Sometimes life just calls for us to revisit past thoughts and ponderings because they seem as pertinent now as they did then. Jane wrote this Friday Fix when Covid was still prevalent. It’s funny, isn’t it, that we humans don’t move on that much really…
Jane writes:
In the winter of 1998, the tiny bundle of joy that is my daughter was born. 1998 also marked the release of “This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours” by the Manic Street Preachers and for the last couple of months of me being pregnant, the house was filled over and over with the dulcet tones of James Dean Bradfield. It was one of those albums that was rarely out of earshot and got played at home, in the car or indeed anywhere you could manage it.
Just after she was born. In that space when the nurses had gone to make me some toast, and dad had gone to call the people who needed to know, there was just me and her. I wondered what I’d say to her and, or how, I could reassure her that she was in good hands and actually what happened was that I sang to her the chorus of this Manics track. I thought it would be familiar to her and that the tune and rhythm would already have been a constant background to her growing. I figured she need to hear something she didn’t even know she had already heard.
Looking back it does seem rather odd to sing to a newborn a track that’s about the horrors of the Spanish civil war. Even the words I sang have a strange menace.
If you tolerate this then your children will be next
Yet it served as a great reminder to me that I had new responsibilities for a tiny human now and whatever I did I had to pay attention to what really mattered. I’m hoping it set her off on a love of realising that music is soooo important in a person’s life and I think maybe it did if her grown-up self is anything to go by.
Our ability to tolerate the intolerable has really ramped up during the last 12 months or so. Our scant regard to the level of death here in this country on a daily basis, and across the world, whilst being worried if we can go out to the pub is astounding. Our willingness to see even larger scale tragedy in countries without the infrastructure or the political will to deal with a pandemic put in a “there but for the grace of God go we” kind of box.
Lets face it though we’ve got form and its not new. We don’t necessarily pay attention to what is or has happened.
I’ve walked La Ramblas
But not with real intent
We walk through places and situations paying little regard for the atrocities that happened there. We walk past statues for people who committed great wrongs and simply put it down to history rather than noticing the real impact on people just a step away. We watch documentaries about issues relating to basic civil rights and think that its history when we know that it is happening every day still.
Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
How we deal with our failure as human individuals or as a collective is fascinating. We know that people are starving every day and living under the most intolerable of circumstances. That they are impacted on by our desire for goods at cheaper cost, for more and more electronic communication and the resources required to make the next gadget, by our hunger for travel and exploration, by our need of convenience and things that make our lives easier. By the struggle for power that brings war and oppression. By our island mentality that seeks to keep out the refugee rather than offer welcome. Yet we seem somehow powerless to act.
But we’ll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
I have no idea how we really fix it but I do know that it’s not enough to ignore it, forget it or bury it on the pile of “jobs that are too hard”. God calls us to do what we can. God calls us to do more than we think we can. God calls us to pay attention. I think I’m a bit scared by the enormity of it all but I do recognise that we have to stand up and be counted however we can.
If you tolerate this then your children will be next
The most haunting part of this track for me comes at the start and end. The sound of a tiny little tune – maybe from a child’s mobile. I don’t think the driver for our intolerance of injustice should be just because it might come to catch us out one day but rather because its what God requires of us. Because we bound up into one great big human family – and each and every one matters.
It’s a cracking tune. It’s a cracking album from the Manics. But believe me much of what they write is not for the faint-hearted and neither should it be.
We’re taking a break this week so from Christmas 2020, here are the lovely people of the National Methodist Choir of Great Britain and The Children’s Choir with ‘Love Shone Down (I had a dream).’
One thing that I am thankful for over the last few years is the widening of access to television series and films from other countries. The BBC, Channel 4 and Netflix have introduced me to some brilliant work, particularly from Germany, Denmark and Norway. It’s not only the visual delights that have captured my heart either; it’s the soundtracks and title music too. The theme tunes to ‘The Bridge’ and ‘Ride Upon The Storm’ spring to mind, but it is to Norway that this song takes us.
