Our Lent Course this year is entitled Build on the Rock: Faith, doubt - and Jesus! Based around Matthew 7.24 (Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock), the course starts by looking at faith and doubt. Is it wrong – or is it normal and healthy – for a Christian to have doubts? Is there any evidence for a God who loves us? We will hear from many witnesses. At the heart of a Christian answer stands Jesus himself. We consider his ‘strange and beautiful story’ and reflect upon his teaching, his death, his resurrection and his continuing significance.
The Course has five sessions: (1) Believing and doubting; (2) Jesus - our teacher; (3) Jesus - our saviour; (4) Jesus - conqueror of death; and (5) Jesus - Lord and brother. Produced by York Courses, the course comes with a good choice of wide-ranging questions designed to involve all members in lively discussion and also brings the thoughts of prominent Christian leaders into our own discussion group.
The Course Booklet has been written by best-selling author, Canon John Young. The Course CD contains five 14-minute radio-style starters for group discussion, with former BBC broadcaster Canon Simon Stanley putting questions to the participants: Bishop Richard Chartres (Bishop of London), Dr Paula Gooder and Revd Joel Edwards. Each session closes with a Reflection by Methodist minister David Gamble. Former Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, introduces the course.
Why do a York Course? Tens of thousands of people study a York Course each year:
"I like the format. Listening to the speakers on the CD helped to clarify my own thoughts as well as inspiring me with new ideas… The questions were challenging and well thought out. Altogether a very enjoyable course."
"York Courses are by far and away the best thought-out house-group material that I have come across. Excellent notes, a really useful range of questions, and stimulating audio contributions."
"Along with thousands of other Christians I have benefited greatly from participation in York Courses over the past few years, mainly as a group leader."
The Lent courses are organised by the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches (SKFC) and will run at:
· 2.00pm on Tuesday’s at St John’s Seven Kings (11 March, 18 March, 25, March. 1 April, 8 April)
· 11.15am on Wednesday’s at St Peter’s Aldborough Hatch (12 March, 19 March, 26 March, 2 April, 9 April)
· 8.00pm on Wednesday at St John’s Seven Kings (12 March, 19 March, 26 March, 2 April, 9 April)
One of the great pleasures of 2012 for me was discovering the music of Bill Fay through Life
is People.
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. 'Cosmic Concerto (Life Is
People)' is a highlight from a collection of stand-out tracks; a celebration of
the miracle of ordinary life, the infinite variation in each human face, which
stirs his soul. I'm currently absorbing his classic Time Of The Last Persecution; empathy in the face of apocalypse. Humility seems to run throughout his music; both in his low-key, almost hesitant and weathered delivery and in lyrics such as "The never ending happening / Of what's to be and
what has been / Just to be a part of it / Is astonishing to me" ('The Never
Ending Happening') and "I don't ask much, for myself / But for the one's I
love" ('Thank You Lord').
Following on from that discovery, here are some other stunning songwriters who, like Fay, have not achieved the attention that their work actually merits:
Michael Been, The Call's singer/songwriter, was born in Oklahoma City but migrated to California before forming The Call with Scott Musik. Sin and salvation are staples of the diet that The Call served up. Been thought that every fault in the world was within him and said that he had had "hundreds of born-again experiences" needing them because he was dead a lot of the time: "I believe in truth. Whatever is necessary for a person to experience to find the rock bottom, to know the darkness of his life, that's right. A lot of our music is confrontational, it deals with the dark side of life because that teaches us something." Red Moon and Reconciled represent the peak of The Call's work combining literate lyrics with powerful anthems and genuinely encompassing despair, ecstasy and the stages in between.
T. Bone Burnett creates ridiculous satirical morality tales - the marijuana smoking computer operator paying through the nose for free love (The Sixties), the millionaire buying culture in massive fashionable chunks (A Ridiculous Man) and the émigrés selling soft sentiment and soft porn to children (Hefner and Disney). Burnett knows though that judgements are precarious - that what we think we know and what we actually know are often in opposition - so he balances his tales on the jerky, anxious, angular rhythms of his rock 'n' country hybrid, almost like stiltwalking.
