Jane writes:

Oh, what joy a new song is! A new artist. A new take. Sometimes they surprise you so much and just enter your ears without invitation. This is one such song that appeared on Spotify ‘cos I’d started out with something else.

I was initially attracted by the voice of this artist, and the simplicity and emptiness of the sound, but then the lyrics kicked in and I wondered what it was all about. Digging around, it seems to be dedicated to the singer’s Grandma. An explanation of the “wordless promises” to someone loved at the end of their lives. The hand-holding and the close affection.

Anyone who has had the privilege of sitting at the bedside of a loved one during those days will know the profound impact of it. What to say and what not to. How to behave and how not to. What to express and what to hold in. The value of your physical presence and theirs. The need to be sure that they know you care and for me, most profoundly of all, what to pray for and when.

Life’s circle and balances seem all too hard to navigate when time is obviously at a premium and in those precious moments maintaining communication, no matter how small or limited, is like a hidden treasure. The last vestiges of love evident in the need to keep contact through voice, or expression, or breath.

How then do you talk to God about the situation and what do your prayers contain? Peace. Thanksgiving. Desperation. Acceptance. A need to be sure it will be the right thing, the right way at the right time. A bit of rage. A request or a deep-seated knowing. I love the way the songwriter accepts that prayer is a two-way thing here and is in need of its comfort as much as their loved one.

Eventually, of course, the inevitable happens but for me, this song sums up those last few precious days and hours when “sitting on the edge of the bed” is what is of value, and holding a hand says more than any words can.

No experience is the same as any other but this song touched me with its honesty – so on this occasion, it seems best to share the whole set of lyrics. Make of it what you will, but know that the value of the instinct to pray in such tough circumstances is precious beyond words.

I’ve never seen wrists so thin

I’ve never seen your hair without the curls that you put in

Your eyes flutter when you talk about the places that you’ve lived

But Dublin’s different now and you miss your best friend

You say she’s waiting

I sit at the edge of the bed

Baby, I’ll pray for you if you pray for me

The radio’s on, but the signal’s weak

Oh, please, keep talking

And I’ll keep listening

I’ve not been so good at visiting

Regretful now that time is always slipping

You’d tell me I’ll regret many things

This will be the least of it so embrace

Life’s chеcks and balances

You hold my hand

I make wordless promises

Baby, I’ll pray for you if you pray for me

The radio’s on, but the signal’s weak

Oh please, keep talking

And I’ll keep listening

She says she loves to hear the birds sing

In the back of her flower garden

She says she loves to hear the birds sing

It’s what keeps her going

When the day is dying

When the day is dying

When the day is dying

Baby, I’ll pray for you if you pray for me

The radio’s on, but the signal’s weak

Oh please, keep breathing

And I’ll keep listening

You can find out more about Ailbhe Reddy here http://www.ailbhereddy.com/

Tom writes:

I wrote recently that I’m not sure all my memories are quite what I think they are – my brain might even have made some of them up, or at least to have improved them. However, one memory I know is accurate is from the summer after I turned 16. That memory relates to an experience common to the vast majority of British kids at the end of the school year now known as Year 11 – results day! I had just moved from Shropshire to Somerset, so I couldn’t just go in and pick my results up. Instead, they were to be posted to me. Even in the days of a reliable Royal Mail, this didn’t mean I could be certain of getting them the day everyone else did, so I put in a phonecall and one of my former teachers (also a parent to one of my best friends at the time) gave me the basic idea.

What I particularly remember about that day, though, wasn’t the phone call, but the sense of relief that I felt that morning that no longer was my life governed by the rules that said I had to go to school (law changes mean this normally applies at 18 nowadays) – whatever the results happened to be, the future was to be decided by me. To mark this moment I chose to leave my bedroom that morning and dance around our new house to a taped copy of The Soup Dragons’ cover version of the Rolling Stones’ “I’m Free”. Whenever I hear it nowadays, I am returned to that sense of euphoric release that I felt that morning.

Of course, if I’m being pedantic, I’d want to challenge some of the somewhat hedonistic direction that the Jagger/Richards lyrics take – in particular, a Christian ethos suggests that while we have free will, a choice to follow Jesus places in a situation where we can’t do anything we want.

But, as someone who went on to work in Higher and Further Education before ministry, and who spent much of that time engaging with young people making decisions about education, often in the light of results that might be seen as disappointing, I don’t want to focus on questions of free will, hedonism, or Christian ethics. No, when it comes to exam results I want to hold onto that sense of release and freedom I felt that morning – and felt before I knew what my results were (on this occasion they were very good, but 2 years later my initial A-Level results were a disaster!)

We are not, any of us, defined by our exam results. Not now. Not ever. They may require us to take different and unexpected paths to our preferred destinations. They may cause us to re-evaluate our goals and make alternative choices. They may seem like an amazing blessing that take us to places we thought we wanted to go but it turns out we didn’t. I’ve seen those who struggled at school flourish at work, and those who succeeded at college struggle at university, and many, many folk find later in life that what they did at school, college or uni, is utterly irrelevant to what they’re doing and how their life feels when their teens are but a faded memory.

As a Christian I will specifically say that the definition of who I am and who I am seeking to be is found in Christ, not my exam results or qualifications, good or bad. Yet, even without that faith aspect I will declare to anyone and everyone who needs to hear it as they open the brown envelope that holds results of whatever kind: you are free to be who you are, whatever you find enclosed in that paperwork. Exam results cannot define me, you, or anyone else. The things that define us are how we live our life, how we love others, how we engage with the rest of humanity and the wider creation. Exams? Not so much. So, open your bedroom, turn up the stereo, and dance with me…

Hi Everyone

As of 1st September 2023, the weekly ‘Fix’ will also be dropping on our new Facebook Page and Instagram account as well as this Blog.

