After a very late watching of the annual Jools Holland Hootenanny (I think August is probably a bit after the fact for a New Year celebration!) I came across this song by Yola. Not a song or artist I was familiar with in any way.
It has a very retro 60’s feeling to it and put me in mind of the greats like Dusty, Pet Clarke and all those other bouffant-haired divas.
Aside from its familiar feeling it held within it a clear statement that we are often not always present in the things we do, mundane or otherwise and that maybe others see in us a need for something beyond what is current.
What, I wondered to myself, does my faraway look consist of if I have one. Is it about sun-kissed beaches? Un-seen bands? Un-discovered films? A plea to be anywhere but here? A longing for something better to come?
It seems to me that in general life is about being v. present in any given moment (I’ve said as much in the FF) but God also has given us the opportunity to gaze into their preferred future, to seek out a new way and maybe sometimes dream of faraway places and ideals yet unseen.
Lord
When we are looking beyond what is current help us to look for you
Let us be thankful for all our wondering and pondering
Let us search for justice and peace rather than self-gratification
Let us recognise all we are blessed with
Let us search for new ideas and approaches rather than simply live in the known
Let us be willing to capitalise on that “faraway look” rather than keeping it in our dreams
For you are an expansive God found in all things
Amen
To find out more about Yola take a look at https://www.iamyola.com/
On Guy Garvey’s Birthday in 2017, Elbow were playing the Eventim Apollo, London. After the opening couple of songs, the onstage screen proclaimed the message ‘Happy Birthday Guy’ and the audience performed an impromptu chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ to the lead singer! Birthday gifts were then passed from the audience. There was a party atmosphere in the venue and an extra connection made between audience and band.
Towards the end of the concert the band played ‘One Day Like This’. I noticed a woman to the left of me, plastic cup raised in one hand, the other tattooed arm aloft pointing to the roof, head tipped slightly back singing every word to Guy Garvey.
She is swaying and moving, sideways, through the packed crowd. Still with eyes fixed firmly on Garvey she bumped into me and bounced off me into the person in front! Her drink spills over that person, my plastic cup is sent flying out of my hand in the direction of the stranger to my right! Taking her eyes off the stage for the first time, she turned to me and smiled an apology and hugged me, while still singing along with the band. I hugged her back and for a line of the song we stood, total strangers, arm in arm singing ‘throw those curtains wide’ – as if we have been friends for years!
In so many other scenarios a drunken person barging their way through a crowd, spilling their own and other’s alcohol, would create anger and aggression but in the heart of this Elbow crowd we find a connection.
A fleeting connection. I could have sat next to her on the tube every day for the next month and not recognised her. Yet, a lasting connection. It is the moment of that gig I remember most clearly, and I experienced most deeply.
It was the anthemic nature of the song. It was the mutual experience of being immersed in a live performance. It was being part of the same audience on the same night and in the same place. Yet more than that, the song was reaching deep into our souls as the band played. When we were thrown together and the connection was made in spirit.
I know nothing about her and never will but as we threw the curtains wide, arms around each other, we were 2 human beings of 1 spirit.
The video version of the song – which I would probably give a 15 Certificate – has had a staggering 860+million views on youtube. It portrays these life contrasts vividly and graphically.
To be honest, I have to be in the mood for dance/club music, but when I am, I love it. One of my all-time favourite tracks is We Found Love in a Hopeless place by Rhianna and featuring the master of contemporary music production, Calvin Harris. It’s a thumping track, with profound missiology at its core; missiology that has helped me grasp a little of how God is, and how God works.
Life is so often a mix of love, hope, possibility, but also despair, dysfunctionality and an ongoing wrestling with some of the obvious, and often less obvious, demons which invade our space.
For a long time in my faith journey, I was seduced into thinking that if things were not hunky dory and a bed of roses then I must be doing something wrong. Whilst I’m still open to the possibility that this might be the case, the evidence of my experience is that this is a way too simplistic theological stance.
Over the years, I have found ‘love in a hopeless place’. In the work I used to do in prisons. Time and time again, I would enter the prison nervous, anxious and uncertain about the reception I and my fellow volunteers would get. Every time, without fail, we discovered God had gone ahead of us and before us and was already there – casting a shadow of love and acceptance across the lives of those most in need. Being and working in what was a very hopeless place.
Yellow diamonds in the light And we’re standing side by side As your shadow crosses mine What it takes to come alive
It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny But I’ve gotta let it go
We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place
In more recent ventures as a volunteer working with the refugees stranded in Calais, I found the same; a living God at work in the most hopeless of situations with the most desperate and marginalised of people. Amidst violence and oppression from the authorities, love is to be found amongst the refugees and those who seek to support them. The situation is hopeless, but the love easily found.
Divorce, cancer, bereavement, living in a rural setting which is very hard work church-wise have all given me a personal glimpse of hopelessness, and indeed, at times helplessness. Throughout I have found it helpful to make a distinction between circumstance and situation, and the God who ‘is’ – that great ‘I am’. Rhianna talks about a division between ‘love’ and ‘life’ – I get that and find it really helpful. However hopeless things are naturally speaking – and I don’t glibly and naively proclaim this – God is still love, still there, still being; still ‘I am’.
