Rachel writes:

It’s 25 years since my mum died, not long after I became a mother myself. Her cousin and sister, ‘the aunties’, stepped in to try and fill the huge hole that she left and became a big part of our family life. Aunty Alice died the year that Mica Paris released her album ‘Gospel’ in the midst of Covid and last week was Aunty Pam’s funeral.

We daughters, and now our own daughters, recognise the mother’s love shining through these words of encouragement, not trying to pretend that everything is alright – it hardly ever is – but rather knowing that everything will be alright; that we are never alone, however much it feels that way and that this too will pass. 

I try not to constrain our mighty God by my own limited human understanding. God is more than Father. God has both a mother’s tough love and practical advice that tells it how it is, but also an impossibly deep compassion in witnessing the pain and suffering of her children.

God knows and sees it all. And encourages us not to give up, to welcome in the new day that is coming. For there is promise, there is hope, and there’s always a light inside that will carry us safe home.

Mama said “Don’t worry where the sun is gone,

You can’t see it shining when everything feels wrong;

Don’t you know your darkest hour’s only 60 minutes long…

And tomorrow’s on its way.”

Mama said, “Don’t give up today.”

I know this night is weighing heavy on your heart

You’re beaten and broken and the world seems so dark

You never thought that you could ever fall so hard

But you’re not as alone as you think you are

I know you’re lost, can’t see the light

But the brightest stars need the darkest night

This storm will pass if you hold on tight

A new day is waiting on the other side

Don’t you know the darkest hour’s

Coming just before the dawn

And tomorrow’s already on its way

Mama said, “Don’t give up today!”

Sometimes it’s hard to see any way out

The weight of this world keeps on dragging you down

So tired and lonely you can’t carry that load

But there’s a light inside that’s going to carry you home

Find out more about Mica Paris at https://www.micaparis.com/

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Gill writes:

A few years ago, I did some work with, and about, ‘Clergy Children’. This included grown-up children, of which I am one. One of the key themes that cropped up for every single person was that of having an itinerant life – we moved where our clergy parent took us. For some, this was distressing and unsettlingly; for others, it was exciting and liberating. I was the latter – I’ve loved and taken to heart every single place that I called home for a while.

Here comes the ‘but’ – BUT I have never really been able to call anywhere my ‘hometown’. I was born in North Devon (which I’m very proud of) – but I’m not from there. The rural Midlands was a fabulous place to be a child – but I’m not from there. I identify most of all with North West England and it’s the nearest to what I call home – but I’m not from there. As an adult, I’ve spent over 20 years living on the East Coast of England – but I’m not from there.

So, for me, this song is a bit of a challenge as I can’t quite sing the words genuinely.

This place is where I’m from
Familiar faces, and the accent’s like a song

Ed Sheeran has a similar sentiment in ‘Castle on the Hill’ where it’s all about familiar faces and places. It’s something that I can, and can’t, identify with. I honestly don’t know what it is like to have been born and brought up in the same place. And then to stay and live your life there as an adult. I think I can imagine what it might be like, but I certainly don’t have the experience to know.

Perhaps this might be a disadvantage for me. I guess that everywhere I have lived, there aren’t friends or family around the corner. Creating a support network in each place takes effort and as you get older, communities seem less likely to welcome the ‘in-comer’. Not because they deliberately exclude, but because they are so established – making space for new people with their gifts and baggage takes effort too.

I’ve mentioned (probably more than once) in a Friday Fix that Liverpool has a special place in my heart. Even though I’m not from there, it was one of the places that really felt like home for a time. If you hadn’t guessed already, Jamie Webster is from Liverpool. It might be 25 years ago since I lived there but I get a sense of home when I hear him singing about the Liver Birds and St George’s Hall – and that it will forever be his saving grace. This I can identify with.

But when I think about the birds and George’s hall
And when they tried to knock us down, and we stood up tall
This city will forever be me saving grace
So no matter where I am
I’ll raise a glass to this place
So, raise a glass to this place

Itinerant preaching has always been a key feature of Methodism, and following the model set by Jesus, John the Baptist, Paul and the Apostles. Jesus left his ‘hometown’ of Nazareth (although he was born in Bethlehem and spent some of his childhood in Egypt, but I guess his family were Nazarenes…) to reach out and preach along the shores of Galilee and on into Jerusalem. He never really went back, and his friends became like family to him.

So perhaps I’m not at a disadvantage. Maybe friends became like family in all the different places I’ve lived, just like Jesus’ friends did. All of these places have helped shape me into who I am today too. Each place has taught me things about myself and about life.

Another advantage, I think, is not getting caught up in town rivalries. I can’t understand the rivalries between Sunderland and Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester, Cardiff and Swansea, Derby and Nottingham, Black Country and Birmingham, etc. I don’t understand why some towns and cities are ridiculed or rubbished either. Liverpool has had a really unfair reputation over the years but it’s just like any other city – full of talent, hopes and dreams. Other places where I’ve lived have also have negative images too.