I found Christmas 2020 (and the build-up to it) rather surreal and therefore escaped into quirky or comforting television viewing. This song comes from a series that merged quirky and comforting together – a Norwegian series called ‘Home for Christmas’ about a young woman who is sick of comments from the family about her relationship status, and so she embarks on a personal Advent challenge of finding a boyfriend by Christmas Eve. As Christmas gets nearer, the goal gets further away – resulting in bitter-sweet, frenetic and cringe-worthy moments.
In a sense, the series could be an allegory for how many of us approach Christmas. About how we get caught up in goals and objectives that are just unnecessary or unrealistic. About how we try to create a perfect image of what Christmas should look like. You know the image I mean – of a multi-generational, Christmas-jumpered, straight-teethed, healthy-looking bunch of people with abundant food and gifts enough for the street or apartment block that they live in. It’s an unachievable dream that some of us chase – this notion of a ‘perfect’ Christmas. What needless pressure we can put on ourselves at times eh?!
Well, this song tells us to ‘calm down’ – that’s what ‘falle til ro’ means in Norwegian. Calm down; settle down; have a rest. The message of the song is to stop and let Christmas give us the rest we need and the space to look back over the year – to see what we have accomplished and to recognise the struggles that we have got through as well.
så kanskje vil jula gi (so maybe Christmas will give)
ennå litt meire tid (a little more time)
tid til å sjå (time to see)
alt som vi streva med (everything we struggle with)
enn om vi trenge det (than if we need it)
sjå heile verda falle til ro (see the whole world calm down)
kanskje det e det som vi trenge no (maybe that’s what we need)
So I prescribe the following – take yourself to a space that helps you relax. It could be a space like a chair, a bench, a corner, a bed; or it could be a mental space where you’re baking, drawing, sewing or tinkering with a car. Pop the song on – and let Eva’s song wash over you and, if you need it, perhaps it might help you to calm down like it does for me.
Happy Christmas.
May this Christmas season bring you space to rest and relax at some stage. And may it bring you the space to reflect on where God’s love has touched your life in 2021.
So often listening to music is all about context. The song of a band we have heard on a sunny festival day will always remind us of friends, laughter and warmth. The song played at the funeral of a loved one will also hold the power to take us back to the emptiness of mourning and missing a friend.
I write this as I sit on a train travelling home. I’m safe. I have a ticket. I am allowed to travel from work to my house which is the sanctuary that everyone’s home should be. As I left the office, I had another piece of cake I didn’t need! As so often in my life, I am aware of my privilege.
I spent so much of today thinking about death. The death of 27 human beings who were travelling in the hope of finding sanctuary. Unlike me, they didn’t have a ticket. The country they were travelling to wants to make it illegal for them to come. So much so that we pay a foreign government to make life hell for them before they even get here.
That extra piece of cake sits heavy in my stomach as I know that less than 30 miles from the coast of our country, asylum seekers are being denied basic human rights, including food. Humanitarian charities are being blocked from distributing food, clothes and tents in an attempt to stop people from coming to the UK.
We’ve gotta get out of this place
If it the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
‘Cause girl, there’s a better life for me and you
Calais is a hostile place for asylum seekers because of our Government’s policy and UK taxpayers’ money. It is a hostile place because the French authorities destroy tents, take possessions and disperse asylum seekers on a regular basis. Yet, this is nothing new for those who have travelled to Calais in the hope of sanctuary. To get this far they have experienced it all before!
What would drive you to make such a journey?
We’ve gotta get out of this place
If it the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
‘Cause girl, there’s a better life for me and you
It was reported last week that analysis using Home Office data requests under Freedom of Information laws has concluded that 61% of migrants who travel by boat are likely to be allowed to stay after claiming asylum. This is because they are coming from countries where war, persecution and human rights violations make it a dangerous place for some people to live.
And all we do is welcome people with persecution and human rights violation in the hope that the ‘problem’, as we see them, will go away.
