The Friday Fix

  • ‘Good Souls’ – Starsailor

    Jane writes:

    I guess it was about 20 years ago when I first ventured out to see Starsailor at ‘The Winding Wheel’ in Chesterfield. Friends who know me well will have heard me say that I was full of apprehension for two reasons. The first – what if there were only ‘three of us and a cat’ and no one else liked them AAAAggggghhhhhh! Second – what if they (that’s the 3 or the cat) didn’t know the stuff and stood like statues without getting involved or singing along. All my worrying was in vain and the gig was electric and packed with everyone really invested in the band, the album and every song offered to us. Phew!

    In recent days, I’ve been to a 20th Anniversary Tour for that same album by that same band (it’s a Covid-delayed bit of a thing), and if anything it was the same experience in glorious technicolour with Leeds Student Union full of very middle-aged folk singing like a choir. For a couple of hours, nothing else mattered.

    Christ, I’m out of my mind

    I need to be loved

    What a plea from the 500 assembled folk and one that resonates around the world for people in all aspects of their existence.

    The reply though is equally impactful:

    As I turn to you and I say

    Thank goodness for the good souls

    That make life better

    There is a huge sense that there are the good folk around us that make life better – the smiley ones, the extra-mile people, the door-openers, the Big Issue buyers, the shopping neighbours, the lift-givers. The list is endless and we are thankful for those little bits of love expressed by these encounters.

    As I turn to you and I say

    If it wasn’t for the good souls

    Life would not matter

    But there’s more. There are also the people who you can cling to, lean on and rest a while with. Those that see you. Those that listen between the words. Those that mean life is still worth living when you feel it isn’t. Deep and gentle committed love for the other.

    The scripture writers tell us that there are two great commandments – to love God and love your neighbour as yourself. If you can be a good soul today for anyone, remember you can make life better and make life matter. Give it a try if you can. You may be answering the deepest need and the heartfelt prayer of another.

    You can still get to love Starsailor and find out more about them here https://www.starsailorband.co.uk/

  • ‘Sudden Light’ – Jesca Hoop

    Jill writes:

    I have hardly stopped singing (and dancing along to) this since I heard it. The uplifting beat of this song raises my spirits and makes me want to dance!

    Jesca Hoop was brought up Mormon in America and has now settled in the UK.

    She describes losing her family’s faith saying, “Now I feel free of it: I have faith in people”

    We have all just been through a period of mourning for the Queen who many describe as the mother (or grandmother) of the nation. My own Mum died not long before the Queen, and all of this has set me thinking about what you ‘take in with your mother’s milk’.

    For many of us in England much of what King Charles and his siblings took in from the Queen, through the cord almost, is also part of our communal history. The belief that we matter, that we are ‘rulers’, that we ‘know best’ and so on are (controversially perhaps) hard to get away from if we are born White and English.

    “A fairy tale can tell no lie”

    What, from our earliest days, is lie and what is truth?

    How do we navigate the urge to become independent, while still being interdependent on so many other living things/people?

    During these periods of mourning and remembrance, I have really valued thinking back through my earliest life and learning to value things I’d completely taken for granted. At the same time, I’ve valued the learning that I can let go, that nothing has to stay with me forever, that I will always have the upbringing I had but that it doesn’t need to be my whole future.

    In an earlier stage of my life, there was a preacher who often said ‘I am coming more and more to believe…’ before he shared something that made us think.

    Jesca Hoop sings ‘Came to believe…. To believe’…

    Find out more about Jessica at https://www.jescahoop.com/

  • Go Peaceful – Paul Field

    As our nation mourns the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II, the Friday Fix will pause until after the funeral service for her takes place.

    Here is a blessing written by Paul Field that offers comfort and hope.

    Go peaceful
    In gentleness
    Through the violence of these days
    Give freely
    Show tenderness
    In all your ways

    Through darkness
    In troubled times
    Let holiness be your aim
    Seek wisdom
    Let faithfulness
    Burn like a flame

    God speed you
    God lead you
    And keep you wrapped around his heart
    May you be known by love

    Be righteous
    Speak truthfully
    In a world of greed and lies
    Show kindness
    See everyone
    Through heaven’s eyes

    God hold you
    Enfold you
    And keep you wrapped around his heart
    May you be known by love

    God speed you
    God lead you
    And keep you wrapped around his heart

    May you be known by love
    May you be known by love

  • Wake Up – it’s Greenbelt!