Peter Case neatly summed up the dual strands of American music when he wrote in the sleeve notes toPeter Case that he didn't know any songs about America but that these songs were about "sin and salvation". Like Bruce Springsteen, Case has an ability to speak in the voice of those people struggling for a nickel, shuffling for a dime who find themselves caught in relationships that have ensnared them. Theirs is the voice of hope deferred - to someone else (Turning Blue), and the voice of harsh experience - "You don't know it but it's plain to see/You can't tell when you're workin' for your enemy" (Workin' For The Enemy). His eye for colourful detail authenticates his character's tales and adds extra layers of meaning - "So we made love in that place out in back/The last time that we took off our clothes/We took other things and took more than that/I took off with my clothes in a sack and I froze"
Rated "rock’s last great obscurity" by Melody Maker Bruce Cockburn has quietly made a living as a singer/songwriter since 1970 and his self-titled debut while never going all out for fame and fortune. As literate a guitarist as he is a lyricist he fuses sparklingly complex jazz/rock rhythms with metaphor loaded lyricism, as often spoken as sung – "sometimes things don’t easily reduce to rhyming couplets". Forty years plus of consistent, intelligent exploration of the personal, political and spiritual, often within the same song, is no mean achievement. When combined with both an honesty about his own relationship and faith frailties and a willingness to campaign with the likes of Oxfam raging against US and IMF oppression in the two-thirds world, you have to give the man respect. In 1992 in a song, Closer to the Light, written following the death of Mark Heard, Cockburn wrote the line - "There you go/Swimming deeper into mystery" – which seemed to sum the direction in which Cockburn’s work has headed over the course of his long career.
Like Gordan Gano of the Violent Femmes, David Eugene Edwards has a preacher in the family - in Edwards case, his Nazarene preacher Grandfather. Edward's songs not only oscillate around the twin poles of sin and salvation but use the language of the King James version as they do so. If any current music fully inhabits the Southern mindset then surely it is this. 16 Horsepower released their debut album Sackcloth 'N' Ashes in 1995 and, after the eventual demise of 16 Horsepower, DEE continued in similar vein with Woven Hand. As he has said: 'The myths of our country are in the songs. The untold stories and
gaps in history books are in the songs – our recollection is preserved in this
music. Those songs as well as the stories that my parents told me, the bible and
the books I read, all this is the foundation of my imagination of America.'
Formed in 1982 and discovered by Chrissie Hynde busking outside a Pretender's gig, the Violent Femmes were among the first to combine punk's frenzy with country's resignation and gospel's jubilation. That full on clash of contradiction is the raison d'etre of the band (and something they were into long before the idea featured in U2's third coming). "That's the thing about this band," said Gordon Gano their singer/songwriter, "in the songs, in the whole performance of them, there's all different levels of total contradiction going on at the same moment where we are serious and as far from being serious as possible, it's important and also far away from being important". It's also part of the "American tradition" - "Country music has a long tradition of singing horrible songs about drinking and sinning and then doing some sincere gospel numbers". This is where 'Country Death Song' gets its dark inspiration from - "I even think 'Country Death Song' is happy because all the awfulness of the song, it came out of my love for country music and I feel happy when I sing it. I must have a different perspective".
Mark Heard wrote, in 'I Just Wanna Get Warm', "The mouths of the best poets speak but a few words/Then lay down, stone cold, in forgotten fields" - in retrospect that seems prophetic. Just a glimpse into the soul of a man known by so few and yet so deeply missed by so many. The liner notes from the tribute album say it best: "Mark Heard left behind a legacy of music that will undoubtedly impact the lives of many, just as he has impacted the lives of the artists who participated in Strong Hand of Love. The testimony of his brilliance as a poet and artist is undeniably evident throughout this inspiring tribute."
Los Angeles group Love were, in the words of David Fricke, 'the bi-racial folk-rock pirates who made Love and Da Capo in 1966, then the silken psychedelia of Forever Changes in 1967.' 'Although Arthur Lee was the main writer, [Bryan] MacLean contributed some fine songs, including Orange Skies, Old Man and the haunting Alone Again Or, with its flamenco-style guitar and dramatic trumpet flourishes.' ifyoubelieveinis a collection of MacLean's music written when he was in the band and written with Love in mind. 'After an aborted attempt at a solo career ... [MacLean]joined a Christian Fellowship Church called the Vineyard ... During Friday night Bible stints [MacLean] took the concert part of the session and was so amazed at the reaction he gradually assembled a catalogue of his Christian songs.' Taken from the Latin and literally meaning 'within the walls', Intra Muros is the album of "spooky" Christian music MacLean was completing at the time of his death. Due to 'the great strength of songs like the amazing Love Grows In Me and My Eyes Are Open', Intra Muros 'stands as fine testament to the ability of a great songwriter.'
