Fidge writes:

Lucy Spraggan first appeared on our screens in X Factor 2012. She pulled out fairly early in the series due to illness, but she still managed to sign a record deal. 

This year she brought out her 5th album Today was a Good Day and whilst I would never describe myself as a fan, this album is really rather good. 

I was first introduced to one of the songs from the album, Stick the Kettle On (featuring Scouting for Girls), while on retreat. Our retreat leader was talking about seeing Lucy in concert and how moved she was by the song.  

Stick the Kettle On was released for World Suicide Prevention Day and is written to support the charity CALM (Campaign against Living <iserably). Whilst it is a song reflecting the high rate of suicide amongst men under the age of 50, it is also a song for anyone who is feeling low – essentially an invitation to speak to your family, friends, anyone – and where better than over a cuppa!  

I’m currently doing some research with Germinate on rural isolation and loneliness. I think loneliness is one of the biggest diseases we have in our country, if not the world. And of course, it’s not just old people or rural people who get lonely, but loneliness is still something that we rarely talk about. It seems to still carry a huge stigma. So this song reminds me of the importance of just having some company and someone to talk to – even if it’s just once a week. 

Whilst on retreat, one of the things I reflected on was how important hospitality is to me as part of my faith.  

I’m reminded of Jesus saying: 

I was hungry and you gave me food 

I was thirsty and you gave me drink,  

I was a stranger and you welcomed me. (Matthew 25:35)  

Or the ancient rune of hospitality that is said weekly at Iona Abbey: 

We saw a stranger yesterday  

We put food in the eating place 

Drink in the drinking place 

Music in the listening space. 

And in the sacred name of the triune God 

He blessed us and our house 

Our cattle and our dear ones. 

As the lark says in her song, often, often, often goes Christ in the Stranger’s guise.  

For me, hospitality is not just about welcoming friends or strangers. Its more about how we make and create community. It’s about knowing who our neighbours are. It’s about picking the phone up for a chat – for no specific reason at all.  

We live in a world where there more barriers of exclusion, the higher the wall, the safer people feel. And yet as Christians we want to break down barriers and invite people in. So, who might you want to have a cuppa with this week? Who might be the lonely people amongst you and how might you connect with them?   

Just an offer of a cup of tea and chat might be a literal life saver for one and you never know, you may even find that you have ‘entertained angels unawares’. Hebrews 13:2.  

Lucy Spraggan will be performing at Greenbelt this year. 

CALM: https://www.thecalmzone.net 

Germinate Rural Loneliness and Isolation Toolkit: 

https://germinate.net/mission/rural-isolation-and-lonliness-toolkit/

David reflects:

Hidden away on my hard drive somewhere is a folder full of songs I’ve never written! One, yet to be completed masterpiece, is entitled ‘Clichéd Love Affair’. A song that seeks, tongue, very much in cheek, to use all the clichés that we hear in love songs and weave a story of the deepest love!

Hearing the opening lines of ‘Yours’ by Katie Doherty and the Navigators sent me searching into the deep recesses of my hard drive with the promise of a new verse for my incomplete song… ‘I’d give you the hills’

Yet the line continues… ‘but they are already yours’ the cliché is smashed, and my interest piqued.

She continues… ‘And I’d show you the stars, but they are brighter where you are!’ and through ears of faith I am conjuring up a love song to the almighty. ‘I’d give you the hills…’ of course they are already yours – you create them! What about the stars, silly me, they are brighter where you are in the heavens!

Yet, this is no deep hymn of devotion, no slow sweet melody – it is written to a sheep farmer, the hills and the stars all makes perfect sense now! (Shepherd? Insert your own theology!)

This beautiful and refreshingly honest song continues ‘you deserve more than my temporary smile, but it’s all I can give you for a while’

How honest do we need to be to admit that our worship is often the temporary smile (or as Paul Field describes it in ‘Make a Difference’… ‘a Sunday morning shine… a pill you take for holiness washed down by bread and wine’). A place we come to escape, where we make promises we don’t keep and where we behave very differently from the rest of our lives? A place that becomes a cliché of our love for God rather than a demonstration.

‘Yours’ concludes with the declaration of love ‘All I can say is I am yours today’. What if our worship concluded not with the grace but with the declaration ‘I am yours’?

