The Friday Fix

Category: 2020

  • ‘Some Children See Him’ by James Taylor

    Here at the Friday Fix we love all kinds of music. Occasionally we come across songs that are written with a genuine intent to be inclusive but the language of the time seems a little bit different to how we would say things today. 

    It helps to understand the context of when the song was written. This song was written on 1951, 6 years after World War Two had ended and when the Korean War was taking place. Add to that the segregation that the United States had – and you can see why this song mattered then – and still does today.

    Anne writes:

    This song brings back such fond thoughts of Christmas at school.

    Every year we would decorate the big tree in the hall on the first week in December. We waited until the children had gone home from school so that when they came in the next morning the school had been transformed in to the magical wonderland. Looking at their little faces when they walked into the hall was always special.

    At assembly time, we would gather the children around the tree and turn off the lights so that the space felt smaller and intimate and the only light came from the fairy lights on the tree. Our headteacher would sit in his comfy chair and read them a Christmas story. The staff all called him ‘Val Doonican’ because all he needed was the colourful jumper and the look was complete.

    As the children filed in, we would play a track from James Taylor’s Christmas album and so now when I hear one of those songs it takes me right back. Christmas at school is a mad rush of parties and concerts. Excitement and fun. But as a teacher, it is frenzied and frantic – and leaves you feeling drained by the time we break up.

    This song brings me back to the true meaning of the season.

    Oh lay aside each earthly thing

    And with thy heart as offering

    Come worship now the infant King

    ‘Tis love that’s born tonight

    This year I have a challenging class due to the current circumstances we find ourselves in. I have children who are terrified for their friends and family in case someone gets this dreaded virus. They are fragile and anxious and the only way they know how to cope with their feelings is to lash out and fall out with each other.

    I see it as my job to keep things on an even keel and make their life in school as normal as I can. Their Christmas will not be the one that they are used to. No concert, fayre or visit to church so it will be difficult but we still need to give them that sense that it is special and a time for awe and wonder. I will play this song to them as they come in first thing in the morning and hope that the gentle tune will reach the parts that ‘I wish it could be Christmas everyday’ doesn’t reach.

    The children in each different place

    Will see the baby Jesus’ face

    Like theirs, but bright, with heavenly grace

    And filled with holy light.

    I think after the world events this year, the words are more applicable than ever before. The children of every country will see images of the baby King that they can relate to but it doesn’t matter what colour they are, the important thing is that they realise that this baby, who was a child like them, changed the world. They can do that too. The family were refugees and homeless like too many children in our world today but theirs is one of the most well known stories in history.

    I will tell that story again and pray that my children will get the chance to spend time with their family around their trees and experience the joy that comes from feeling loved and safe. I look forward to seeing the faces of my grandchildren as they grow to understand what Christmas is about. I will play them these songs and make sure that the baby isn’t forgotten amidst all the decorations and wrapping paper.

    Find out what James Taylor is up to these days at https://www.jamestaylor.com/

  • ‘Stained Glass’ – Danny Schmidt

    David writes:

    It may seem strange to write in Advent about a song set during Lent and Easter! But this song is about incarnation – God with us. It is a song that challenges us to smash our own stained-glass images of the infant Jesus. The sanitized Christmas card nativity scenes and the niceties of Victorian Carols portraying a baby who doesn’t cry or a child who is never difficult!

    In so many ways we have deradicalized the incarnation. We have lost the miraculous depth of truth within the statement that God is with us, rather emphasising God as the benevolent stranger who walks alongside us until our life gets too much and then, just before we fail, picks us up!

    We have retreated behind our stained (or not-so-stained) glass church windows for a dose of ‘God with us’, enabling us to return to the world and ‘brave it out’ until our next church visit.

    In both these scenarios we have lost the fundamental meaning of incarnation. God is not on the periphery of our world, appearing as and when we need God, but rather God participates constantly in earthly life. God is not the immutable figure in the background but an active participant in our human experience. As a result, God walks alongside us understanding exactly how we feel, not waiting to pick us up at the last moment but, suffering and rejoicing with us in all things.

    God takes on the frustrations of life and relationships and knows just what it takes to deal with these vibrant emotions.

    ‘And then God rode through on sunshine and sat down ‘cos he was tired. He was tired.’

    Incarnation is God in human form, not scratching the surface of living but One who is exhausted through the process of living.

    This is the God who is born in the stable, forced to flee as a refugee and whose life ends in betrayal, arrest, torture, and crucifixion. ‘Stained Glass’ is a song that challenges us not to see the resurrection as the archetypal Hollywood happy ending but to understand it through incarnation and suffering.

