Author: inertus

 
David writes:

After a few pleasantries, the hygienist about to clean my teeth told me he was from Italy. Having spent some time there myself, I asked him where, and before I knew it, he was entrusting me with more Italian than I possess. So, you’re a Protestant pastor? What are the main differences between the Protestant Church and the Catholic Church?… And you’re from the USA, right? What do you think of the new pope? A thorough cleaning of my lower teeth gave me some reflection time before spitting out my rinse and some overly-simple responses.

Behind the whirring of the equipment was a soundtrack he seemed to be controlling from his phone. Some David Bowie. Then Green Day’s American Idiot (did he play that one on purpose?!). The next time my mouth was freed, I asked him which Italian artists he liked. He put his hand-mirror and cleaning-pick onto a tray, and scrolled through his phone. Green Day cut out. Silence. Do you know Vasco Rossi? He sang in church before he became a star, you know. You might like this one. It’s called “Vivere.” It’s very, how would you say, riflettivo.

He resumed his work on my teeth, and with the first few strums of the guitar, I could feel my hands loosen their grip on the arm-rests…

Vivere
È passato tanto tempo…
È un ricordo senza tempo
Vivere
È un po’ come perder tempo
Vivere e sorridere…

To live,
much time has passed…
it is a memory without time.
To live, it’s like wasting time,
to live and to smile…

Reflective, indeed. Mindful, too. Just live. Didn’t someone once describe prayer as ‘wasting time with God’? And to smile, even when sitting in a dentist’s chair?!

…Vivere e sorridere dei guai
Così come non hai fatto mai…

To live and to smile at misfortunes.
It’s just like you have never done it…

Later, I checked out the video – images of desperation and inspiration alongside one another. A solitary cry raised from some soulless bar, suddenly backed by a choir and an orchestra… like aloneness found by community, lament becoming a hymn, desperation shifting into a resolve to live better.

…Vivere, vivere
Anche se sei morto dentro

Vivere, vivere
E devi essere sempre contento
Vivere, vivere
È come un comandamento…

To live…to live…
Even if you are dead inside.
To live…to live…
And you must be always content.
To live…to live…
It’s a commandment…

Must be content? Deeper than optimism? A commandment to live, and live abundantly? A decision to seek resurrection?

Vivere o sopravvivere
Senza perdersi d’animo mai
E combattere e lottare contro tutto contro…
 
To live or to survive
Without losing the soul
And to fight and battle against everything…

After what felt like an unusually long time with the hygienist (my teeth must have been with extra-clean by then), I lifted myself out of the chair, like getting up from a pew after worship.

Grazie, Vasco.

Find out more about Vasco Rossi at https://www.vascorossi.net/it/home/1-0.html

Tom writes:

Despite my known affinity with the Glastonbury Festival, I have only been backstage once – which I know is more than most people, but is far less than some people I know! It wasn’t deliberate (I happened to be with my dad being shown around as the new vicar – and unofficial chaplain to the Festival) yet somehow we ended up on the side of main stage (this was in the brief period when it wasn’t a pyramid). It was Friday, and the first act was on the stage (later that day, Oasis would headline for the first time, and the next day Pulp would cover for the imploding Stone Roses in a headline performance that remains era-defining). I didn’t know who they were, but it was amazing to be there, at the side of the stage, watching them do their thing. Unsurprisingly, I have felt an affinity for the music of Michael Franti and Spearhead ever since – and especially their 1994 album, Home, which formed the main part of their act that day.

I love the way that Michael Franti’s music weaves catchy beats and melodies with lyrics that tell intriguing stories with clear ethical implications. In “Hole in the Bucket” the familiar children’s rhyme entwines with a day-in-the-life story of a man’s encounter with a homeless beggar and the nagging need for some thread. Much of the song is an internal monologue of Franti thinking through all the reasons why giving some of spare change to the panhandler would be a bad idea. Would, he thinks, the man use it for sensible reasons, or for ill?

No doubt many of us have been there. I am deeply aware of the regular advice given to offer food or tickets rather than cash, to avoid being scammed, and have personally done that, taking an enquirer to the supermarket to buy them food rather than simply giving them cash. But I’ve also given people cash, not knowing what they’d do with it – but I had it, and didn’t need it, and my faith calls me to be gracious rather than cynical. Either way, however, I’m not sure that the key message of the song is about giving cash to down-at-heel strangers.

At the end, Franti decides to go and give the man some cash. Yet it is in this act that he realises why he needed to buy the thread that’s been nagging him all along – he has a hole in his pocket, and now neither of them has the cash! It seems to me that at the heart of this song’s message (and with Spearhead you can be sure the song has a message) is the fact that debating about whether certain things are a good idea or not can blind us to more urgent problems that, if left unfixed, will lead to an inability to resolve the matter we think we’re debating.