Shine a light through an open door Love and life I will divide
Turn away ’cause I need you more Feel the heartbeat in my mind
It’s the way I’m feeling I just can’t deny But I’ve gotta let it go
We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place
So a cracking, pump up the air, touch the emotions, grab you by the short and curlies dance track full of missiology and, for me, helpful theology –who would have guessed? So if you are going through some tough times, I hope this reflection might add to your understanding that God works in all and many different ways. Even when it is hopeless, God is there – even if things don’t become immediately – or even ever, hopeful – we might still discover that
We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place We found love in a hopeless place
My travel communion box lay open on her kitchen table. The now faded, embossed image of a circuit-riding preacher glistened in the afternoon sun. My host had found a small piece of west African kente to use as a communion cloth. I had poured the grape juice into two small cups, placed a wafer on the tiny plate. We talked a while over our make-shift altar — about her family, her faith, her life ‘back home’…
From the radio in the next room I could hear BBC Radio 2 chiming three o-clock. Against the muffled backdrop of the headline news, we prayed an opening prayer. Travel news babbled through the scripture lesson. Then some requests. Oldies music, a soundtrack to our sacrament.
A familiar piano introduction wafted down the corridor. Then, Don Henley’s raspy voice, like an old friend calling from the distance: Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses…. Suddenly, I was back in 1970’s New Jersey, listening to DJ Don Imus on WABC. Here I was in a south London flat in my ministerial role, but my mind wandered back to a time of proms and pimples…
I wondered if my host was noticing this song. I sensed not. How can the same song awaken one person’s memories and drift by another in static? But then again, I might have missed her inner reminiscences of an earlier song?
Snap back to the present. On the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread… I reached for the plate.
…Now it seems to me, some fine things have been laid upon your table…
I looked across at my host. In a practical sense we are foreigners. In a theological sense, family. In essence, however, we are complete strangers. Just behind the door of her memory is a whole warehouse of memories I will never know. Nor could she understand what the Eagles evoke in me. How can we have grown up to such different music, but for this three-minute span, be listening to the same melody?
The middle age minister chastened the day-dreaming teenager back to the task at hand.
Later, when the supper was over… I handed her a cup.
Desperado, O you ain’t getting no younger…
As I prayed for her, for her family, for the community and congregation, I paused. “…and for all those who are out riding fences…” I’m not sure if she caught the reference, but inwardly, I smiled. I’m sure I’d transgressed all kinds of liturgical guidelines. But in some strange way, it felt like reaching across time and space to bring something together, back together. And one song had opened the gate.
If you want to know more, follow the link to the Eagles website https://eagles.com/
Lucy Spraggan first appeared on our screens in X Factor 2012. She pulled out fairly early in the series due to illness, but she still managed to sign a record deal.
This year she brought out her 5th album Today was a Good Day and whilst I would never describe myself as a fan, this album is really rather good.
I was first introduced to one of the songs from the album, Stick the Kettle On (featuring Scouting for Girls), while on retreat. Our retreat leader was talking about seeing Lucy in concert and how moved she was by the song.
Stick the Kettle On was released for World Suicide Prevention Day and is written to support the charity CALM (Campaign against Living <iserably). Whilst it is a song reflecting the high rate of suicide amongst men under the age of 50, it is also a song for anyone who is feeling low – essentially an invitation to speak to your family, friends, anyone – and where better than over a cuppa!
I’m currently doing some research with Germinate on rural isolation and loneliness. I think loneliness is one of the biggest diseases we have in our country, if not the world. And of course, it’s not just old people or rural people who get lonely, but loneliness is still something that we rarely talk about. It seems to still carry a huge stigma. So this song reminds me of the importance of just having some company and someone to talk to – even if it’s just once a week.
Whilst on retreat, one of the things I reflected on was how important hospitality is to me as part of my faith.
I’m reminded of Jesus saying:
I was hungry and you gave me food
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me. (Matthew 25:35)
Or the ancient rune of hospitality that is said weekly at Iona Abbey:
We saw a stranger yesterday
We put food in the eating place
Drink in the drinking place
Music in the listening space.
And in the sacred name of the triune God
He blessed us and our house
Our cattle and our dear ones.
As the lark says in her song, often, often, often goes Christ in the Stranger’s guise.
For me, hospitality is not just about welcoming friends or strangers. Its more about how we make and create community. It’s about knowing who our neighbours are. It’s about picking the phone up for a chat – for no specific reason at all.
We live in a world where there more barriers of exclusion, the higher the wall, the safer people feel. And yet as Christians we want to break down barriers and invite people in. So, who might you want to have a cuppa with this week? Who might be the lonely people amongst you and how might you connect with them?
Just an offer of a cup of tea and chat might be a literal life saver for one and you never know, you may even find that you have ‘entertained angels unawares’. Hebrews 13:2.
Lucy Spraggan will be performing at Greenbelt this year.
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Hidden away on my hard drive somewhere is a folder full of songs I’ve never written! One, yet to be completed masterpiece, is entitled ‘Clichéd Love Affair’. A song that seeks, tongue, very much in cheek, to use all the clichés that we hear in love songs and weave a story of the deepest love!