If you would like to start following the Facebook page/Instagram account then this is the logo to look out for:

And here’s where to go (just to say it will be very quiet until 1st September!)

The Friday Fix – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095789821782

@the.friday.fix

Jane writes:

I’m such a sucker for a first line and it’s often through that lyrical content that I get drawn into a song. This one is no different. Alongside that, the joyous sound of Athlete and their big sweeping melodies that work against what they have to say, mean that this song is one that goes somewhere and provokes all sorts of thoughts. Athlete have a home at the FF where other writers have reflected on what they have to say, especially about the harder things in life.

Take all your chances while you can

Never know when they’ll pass you by

Those first two phrases are probably enough to fill any journal you write for days. It sounds on the face of it an easy instruction but what might prevent you is often more the problem. Your life context and financial stability say. Your embarrassment factor. Your lack of self-worth – possibly put there by another. Your risk aversion. Your absolute sense that you’ve no idea if it’s the right thing. I could go on…..

And then for people of faith it’s often about grappling with whether the chance is the right one to take, given all that they know about the God they worship and love

There’s something too about the complexity of that decision-making process that never goes away. Humanity has never been immune to such choices and throughout history, people have used all sorts of approaches and plans, and ideas to help. The toss of a coin, mind maps, strategic plans, algorithms and forecasts. In our scriptures – prayer, laid-out fleeces and other signs and wonders, chance happenings that seem to point the way, ancient writings from other believers, and clearly-heard directions. Literally and metaphorically like a sum that can’t be solved.

Like a sum a mathematician cannot solve

Like me trying my hardest to explain

But the songwriter then has something much more emotional to link to. Cries and kisses. Something much more about the feelings that lead to action and not regret. Emotions that plot a takeover and win. Emotions that link us to ourselves, others and the divine. Emotions that enable us to express our faith not just in language and ideas but in instinct and belief.

It’s all about your cries and kisses

Those first steps that I can’t calculate

I need some more of you to take me over

This song is a lovesong of course – there’s not many songs that aren’t in their own way – but it also encourages us to contemplate a whole lot of other big life questions. Life questions that God is interested in for us. Life questions that rise out of a deep sense of knowing who we are as unique and precious, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Life questions that tap into our emotions and thought processes. Life questions that just may encourage us to take the holy risk, and alongside that, all our chances while we can.

Athlete split in 2013 and, although their members are busy doing other things, the only remnant seems to be a Facebook page and fabulous music

Oooh – and this track was used at the end of a Dr Who episode – you can see a bit of that here – https://youtu.be/ubTJI_UphPk

Tom writes:

There are many songs that take me back to parts of my childhood summers, but the one that really gets me smiling is Reef’s “Summer’s in Bloom”. When I hear it, I’m immediately back in Somerset, hanging out at Greenbank outdoor pool, or in the beer garden of the Street Inn, or up the park with cider from the local farm. Or maybe the memories are from further back, of cycle rides through the local estate (the kind with gamekeepers, not council houses) with my cricket bat on my back to get to the club I played for, of evening adventures up the Wrekin with the youth club or Scouts, or camping out in the field behind my mate’s house. There’s a million and one other memories it brings flooding back as well, all of them bringing a smile to my face.

Yet, here’s the thing: the album Glow, from which this song comes, wasn’t released until January 1997, when I was already 18 and part way through my third year of A-Levels while of my mates had already moved off to university or found jobs. And so the song that has me bathing in memories of glorious childhood and teenage summers didn’t come out until I was almost 20 and those days were behind me! Why is that? Well, in part it’s because it’s Reef, and the couple of places it mentions in the lyrics are places I can identify – indeed, my sister lives not far from Cinnamon Lane in Glastonbury. I never went swimming there, but a Westcountry accent singing about summer swimming is just bound to take my mind back, isn’t it, even if it’s to a pool rather than a river? And from there, the mind does the rest!

Of course, the reality is that not only is it strange that a song not released until the end of my childhood should so strongly remind me of the childhood it played no part in, but the reality is that I don’t think my summers were ever quite as glorious as I remember. I’m pretty sure it’s a case of rose-tinted (sun)glasses! While I can’t describe my childhood and teenage years as bad (I know I have friends whose childhoods are genuinely entitled to that description and stronger), they were far from perfect – I was both bullied and a bully, who struggled at times to fit in socially and who developed physically quite late. I’m also pretty certain that I only went to Greenbank a handful of times, and I definitely only camped in that field the once! Yet, I definitely look back with fondness to those summers, whether amid the wheat fields and playing fields of Shropshire, or amid the play parks and beer gardens of Somerset.

I suspect church life is very much like this too. When we look back we remember with fondness the full churches on a Sunday, and over-flowing Sunday Schools, and gloriously sunny picnic outings. I’m sure those things existed, but I am not convinced they were a weekly occurrence in most of our churches most of the time. And even if they were I suspect we weren’t yet old enough to experience quite how much energy they required of the leaders and organisers, and that it was a good 30-40 years ago at least!

Honestly, fond memories of the past are a good thing, even if they are heavily filtered through pink prisms. Yet we have to be careful that the memories that make us smile don’t catch us in the trap that is nostalgia. Time is a one-way road and we can’t go back. And anyway, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. We are where and when we are. So, as I listen to Reef sing of past summers in bloom, I’ll continue to smile about those that happened when I was younger than now I am, but I’ll also make sure I put my focus on enjoying the summer that’s in bloom right now!

You can find Reef at a handful of festivals this summer – find out more here https://www.reeftheband.com/