Marc writes:

“You’re always trying to see yourself
​through the eyes of someone else”

There’s a degree of pressure on us when we do that.

To “hold a mirror up to” is a phrase meaning “to take a look at oneself objectively to examine or reflect on things (issues) stemming from the reality of reflection; to reveal to someone about the way they look (differently) to the rest of the world (so that they can reflect upon themselves); expose, show up, bring to light (some (unpleasant) aspects to oneself)”.

Community done badly holds up images of the ideal alongside the mirror and tells us all the ways we don’t measure up.

I think there is merit in the mirror when it comes from a community with the right heart.

Community done well is about having a mirror held up to us that we can respond to. That mirror isn’t designed to focus on and highlight all our flaws, but rather to reveal the inner beauty and brilliance that is masked by who we try to be, that’s often waiting to be released. The image they want to see revealed isn’t about creating another person to look like the “ideal” but to bring out the latent potential in the individual to enhance the community.

It’s about allowing the individual to belong and shine without conforming to herd mentality or having to look identical to the rest of the flock.

It only works when there is real objectivity. It’s a skill that needs nurturing in communities and in ourselves, to be able to see all thrive. We often get it wrong, I often get it wrong, but I know there’s intention with the right communities I’m part of.

It’s with sadness and often admiration that I see people who are still battling to live up to unreal societal and cultural expectations, forcing themselves to be someone else. The sadness comes from the fact that it is wrong and the compulsion to conform to set ideologies shouldn’t be there, but I admire the resilience and the longing to chase that which is so often fickle and fading before it’s achievable… But how long can that really last? Life is passing them by while they try to be someone they’re not, struggling without asking for help to find freedom. How are you still holding on!?

May we all find a community that helps us be shaped more into who we are than the ideal they think we should be, but may we also find communities that see the innate beauty and brilliance in us and allow them to help us change to accept that!

You can find out more about Kodaline here – https://kodaline.com/

Gill writes:

Here’s a song that would definitely figure in the soundtrack of my life – for two reasons at least.

Firstly, the release of this song in 1991 coincided with my early 20’s which was a time when I first started to really question and have doubts about God and all that good stuff. This stage is absolutely an integral part of faith development – we grow by asking, exploring, and challenging ideas and beliefs.

It was a time of trying to get to grips with life and with issues that life threw at me – sex, drugs and rock n’ roll I suppose – and these were things that the church either avoided discussing at all costs or had only one view on the issue that couldn’t be questioned or explored.

Secondly, and quite simply – I find that the music is just so catchy – and at points matches perfectly with lyrics that I can’t help but sing along to them.

Many people think that the song is about religious doubt and guilt but according to Michael Stipe, R.E.M.’s frontman, it’s more about unrequited love – of not being noticed by the one you are devoted to. Apparently, in parts of the southern USA, ‘losing my religion’ means that you’ve got to the end of your tether which puts a very different slant on the song!

As I said earlier – the song gave voice to my frustrations of being both a young adult and a young Christian. That optimistic twenty-something probably wouldn’t expect the lyrics to still resonate 32 years later but as I go about my daily work as a worker and lay minister of more than one denomination, I guess you could say that I feel like I’m losing my religion about some of the attitudes we have towards younger people – in both church and society. We seem to see them as separate rather than part of – and that troubles me.

A few years ago, I took part in a workshop led by Dr. Steve Argue (from Fuller Theological Seminary and a leading expert on faith and emerging adults). Steve told us that he’s regularly asked by churches if he could help them to reach older teenagers and young adults. His reply is always along the lines of ‘if you are prepared for the doubt and questioning that they will bring to your comfortable church community, then yes.’

And this is what I see across the country in both our communities and churches. Younger people are in the corner, in the spotlight, losing their religion. Younger people challenge us – with their ideas, with their energy, with their need to respond and do things differently from the generations that preceded them. They ask why we’re doing things that way and make suggestions about how we could do things differently. And for some reason, we can have a tendency to go on the defensive and guard that which we see as precious and not up for negotiation.

The question is – how can we respond to the challenge well so that we can all benefit?

Perhaps one thing is in realising the bigger picture. In 1 Corinthians 12:26 we’re reminded that ‘if one part suffers, every part suffers with it.’ Rejecting, ignoring, excluding those who are younger or different to us, and focusing only on our needs is a pretty selfish act, and it helps to realise that life, and God, are much bigger than us.

Oh life is bigger
It’s bigger than you
And you are not me

Perhaps another thing is to stop sending mixed messages. We say that we want younger people to know God and to fill our churches, but I think we only want them on our terms (not God’s). They need to fit our expectations and follow our traditions and patterns. They’re expected to conform to our ways – when let’s face it, part of their job as a younger person is to challenge the system – it’s what they do! So how can we make room for this instead? It’s no surprise they walk away…

Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh no I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough

Perhaps, instead, we could turn around and notice younger people. Perhaps we can requite some love. Perhaps we can start to build good relationships across all the generations in our churches – building bridges rather than walls. Let’s seek to understand each other rather than to blame each other.