    One day all things will be made whole but until that day God, who is born in the shit of the stable, is with us – whatever life throws at us. The refugee Deity travels, the betrayed Almighty struggles, the arrested Creator is bound, with us. The beaten and tortured Life Force experiences our pain and as the Divine dies on the cross we know that whatever our experience – God is with us.

    Understanding the incarnation in this way smashes our dualistic theology of good versus bad and light versus dark, as forcefully as ‘the Elm tree hit the church‘. The previous window had been ordered and ‘cast a godly light’, the new window is different…

    ‘It was covered in black velvet like a hood or like a veil

    He pulled the sheet and there it hung apocryphal and frail‘

    ‘The chapel fell to silence, it was more than just surprise

    As the monstrosity of color slid its tongue across their eyes

    And they shivered from exposure like babies born again

    Cause in every pane of glass was all the joy and pain of man’

    God is not only found in our sacred or thin places, within the joys and highs of life. God is also found in, what we lazily term, the ‘dark’ places of life, ‘every fearful smile, every awkward friend, every lie that ever saved the truth from being shamed, every secret you could ever trust a friend to hide away, every shape inside your head you can’t carve with your hands…’

    The term stained-glass has become synonymous with windows in church depicting the sacred and the saints – the perfect not ‘emblazoned imperfections in a perfect stream of light’!

    In Danny Schmidt’s song, the new window is stained with all the shades and chaos of life. A vivid challenge to us to meet our incarnate God in the whole of life: ‘And there was bloodstains in the red and there were teardrops in the blue’. God comes to us not solely in our churches or other places we deem to be holy, but in the shades and chaos of our everyday life.

    ‘As the thunder and the hardwood settled back into its place

    God removed his veil and there were scars across his face

    And some folks prayed in reverence and some folks prayed in fear

    As all the shades and chaos in the glass became a mirror’

    Under the cover of the night the veil of God is removed in the birth of Christ.

    In the darkness of the tomb divine scars are revealed.

    As much as we veil the shady side of our life, we find God in those self-same shadows. When we mask in lies the scars, that shame and delight us, God is not fooled. Instead of judgement and rejection God simply reveals in a mirror the life of God lived in Jesus.

    Visit http://www.dannyschmidt.com to find out more about Danny’s music.

  • ‘How the Love Gets In’ – Thea Gilmore

    Jane writes:

    My friend sent me a track by Thea Gilmore. She’s an artist I knew of but had never really got to grips with. Kind of not knowing where to start for the best, I was pleased to receive the offer. I’m happy to say that the track in question was an excellent starting place. It wasn’t this one but it did mean I embarked on that thing where you search through the back catalogue. I liked some of it but not all and saved the stuff that appealed to my Spotify playlist called “newish.” That’s kind of a thing I do a lot.

    It wasn’t until the other day while walking that this track popped up again and really made me think. Thea’s lilting voice was doing that thing of soothing my ears while prodding at my soul.

    So here is a song where everything in life seems just out of sync and slightly out of kilter. Where things are okay but they are definitely not. Where the balance has shifted and it ought to be alright but there is a hidden secret that it’s all horribly wrong – or at least not as it seems. Where its downright tough. Uncomfortable, fraught with difficulty and just a bit in that place where

    “your heart is whole but your soul is shot”

    “your load is light but your feet are stone”

    “the road is clear but the bridge is closed”

    Yet this is how the love gets in

    At this time of year as people of faith we think of a story where “set back” and “peculiarity of circumstance” were par for the course. Betrothal to a woman who is with child. Being called to account in a Census because the Occupying Forces required you to. Travelling long distances when pregnant. No room to shelter. Visitations from strangers – shepherds and Magi alike. Tyrannical leadership bringing risk to your new-born. Fleeing from persecution as a refugee family. All of this against a background where God had made it clear that Mary was in favour and would bear a precious Son that would be great and called Son of the Most High – the Son of God. Even with this known outcome, the path was not easy and at every turn there seemed to be an issue to face or something to overcome.

    Within the story then, there are places where the love gets in. Where God moves in mysterious ways. Outside the story, two millennia later, it causes us to reflect on just how easy it was to see the love of God creep in to all sorts of lives through these complex circumstances.