Imagine if Franti (and I use his name only as the singer of the song and teller of the story) had decided to give the street-dweller his money sooner – not only would the man have got some cash, but Franti would have been reminded of the reason for needing thread much sooner. I suspect that many of us have found ourselves in similar situations – in our faith, our politics, our lives in general. We have spent so long discussing the merits or otherwise of some problem that by the time we settle the matter we have let a more significant problem get worse. Hopefully, it has rarely meant the debated problem is now entirely unsolvable, but we are nonetheless reminded by Franti and his band that focussing on the philosophical can lead us to miss other, more pressing, practical matters.

Now, excuse me while I just go and check my jeans pockets…

Find out more about Michael Franti and Spearhead at https://michaelfranti.com/

Gill writes:

At long last, I finally saw The Lightning Seeds perform recently when they supported Paul Heaton at Bramhall Lane in Sheffield. And I’m pleased to say that I wasn’t disappointed, especially when they played this song which has always been a favourite of mine.

I findThe Life of Riley to be a particularly joyful song. From its jangly guitar to the cheery chorus, it’s pure optimism bottled into three minutes. But underneath the bright melodies, I think there’s something a teeny bit deeper going on.

First of all, the title itself – The Life of Riley – suggests living a carefree life. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a hymn to laziness – lying on the couch eating crisps and doing nothing. But actually, this song is more about seeing life through fresh eyes – a child’s eyes. Ian Broudie wrote it for his son Riley, and I think there maybe there’s something slightly sacred about it. The way he sings:

So here’s your life
We’ll find our way
We’re sailing blind
But it’s certain nothing’s certain

I don’t mind
I get the feeling
You’ll be fine

isn’t blind optimism – it’s an act of hope. Of trust. Of faith. And those of us who follow Jesus hopefully know a little bit about that.

Hope, in the Christian tradition, isn’t naïve – it’s radical. Believing that God is with us even when things are confusing, a bit messy, or just plain boring – that’s real faith. And I can’t help feeling that this song invites us into that kind of space. It’s not ‘preachy.’ It’s encouraging and it’s hopeful.

Maybe there’s also something spiritual about the playful nature of the song too. Jesus said we must become like little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Not childish – but childlike. Trusting. Joyful. Able to be amazed by a butterfly, or to laugh at a well-timed joke.

So maybe that’s the real lesson here for us. That delight is not a distraction from faith – it’s part of it. That dancing round the kitchen, skipping in the rain, or just singing along to The Lightning Seeds (or any song of your choice) at full blast can be holy too. God didn’t make a grey world – he made a rainbow one. And joy, like the song says, is worth celebrating. So I’ll let this song wash over me and remind me that joy is a gift that God wants us to open.

Oh – and by the way – I saw Riley that day too. A grown-up, 30-something Riley playing guitar alongside his Dad on stage in The Lightning Seeds. He really was fine, just like his Dad predicted.

Find out more about The Lightning Seeds at https://lightningseeds.co.uk/

The FF today comes with a bit of a health warning about issues of domestic violence so please do proceed with caution

Jane writes:

Every year the MP Jess Phillips has the uncomfortable privilege of reading out the names of those women killed by acts of domestic violence. It’s a salutary experience to listen to the names of real humans no longer living because they were trapped in situations that claimed to be about love and were anything but.

This song today by Shallow Alcove came to me from nowhere, a chance encounter if you like. Its beautiful haunting melody and vocal hide though a kind of sinister reality where someone finds themselves in a place that feels so uncomfortable that it seems reasonable to hurt themselves:

I’m pulling out my teeth
I’m gnawing off my own leg
For years I’ve been asleep, but I
Woke up in a bad bed

A reality where the hope is always for something better, safe and more than there is:

I thought I’d get
Something more than this

It’s a tragic truth that lots of people in our society, men and women, are living with the stress of relationships that demonstrate none of the love that God advocates for as described in scripture.

A love that is patient & kind. That keeps no record of wrongs. That does not dishonour others. That is not self-seeking or easily angered. I could go on.

People living in such difficult contexts should not have to. It is not the way it should be and it is not the way it has to be but, as the lyricist suggests, for some people

It’s safer to play dead
and pull the covers over your head

What kind of world is it where that is the case, and what is ours to do to make it otherwise I wonder?

What can we do to advocate for a different way today? Because I am as certain as the songwriter that there must be something better, something more.