I’m fairly sure that The Animals never thought this was a song about seeking asylum. As I said context is everything when listening to music, and as it played at the start of my journey home, the chorus took me right back to yesterday’s news – and to Lampedusa in October 2019.
The morning we arrived on the island, we heard that a boat carrying refugees had sunk a few miles off the coast. I attended the memorial service held for those who died. 14 numbered coffins, no names, all women – at least one who was pregnant (and these where just the bodies they had recovered). I understood none of the priest’s Italian words but I knew the grief and the guilt of the survivors’ tears and cries.
I cried out to God both in that service and yesterday – ‘You who commanded the waves to be still, why not for these your children?’
In the cold light of today, I know that this is nothing to do with God and everything to do with policy and politics. The policy of violence and oppression that forces so many to flee from their homes and the closed border policy of governments who are intent on driving down immigration statistics, rather than seeing the human being and human need.
We’ve gotta get out of this place
If it the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
‘Cause girl, there’s a better place for you and me
This isn’t explicitly a song about seeking asylum, it’s a song about the hope that life can be better. As such it is a song for those of us who vote; those of us who have access to our MP. The message is clear – God is urging us to get out of this place – this place of persecuting those who have become vulnerable, and with the urgency of it being the last thing we do. There is a better place for you and me, a place where those seeking asylum are handed a humanitarian visa and walk onto a big, safe ferry to be welcomed by communities across the UK…
Well, if you’d have suggested to me a couple of years ago that not only would I be increasingly fond of Harry Styles and his music but that I would be choosing one of his songs for a Friday Fix – I might have laughed at you, or at least rolled my eyes (I am well known for that!).
The irony that I have chosen a song from Harry about kindness is not lost on me. I was probably not the kindest in my attitude towards One Direction, with my prejudice towards manufactured bands from the stables of X-Factor and the like. But hey, it’s time to be kinder. Maybe I have found my place to feel good and treat Harry Styles with kindness.
Maybe we can Find a place to feel good And we can treat people with kindness Find a place to feel good
I think I love the whole package of this song. Music that, try as you might, you can’t resist a toe-tap to; lyrics that are fun and make you feel good with just a tiny dusting of a moral message and a video starring the fabulous Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Perfect for this time of year.
Kindness seems to be one of those attributes that some scoff at. Or associate with being a bit soft, or maybe even gullible. ‘You’re too kind to them’ or ‘why are you being kind to them when they’ve done that to you?’
Maya Angelou famously said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
I got a good feeling I’m just takin’ it all in Floating up and dreamin’ Droppin’ into the deep end
Kindness is amazing. I’m RAKtivist with the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation – and they point out that seeing kindness in action can release oxytocin, the love hormone; it can energise you; the altruistic action of kindness can bring happiness; it helps you to have a healthier, longer life; it pings your reward centre in your brain and gives you a ‘helpers high’; and it stimulates the anti-depressant hormone, serotonin.
The fifth fruit of the Spirit is kindness and we read in Ephesians 4:31-32, ‘Stop being mean, bad-tempered, and angry. Quarrelling, harsh words and dislike of others should have no place in your lives. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God has forgiven you because you belong to Christ.’ (TLB version)
It should come as no surprise that a YouGov survey in 2019 found that ‘one in three Britons think ‘kindness’ is the most important trait for being a ‘good’ Christian.’ The big question, I guess, is how much do we Christians match up to the expectations of 33.3% of Britons? Do we really impart kindness? Are we selective in where we share kindness? Is it a part of our spiritual life that we could do much better at? Do we really practice it?
Well, I know that I could do better. And I know that practice makes us better (if not perfect!) at things. I might keep getting it wrong but I can keep on trying – just like Harry sings:
Giving second chances I don’t need all the answers Feeling good in my skin I just keep on dancin’
If you want to find out more about Harry Styles – here’s his website: https://hstyles.co.uk/
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, but country music is almost synonymous with home for me. And the music of Collin Raye conjures up memories of family sing-alongs and the soundtrack of road trips and holidays. So deep is my love for Collin that my mum, my best friend and I once took a very long ferry ride to Belfast and back, simply to see him in concert.