    At the moment for me, the whole of life is in that complex place. Work that seemed simple is complicated. Relationships that flourish usually are all just a bit odd. Plans you had can’t be realised. What ought to be dead obviously isn’t. It’s all a bit flat. There’s a lot of wondering and pondering to be done and just when you think you have the hang of something, you don’t. Yet even now it is in this place of strange inconsistency that the love gets in.

    It’s more than “in spite of” though, it’s “because of”. Because it’s all just a bit weird, there’s space for it. Space to notice. Space for honesty. Space to learn about the other. Space to care. Space for vulnerability. Space to pay attention. Space for the love to get through.

    “So raise a glass to how it shatters. ‘Cos it’s the cracks that really matter”

    This is how the love gets in

    Love for one another. Love for humanity. Divine Love that looks for the cracks and seeps right in. God with us still.

    You can find out more about Thea Gilmore here at https://www.theagilmore.net/

    PS – I often wonder when people write things whether they realise the effect they are having on people. I suppose they must want their music to make some kind of impact but to what extent they own that impact is interesting. Where music and lyrics take you can sometimes surprise you. Now it’s your turn…

  • ‘A Thousand Times’ – Kinnship

    Michael writes:

    I don’t know about you, but I’m a thinker. I’m also a big self-reflector. I’m not sure whether that’s pious or egotistical of me (perhaps that’s another thing to naval gaze about at some stage!?) but I suspect, in actual fact, it’s really a little bit of both…

    The last few months have left me with a worryingly large amount of time to think about who I am and how I am. I’m not going to lie; I’ve not been OK for large swathes of it. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about the parts of myself I often try to deny or minimize or hide from others – that shadow-self that I am desperate for other people not to see, and yet I am all too aware of.

    Staring at ourselves in the mirror can be a vulnerable, painful and distressing activity. In the midst of this intense looking-glass season, I have found this beautiful song a really helpful meditation. It announces so much of what I have reflected about myself lately; that I am often two things at once – both light and shadow, both present and absent, both selfless and selfish, both OK and broken:

    I am rich and I am poor

    I am healthy and I’m sore

    I am certain and unsure

    I am one foot out the door

    I am dirty and I’m clean

    I’m awakened and I dream

    I am kind and also mean …

    I am strong and I am weak

    I am hopeful and I’m bleak

    I am fierce and I am meek …

    I am false and I am true

    I’m a wise man and a fool

    I will give you all you need

    But reserve the best for me

    The tone of these opening verses is undeniably bitter and disdainful. So often that is how I feel when I consider my own broken nature. Sometimes the self-loathing is palpable. Perhaps you can relate?

    But what I’ve found helpful and inspiring is that this song is not about despair, it’s about love. The kind of love that accepts both the light and the shadow of an individual, who they strive to be and who they are, the times where they are OK and the times they are not. It embraces the whole person, and in so doing allows that person to embrace their whole selves too:

    I thought I would find a noose, but instead you cut me loose

    Now that you have set me free, I reclaim my identity…

    As I’ve listened to this song many times recently I’ve found myself being slightly stitched back together and comforted. It’s OK that I am “Sometimes not what I think I seem” and “A dichotomy so to speak”. It’s OK that I am both pious and egotistical. Despite resenting and wishing to certain parts of myself for fear or rejection, I am already loved. And, I’m left wondering… maybe, if I can learn to more openly acknowledge, and even share these parts of myself, my sense of being loved will grow.

    Blessed are those who are honest about their whole selves, for they shall know love (Matt 5:8 – my rendering).

    Find out more about Kinnship by visiting their Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/iamkinnship/

  • ‘Nothing Rhymed’ by Gilbert O’Sullivan

    Gill writes:

    It seems quite apt that I’ve been listening to this song lately because this time 50 years ago, ‘Nothing Rhymed’ was heading up the charts (it reached Number 8). It may be 50 years old, but I find this song a timeless one – and apparently I’m not alone in my love of this song as John Lennon and Paul Weller are both known to have loved it too.

    Gilbert O’Sullivan is the first singer and popular music-maker that I remember. I have distinct memories of the ‘Himself’ album cover lying on the record player in our home – and I know that I played ‘Matrimony’ incessantly as a tot.

    Gilbert took a backseat during my teens and twenties but re-entered my life in 2002 when this track took me by surprise whilst watching the film ‘Anita and Me’. I don’t know how familar you are with the story (the film is slightly different to the book – the Methodist youth leader in the book is the vicar in the film) but without wanting to give away too much, it’s the story of Anita (a white, working-class girl) and Meena (a British Asian girl) who become friends but are challenged by the clash of their cultures. It’s funny, poignant and definitely worth reading and watching.

