Fidge writes:

I’m a huge fan of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, where each week a well-known personality chooses 8 soundtracks that have shaped their life. I’m always amazed at how music speaks to us during the highs and lows of our lives. I wonder if you were choosing your 8 soundtracks, what music would you choose?

This week, we are thinking about music that nourishes our soul, and I think Plato summed this up perfectly saying, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything”. What kind of music nourishes you? Are there certain tracks that bring everything to life? Songs or tunes that just make the day feel a bit brighter?

The essence of soul music is rooted in African-American gospel and blues, often sung with a strong emotional intensity and expression. This is what I hear in Nina Simone’s, Feeling Good. It’s a song that reminds us that each day is a new beginning, full of potential and possibility. An opportunity for us to start all over again.

The discipline of naming our daily gratitudes has grown significantly over the past decade as part of mindfulness practice. Taking a moment to notice and acknowledge the things we are grateful for each day improves our mental health and helps us to feel good about ourselves.

I sometimes think that we walk around like those horses with blinkers on their eyes – we don’t see clearly the world around us. We need to open ourselves up to a deeper awareness, to notice the things we often take for granted, the conversations, the experiences, our feelings and emotions. This is expressed well in this song – noticing the world around us helps us to live life more fully present in the moment:

Fish in the sea, you know how I feel

River running free, you know how I feel

Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life for me

And I’m feeling good

Perhaps this is a song that might resonate more with the new life of Easter Sunday than the start of Lent. But as we think about soul food, the invitation during Lent to think about just that – what music nourishes your soul? How might the music and words of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good speak to you this week?

Perhaps you could write down your 8 Desert Island tracks or name 3 gratitudes each day? Or just pause and notice each day what makes you feel good? The more we open ourselves up to the world, the more we begin to see and notice God’s presence in the world and in ourselves.

Find out more about Nina Simone at https://www.ninasimone.com/

Seven of our contributors have written Friday Fixes for the Methodist Church in Great Britain’s Lent 2025 Campaign – Soul Food. Some of you will already be signed up to that and so will be receiving daily reflection emails. You can sign up at: https://www.methodist.org.uk/for-churches/soul-food/

Rather than find another 7 reflections during Lent, we’re going to share the same reflection that we have written for Soul Food. And to ensure that we don’t drop the reflections too close together – we’ll be releasing our Friday Fixes around lunchtime which is a little later than usual.

This week’s fix first appeared on Simon’s Substack (https://simonjcross.substack.com/). We think it’s a Friday Fix.

Simon writes:

“Have you ever been to prison, Simon?” Asked my friend Paul.

“No mate, never.”

“Me neither. Well…” He paused to take a drag on his cigarette. “Not really…”

We were standing outside his house, weak sunshine warm but not hot, he had been tending his garden, which is his main hobby. Apart from smoking.

The smoking is not so much a hobby as a way of life, I suppose. Some of the time it’s normal tobacco, some of the time it has been ‘herbally enriched’.

“I do smoke quite a bit of green,” he admitted, “it’s like medicine for me, it helps calm me down.”

“I know mate,” I said. “I can smell it.”

Anybody within a fifty yard radius can smell it.

We were talking about a young lad we both knew, in his twenties, just sent to jail for doing something bad. He once smashed Paul’s front window and has never apologised, so Paul has no sympathy for him whatsoever.

“It’s his own fault mate, nobody makes him behave like that.”

On the radio the DJ introduced ‘Bankrobber’ by The Clash, ‘Daddy wa-as a bankrob-ber’ warbled Joe Strummer, his scratchy voice loosely imitating the Jamaican musicians he admired so much. I nodded my head, unable to stop myself. My band used to do an unsubtle version of the song. We were terrible, but it didn’t matter.

The Clash version of ‘Bankrobber’ didn’t make it on to any of their studio albums, instead it surfaced just prior to the sprawling ‘Sandanista’, on the band’s compilation album ‘Black Market Clash’ – a home for unreleased and import tracks – combined with a dub version which was released elsewhere as ‘Robber Dub’.

The Clash had a bit of a thing about prison. Their anthemic ‘Stay Free’, perhaps the purest, finest, example of a platonic-male-love song, was about the release from jail of one of Mick’s school friends. On ‘Bankrobber’ incarceration is revisited from a different angle.

“An old man spoke up in a bar, said I’ve never been in prison, a lifetime serving one machine is ten times worse than prison,” Joe drawled.

The lyric makes you think about the nature of ‘freedom’ in contemporary society. How free are we, really? How real are the choices we make every day?

When I taught undergraduate criminology I asked my (mainly female) students to come up with an argument to answer the following question: “Which is more liberating, the bikini or the burqa?” Much interesting discussion was had, once we had got past the immediate objections.

“So do you mean, y’know, that society is a prison, then?” I asked Paul.

He narrowed his eyes, stretching out his fingers, ancient indigo dots, now smudgy but still visible, on each knuckle. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, do you think we’re trapped in cycles of work and consumption that offer an illusion of liberty but which are, thanks to constant social surveillance, surveillance of each other in fact, actually an effective form of imprisonment. Is that why you said you’d never been in prison ‘really’?”

