Lots of people cite Autumn as their favourite time of the year. Are you one of those people? Do Keats’ words of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ thrill you? Are there secular songs about Autumn or songs that remind you of Autumn that you could tell us about?
We’d love to hear from you – just write a few words about the song and why it resonates or moves you. Email it to Gill at thomasg@methodistchurch.org.uk or drop a comment through this blog to us.
David reflects:
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/
The Friday Fix has been up and running for nearly 3 months now and it’s slowly gathering a following.
We’ve loved the contributions from you so far – they’re taking us to unknown musical places for sure. If you’re following this blog and haven’t sent us a contribution yet, please don’t be shy. Leave us a comment or click on ‘Contact Us’ at the top of the page – and we’ll be in touch.
PLEASE BE AWARE that there is some explicit language in the video – so if you are easily offended, just stick with reading her profound lyrics!
James writes:
Described as the protest song the world has been waiting for (NME, 30th November 2015), I first came across it during Kate Tempest’s performance at Glastonbury 2017. Watching her perform to a crowd of alleged snowflakes, those of a different generation like me were challenged by this 21st century prophet and her generation both to lament and to counter cultural action within our western context of individualism, materialism, ecological endgame and (increasingly right wing) political polemic.
Here are few of my favourite lyrics from this prophetic poet:
Still we are clamouring victory.
Europe is lost, America lost, London is lost,
All that is meaningless rules,
And we have learned nothing from history.
To sleep, to dream,
to keep the dream
in reach
To each
a dream,
Don’t weep,
don’t scream,
Just keep it in,
Keep sleeping in
What am I gonna do to wake up?
I feel the cost of it pushing my body
Like I push my hands into pockets
And softly I walk and I see it, it’s all we deserve
The wrongs of our past have resurfaced
Despite all we did to vanquish the traces
My very language is tainted
With all that we stole to replace it with this,
I am quiet,
Feeling the onset of riot.
But riots are tiny though,
Systems are huge,
The traffic keeps moving, proving there’s nothing to do.
It’s big business baby and its smile is hideous.
Top down violence, structural viciousness.
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives.
But don’t worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.
The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying.
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.
Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them.
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms.
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline.
Oh but it’s happy hour on the high street,
Friday night at last lads, my treat!
All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar,
Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou,
It was madness, the road ran red, pure claret.
And about them immigrants? I cant stand them.
Mostly, I mind my own business.
But they’re only coming over here to get rich.
It’s a sickness.
England! England!
Patriotism!
And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?
It’s the BoredOfItAll generation
The product of product placement and manipulation,
Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care,
Come on, new shoes.
Beautiful hair.
Construct a self and psychosis
And meanwhile the people are dead in their droves
But nobody noticed,
Well actually, some of them noticed,
You could tell by the emoji they posted.
Lyrics (c) 2016 Kate Calvert.
Since this song was released other prophets, such as Greta Thunberg have taken this message, to quote Bring Me The Horizon’s Antivist, ‘off of our screens and onto the streets’. Every time I listen to this track though, I find myself asking, ‘what have I done today to join in with a generation passionate about people and planet? How have I been part of making God’s world a little bit more just? Where are the glimmers of kin-dom that the prophets Tempest and Thunberg point us towards?’
How about you?
You can find out more about Kate at https://www.katetempest.co.uk/
by Jane
I have to confess to being a bit conflicted about Hope. It sometimes seems that all hope is lost; it sometimes feels like hope comes before the inevitable disappointment and actually makes the whole thing worse; it sometimes feels like it’s all you might have left and that’s a bit sketchy as a basis for things.
Many of us are very familiar with Hope as an important faith concept not least because of one of our most popular readings from the book of Corinthians. “….. but now these three things remain: faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love”. It might be argued that our hope is founded in God but it doesn’t for me always make it seem much easier to deal with as a reality.
Megan Henwood, in this song, finds a way to articulate some sense of perpetual hope in every new day even if the alternative is being in a really tough place. This ability to embed yourself in the perpetual hope that life, nature and God might bring I find almost intangible – a bit like grappling with jelly – and yet this writer seems to suggest that its doable simply by getting out of bed and looking really carefully at the glory of the day. Maybe it’s worth a try.
More about Megan can be found here http://www.meganhenwood.com/
Thank you for joining us, the East Central Team, for our Friday Fix.
It’s a chance to share our thinking about our love for music and how “secular music” shapes who we are as people and, in particular, as people of faith. Each week someone will share a link to a particular song and piece of music and tell their story about why it connected with them – and maybe shaped or changed their spirituality. You can get involved too. If you have something to share and something to say, then get in touch with us and we’ll help you be part of the Friday Fix Family.
“You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe, a harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.” ( from the film ‘August Rush’)
The Friday Fix 