    The song strikes up at a point in the film where Meena is desperately trying to make sense of the world – and it captures the mood perfectly.

    Nothing good, nothing bad, nothing ventured
    Nothing gained, nothing still-born or lost
    Nothing further than proof, nothing wilder than youth
    Nothing older than time, nothing sweeter than wine
    Nothing physically recklessly, hopelessly blind
    Nothing I couldn’t say
    Nothing why ‘cos today
    Nothing rhymed

    This week has felt like ‘Nothing Rhymed’ to me. The Overseas Aid Budget has been cut whilst the Defence Budget has received a windfall. Some public sector workers are going to receive pay rises whilst others won’t – despite all of them serving our communities amazingly during the last year. We’re coming out of lockdown next week but across the country there will be different Tiers that possibly don’t make sense in some places.

    It’s times like these when you can feel completely unsettled and unsure – about life, God and the universe. I think there’s a tendency for us to think ‘well if we can just get this one thing sorted, things could start going right’. The world isn’t a nice, neat place; lots of our plans don’t come to fruition; we can’t always control what is going on in and around us.

    We’re about to enter the period of Advent when Methodists will be remembering that #GodIsWithUs. This is something that is worth holding on to, especially in our unsettled and darker moments. It’s a time when the messages from Isaiah are revisited as part of Advent reflections. Perhaps we could go further into Psalm 40 than usual and ponder:

    “So — who is like me?
        Who holds a candle to me?” says The Holy.
    Look at the night skies:
        Who do you think made all this?
    Who marches this army of stars out each night,
        counts them off, calls each by name
    — so magnificent! so powerful! —
        and never overlooks a single one?” (Isaiah 40:25-31 – The Message)

    The troubled times of Isaiah perhaps ring truer than ever this year – a time when people are saying ‘God – where are you? What’s going on?!’

    Later in Isaiah, we’re reminded “I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think” (Isaiah 55:8-9 – The Message). 

    It’s okay that we can’t make sense of the world. Time is sometimes needed to help us to understand and God can be revealed most of all in challenging and worrying times. We need to hold on to, and trust in, God being with us – especially at those moments when nothing rhymes.

  • ‘Let Your Love Flow’ – Bellamy Brothers

    David writes:

    “And which song would you like played for the recessional?” I asked the couple. We sat in the small chapel where, in a couple of months, they would say their wedding vows.

    “Well, we’ve thought about it. We’ll have sung a few hymns already in the service. We were wondering if we could have something a little different at the end. Do you know the Bellamy Brothers?”

    “1970’s, country/soul, long hair, sideburns, wide collars, bell-bottom jeans?”

    “The very ones. We’d really like the song ‘Let Your Love Flow’.

    While they waited for the title to register on my face, she began to sing as he strummed air guitar: “Let your love flow like a mountain stream, and let your love grow with the smallest of dreams, and let your love show and you’ll know what I mean, it’s the season…” She brought it up on her phone to play the rest.

    I smiled. Of course. Then, I crinkled my brow, reminding myself that I was being asked to assess its liturgical appropriateness: “…go stealin’ through the moonlit nights with your lover [?]…let your love fly like a bird on a wing…bind you to all living things [?]…So let that wonder take you into space and lay you under its loving embrace…” [?] Hmmm….

    “All right, I think we could do that.”

    “Great, we’ll download it and get it to the wedding stewards on a memory stick.”

    I don’t remember many details from their wedding day. I’m pretty sure I made some attempt to connect the flowing love with the biblical love from Colossians 3: “Bear with one another…forgive one another…clothe yourselves in love…let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…” But what sticks with me most was the exuberant roar of electric guitar right after I pronounced the final Amen…. then…“There’s a reason for the sunshine sky and there’s a reason why I’m feelin’ so high, must be the season when that love light shines all around us…”

    I recall some faces (mostly the 40-50 somethings) lighting up and some heads bobbing. I can still picture the couple bopping down the aisle towards the door. Years later and that song still ushers me into church.

    We’re currently in a season when nothing much seems to be flowing. For most of us, mountain streams are virtual. Other than birds on a wing, much of our flying is grounded. Affection is restrained. Patience is in short supply. Joy is muted. Finances are tight. Political good will is at a trickle. Singing is masked. Praise is muffled. Relationships are distanced.

    And in the midst of all that, Jesus’ call to love remains loud. The invitation is to love God and love one another with everything we’ve got. Our neighbour is not to be merely tolerated or treated with wariness, but loved. These days I need more than an acoustic reminder to love. Crank it up to eleven.