This place has cries and screams
But there’s plenty of people
Building hopes and dreams
So here’s to the ones working behind the scenes, a-hum
Gives me a smile, gives me a shiver
When I think of being stood on the river
Everyone’s on the take
But this place, she’s a giver

All this takes me back to Nazareth, a town that was rubbished too. Jesus may have moved away from there but I don’t think he was ever embarrassed to have grown up there. ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Nathaniel asked in John 1:46. Nathaniel who was caught up in local town rivalry – coming from Cana of course…

So this song might remind us that we should all be pleased with where we come from. These are the places that have provided space, relationships and opportunities; places that have shaped us. Whether we’re from ‘all over’ or one town only, can anything good come out of Skelmersdale? Kabul? Grimsby? Dundee? Aleppo? Omagh? Preston? Mogadishu? Bangor? Baghdad? Portsmouth?….What do you think?

Alison writes:

In 2009ish La Roux arrived in my awareness, she won a Grammy and was very very cool. Recently this song of hers has been in my play list again

“Tick, tick, tick, tick on the watch

And life’s too short for me to stop

Oh baby, your time is running out“

My dad died in January and I was determined to deliver the work I’d committed to, despite having been ill with fatigue for months the year before. The jury is out as to whether that was foolish or not. But certainly my sub-conscious attitude was

“This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof”

Then after weeks of crying and getting to the stage where I was so tired I couldn’t work out how to log on to some online learning portal, I finally took time to rest. 

What did Jesus do when he found out a relative of his had died?

“When Jesus heard this [John had been murdered], he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place”

Matthew 14.13

This failure of mine to rest isn’t new. I’ve crashed and burned a few times in my life including as a much younger woman. 

“This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof

This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof”

What were the patterns Jesus had from his early working life? 

“In the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed”

Mark 1.35

I’m learning to be present in the patterns of the year. I love to spot a new season coming. I’m very keen on full moons and swimming outdoors and really want those two to happen at once sometime soon. When I do these things I’m much better at rest. 

In Mark 4 Jesus is shown to be teaching using metaphors from nature, and then what does he do? 

Leaving the crowd being him…

Mark 4. 35&36

I’m learning to take space for the rest and the life affirming moments and space. 

Jesus however did this often

“Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray”

Luke 5.16

So my prayer this lent is to be present in some simple life affirming moments. 

I’m accepting Jesus’ invitation to step away and pray. I’m praying in these ways and others. 

I’m hoping that maybe this time I’ll learn that I’m not bulletproof

Check out La Roux’s YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/@larouxofficial/featured

Today’s Fix is an article by Nick Horgan for the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (https://licc.org.uk/). Nick is happy for it to be shared here too.

Nick writes:

‘This is a soul splitting open and exploding into art.’ – Ari Grossman

I’ve been watching complete strangers shed tears, at a loss for words, or opening up about their own mental health struggles, prompted by their first viewing of one song.

I’ve been watching reactions to ‘Hi Ren’, a video performance by independent musician Ren. It’s a nine-minute exploration of the artist’s struggle with self-doubt – compelling in its delivery, deceptive sophistication, and raw honesty. By the end, we are in no doubt this is a life lived, not imagined.

What ‘Hi Ren’ does so well is explore the lie that we are constantly told by the world, the flesh, and the devil (1 John 2:15–17) – you’re not good enough, so just give up.

He puts that devilish whisper on the screen, rather than keeping it in his own head, and in doing so exposes the falsehood that it’s only happening to you, and no one else will understand. It’s a hard watch, as he is bullied, mocked, and accused by a voice that seeks to control, coerce, and diminish his God-given talents. It’s a powerful performance, which engages viewers to the final line.

Tears have been shed as viewers recognise their own hidden thought life in Ren’s, their own struggles with that other voice. Although it starts as a struggle with himself, the source and reality of that voice is ultimately the devil, exposed in a boastful rant.

Hope makes a powerful appearance in the song, too. This is possibly the source of the video’s popularity and ability to connect with viewers. Hope from knowing that someone else has felt the way you feel, that they’d believe you if you told them.

How do we put Jesus at the centre of this desire for hope? How can we bring hope to the mental health epidemic of isolation and anxiety? It’s with the truth that Christ died for all, regardless, so everyone can be whole, healed, and forgiven.

Are we authentic? Do we hide our self-doubts and failings?

Can we open up a conversation with friends and colleagues about whether this song affected us, and invite them to respond?

If there’s a voice whispering ‘it’s not worth trying’, you know who that is and you know that he’s been overcome.