“Ohhh…”

Paul looked around at the flowers, of which he’s so very proud, squinted at the pale blue sky and took a long drag on a cigarette.

“No mate, I mean… do the cells count as prison? Cos, you know, I’ve been in the cells, but that’s not prison, really, is it?”

“No mate, it’s not.”

“No, I didn’t think so.”

The music played on, Joe’s strangled voice hit the chorus: “Some is rich, and some is poor, that’s the way the wo-orld is, I don’t believe in lyin’ back, sayin’ how bad your luck is…”

Find out more about The Clash at https://www.theclash.com/

Tom writes:

I have a friend whose view is that each and every one of us has an addiction. I am not sure if I entirely agree (which is not to say I am not myself willing to accept a tendency for certain addictive behaviours – I don’t own a smartwatch precisely because I worry I am already addicted enough to my phone and the last thing I need is to have it accessible on my wrist rather than my pocket), but I have certainly seen enough of life to understand where such a view might come from. I’m certainly open to the idea that, in the Western world at the very least, addiction is far bigger problem than many of us are willing to admit.

One person who seems willing to acknowledge that challenge is Florence Welch, whose song, “Hunger”, openly explores her own experiences of addiction, not just of alcohol and drugs, but of all kinds of ways that bring emotional and hormonal highs in ways that are ultimately more harmful than helpful. It is, to my mind, a powerful song that is open about Welch’s experiences in a way that is raw and yet also hopeful – the acknowledgement that the hunger exists, and that the past attempts to satisfy it have failed, is itself a notable step in the right direction.

While I may not be entirely sold, yet, on the idea we all have addictions, I do think we all have a hunger – a hunger to be loved, to be welcomed, to be valued, to be seen and heard and enabled to fulfil our potential. As someone who believes we are made in the image of God, I might call this a hunger for our divine selves. This is not something new to Christian thinking – Augustine of Hippo probably said it best, when he said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (Confessions) We all have a restless desire to make our way home, to know ourselves loved as those made in the image of the One who is Love.

Of course, we so often try at satisfy that hunger in the wrong places. We find ourselves wanting more and more: whether of things, or highs, or experiences, or adulation, or power, or… well, the list certainly goes on. I know when my own Black Dog is raging, when I feel swamped in the fog of depression or am wired with the adrenaline of anxiety, I think that what will satisfy it is food, or drink, or buying stuff, or the flashing lights of my phone. Yet what actually stills me and frees me, even if only temporarily, is space, and stillness, and focus on my breathing, and repeating the words of the Lord’s prayer.

Do we all have addictions? I am genuinely not sure. But I am convinced we are all hungry, hungry for love. Not the various kinds of human love (as good as they are and as reflective of the ultimate Love) but divine love, the love that made us and holds us and will go through death to give us life in all its fullness. We all have a hunger, and I pray that each and everyone us might find that hunger sated in the One who made us and in whom we will find eternal rest.

Find out more about Florence and The Machine at https://florenceandthemachine.net/

Gill writes:

Let’s face it. This song is not particularly deep and meaningful. It’s not the sort of song that you pop on when you’re feeling like a bit of navel-gazing or contemplative reflection. So apologies if you were hoping for deep lyrics this week. Instead you have fun, frivolity and love.

Sometimes our everyday life is so full of trying to unpack what an earth is going on around us, we need music to divert our attention for a little while. For me, this song does just that. It not only diverts, it energises too.

It transports me back to that point in time when the 80’s turned into the ‘caring, sharing 90’s’ when I was in my early twenties. A time when spending time with friends was paramount in my life. A time when we would get in a car and just drive  – not quite to a funky little shack – but to a different town for a change.

It also transports me to a time when I found the USA exciting and vibrant. I could totally believe The B-52s driving a big American car along the sunlit Atlanta highway to this fun place called The Love Shack.  The land of the free to be who you want to be – that’s what I thought the US was all about.

It’s a song that was a dance floor filler. My whole group of friends would be straight up dancing – usually pretending to drive a car; definitely ‘bang bang’ banging on the door baby! It’s quirky, camp and full of energy just like the band singing it. 

It celebrates life, being together and having fun. Its lively, colourful nature suggests that love is not just about serious things, but also about joy, spontaneity, and embracing imperfections.

So perhaps this song is both fun (and frivolous) with something to ponder too. After all the Love Shack is a little old place where everyone is welcome. It’s an inclusive space – regardless of who you are. All you need do is bang on the door. Love and being included await.

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Friday Fix. You are loved – whoever and wherever you are.

Here’s where you can find out about the B-52s these days – https://www.theb52s.com/

Jane writes:

I love this track. There is no other way of starting this reflection. It’s a real favourite. And I’ve lived with it a very long time.

If I go to see a concert that has any remnant of my beloved band Genesis in it, or frankly any kind of halfway decent tribute, the conversation with my equally geeky Genesis buddy turns to what we want on the playlist.