    It’s a Bank Holiday weekend. We’ve run out of Friday Fixes this week so how about a listen to the music of this year’s Greenbelt Festival.

    If you’re at Greenbelt, have fun enjoying some of it live!

    Here’s the link to the playlist- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5lqf2w8pZXTUa8gap24uD1?si=cAJ5afrhRKS7zLGnhX5G5g

  • ‘Thank You For The Music’ – Abba

    Gill writes:

    I thought it might be time to welcome those of you who have found your way here because you have followed the ‘Everyday Faith’ journey – ‘Striking a Chord.’

    For those who aren’t aware, I was invited to put ten reflections together for our siblings in the Church of England as part of their Everyday Faith portal. I, therefore, tweaked the reflections that I have done for the Friday Fix to create the journey of daily thoughts and prayers.

    The first reflection, however, is one that I hadn’t done for the Friday Fix and so I thought you might like to see how we kicked off the journey. Here we go:

    Have you ever seen the film, August Rush?  There are these great lines in it that go “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, everywhere, even the stars.”

    Popular music of any kind can help us to explore and question our beliefs, or it can help to shape our understanding of God and the world that we live in, or it can give voice to our passions and concerns about what it is to be human.

    Music brings people together. It triggers memories and connections. It expresses thoughts and feelings for those who struggle to do so. It can change lives. It can be the best way of connecting with the Divine. Music is a gift from God.

    One of the most well-known songs by the pop group, Abba, is ‘Thank You for the Music’.  It could almost be a prayer for those of us who hear God speaking through music and lyrics. Any kind of music that is – not just hymns, choral songs and psalms.

    ‘Thank you for the music,

    The songs I’m singing 

    Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing 

    Who can live without it? 

    I ask in all honesty 

    What would life be? 

    Without a song or a dance

    What are we? 

    So I say thank you for the music

    For giving it to me’

    Do you hear God speaking to you through music and lyrics? If you do, which songs are the ones that might have shaped or influenced your faith? If you haven’t, think about the songs that you like to play (or sing) when you’re happy, sad, angry or worried. Why do you play them? How do they make you feel? Might God be in there somewhere?

    Find out more about Abba at https://abbasite.com/

  • ‘Hear Me Lord’ – Oliver Mtukudzi and Bonnie Raitt

    David writes:

    When I think of a lament, I think dirge – a combination of whinging, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, put to music. Not so with Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi’s collaboration with Bonnie Raitt, ‘Hear Me Lord.’

    Mtukudzi, the Zimbabwean artist known for his husky voice and commitment to justice, died in January 2019. As critic Terence Blacker notes, Tuku challenged realities such as AIDS and poverty with a knack for filling even the bleakest topics with hope. He was averse to analysing his own lyrics, but seemed able to articulate the universal ache of the heart and the longing for God. Mtukudzi’s directness, penned in the chorus of this song, may encourage our own prayers to be shorter, and our church liturgies less wordy.

    Hear Me, Lord

    Hear me I pray

    Hear me, Lord

    Help me now (Help me Lord, I’m feeling low)

    Help me Lord, help me now (Help me Lord, I’m feeling low)

    Raitt, the American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist, recalls a band member turning her on to Mtukudzi’s music. This particular song, she writes, “used to get so much play on our late night bus rides, I just decided to cut it on the next album, so we could play it live every night”. She teamed up with Tuku in 2002 to do just that.

    The link below above the unlikely duo in concert at an Austin City Limits concerts some years later. One aspect of this live recording that I particularly appreciate is the way that the artists share the melody, lyrics, and spotlight. Even as they sing in the first person…

    I am down on my knees (Help me Lord, I’m feeling low)

    …they alternate voices, almost like passing the baton of honesty between them, and giving one another a breather in the role as cantor. Just when we envision lament as a solo and lonely cri di coeur, we are reminded that it can also rise from the combined effort of a band, a group of friends, or a community of faith.