You can find out more about Shallow Alcove here https://www.shallowalcove.com/

And you might like to take a look at these spaces to see what might be yours to do

White Ribbon Campaign: https://www.whiteribbon.org.uk/
Refuge: https://refuge.org.uk/
Mankind: https://mankind.org.uk/

Tom writes:

We were recently on holiday in Holland. Staying in Gouda, we visited Sint-Janskerk (St John’s Church, named for John the Baptist) as part of our wanders around that small city. Like the rest of the Netherlands, Gouda is very much a Protestant city, yet unlike most of the country, Gouda’s adopting of Reformation principles was not as extreme in its iconoclasm as many places. This means that its vast, central church has medieval stained glass windows that remained in place while most other cities destroyed theirs. So attached to these windows are the people of Gouda that, when the German army invaded in May 1940, they removed them from their usual locations, packed them in crates and hid them in various locations in the surrounding city and countryside. Following liberation, the windows were all back in place within a year! They have gone on to install further windows, including some very modern ones indeed.

Both my wife and I were deeply touched by this story, and I particularly appreciated the way in which a people with a deep Protestantism had nonetheless avoided the worst excesses of iconoclasm – something I think we Protestants have too often been guilty of. At the same time, I think that we people of faith do need doses of iconoclasm to provoke us and make us think. Which in my mind leads us the Stone Roses.

Pioneers of the “Madchester” scene, I have long been intrigued by The Stone Roses’ frequent use of religious imagery in challenging ways. This is found most notably in two songs – “I am the resurrection”, and “Love Spreads”. Of the two, it is the latter that I most frequently find myself drawn to. In it, songwriter reflects on the passion of Christ – a remarkable thing to do in a song written for mainstream production and release. And this isn’t me just thinking that the language can be interpreted that way – Squires is on records as being clear that this is what the song is about. Yet, it offers this reflection on the Passion in a deeply iconoclastic way:

“Cold black skin
Naked in the rain
Hammer flash in the lightning
They’re hurting her again
Let me put you in the picture
Let me show you what I mean
The messiah is my sister
Ain’t no king, man, she’s my queen”

Yes, Jesus in this Passion is a black woman. And before you think this is some modern, “woke” revisionism, I’d remind you this was written in about 1992 or 1993 and released in 1994 (the production of the Stone Roses’ second album, The Second Coming (yet more religious iconography) was infamously long and tortuous), and inspired by a book published in 1988 (The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles).

Artists have always done interesting things with faith stories – just go check out those Gouda windows if you want evidence of that! And one of the most important things creators of icons do is beg questions of previous icons. That’s why art is risky and dangerous, but it’s also why we need it. When those of us who are people of words get dragged down in precise meanings and technical language artists can pop our pomposity and draw us to large visions, even when that includes questioning some of the imagery that precedes them and us. Who knows, in amongst the iconoclasm, the playing with images, and the seeming profanity, maybe we’ll once again encounter the profound:

“Love spreads her arms
Waits there for the nails
I forgive you, boy
I will prevail”

Marc writes:

I feel like Mumford and Sons and Pharrell Williams wrote their song in response to Jack Johnson, but it was 20 years in the making!

Jack asks “Where’d all the good people go?” And Marcus replies “Good people, been down for so long, and now it’s like the sun is rising…”

Is there a shift happening? Is the sun rising? 

I regularly find myself asking where all the good people have gone. Don’t get me wrong, I see them locally and on the micro scale, but on the world stage, where are they? Where are they when I turn on the TV, or scroll the news on my socials?

Every time I get a glimpse of someone good breaking through, I have my hopes dashed when they’re not allowed to be good because of the louder voices shouting them down or systems shutting them up.

“And I’m done being tired”, and want to be inspired…

Maybe the problem is that I expect to see them taking the lead loudly. Perhaps it’s my expectations that are the problem. Maybe it’s that the good is happening and rising from the ground up, and as it swells it’s like the sun rising. Maybe that uprising is the wake up call we need to the revelation. 

And what if seeing those glimpses of God is all I need to give me the courage to release my own capacity for good? “And in my soul something is stirring now and I’m not worried… You better get ready to see now”... And what if I add my good to yours? That could be unstoppable!

But I’ve come full circle to Jack again… “It’s your show now, so what’s it gonna be? Cos people will tune in” and what are they going to see?

“Welcome to the Revelation”

Find out about all 3 artists at:

https://jackjohnsonmusic.com/

mumfordandsons.com

pharrellwilliams.com

Tom writes:

It would be wrong of me to say I’ve only recently found the music of Sam Fender. As a regular listener to Absolute Radio, I’ve been hearing his music since he first broke onto the major music scene with “Dead Boys” in 2018. But I will admit that it’s only recently that I really started listening to his music. And the more I listen, the more I’m impressed and moved by what he writes and sings. This impact really hit as I listened to his most recent album, People Watching, for the first time.