Leading me from church into the world;

to turn the other cheek till both my cheeks ached,

to constantly walk the second mile,

to never judge,

to be more concerned with the log in my own eye than the spec in my neighbours,

to sell all I had to give everything to the poor,

to kneel at the feet of my friends while really praying for my enemies and actually put myself last all the time…

…then, I would be yours, O God.

You can find out more about Katie Doherty and the Navigators here https://www.katiedoherty.co.uk/

Gill writes: 

There’s been a bit of a backlash about the phrase ‘thoughts and prayers’ over the last couple of years.  People have got tired of this ‘go to’ phrase from our leaders that their ‘thoughts and prayers’ are with whoever has been affected when a tragic event has happened.

The words “Let’s not just pray, let’s make a change” in this song from Frank Turner (an out & out atheist) really sums this frustration up. 

But change is a funny thing.  We know it needs to happen but we just seem to struggle with making changes – perhaps because we think it needs to something big.  And big things require lots of effort and a good deal of time. We get caught up in things needing to change dramatically.  Huge gestures.  A complete overhaul. 

Shane Claiborne, the American Christian activist, once said ‘Get ready friends….God is preparing us for something really, really…small’.  

And when you think about it, Jesus wasn’t about big gestures to bring about change – it was all about small things.  Walking an extra mile; a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread; mustard seeds; grains of wheat; a women at the well and a cup of water; a Samaritan; a father and his two sons;  a loaf of bread and a cup of wine;  a cross. 

This song is all about making little changes in your life.  Frank wrote it as a reflection on his experience of cognitive behavioural therapy where he learned that he can significantly change aspects of his life just by making small changes in his behaviour.   

I love the honesty of his words and music.  I could have chosen so many of his songs to share but I think that this song seems to capture my own personal mood at the moment – it definitely speaks to me when I think about climate change, but it also reminds be about living a healthier, fruitful life just by being a bit kinder to myself and therefore, kinder to others.

“Giving up too easy when we could’ve tried a little bit harder 

Standing to the side as the neighbourhood went to the dogs 

We spend our energy getting angry instead of being kinder 

Singing hymns of praise in a city given up on by the gods” 

So instead of feeling frustrated and blaming others, we can pray & reflect (ooh –thoughts and prayers) on what change we want to see in the world and make little changes to bring about that bigger change.  

I’m looking forward to seeing Frank Turner at Greenbelt this year and of course, I’m hoping he’ll be playing this one.

If you want to know more about Frank’s music, visit http://www.frank-turner.com&nbsp;

Jane writes: 

The Time is Now – the current slogan for Climate Change activists – is a tough reminder that there’s no time to lose around issues of Global importance.   The feeling of crisis sharpens the senses to the needs, not only of the planet itself, but of all those creatures living on its surface and if ever there was a time to stand up and be counted – it is now.   

It’s not the only issue either facing us as people of faith.  The political and social climates are increasingly hostile, the word ‘Brexit’ is never far from our lips and even within the church we find ourselves polarised on a number of issues leading us to the edge of a crisis of our own. 

The stories we read of Jesus consistently remind us that his attention and intention in any given moment were critical.  Healing the woman who was bleeding; healing the sick; conversation with the woman at the well;  careful answers to provocative questions; making the political point: I could go on.     I wonder if this is another call to grasp the current moment and pay attention to what’s happening right now in a God-filled way. To pay attention to the people in need right now. 

So this track of the same name, that has long been in my consciousness, seems a fitting commentary for the moment.  An out and out declaration of the urgency of love, connectivity and seizing the day – it suggests that the all-consuming nature of relationship is just like breathing in.  Its value comes not in tomorrow but in the current and grabbing it for all its worth. 

God offers fully committed love to us and indeed invites us to respond.  Not in the future but now.  Who knows what that might look like for each of us but “giving ourselves to the moment and realising the time is now” might just enable us to make the positivity of the moment last.  To make a long term difference.  To do what is right at any given point in time. To realise that the Kingdom of God is quite literally for now. 

