kum ba ya

Or however it is spelt.

I don't know why this popped into my head in the shower this morning, perhaps I remembered hearing it from some enthusiastic street evangelist who was singing it, taking advantage of the Christmas spirit and hoping to lead the masses to an epiphany outside HMV.

Needless to say, it didn't happen to me. Instead I remembered a hymn book that we had in Infant school, one of the child-orientated ones with bright covers that were supposed to imply "hey, kids, God is cool and singing to Him is FUN!", and this one was called "Someone's Singing Lord" i.e. it was a line from 'Kum Bai Ya' , one of the 'groovy' songs within its perky covers.

I always mistook the apostrophe for the apostrophe of possession, and, having been taught that religion was a very special and personal thing, and that God belonged to each of us as we belonged to Him, I assumed that someone had got a personal version of God that sung. Which was very nice, but what about the other types of Lord that were mentioned in the song?

Of all the varieties of Lord that you could have (as specified in the song) I felt very sorry for the people who were last in line to pick their God and got stuck with the Crying Lord.