As I listened through, I heard the expected voice of life growing up and living in the post-industrial North East of England. It is neither an accident nor a surprise that Fender’s songwriting themes bring frequent comparisons to Bruce Springsteen – blue-collar/working class reflections on life, loss and love. Then I reached “Little Bit Closer” and I almost had to pull over (I was driving at the time) so I could focus on what I was hearing. This was, it seemed to me, something new.

Fender’s work has always had a sense of compassionate ethics, but it has always seemed to me to be rooted in a general sense of humanism. He didn’t, unless I’d missed it (always possible, remember I was generally hearing but not properly listening), do faith. But not here! Here, God is put front and centre.

Of course, this is Sam Fender, so this is no evangelistic, worshipful celebration in the way of Rend Collective or similar. In fact, for much of the song, it feels like God and the Church – or at least the particular expressions of church that Fender appears to have encountered when younger – are on trial. Without entirely dismissing the purposes of the Church he nonetheless questions some of its behaviours as he, his family and friends have experienced it, challenges the theological positions and attitudes it takes, and compassionately sides with those that the Church has frequently damaged and cast aside. At one point he is clear he would rather burn in hell than abandon the friends and family he knows and loves.

He is also willing, in public, to ask the question, “What is God?” and to acknowledge that he himself is not a believer, while at the same time clearly yearning for something that speaks of a bigger picture and a greater meaning. In the end, he says, he finds that in love – and through love he seems to be drawn closer to that greater meaning.

As I heard Fender make these challenges, ask these questions, admit this need for something more, I found myself thinking he was a lot closer to answering the question “What is God?” than he might imagine, and thinking the Church might have greater success in helping people ask and answer that question if it openly listened to the challenges Fender lays down. The Church is called to share God’s love, yet too often we are frozen, mummified, too bound up in the need for certainty and success that we fail to simply walk alongside our neighbours, holding conversations, and enabling people to simply get a little bit closer to the God who loves us beyond our wildest imaginings.

Find out more about Sam Fender at https://www.samfender.com/

Kristie writes:

When I look at you
I see your power
But when your blues come around
You’re so hard on yourself

I suspect I’m not the only one who is sometimes hard on myself, or forgets my own power.

Thankfully, I came across Luka Bloom whilst living in Ireland some 25 years ago and when praying recently, this was the song that came back to mind. I love how God can respond to prayer!

But when you’re low
Where do you go
Who helps you come around?

This week (12-18^th May) is Mental Health Awareness Week and this year’s theme is celebrating the power and importance of community. These questions are great ones to ask ourselves – who helps us; where do we go when we’re feeling low; who supports us and reminds us we’re not alone?

When I look at you
I see things you don’t seem to

For me this is what a good friend, counsellor, and God does – offering me a way of seeing myself that is gentle and kind, rather than hard and harsh. Especially when the world is tough.

Life’s not easy
Sometimes the heart aches
I will sing a song for you
Don’t be so hard on yourself
Don’t be so hard on yourself

I wonder if you too could hear these words as if God is singing them to you?

Find out more about Luka Bloom at https://lukabloom.com/

Gill writes:

This week’s Friday Fix gives more than a passing nod to last week’s FF because it was in listening to a revisit of Mike Peters’ choice of songs on Sounds of the 80s with Gary Davies last week that inspired a reflection on this anthemic song from Big Country.

I remember being so excited when Big Country appeared on the scene in the 1980’s – out of the same stable as my beloved U2, Simple Minds and The Alarm. Listening to this always leaves me with a strange mix of uplift and ache — like looking at a beautiful landscape and suddenly realising how small I am in the world. It makes me think about how vulnerable it actually is to keep believing in things — especially when life doesn’t always meet you halfway.

It doesn’t surprise me that a number of people told lead singer, Stuart Adamson, that this song is what saved their lives – Mike Peters included. A sad irony given the early departure from life that Adamson himself made.

I’m not expecting to grow flowers in the desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

In a big country, dreams stay with you
Like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

These are some of my all-time favourite lyrics in a song. To me, they speak of what it means to keep going when life isn’t flourishing the way you hoped. There’s no illusion of success or transformation — no flowers in the desert — just the quiet grace of noticing that even in the hardest seasons, there’s still sun, still breath, still something to be seen and felt.

I see spirituality here – it may be subtle but it’s definitely here. It even lives in the landscapes that the song evokes in my mind — vast, open, and wild. The song suggests that to live life in all its fullness includes risking heartbreak and sadness, being vulnerable and exposed, yet still to believe in something larger than ourselves — whether that’s love, hope, or the sheer scale and mystery of the world we move through. Some of us would call this God.

Sometimes, we need permission to stop trying so hard to fix things, and just to be — to look, to breathe, to see the sun. That feels like faith to me: not in answers or outcomes, but in the quiet, persistent value of being alive, even in wintertime.

Big Country are still creating music and you can find out more at https://bigcountry.co.uk/