    I recently heard the Christian theologian Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings talk about dismantling racism. He spoke of committing ourselves ‘to the great work of hope’. For Jennings, hope is not a sentiment. Rather, it is a discipline. The scriptures invite us to hope, even command us to hope. With disciplined marching orders like those, it is a gift when others can get us tapping our feet while doing it. And with the help of artists like Mtukudzi and Raitt, we might even find ourselves dancing.

    Find out more about Bonnie Raitt at https://www.bonnieraitt.com/.

    If you want to find out more about the life and work of Oliver Mtukudzi – try this Wikipedia page and see where it takes you – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Mtukudzi

  • ‘Drown’ – Red Rum Club

    Gill writes:

    I haven’t quite been snared by the ‘wild swimming’ bug like some of my friends have been. My social media feeds over the last couple of years have been increasingly peppered with images of friends in swimsuits, wetsuits, and a glamourous array of swimming hats. They are diving into plunge pools at the foot of waterfalls, or emerging from misty lakes, or walking towards a grey sea with a bunch of swimming buddies arm in arm.

    Of course, I have considered succumbing to the bug. I do like swimming. I do like paddling in waves. I’ve always enjoyed building dams and striding through shallow rivers. However, I don’t like creatures swimming anywhere near me (this is the woman who ventured into Lake Galilee, took one look at all the fish, and walked straight back to the swimming pool). And I don’t like ‘deep.’ I think I am as much scared of depth as I am of heights. I once had to swim a race at Wigan International Pool (now gone) which was a 50m pool with a 5m deep end. I’d never been so fast at the beginning of a race as I was that day.

    This song, however, took me to the seawater pool at Southport on the first time of hearing it. Possibly not in January as the song suggests but there were days in May and June when you couldn’t feel your hands or feet

    Red bikini, running, slipping
    Get your stuff, we’re going swimming
    In January
    I can’t feel my feet or my hands
    Making me watch you do handstands
    Is this why you brought me?

    I love it when a song conjures up nostalgic feelings where we can place our own images onto it. You don’t have to be from the north-west to understand handstands in water and shivering until the warmth of towels and clothes take effect. Of course, the rest of the song takes me further down memory lane as it’s all about Liverpool (where the band are from) – a pool where I would happily drown.

    Don’t let me down
    If you listen, there’s a beautiful sound
    In a cold north western town
    We found a pool where we’d happily drown
    I wish I was there right now

    One of the phrases that have crept into our vocabulary fairly recently is ‘making memories.’ I can’t say that I warm to it really. There’s something a bit too ‘consumerist’ in it for me, and it goes hand in hand with visiting a place because it looks good on Instagram. Perhaps I’m too much of a cynical Gen X-er but this phrase attributed to AA Milne (but probably not from him at all) works better for me – ‘We didn’t realise we were making memories, we were just having fun.’

    I do concede, however, that it’s important to stop and savour the moment. We can be so caught up analyzing yesterday or preparing for tomorrow that we are not actually living in the present and noticing the small moments. I can’t, therefore, argue with the intentionality of ‘making memories.’ I think that great memories in our lives are of moments when all of our senses are engaged; we feel valued and loved; and we feel connected with others.

    This song captures these feelings for me because my memories of living in Liverpool are full of love, laughter, new experiences, adventures and feeling liberated. It goes without saying that watching the video is no less nostalgic for me.

    And because I was living in the moment so much, I can appreciate those days with lots of affection without a desperate yearning to go back to those times and places. They were special there and then; it wouldn’t be the same if I returned to try and recapture it all. After all, I am too busy living where I am right now.

    Happiness Researcher (yes, it is an actual job) Meik Wiking says in his book ‘The Art of Making Memories’ – “As long as you live, keep learning how to live. And remember: one day, your life will flash before your eyes – make sure it is worth watching.”

    I hope this summer is a time where you are blessed with moments of feeling connected, noticed, and loved. Go ahead and make some memories – and take time to be in the moment.

