The 10 albums that I enjoyed most in 2013

Here are the 10 albums (in no particular order) that I've got hold of and enjoyed the most in 2013:

The Invisible Way - Low: Alan Sparhawk has said that "Music in general has been the fiber of my faith from the beginning.  Everything I know about God was taught to me in songs & the spiritual milestones of my life have almost always been musical experiences. I think the process of writing songs has helped me learn to listen to the spirit, which then testifies of Christ & His Father." 'Holy Ghost' returns the favour, along with the rest of this inspirational album.

One True Vine by Mavis Staples: "From album opener 'Holy Ghost' (Alan Sparhawk), to the new [Jeff] Tweedy composition 'Jesus Wept,' the gravity in Staples' voice is transfixing, heavy with burdens but blessed with the promise of true redemption that shines through on the deft and driving 'Far Celestial Shore' (Nick Lowe), Can You Get To That' (Funkadelic), and Pops Staples' uplifting 'I Like The Things About Me.'"

Moyshe Mcstiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart by C.O.B.: "It's Middle Eastern, it's contemplative and it's about quite serious subjects." It has a "sad, faintly religious atmosphere" supplemented by C.O.B.'s innovative use of drones created through their invention of the dulcitar. Mick Bennett is a poet with an "amazingly powerful voice" who "contributed a huge amount to the atmosphere and spirituality of C.O.B.'s music."

Jericho Road by Eric Bibb: “The title refers to the road between Jerusalem and Jericho where the Good Samaritan, a traveler of a despised race, stopped to help a stranger in need after better-off religious leaders had passed by and done nothing. On April 3, 1968, the night before his death, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King urged us to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, saying:  ‘Ultimately, you cannot save yourself without saving others.’  If this record has a theme, that’s it in a nutshell: have a heart.”

Trouble Came Looking by Ricky Ross is a modern Celtic folk album written as the wheels started to fall off the economy. On the album Ricky captures the sense of helplessness we all felt as governments signed off billions to protect the banks and institutions, and then sat back and watched as normal people lost everything.

Meet Me At The Edge Of The World - Over The Rhine: Linford Detweiler and Karen Bergquist say: "... we try to write music that in little ways helps to heal the wounds that life has dealt us or the wounds we’ve dealt ourselves. We try to write songs that can hum joyfully at the stars when something good goes down. We try to write tunes capable of whispering to a sleeping child that in spite of everything, somehow, all is well. We try to write words that help us learn to tell the truth to ourselves and others."

Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time by Steve Mason, with a title referring to the Buddhist term for an easily distracted brain, " is air punching, proletariat mobilizing, insurrection-pop of the highest calibre." "Lonely soars with melancholic-gospel-ennui, Oh My Lord is Sweet Home Alabama on a Bontempi keyboard, and Fight Them Back – arguably Mason’s finest piece of song-smithery since Dry the Rain." (BBC Review)

The Relatives’ sound bridges the gap between traditional Gospel, Soul and Psychedelia. In the early 1970’s, they recorded three obscure singles and a previously unreleased session—all of which are compiled on the acclaimed 2009 anthology, Don’t Let Me Fall. The release of the anthology brought The Relatives back together as a band, planting the seeds for their 2013 Yep Roc release, The Electric Word.

The Memory Of Grace by The Children is a volume of unconventional spiritual songs dedicated to the Most High; a poetry and music rooted in English lyrical ballads; in Bob Dylan, and the sons and daughters of Bob; in Ezekiel, Matthew and the Psalms; in cultural reggae and the gospel blues.

Bill Fay's classic Time Of The Last Persecution displays empathy in the face of apocalypse. Fay's songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights (both whimsical and surreal bearing comparison with Syd Barrett and Nick Drake) delivered with gravity and grace.

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C.O.B. - Solomon's Song.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matthew 6. 34 (Text for 2013 - St John's Seven Kings)

Simon Small writes in ‘From the Bottom of the Pond’ that: “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

But, he says, “Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is”: “To pay profound attention to reality is prayer, because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God. There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.”

This is very much what Jesus seems to be saying to us in our Text for 2013 (Matthew 6. 34) and in his teaching on worry and anxiety found in Matthew 6. 24 -34. 

When we are preoccupied with what might happen in the future, we are not living fully in the present and may well misunderstand or misinterpret what is actually going on. Jesus encourages us to live fully in the present because, as Simon Small says, that is where we encounter God.

When we genuinely encounter God in the here and now we know that his love and forgiveness surround us and that his Spirit fills us. As Jesus prayed in John 17, he is in us and we are in him. When we know this in our hearts in the here and now, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end. We are held in the palm of his hands and, as Julian of Norwich put it, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Even in the difficult times, we can still know that this is true because, as our Text for 2013 puts it, God will help us deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Jesus is saying that the more we live in the present and the more we encounter God’s love in the here and now, the less we will be anxious or worried. Prayer is able to help us do both things and therefore helps us to reduce our sense of anxiety or worry. Not because we have listed all our worries to God and believe that he will solve them all for us, but instead because, through prayer, we have encountered more of God’s love and, as a result, trust that he will be with us whatever comes our way.   

This is important because so much of our sense of dissatisfaction with our lives and the complaining we do about other people stems from our own worries and anxieties rather than what may or may not have happened or what others may or may not have done. Instead of focusing on other people and what we think they should or should not do or have done, we need to begin with ourselves and our relationship with God by giving our entire attention to what God is doing right now, and not getting worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. Then God is able to help us deal with whatever comes up, whether hard things or blessings, when the time comes.

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The Killers - Be Still.