Are we tough enough? Reflections on U2’s Ordinary Love

Dan at Redeeming Sound asked me to write something for his blog. So naturally, I decided to write on U2…  They’ve had a new album coming out any minute for years – latest is that it will be sometime this year… but they recorded a song for the soundtrack to the new Mandela movie starring Idris Elba: Ordinary Love

• So here are my garbled reflections on the song
• Here’s the video:

• And here are the lyrics:

The sea wants to kiss the golden shore
The sunlight warms your skin
All the beauty that’s been lost before
Wants to find us again

I can’t fight you anymore
It’s you I’m fighting for
We can’t fall any further
If we can’t feel ordinary love

We cannot reach any higher
If we can’t deal with ordinary love
The sea throws rocks together
But time leaves us polished stones

Birds fly high in the summer sky
And rest on the breeze
The same wind will take care of you and I
We’ll build our house in the trees

Your heart is on my sleeve
Did you put it there with a magic marker
For years I would believe
That the world couldn’t wash it away

‘Cause we can’t fall any further
If we can’t feel ordinary love
We cannot reach any higher
If we can’t deal with ordinary love

Are we tough enough
For ordinary love

We can’t fall any further
If we can’t feel ordinary love
We cannot reach any higher
If we can’t deal with ordinary love (x2)