promote this: Do you know the Christina Georgina Rossetti poem Love Came Down at Christmas? It appears in our Hymnal. If you look at Hymn 84, you will find it set to an Irish tune. It is one in the list of Christmas songs we never sing:
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, Love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.
— Christina G. Rossetti
We will never finish our contemplation of the meaning of love; we will never be done finding its application in our lives. As Christians, we hold that the supreme focus of love is Jesus. When Jesus came, it was Love that came down. To begin a year, to end a year and on every day of a year, we take in the signs, we worship Jesus, Love divine. Let love be our way of life, let it be our worship, and let’s strive to live it, with our neighbors and with ourselves. It is what the world needs now; it is all you need.
Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. —1 John 4:7-9