    If you’d like to know more about Red Rum Club, check out their website at https://www.redrumclub.com/

  • ‘Til You Can’t’ – Cody Johnson

    Nigel writes:

    If you got a chance, take it

    My dad was 90 a few weeks ago, and my mum was 87 last month. They’ve lived happy and fulfilled lives, but I’m increasingly aware that we are all vulnerable and that they won’t be around forever. I’m trying to speak with them on the phone and see them as much as I can. I don’t want to have regrets about not spending time with them when they are no longer here.

    I also want to keep doing the things that bring me life in all its fullness, recognising this is not a free pass to an entirely selfish existence. I’ve still got stories to write about. Music I want to play and listen to. Places I want to visit. Books I want to read. But time – and more often than not, energy – often seems in short supply. Money is not always available to do the things I’d like in these troubled economic times.

    I’ve also got struggles I’d love to heal. Relationships I’d love to grow. Unfulfilled dreams I’d like to see become a reality. On top of that I’d love to spend more time and energy campaigning and acting on behalf of refugees, young people and those in need of a bit of help. I’d like to take more political action over the things I’m passionate about to see transformation in our broken world.

    However, the pandemic has left a trail of trauma and loss which can sometimes lead to a paralysis of thought and action if I’m not careful. It’s too easy to end up sitting watching TV and doing nothing. I also need to balance my own wants and desires with those of others. All-in-all, life can be a bit of a challenge … and that leads me to the song I’ve been impacted by of late …

    It’s a song from American Country artist, Cody Johnson, that talks about taking chances in life rather than waiting until they’re gone for good. The chorus has particularly spoken to me:

    If you got a chance, take it,

    take it while you got a chance

    If you got a dream, chase it,

    ’cause a dream won’t chase you back

    If you’re gonna love somebody

    Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can

    ‘Til you can’t

    I’ve always believed that our best dreams come from God and my quest in the coming season is to try and line up what I want, with want God wants. For me, that means better following the advice in the song and taking every chance that comes my way, believing that God opens the doors, orchestrates great possibilities, and offers divine invitations. My part is to be on the lookout for when it’s God, and discerning in how I respond to what comes before me.

    I need to do the loving and say the ‘love-you’s’ now. If I find something that needs fixing, I need to fix it now. Where I get things wrong, I hope that I can say the ‘sorries’ now. And even when I’m tired and grumpy – which can be often – I need to take and make the phone calls now, just in case there comes a time when I’m not able to. In the words of the song, I don’t want to kick things ‘further down the road’ and ‘wait on tomorrow’ …

    If you got a chance, take it

    If you got a dream, chase it

    I like this live version of the song best – turn it up loud!

    Find out more about Cody Johnson at https://www.codyjohnsonmusic.com/home.

  • ‘Sea Change’ – Turin Brakes

    Jane writes:

    Turin Brakes are one of my absolute favourite bands. They have a great sound and they are equally good whether channeling their gentle rock style or their fabulous acoustic harmonious selves. They also write a mean lyric. What’s not to love.

    You only need to begin to pay attention to the news, or indeed look outside your window at your scorched lawn and thirsty plants, to see the world is struggling with a changing climate. Floods and drought equally destructive to people’s homes and livelihoods. Melting glaciers falling on unsuspecting tourists. No snow where there should be some. Forty shades of green becoming forty shades of brown. No crops leading to the starvation of millions. I could go on.

    This song speaks for itself. The wondering about what is ours to do and how many people have to struggle before we pay proper attention. When will it be too late and why aren’t we able to jump right in now.

    Soon, it seems, there may be only one person left to notice the end of the world and by then it will be too late for humanity

    God was careful enough to be a creator of a world where everyone and everything could flourish. Not simply exist but be the best they could be. I guess the question is when will we wake up and make a difference for the billions with their backs already against the wall and not wait til it gets to us before we act.

    Maybe pay extra attention to the news this week. Whenever you see a story linked to the climate make some effort to act for good change now. Small or large. You know it makes sense. You know it will be a part of serving the God you love and loving the planet we live on.

    You can find out loads more about Turin Brakes here https://turinbrakes.com/