We all know that relationships are a two-way process that require time and effort; that might lead to heartbreak; that need empathy and understanding; that demand us to be sacrificial; that allows space for us to be cared for as well as being the carer; that ask us to close the gap rather than keep some distance.

In making the effort, perhaps we might find some joy and hope. Perhaps we might grow and learn a new song. We can, at least, try.

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Or perhaps it’s just a dream…

Find out about R.E.M at https://remhq.com/

Tom writes:

I have sometimes described my secondary school as “below bog standard”. To be clear, that is, I am sure, the way many locals looked at it, and the way the local education authority viewed it – especially based on the fact it no longer exists, its buildings flattened and built over with a housing estate whose only nod to the area’s former use being the road names referencing authors such as JRR Tolkien and Agatha Christie! And I cannot say that my time there was always the happiest a child has ever experienced. But the teachers were undoubtedly committed, and looking back I am nothing but grateful for the experiences attending that school gave me, learning to live alongside people whose daily experiences of life were very different to mine as a bright, academically-inclined, often shy, village-based, vicarage-raised, white, straight kid.

Some of my happiest memories from that time are from my GCSE art classes. Art was not my strongest subject, but I enjoyed it, and it was also a class that was not streamed (there weren’t enough pupils taking the subject to enable it to be). This meant that I was in class with kids who were much better than me and kids who were taking it precisely because it was a non-academic subject and therefore an escape from their struggles with numbers or letters. It was also taught in a relaxed classroom environment – which meant we were allowed music on in the background, music of our choosing!

It was in this environment that I was introduced to the music of Guns & Roses. I suspect that many church-goers, not just then but even now, would be shocked by the thought of a good Christian kid like me listening to such a band. They would be even more shocked, I suspect, by an ordained minister actively encouraging people to listen to their music! To be clear, I am not condoning the behaviour of band members, whose life-choices have regularly epitomised everything negative the media have ever suggested about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yet, as I learned studying art alongside some of those classmates, those who have experienced the darkest that life has to offer can frequently ask the brightest questions.

So it is that we find the imperfect people that are Axl, Slash, Duff and company asking significant questions of humanity’s propensity towards acting violently towards one another in their 1990 song, “Civil War”.

I will admit to being someone who accepts the ideals of pacificism while believing the pragmatic response to the evils of the world sometimes requires a violent response. I wish it didn’t. I have no doubt that all war, all violence is sin. But I also believe that the world places us in no-win situations where the spider’s web of what we may choose to call original sin forces us to rely on God’s unlimited grace because whatever we do will place us in need of it. And the words of this song, as much as anything else, challenge me in that position.

So it is that when I hear of wars and the rumour of wars, and when I am half way to being convinced that maybe some wars might be justified, I return to the voice in the background of those GCSE art classes, provoking me to once again reflect deeply on God’s demonstration on the cross that violence is never the answer, as Axl Rose asks at the very end of the song, “What’s so civil about war anyway?”

I haven’t yet come to the conclusion that war and violence are always avoidable, but I accept it is never a civil response to the difficulties of the world, and that our propensity to turn to it as a first response, and even our willingness, my willingness, to turn to it as a last resort leaves us forever in need of God’s grace. Who’d have thought that GCSE art classes would have such a lasting impact?

Tom writes:

My experience of depression is that it plays havoc with my memory. It especially causes you to replay bad memories, and tries to tell you that these are the only memories important to understanding your place in the world – like a vinyl record or CD that’s been scratched and keeps playing a particular phrase on repeat. It helps, therefore, to have memories that you can bring to the forefront of your mind that can, somehow or other, overlay or push aside the worst with, if not the best then, at least, better.

As you might guess, for me those positive memories are almost always innately linked with a soundtrack of some kind or another, and none so more than the one attached to Mancunian modern jazz trio GoGo Penguin’s ‘Last Words’:

It was the middle summer of my probation as a presbyter and the Black Dog was as large and overpowering as I have ever known him. My head was so firmly in the grip of his fearsome jaws that I was signed off by my doctor. I was exhausted by his company but could not rid myself of him. And so I lay on my bed, unfeeling and uncaring. On the stereo was the debut album of a jazz group I’d heard about on the radio a few weeks earlier. I wasn’t deliberately listening, it was just noise, something in the background to avoid silence that would inevitably leave my canine companion growling in my head.

Then on came the track “Last Words”. I found myself drawn from my bed, energised and compelled to dance around the bedroom, the landing, the other rooms around our first floor. Not dancing in any sensible or ordered fashion. Just free and joyful. And I can give no explanation to this other than the Holy Spirit. In that moment I was joyful and danced before the Lord and knew that God was with me. As the music ended Black Dog overwhelmed me again, and I returned to my bed, the covers wound tightly around me, an emptiness and numbness once again returning to consume me.