My Collin-love was already well-established when he released his 2009 album, Never Going Back (which contains a few other tracks I could easily blog about), featuring this absolutely stunning, musical tribute to his granddaughter Haley, who spent her short life battling a severe neurological disorder and who sadly died – aged 9 – in 2010.
When I first heard She’s with me it quite simply floored me (to be honest, it still does). Not only is the tune, played beautifully on an acoustic guitar, a perfect showcase for a voice that I love to listen to, but the lyrics are so deeply personal and every single word is heavy with the weight of the (almost defiant) love this man has for his granddaughter. As Collin sings this perfect, simple song, explaining the joys and the trials of loving a child with additional needs, I would challenge anyone not to feel moved. I still well-up when I hear it.
I have the immense privilege of being ‘Auntie Lynne’ to (among many other children) a friend’s son who is autistic and non-verbal. I love this little boy and his family deeply and they have granted me the huge honour of being a part of their ‘chosen’ family, placing me within their circle of trust. Like the words of the song, I wear this role as a ‘badge of honour’ and count myself blessed to do so. The lyrics that really resonate for me, as Auntie Lynne, are these:
She lets me know she feels my love when she’s with me
I know just what heaven looks like when I see that perfect face […]
How could I be the one you chose to care for our girl
Never done a single deed to earn the right to share her light
If all humanity is made in the image of God, then that includes those with special educational needs, those who are neuro-divergent, and those who communicate using non-verbal means. What glimpse of God do these fearfully and wonderfully-made members of the Body of Christ grant to us? For one thing, I know what pure, unfiltered joy in creation looks like, because I see it when I watch my friend’s son paddle bare-footed in the cold sea, or when he giggles uncontrollably as he enjoys the physical experiences of swimming or bouncing on his trampoline. It is, quite simply, worship in its purest form. I also see this boy bring out the best in the people around him – including me. Watching his mum and his sisters as they love and care for him teaches me a lot about Godly, sacrificial love.
Whilst Raye uses his song to describe the joy of loving a child with additional needs, and the pride he takes in his role as Haley’s advocate in the world, he doesn’t shy away from or dismiss the pain that comes with having to watch his granddaughter suffer and struggle. Instead, as a committed Christian, he trusts in God and looks forward to the hope of an eternal life, where roles will be reversed and his beloved Haley will be his advocate in Heaven. Regardless of your theology of heaven, hell, and the resurrection of the dead, there’s something beautiful about this man’s certainty of God’s love for his granddaughter and his faith that – whatever heaven looks like – Haley is sure of a place there.
I’m doing some study at the moment and during a recent session I was confronted by a picture of a huge superyacht travelling through the dutch canals on its way to seaworthiness testing. I was immediately taken to two places. The North East where ships were built. Ships so big they blocked the sky and light from the terraced houses made tiny in comparison, and of course this track: Shipbuilding.
The song itself was written by Elvis Costello and there are many stories about who and how it might be recorded BUT once Robert had been brought in to sing it seemingly there was no other option. It’s a really understated spell-binding performance and this is the one I first saw on the OGWT (Old Grey Whistle Test) as a teen.
Written in response to the conflict in the Falklands, the song sets out the ever-complex conundrum of the economic benefit of war – replacing the ships lost and the employment that brings – versus the loss of the many men from the same kinds of towns and cities. Men who can never be replaced.
By now you know how much I love an opening line and this song has an absolute corker that sums it all up.
Is it worth it?
It’s not lost on me that it’s around now that we offer our heartfelt respect to all those whose lives have been lost in war. Real men and women, not just numbers. I know, from the stories told within my own family of loss, the pain and agony that war can bring. The young often bearing the brunt. The young taken to task and expecting to be back by Christmas.