We always want ‘The Cage’ but very rarely is it played. We like ‘The Carpet Crawlers’ and are often satisfied. He’s a ‘Cinema Show’ fan whereas I’d rather have ‘Blood on the Rooftops’ (no comment on my personality please).

But when the first few bars of this song plays, an inner peace and warm glow descends on an audience, and the shared audible sigh of appreciation is heard and felt. It’s a track from an album which has within it all sorts of stories and, for me, it is a great way to end an album.

It’s also a song that, even without spiritual resonance or lyrical value, matters somehow. (You can tell by now, not only does the song matter to me but the band does too. It gels me with a certain kind of people. It connects me to dear friends. It takes me back to the days when I wrote out the lyrics of songs in my best handwriting so I still had them when I returned the vinyl back to its owners and listened on my dodgy cassette recording. Being a Genesis fan is a shortcut to understanding the other without any extra comment.)

This is a song where its subject is looking and searching. So clear about how things were. What was of value and the impact of having lost it all. It has a level of lament and deep honesty in it. Anyone who can openly say:

I miss you more
Than the sun reflecting off my pillow
Bringing the warmth of new life
And the sound that echoed all around me
That I caught a glimpse of in the night

is expressing pain and love and loss.

For me it is a song about yearning. A deep desire to find the missing piece. It speaks of grief – there’s a lot of it about in my world at the minute – and a recognition that it won’t ever be the same, and that dents the soul.

I’m never really sure why our closeness to God often comes when we are in a spot. When we express our lament. If only we could be as open with God as this song writer is with the invisible hearer of these words.

I know it can be hard when there is so much to be thankful for, but I truly believe telling it like it is, in an emotionally true way, builds connection with others and the God we love. It settles the soul and an expression of what we feel and need – even if it can’t come to pass – helps us find a way through.

I often wonder if the ‘Afterglow’ in the title comes just from having listened to it (or sung it of course) and then settled into the fact you’ve said what needs saying for the moment.

I wonder what it might do for you today…….?

Bizarrely its quite hard to find an official website for Genesis these days and those that claim to be are a bit unusual. However you could try this https://thegenesisarchive.co.uk/ and see what you find.

Tom writes:

“The lyrics are about what’s going on these days. Everything is crumbling apart but this is trying to keep a bit of faith.”

So said Doves’ guitarist, Jez Williams, about the track ‘Kingdom of Rust’ in an NME interview at the release of the same-named album in 2009. I don’t know about you, but I sure feel like that quote could have been uttered yesterday! Maybe that’s why great music is timeless.

It has always been one of my discomforts with the language of faith that we seem so easily to slip from the language of trust into the language of knowledge. We ask people whether they know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, we sing that we know our Redeemer lives, we declare our understandings of scripture and human behaviour and divine nature as self-evident fact.

This year is the 1700^th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, which produced the earliest edition of what we now refer to as the Nicene Creed. Given the way some Christians speak, you’d be forgiven for thinking that such a creed was a series of knowledge statements, and yet it isn’t. The phrase we Christians repeat time and time again as they recite the ancient statement is “I believe…” Creeds are statements of belief, of faith, of trust. God, as Creator, is ineffable, unknowable, to the creation and its creatures – including us. Indeed, an argument for the incarnation is that if God the Creator desires us to know the divine then it needs to be done on our terms, as part of the creation, because creatures cannot know anything beyond the universe within which we live. And so God comes to us as a human being, a creature subject to time and place – thereby experiencing the limitations that we are subject to while also enabling us to know what God is like in a tangible manner.

Yet even in the context of the incarnation we face the challenge that as human-beings subject to time and space we cannot know Jesus in the same way that his mother, disciples, and others present in 1^st Century Judea knew him. We must rely on the writings of the generation that followed, the wisdom of saints both ancient and modern, and what we take to be the moving of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And note, I say “what we take to be”. I cannot prove the existence of the Holy Spirit. Yet I very happily declare in the creeds that I believe in it. I have faith in it. I trust in it.

When I look at the world today, I wish I knew, in empirical, factual terms, what God was up to, that somehow or other I could prove that the evil at work today was on a losing trajectory, that undertaking certain actions would guarantee the lifting up of the lowly, the feeding of the hungry, the healing of the sick, and the freeing of the oppressed. But that isn’t the case. Instead, this poor creature that I am is required to have faith, to believe, to trust. And so that’s what I do, even when it takes every fibre of my being to offer up even a single drop of the faith I know I need…

“…I know it takes an ocean of trust
In the kingdom of rust”

Find out more about Doves at: https://dovesofficial.com/

Would you like to help us build up our Friday Fix reflections stock? It’s currently looking empty!

Is there a pop song that is helping you through the long month of January? Is there a rock song that resonates for you at the moment? Is there a soul song that has become your prayer?

We’d love to hear from you if you do have a song – just email your thoughts to us at fridayfixmail@gmail.com and we’ll do the rest.