    Find out more about the Bellamy Brothers at bellamybrothers.com

  • ‘Ooh Child’ – The Five Stairsteps

    Kristie writes:

    One of the best things I ever did was join a gospel choir. This was 10 years ago, my husband had just left and I made a decision to do something just for me. I got a babysitter, and each Wednesday night would head out to sing with others from around the county.

    We have a wide repertoire that includes well-known favourites such as “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers and “Shackles” by Mary Mary. There are originals written by our musical director. And then I’ve discovered songs I simply hadn’t heard of before becoming part of this community, like Israel Houghton’s “Not Forgotten” (recommended if you’ve not heard it either).
    One such new-to-me song was the uplifting “Ooh Child” by The Five Stairsteps. As well as singing it with others at gigs and rehearsals, it’s now my go-to song to sing by myself when I’m feeling low.

    It’s been a challenging year for many of us, and this is just the sort of song to help us hang-in there when it feels tough. Personally when I sing it, I imagine God singing it to me, reminding me that this too shall pass. We’ve never known what the future holds, but that feels truer than ever right now. I find it useful to remember that things change, and will ultimately get easier/brighter. And on gloomy rainy days I have hope that one day I will once more ‘walk in the rays of a beautiful sun’.

    We’ve not been able to gather to sing for 8 months now, but our Director has sent out songs and we’ve had Zoom rehearsals. We’re called One Voice Community Choir, which usually refers to how our harmonies blend. Right now it’s more literal, with my one voice accompanying the track. But it’s still singing. 

    I hope you too have songs you know will lift your spirits.  Here’s us having fun with it at a rehearsal: https://fb.watch/1yFQacy40V/

  • ‘Running to Stand Still’ by U2

    Jane writes:

    Sometimes in life you’re thrown a curveball that stops you in your tracks. They happen periodically and without warning and often in a way that’s oblivious to others around you. You’re coping but goodness knows how (maybe you’re not) and it’s just a case of keeping the show on the road.

    I imagine that such moments feel different for different people but for me they are often times when I feel overwhelmed and don’t really know what to do. I am busy ensuring stuff happens but essentially I am only just “running to stand still”.

    This global curve ball brings a whole new level of stopping in our tracks. It was for a while a temporary issue but now it seems like it may have to be a whole new way of trying to keep the show on the road and maybe, just maybe, we need to stop doing that thing that we do to keep on keeping on.

    To recognise it can never be the same. To notice that some stuff just needs to stop for ever. To be ready for it to be other than our usual experience. To simply try another way of being. It has to be okay too to have the freedom to say we’re not alright.

    In this song much of what’s written is connected to isolation and addiction. The girl within it …..

    She runs through the streets

    With eyes painted red

    Under a black belly of cloud in the rain

    In through a doorway she brings me

    White gold and pearls stolen from the sea

    She is raging

    She is raging

    And the storm blows up in her eyes

    She will suffer the needle chill

    She’s running to stand

    I know that we are not called by God to live life in this frantic way. To live like an addict in isolation or with an obsession for perpetuating the current pattern of our lives. To get our next “fix”.

    I felt from the start that this might be something we needed to face but as we come to Advent, we may just need to think about it a bit harder. Why do we do what we do at this time of year? Where do our values and faith sit within the busyness? How do we recognise who is important to us and make them, not stuff, the priority – even if the joy of giving and the hubbub of connectivity are all part of the fun of the season.

    I am not the sort of person who wants to cry “Bah Humbug!!” but I wonder if this year instead of rushing to repeat the pattern of years past we just take an extra breath and try something new. Break the “addictions” or “obsessions” whatever they may be and recognise that this truly is the season of God with us.

    God offers life. Life in all its fullness. Life that is challenging. Life that’s full of joy. That’s a complicated thing but its the offer we must grasp now. No more running to stand still. More of a walk towards God’s preferred future.

    U2 and everything about them can be found here https://www.u2.com/index/home

  • A plea for Friday Fixes…

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    To be honest, we’re really needing some Friday Fixes for the next few weeks so please don’t be shy and send them in!

    But in particular, we’d like to tie in our Advent posts with the Methodist Church’s Advent Campaign so songs that speak to you of God being with us would be cracking!

    Please, please, please – we absolutely love receiving Friday Fix contributions and are more than happy to help with editing and finding the video clips and links. All we need are your thoughts.

    So have a good think – and then put it into writing and send your thoughts to Gill at thomasg@methodistchurch.org.uk.