Your Love is Kind

Sung to the tune of Chanson d'Amour by Gabriel Faure.

Your love is kind, Your love is true.
Love is not boastful and not haughty
Your love is kind, It guides my travels,
It leads my path to all your children.

You see my pain. When I defy you,
love can heal me and make me whole.
Love does not boast, It cares for all.
It endures all of our despair.

Your love is kind, Your love is true ,
Love is not boastful and not haughty.
Your love is kind, It guides my travels,
It leads my pathway to your flock.

Your Love makes all things much more radiant.
You guide the righteous on their way.
I pray and I hope for your love,
It carries me through all my troubles.

Your love is kind, It fills my soul.
It spreads to all those I can cherish.
Your love is kind, It guides my travels.
It leads my path to all your children
It leads my pathway to your flock.

.......

I've always enjoyed music and singing. I sang in children's choirs as a kid. Later I sang in several church choirs as an adult. I sang in groups at summer camps. And I like to sing along as I drive the car or sometimes with music when I'm out jogging. (That's not good for your voice!)

And I sang as part of my vocal training to develop an authentic, feminine voice.

But a year ago, I took it to another level and signed up for professional lessons at the New Mexico School of Music. It's been a wonderful journey, but not nearly as straight-forward as I had thought. There are a lot of details to learn to recognize and new habits to form to produce an accurate and pleasant tone!

But I made progress. And last summer I thought I was ready and volunteered to sing for one of our church services. Our new music director gave me four different songs to choose from. And I picked Chanson d'Amour by Faure. It was slightly less stressful than the others, and within the range of a couple others I had worked on. But it was a French love song, and not really a good match for a church service! So I decided to write different lyrics to sing.

And since it was a song about love, I turned to 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, the "Love Chapter".

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

USA, National Council of Churches. New Revised Standard Version Updated Bible : With Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition) (p. 4376). Friendship Press Inc. Kindle Edition.

But it took some work to get those words to fit the meter of the song. And so I revised some of the phrasing, reworked the rhythm of the song in a couple places when I didn't want to change it, and added a few thoughts and phrases of my own.

The summer performance got cancelled. I really wasn't ready. We picked a date at the end of November and I continued practicing. But that also got delayed. So it will likely happen next summer.

But I've continued to take lessons and practice several times a week and my voice has notably improved! (Although I know I'm not ready for Emma Ann Tate's Opera House !!!)

I know it will sound really good when I do sing it in front of people. And the journey is its own reward!!!

I also plan to sing it a bit slower than usual for the French lyrics. But here is a really nice performance if you'd like to imagine what it might sound like. In my dreams, I wish I might sound half that good!

https://youtu.be/jYKMgb8gWyE?si=xeoAQCgPtDZaae4a