Hearing the opening lines of ‘Yours’ by Katie Doherty and the Navigators sent me searching into the deep recesses of my hard drive with the promise of a new verse for my incomplete song… ‘I’d give you the hills’
Yet the line continues… ‘but they are already yours’ the cliché is smashed, and my interest piqued.
She continues… ‘And I’d show you the stars, but they are brighter where you are!’ and through ears of faith I am conjuring up a love song to the almighty. ‘I’d give you the hills…’ of course they are already yours – you create them! What about the stars, silly me, they are brighter where you are in the heavens!
Yet, this is no deep hymn of devotion, no slow sweet melody – it is written to a sheep farmer, the hills and the stars all makes perfect sense now! (Shepherd? Insert your own theology!)
This beautiful and refreshingly honest song continues ‘you deserve more than my temporary smile, but it’s all I can give you for a while’
How honest do we need to be to admit that our worship is often the temporary smile (or as Paul Field describes it in ‘Make a Difference’… ‘a Sunday morning shine… a pill you take for holiness washed down by bread and wine’). A place we come to escape, where we make promises we don’t keep and where we behave very differently from the rest of our lives? A place that becomes a cliché of our love for God rather than a demonstration.
‘Yours’ concludes with the declaration of love ‘All I can say is I am yours today’. What if our worship concluded not with the grace but with the declaration ‘I am yours’?
Leading me from church into the world;
to turn the other cheek till both my cheeks ached,
to constantly walk the second mile,
to never judge,
to be more concerned with the log in my own eye than the spec in my neighbours,
to sell all I had to give everything to the poor,
to kneel at the feet of my friends while really praying for my enemies and actually put myself last all the time…
There’s been a bit of a backlash about the phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’ over the last couple of years. People have got tired of this ‘go to’ phrase from our leaders that their ‘thoughts and prayers’ are with whoever has been affected when a tragic event has happened.
The words “Let’s not just pray, let’s make a change” in this song from Frank Turner (an out & out atheist) really sums this frustration up.
But change is a funny thing. We know it needs to happen but we just seem to struggle with making changes – perhaps because we think it needs to something big. And big things require lots of effort and a good deal of time. We get caught up in things needing to change dramatically. Huge gestures. A complete overhaul.
Shane Claiborne, the American Christian activist, once said ‘Get ready friends….God is preparing us for something really, really…small’.
And when you think about it, Jesus wasn’t about big gestures to bring about change – it was all about small things. Walking an extra mile; a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread; mustard seeds; grains of wheat; a women at the well and a cup of water; a Samaritan; a father and his two sons; a loaf of bread and a cup of wine; a cross.
This song is all about making little changes in your life. Frank wrote it as a reflection on his experience of cognitive behavioural therapy where he learned that he can significantly change aspects of his life just by making small changes in his behaviour.
I love the honesty of his words and music. I could have chosen so many of his songs to share but I think that this song seems to capture my own personal mood at the moment – it definitely speaks to me when I think about climate change, but it also reminds be about living a healthier, fruitful life just by being a bit kinder to myself and therefore, kinder to others.
“Giving up too easy when we could’ve tried a little bit harder
Standing to the side as the neighbourhood went to the dogs
We spend our energy getting angry instead of being kinder
Singing hymns of praise in a city given up on by the gods”
So instead of feeling frustrated and blaming others, we can pray & reflect (ooh –thoughts and prayers) on what change we want to see in the world and make little changes to bring about that bigger change.
I’m looking forward to seeing Frank Turner at Greenbelt this year and of course, I’m hoping he’ll be playing this one.
The Time is Now – the current slogan for Climate Change activists – is a tough reminder that there’s no time to lose around issues of Global importance. The feeling of crisis sharpens the senses to the needs, not only of the planet itself, but of all those creatures living on its surface and if ever there was a time to stand up and be counted – it is now.
It’s not the only issue either facing us as people of faith. The political and social climates are increasingly hostile, the word ‘Brexit’ is never far from our lips and even within the church we find ourselves polarised on a number of issues leading us to the edge of a crisis of our own.
The stories we read of Jesus consistently remind us that his attention and intention in any given moment were critical. Healing the woman who was bleeding; healing the sick; conversation with the woman at the well; careful answers to provocative questions; making the political point: I could go on. I wonder if this is another call to grasp the current moment and pay attention to what’s happening right now in a God-filled way. To pay attention to the people in need right now.
So this track of the same name, that has long been in my consciousness, seems a fitting commentary for the moment. An out and out declaration of the urgency of love, connectivity and seizing the day – it suggests that the all-consuming nature of relationship is just like breathing in. Its value comes not in tomorrow but in the current and grabbing it for all its worth.
God offers fully committed love to us and indeed invites us to respond. Not in the future but now. Who knows what that might look like for each of us but “giving ourselves to the moment and realising the time is now” might just enable us to make the positivity of the moment last. To make a long term difference. To do what is right at any given point in time. To realise that the Kingdom of God is quite literally for now.
You kind find out more about Moloko and the work of their lead singer Roisin Murphy here
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