The world seeks our authenticity. Whether with fellow believers, relatives, colleagues, or social companions, we can demonstrate Spirit-led compassion and commitment to those he has put in our lives as we draw alongside them.

Find out more about Ren at https://www.renmakesmusic.co.uk/

Gill writes:

Maybe it’s because we’ve had Valentine’s Day this week; or perhaps it’s because the Church of England went public about gender-neutral pronouns for God; or perhaps it’s because I have heard this song playing away in the background in shops and on the radio – whatever it is, this song has been at the forefront of my mind in the last few days.

The music of Howard Jones arrived at a sweet spot in my teenage years and gave a voice to my inner thoughts. His songs encouraged me to see both sides and throw off your mental chains; to get to know people well and to reach the real you inside; not to always look at the rain and to ponder what is love.

When I was training to be a Reader, we were tasked with coming up with a sentence or two that might describe God to someone who hadn’t heard of God before. As you can imagine, there were all sorts of descriptions but most of them contained something appertaining to God being love. Apart from one person – whose experience of parental love left them feeling cold when God is described as love.

I’ve written before about the different types of love, and it occurs to me that those of us who think of God as love might be influenced by the type known as agape – unconditional, sacrificial love.

I love you whether or not you love me
I love you even if you think that I don’t
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you
But I don’t mind
Why should I mind?
Why should I mind?

Love challenges us and questions our assumptions. Love leads us to want to change. Love turns our world, and what we know of it, upside down at times. Love enables us to doubt. Doubt is something that some Christians fear so they might deny they have doubts, or they might just shy away from discussing them. But doubt is the thing that leads us to think, question and understand more deeply. As Pete Rollins puts it “To believe is human, to doubt divine.”

Can anybody love anyone so much that they will never fear?
Never worry, never be sad?
The answer is they cannot love this much, nobody can
This is why I don’t mind you doubting

The verse that resonated so much for me as a teenager is the third one. And it still does today. For many of us, our teenage years are the time when we’re most aware of having expectations placed upon us, or expectations that we worry we can’t live up to, of people telling us who they think we are and what we’re capable of. It’s the time when we kick back and assert our need for space to develop in the way God created us. Having space and nourishing environments for us to know and grow about ourselves and others is vital to our being human.

And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be
The door always must be left unlocked
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you
And not to spend the time just doubting

The key to knowing God’s love is to love yourself (you are fearfully and wonderfully made), then you can love others and the world which God not only created for all life, but entrusted us with. Letting love shape and direct our lives offers worship and love for God – and this is what Jesus taught and showed us to do.

So yes Howard, anybody can love anybody anyway, if they’re following the path that Jesus put them on.

Howard Jones is still making music – and you can find out more about what he’s up to here – http://www.howardjones.com/index.html

This week’s Fix first appeared a few days ago on the Theology Everywhere blog. We thought it was well worth a share on The Friday Fix too – enjoy!

Kerry writes:

Let me invite you to peer, quickly, into the Gizzverse. This is the realm, theoretical and experiential, inhabited by invested fans of the Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. In 2022 they celebrated 10 years together and released 5 records in one year, for the second time! Their last offering of 2022 was the album Change, featuring 7 tracks which were initially birthed 5 years before. The band realised they did not have the musical capacity to complete the album then, but 5 years of growth finally enabled them to do it. The whole album is an experiment in music, each song structured around two chords and scales, D and F#. I am not sure if by now you are bemused, disengaged, or intrigued, but please hang in there.

AstroTurf is the third track on Change and is about, well, AstroTurf! It is an environmental lament. The band have taken increasingly seriously the environmental crisis we find ourselves in. Individual tracks on albums, multiple tracks on their 2019 album, Infest the Rats Nest, explore environmental change and crisis, and it does not end there. They regularly press records on recycled material; have dispensed with shrink-wrap covers for their albums, in favour of cardboard envelopes and, in one case, reclaimed denim. They were awarded a £20,000 prize (which they donated to the environmental charity The Wilderness Society) for the song and video of If Not Now, Then When?, (from the album L.W.). A persistent refrain in that song wonders what it will take to change our behaviour. The song AstroTurf is another of their environmental protests. It portrays the mentality where control and the pursuit of an artificial (im)perfection overwhelms natural beauty, and to counter this it offers the lament of butterflies.

AstroTurf, the product, appears to solve the intrusions of the natural world for the human speaking in the song:

Everything’s dead here
Covered with plastic
Everything’s fluoro
Evergreen matter. . .

When it don’t matter
Everything’s better
Throw-away plates are
Better for business
Everything’s easy
Better for the earth is AstroTurf. . .

Suitable texture, suitable colour
Miniature forest, better than nature
Make me feel better knowing I won’t go
Out on my lawn and see an animal
Everything’s sterile, even infertile
Proud of my monster, never been straighter. . .

