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.

Gill writes:

It’s probably no surprise to those who know me that one of my favourite books and films is ‘Bridget Jones‘s Diary’. I realise that nearly 30 years on from when it first appeared, there are some problematic elements to the story but I think there are still some valuable lessons and observations that are just as relevant today such as standing up for yourself and recognising and walking away from toxic relationships.

Most of all, and most importantly, I think there’s an underlying message of learning to accept yourself. In fact, one of my favourite scenes from the film really drives home the message. If you’ve never watched the film or read the book, Bridget (in a scene resembling Darcy‘s proposal in Pride and Prejudice) is told “I like you very much. Just as you are”

It seems to be a thing that many of us find difficult – to accept ourselves just as we are in the way we were fearfully and wonderfully made. This song from the Stockport band, Blossoms, delves into the idea that we can pull the wool over our eyes (and the eyes of others) by pretending to be ‘perfect me.’ The thing about pretending is that it takes up a lot of energy. It’s exhausting. And when you think about it, it diverts us from living life in all its fullness.

Mid-January is the time when many of those New Year’s Resolutions start to fall apart at the seams. Those promises we made to ourselves to regularly get a good night’s sleep, to look our best, to show our friends empathy, and to be more intentional about our time with family might have seemed a good idea on New Year’s Day, but now in the cold, murky, foggy light of January we might be finding these promises, these resolutions, more difficult to carry out than we thought.

We’re only human. We can only do so much. Striving to be perfect – perfectionism – is not all it’s cracked up to be and I’m not sure it’s what God is really after for us humans. In the book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron challenges us with the idea that ‘Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough—that we should try again.’

To be true and direct
It’s as hard as you’d suspect
Is that cynicism I detect?
Or my lyricism I detest?
Wait, I’ve three more things to say
You’ve got to learn from your mistakes
Over time you will change
No one leaves here unscathed

Being a better human is not the same as being a perfect human. And that’s what this song reminds us about – we should learn from our mistakes and that, over time, we will change – for the better hopefully. It also reminds us that we’ve got to come to our senses and recognise that life isn’t easy. It does keep you guessing, so most of all – just keep breathing.

I’ve come to my senses
Life’s not easy
It leaves you guessing
Just keep breathing

So if you’re one of those who is beating yourself up that you haven’t achieved what you might have set out to do at the beginning of this month, ‘tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it yet’ (the wise words of Anne of Green Gables) and that God loves you just as you are.

Find out more about Blossoms at https://www.blossomsband.co.uk/

Sally writes:

This week’s Friday Fix song is ‘New Years Day’ by U2. It is a song which was written in the early 1980’s and according to Wiki was originally a love song but it was adapted to fit with the Solidarity movement in Poland.

Listening to it for New Year in 2025, when the world has become increasingly polarized, it has a very strong meaning for us now I believe.

The words I want to particularly focus on are:

“And we can break through
Though torn in two, we can be one
I, I will begin again
I, I will begin again
I will be with you again.”

It does feel that we have been ripped apart as a society both in this country and elsewhere, with the rise of populism and people being pitted against one another rather than against the forces of oppression which are increasing inequality between those who have and those who have not.

As a Christian, populism is something I believe we need to stand against, not to condemn people, but in order to offer an alternative. Christianity, in its purest form, is based upon love and based on hope – not fear – and solidarity – rather than competition or control.

And New Year is all about hope and the chance to start again. Even if we feel like in 2024 we messed up, we can say sorry and begin again. Beginning again with a fresh slate – a chance to move on from all the mistakes of last year and into a place of hope and sincere desire for things to be different.

Of course this year we will still mess up from time to time, but if we are intentional we can choose this year to live in a way which is about breaking through into a different way of being and unified in community rather than divided by difference.

So I wish you a peaceful and hopeful 2025 based on love rather than hate; hope rather than fear as we all begin again.

Find out more about U2 at https://www.u2.com/

It’s our annual Friday of rest, but fear not because it’s also the day that we share the playlist of most of the songs that appeared on the Friday Fix during 2024.

Happy Christmas and enjoy listening:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Jz6pJRogfbaiv099wrJPV?si=h3M3S9B3TFmN5-ZCzbzriQ&pi=e-6ixnhJUvR6uy

Tom writes:

This piece was going to be very different, and based on a very different piece of music, but such is life. As I sat and thought about the theme of love, that great Advent and Christmas theme, and wondered what I might write, I paused the song I was going to write about and searched my many, many playlists to see if anything else stood out. And it was Eagles of Death Metal’s (EODM) ‘I Love You All The Time’ that jumped out at me.

Now, I am the first to acknowledge that this band and this song is not necessarily the most obvious choice to reflect on the love encountered at Christmas – although it should be noted that EODM don’t actually play death metal, they play good ol’ heavy-blues-inspired rock. But even with that, “I love you all the time” is inescapably a love song in the standard type of that genre – a reflection on unrequired romantic love.

 Yet, it is what this song represents that I think caused it to jump out at me and say, “This, this is the song that works for this theme”. If you’re not aware, EODM were playing to a sold-out crowd at the Bataclan Theatre, Paris, on the night of 13th November 2015 when Islamist terrorists entered the building and killed about 90 people in the crowd as part of a co-ordinated attack targeting numerous sites that evening.

As part of their response, the band encouraged other artists to cover this particular track, and that all royalties generated would be given to Josh Homme’s (a founding band member) charity, Sweet Stuff Foundation, which in turn would pass the monies to victims of the attack.

In the song, the lyrics include the lines:

I can tell by that look in your eye

You’re looking and all you see is another guy

I can tell you’re gonna take your love away

I can tell by that look in your eye

You’re looking and all you see is another guy

I would beg you if I thought it would make you stay

 I wonder whether this is how God sometimes feels when looking at humanity. God loves us more than we can possibly imagine, and yet our propensity is not to return that love but to cast our eye around for other objects to love – whether people, power, money, and other things beside. Yet God does not beg for our love. No. Instead, God comes to us as one of us, born a tiny child and laid in a manger, growing up to walk the earth as one of us, before dying a brutal and ugly death on a cross prior to revealing the love that will not ever die in the resurrection. From the his first breath to his last, Jesus is God’s saying to us, “I love you all the time”.

 The responses to the Play It Forward campaign, as it became known, are gathered together on a playlist (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2m1wKfQbPfHxDypBycFyUo?si=e29efced718c4e67) that currently contains 68 versions of the song – produced by everyone from the legend that is Sir Elton John to the choir of St Lawrence Primary School, plus artists covering every genre from rock through electro-pop to folk. That’s quite some response. One song, representing the way in which love will always overcome hate, that however small and inconsequential love can feel in the face seemingly all-powerful, all-encompassing, all-destroying hate, love will find a way to speak out, to reveal itself as unvanquished – whether in the singing of a song, or in the cry of a baby.

 So as we journey towards Christmas in a world that so often seems challenging, let us rejoice that God loves us – All. The. Time!