Yet now I knew. Now I knew that even in that deep pit God was somehow there, even when I could not see, or hear, or feel any indication that this was so. The band’s video for the song makes clear that the themes of the piece (there are no words) are indeed those of endings, departures, and the saying of goodbye – themes that depression also frequently brings to the forefront of one’s thoughts. However, in this piece I found hope, and joy, and peace, and love, and something to hold onto, to drag to the forefront of my mind whenever the beast that haunts me once again grows to the size of a Baskervillian hound and threatens to consume me.

I have no expectation that my offering of this memory, and in particular this piece of music, will somehow lead to everyone finding God’s presence in this one instrumental – or indeed in music at all. I offer it only to affirm this – that God is present, even when we cannot see, or hear, or feel, and that such presence may well make itself known, even temporarily, in the most surprising of moments, by the most surprising of ways.

Jane writes:

I love a bit of Janis Ian. Her timeless qualities and her writing that seems relevant for all the moments in her life (and ours) means that she always has something to say. I mean just look at “At Seventeen” from way back in 1976 as an example for any anxiety-ridden teenage girl.

This song is one that was penned in 2020. She has spent a lot of time encouraging people to record it for themselves and in as many ways as possible to spread the message. You might find all sorts of versions.

It seems to carry a spirit of eternal optimism

Better times, better times will come. Better times, better times will come

We will dance, we will sing in that never-ending spring

But it comes with a kind of list of caveats and ideas that are needed to make that so

When this world learns to live as one

When we greet each dawn without fear

And when the winds of war cannot blow anymore

In the kind of world we’re facing at the moment I’m not sure Janis’s optimism seems very real. I’m also not convinced that as a society we can do as required to make better times a reality. Are we willing to make the choices needed? How much of it is in our gift anyway? Living alongside each other harmoniously, stopping war, and generally living a fear-free existence because of those two things being in place. It takes effort.

Yet as we come to that part of the church year when we see Easter on the horizon I wondered how much resonance there was with the sense of hopelessness of those first disciples after the death of Jesus. I wonder if the messages of loving our neighbour are the ones we need to hear again? I wonder if the spirit of the early church, which encompassed sharing and caring for each other and those less fortunate with no support network, was embraced again now the better times may feel more real.

This Lent and Eastertide it seems then it’s worth just picking up one task, offering one loving word, or one act of protest that might mean better times for everyone. Oh and don’t forget to have a sing as you go.

Janis Ian and Neil Finn, who sings on this version, are both making music https://janisian.com/ https://www.neilfinn.com/

Lynne writes:

“Being heard is so close to being loved that, for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” (David W. Augsburger, Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard)

One drizzly morning in September 2019, sat in the ‘Honky Tonk’ venue on day two of The Long Road Festival, I had the great joy of discovering the wonderful Danni Nicholls and her beautiful music. It was a happy accident – my dad, sister and I had just attended the quiz event (we did not do well) and had nowhere in particular to be. So, because we had seats and it was miserable out, we stayed to see who would next take the stage. During Danni’s set, which largely featured her recently-released Melted Morning album, I found myself actually moved to tears, such was the power of the melody, lyrics and her gorgeous voice.

For me a stand-out track (on that stand-out album) is the soulful empowerment song, Hear Your Voice. It was co-written with the equally awesome Kyshona Armstrong, in the wake of the ‘Me Too’ movement and inspired by personal experience (and their anger and frustration at the way some women’s stories are dismissed or silenced). Hear Your Voice is a call for women everywhere with a story to tell to ‘sing it out’ and a message that we need to work towards everyone feeling safe to do this.

When you are ready to step into your power

The bridges you’ll burn will light your way

And when you are marching down that road

Know that you are not alone

When the curtain falls

And the cast is bowed

When the crowd is gone

And the light fades out

I wanna hear your voice

Sing it out

Whilst Hear Your Voice was written as a reaction to the marginalisation, abuse and manipulation of women, it is an effective call to allyship with oppressed and persecuted people everywhere.

Listening is the first step in being an ally, it’s the best way to tackle loneliness and isolation, it demolishes shame and stigma. Listening – especially to someone who is used to being ignored and devalued – holds great power – and gives power where previously people felt they had none.

I see the positive impact that listening can have in my work with young people who have grown too used to being dismissed as ‘trouble-makers’ or worse. Listening is the loving thing to do. It’s what Jesus did as he prioritised the powerless, drew people from the margins to the centre, and embodied a vision of shalom where everyone could flourish.

Every time Jesus interacted with women, with the ‘unclean’, with those of low social standing, we see Jesus serving as an ally.

As another woman I greatly respect, UK campaigner Gina Martin, says:

“[W]hen it comes to people from different backgrounds, with different experiences and especially from marginalised communities, your job is not to talk, but to listen. Then help them get their voices and experiences heard. Pass the mic.” (Gina Martin, Be the Change)

Find out more here: http://www.danninicholls.com