But at the same time creation is given a voice, a lamenting voice in the butterflies:

Six butterflies fluttered by
Looked horrified
“I just hatched from chrysalis
I’ve only hours, . . .
And this is where I will die
Heart-breaking way to end
I will cry on AstroTurf”

This is not a direct dialogue between the parties, but two monologues. The voice of power mistaking domination for dominion, and control for beauty; the voice of vulnerability seeing beauty in the created cycle of life and in the natural order of being.

The persistence of some human beings to dominate creation, to eradicate natural beauty in favour of artificial (im)perfection, is wanton and devastating. Our arrogance is such that we can presume the only voice we will listen to is our own, but King Gizzard pose an alternative voice and invite us, through song, to listen in. Convenience and control define some of our ways of relating to the world and the response is the sigh of creation (Romans 8.22). This is what Pope Francis highlighted at the beginning of Laudato Si’: ‘This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. . .This is why the earth herself . . . “groans in travail”’.

What I think the song does is elevate the voice we don’t hear, the groan of creation. I am not saying I believe human beings and butterflies are equal, or the same. Human beings are uniquely “capable of God”. They are, for me, created in the image of God. In the Wesleyan tradition, they have been given the natural, moral, and political image of God to serve God’s purpose for all creation. All life participates in God, but human beings have a greater ability to enjoy or frustrate the relationship than any other form of life. That distinct place we have is not one that should cause us to ignore God’s voice, grace, and presence, as it is mediated in other parts of creation.

For John Wesley, the political image of God in us is significant for the whole of creation, because it relates to our call to be for God, in our being for the world. In his sermon The Great Deliverance he writes of how humanity ‘was God’s vicegerent upon earth . . . all the blessings of God flowed through [them] to the inferior creatures. [Humanity] was the channel of conveyance between [their] Creator and the whole brute creation’.  There is an intention for humanity to act for creation. It is a purpose and call to live for creation in such a way that we tend it with the Divine intent, that we act for it in a way consistent with God’s love. It is a call to listen to the lament of creation in the songs of butterflies and abandon AstroTurf and all it symbolises.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have gigs at Alexander Palace on 22nd March and Troxy, London on 23rd March, plus they are part of the line-up for the End of the Road Festival in Salisbury from 31 Aug – 3rd September. Find out more about them at https://kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/

For the first time ever, we’ve had a submission of a song that we have had previously. Isn’t it great that a song can cause such different reflections?!

Tom writes:

They tell me that modern congregations can’t or won’t sing.

They tell me that modern congregations, even if they’re willing to sing, won’t do harmony.

They tell me that modern congregations don’t get responsive liturgy.

Who “they” are I can’t tell you precisely, but it’s certainly a view I’ve regularly come across as a student of the Church’s worship – from both sides of the Worship Wars divide: those whose love is a choral, liturgical style that seems slowly to be disappearing; and those who provide a more concert-style worship because that’s what people seem to want/need. (I paraphrase, and do so knowing the arguments and debates are far more complex.) Just rest assured, I’m told that these things I list are true by a range of people.

And then I close my eyes and listen to a memory:

A concert at the Eden Project. Mercurial, symphonic, Mancunian pop-rockers Elbow are on stage, led by the soaring voice and humble personality of lead singer Guy Garvey. Part way through, Garvey is talking to the crowd and breaks into a bit of repeat-after-me vocal exercising. And he doesn’t need to tell the crowd they’re to repeat after him, he simply sings a few la, la, la notes, and the crowd responds, following him where his melody leads. And, of course, as the crowd already knows, those vocal antics eventually lead into the opening “Oh, oh, oh” warble of their track, “Grounds for Divorce”.

Yet, as if this isn’t enough to question the assumptions behind the starting assertions, there comes an even stronger memory:

The same place, the same concert, just a little later. The band have already gone off and then returned to do an encore. They finish this final return, as they were bound to, with their greatest hit, the soaring anthem “One Day Like This”. As the song reaches its final harmonic crescendo, with its chorus repeating ad infinitum, Garvey encourages the crowd to not only join in but to carry the weight of the song, to become not just the lead singer but the backing singers as well… and then the musicians stop playing… and Garvey stops singing… and the lights go down… and the crowd keeps singing, in full-blown harmony, for what feels like forever, until finally it forms its own gentle fade-out.

Whenever people try and tell me what people nowadays can’t or won’t do in worship, and especially when it relates to singing in harmony or responding to responsive liturgy, I think of Elbow and “One Day Like This”. Because it seems to me that while we can sit around and complain at the lack of ability in modern day congregations the reality is that concert crowds prove time and time again that it isn’t true. Maybe, just maybe, in the ability of these crowds, God is challenging us to offer them something they actually want to respond to and sing!