It is fair to say then, that the anger I carry about our continued economic reliance on the creation of armaments for others to use to kill, is pretty much off the scale. Our compliance as a society in the death of thousands of people – military and civilian – just by turning a blind eye to where our money is invested, to where our jobs come from, and even who owns the teams in our hallowed game, is indeed a matter of deep, deep pain. Our willingness to throw our metaphorical weight around in international matters to make us look good and putting our own at risk, a distress-causer extraordinaire.
Micah and Isaiah both have passages that foresee a world where swords are turned to ploughshares and spears to pruning hooks. Oh, how that resonates here. Why aren’t we building ships to rescue the desperate and fleeing rather than new fleets of “weapons bearing” ocean-going vessels? Why aren’t we using our economic wealth to support countries in developing stable economies and ensuring people have enough to eat and drink, rather than using it to woo wealthy regimes and persuading them to buy missiles from us. Why aren’t we prepared to do the hard work of negotiation and reconciliation rather than thrive from the spoils of discontent? Why aren’t we giving our surplus medical supplies to the global south rather than stockpiling? (Oh, and while we’re on stockpiling, why do we have 125 operational nuclear warheads when 1 is enough to devastate the planet?).
I’m sure the subtleties could be thrashed out in the pub of an evening or even a chapel bible study group, but for me it boils down to this: EVERY life is precious to God. Every single one. Everyone deserves to live in a world where no-one is
I have a feeling that this song will have somewhat of a resurgence over the next few weeks. Probably not because of this reflection, but because of this year’s John Lewis Christmas Advert!
I’ve been preparing all week for an All Soul’s service this coming Sunday and this reflection includes a ‘sneak peak’ of where my thoughts have taken me, because, unsurprisingly, life, death, separation and connection are at the forefront of my mind.
We’re at the point of the church year when we grapple with the fact that love and loss are intertwined. The cold reality of loss is warmed by precious memories. Over this last week, we might have remembered the saints who paved the way for us and those who we love but see no longer. Next week, we remember those whose lives were cut short by war and conflict.
This song became very important to me in my late teens when I encountered more than one death of friends who were a similar age to me. I’d encountered the death of older people – grandparents, family and friends – but the notion that death could come calling for people my own age (and younger) was a different kind of grief to me at the time. This song gave me some words that expressed my feelings. It also gave me a melody to blast out at the top of my lungs when I was pootling in my car around the roads of Lancashire.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognise Love comes as a surprise And it’s too late It’s just too late to stay Too late to stay
Beginning to understand your own mortality is a big step from adolescence to adulthood – perhaps it’s the final step. Coming to terms with the idea that sharing in the lives of others is a gift – a gift to treasure and not take for granted that the gift will be there tomorrow is a great realisation.
But somehow, those friends who died at such a young age, still live on in my thoughts and memories. I meet them in the songs that I hear; in the places that I visit and in the activities that we shared in.
Though you’re miles and miles away I see you every day I don’t have to try, I just close my eyes I close my eyes
I’ve just finished a book – ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle’ by Barbara Kingsolver. She talks of how she is captivated by a Mexican tradition (that was passed down from the Aztecs) called Xantolo held at the end of October/beginning of November; and how a Roman Catholic missionary, who initially set out to rid the people of such heathen practices, began to see the value such a time of celebration where the worlds of living and the dead come together in dance, food and activities.
Kingsolver began to realise that you can experience Xantolo anywhere. When she cultivated her garden, she was spending time with her Grandfather as her thoughts flashed back to gardening with him; starting a meal with dessert meant that her Grandmother was there because that’s how Grandma started her meals and picking mushrooms still involved her Dad somehow. She realised that even though they were physically gone, there was still a thin space of connection.
Maybe that’s part of what eternal life involves. We’re all on this journey of eternal life when we walk with God; our lives are still connected to those who we no longer see. Love connects us – and as the song reminds us – ‘love never ends.’
We’ll always be together However far it seems (love never ends) We’ll always be together Together in electric dreams
The Friday Fix 