You kind find out more about Moloko and the work of their lead singer Roisin Murphy here 

https://www.roisinmurphyofficial.com/

Gareth reflects:

Where to start on picking a song that represents something powerful and poignant to you? The list is endless and so dependent on the mood you’re in, who you’re with, what has happened in your day. Then add to that songs that speak into your understanding of your faith and what God is saying to you – it is a difficult, if not impossible, choice.  

I think I am quite lucky in that I have not been blessed with any musical talent whatsoever. What I lack in talent and ability, I try to make up for in volume and because of this completely talentless ignorance, it gives me that space to simply listen to the music. Take in the words. Follow and enjoy the melody. Find the beauty in so many instruments and techniques coming together. 

I am not a big fan of singing worship songs – one reason for this is as noted above. If I tried singing as a means of attempting to offer something to God, at best it would be received as a pair of socks at Christmas. I often, therefore, listen to sung worship. In this Foo Fighters song, and so many like it, I hear of connection with the God who is alive and moving in every facet of what we do.  

This song, and in particular the acoustic version, I remember first hearing it with a real chance to listen to it properly sat on the train to London and I must have played it four or five time in a row to try and absorb as much of it as I could. There was a simplicity, vulnerability and honesty to it that I think is rarely found and few musicians are willing to fully engage in. Much like in church life, I believe that this is where and when music has a real opportunity to impact us. 

The chorus sings;  

And I wonder 
When I sing along with you 
If everything could ever feel this real forever 
If anything could ever be this good again 
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you 
You got to promise not to stop when I say when 

One of the theological writers that I enjoy reading speaks of their thoughts of God. They describe the challenge of imagining God and instead liken Gods presence in the world as being like a song. A song that has been sung since creation and is continuously sung still. They describe our challenge as being to try and sing along with the song. A song of connection, a song of grace, a song of love and so many other things.  

Occasionally, I feel as though I get a few notes right and in these times, I do wonder, as the chorus sings, If everything could ever feel this real forever, If anything could ever be this good again. These are times of real connection with God and the relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit seems to be one that sings the tune in perfect harmony.  

I would like to think that the more aware we are of that song, as our eyes are opened to the places that song is being sung, as we become more aware of the people who are singing the song, the more chances we have to sing the same notes. 

Follow Foo Fighters at https://foofighters.com/

Jane writes:

I love a good song lyric but even I find there are times in your life when words are just not helpful. 

It may be that I have lots to do and need the comfort of music to help me along. 

It may be that the words are a distraction to my own thought processes and I might actually disagree with a lyricist. 

It may be that I just need to settle into something that takes me away from life. 

All this said then, Lux Arumque is a piece that seems to resolve all those things for me.  The choral music takes me to a different place where I am lifted beyond where things can bother me. 

Our tradition, as Methodists, is for our faith to be wrapped in song but even our Christian hymn writers can cause a ripple or two around what we’re willing to sing.  Maybe the option on occasion is just to rest in the glory of God, letting music form a bridge between our human experience and something farther beyond that.  To experience something that’s almost indescribable. Let the music take us to places we weren’t expecting.   

Much of Eric Whitacre’s writing does that for me and it does have words but often not ones I need to hear or understand. 

You can find out much more about Eric Whitacre’s work here  https://ericwhitacre.com/

Gill reflects… 

Oh how I still love this song.  The words resonate as much now as they did back then in 1991 when I was a young twentysomething, just breaking out into the world after years of education and beginning to find my feet as a proper grown-up. 

When this song struck up in clubs and parties in the early nineties, it generated a strong sense of unity.  People would sit down on the dancefloor and sing at the tops of their voices “Those who feel the breath of sadness, Sit down next to me. Those who find they’re touched by madness, Sit down next to me. Those who find themselves ridiculous, Sit down next to me’.   

This was also a time when my faith grew and matured a bit more.  It’s when I began to understand that part of following Jesus was about having empathy and serving those in need of justice and peace.  Standing up against oppression.  Sitting down in protest.  Being alongside those who needed support.  Speaking out for the powerless.   

This song helped to put into words those strong emotions I felt (and still feel) about needing to recognise the pain and turmoil of life, to show grace and share empathy in any way that I could and to help empower people in dealing with their struggles and removing their own barriers.

You’re not alone.  I am with you. 

You can see what James are up to these days by visiting their website at https://wearejames.com/