Michael McDermott's trademark embrace is "of faith and hope in the face of adversity." His lyrics are "uniquely evocative" as he "sings in poetry", his tunes being "literate story-songs." Stephen King wrote of him: “Michael McDermott is one of the best songwriters in the world and possibly the greatest undiscovered rock ‘n’ roll talent of the last 20 years.” In “Mess of Things,” McDermott sings, “the trouble with trouble is that it sometimes sticks/plays tricks with your mind while it gets its kicks/And slowly there’s a momentum shift/And the weight becomes too great to lift.” McDermott sings about a world where “everybody is bleeding, or everybody is filled with doubt,” and yet he sings, “say the word/And I shall be healed.”
'After the Flood' from Lone Justice's debut album neatly fits Maria McKee's description of country music - "originally Country music was very raw and very spiritual and very gut-level". With a half brother (Bryan MacLean) from seminal 60s LA band Love and Victoria Williams as a next-door neighbour growing up ("she taught me my first guitar chords", McKee has said and they sang briefly together before their separate careers took off), the emphasis was always likely to be on the raw, spiritual and gut-level rather than the country aspect of the definition. By the time McKee recorded her second solo album You Gotta Sin To Get Saved, with a band that included Jayhawks, Gary Louris and Mark Olson (then Williams' husband), she felt she was standing still, merely reprising her work with Lone Justice. She responded by recording the critically acclaimed album Life Is Sweet. Here she felt her songwriting becoming "crystal and dramatic ... this larger-than-life grandiose thing, sort of riding the fine line of bad taste". Grunge based and coruscating on tracks like 'Scarlover', Life is Sweet sounds a far cry from the cow-punk of Lone Justice but it remains "very raw and very spiritual and very gut-level". At the end of the day that's what matters.
Julie Miller writes nakedly emotional songs which in their aching beauty combine perseverance and faith with sorrow and heartache. Her songs have featured in her solo work, her husband Buddy Miller's solo albums and on several jointly recorded albums. An early song reflecting on the crucifixion asked, 'How can you say No to this man?' The same question can be asked of Miller's confessional work - how can you say no to the grace and openness found therein?
Neal Morse is a US prog rocker who first
made his mark in the band Spock’s Beard and then formed the prog-rock supergroup
Transatlantic. Following his conversion to Christianity in 2000, he left both
bands and has since produced a substantial and well-regarded body of solo work
exploring different aspects of his faith. His fourth solo album
Sola Scriptura, across four tracks and 76 minutes (this is prog
rock we’re talking here!), tells the story of Martin Luther and the Reformation.
Morse says, “The point of it is to point us … toward the light of God's truth
which is laid out wonderfully before us in the scriptures. Of course, this is a
lofty goal for a mere CD, but, with God anything is possible!”
Over The Rhine'sLinford 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." “We’re really only reflecting what we’ve already heard,” Detweiler explains, “a mix of all the music we grew up with and were drawn to: old gospel hymns, the country and western music on WWVA, the rock and roll records the kids at school passed around, the symphonic music that my father brought home, the jazz musicians we discovered in college, the Great American Songbook performers that Karin’s mother loved, and of course the various singer-songwriters that eventually knocked the roof off our world. But when this music is reflected back to the listener through the filter of our own particular lives, hopefully it becomes a much different experience (maybe even somewhat unique) for those with ears to hear.”
The Innocence Mission hail from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and own up to a "religious upbringing where our parents lived out their faith rather than evangelised". They formed in 1982 and initially attracted the support of Joni Mitchell and her then husband, Larry Klien. Mitchell called Karen Peris "one of the most interesting singer/songwriters around at the moment", while Klien produced their first two albums (The Innocence Mission and Umbrella). Peris summed up the band's approach when she said "I saw something in a book Float Planes. In the beginning there's a quote from a hymn that said, "When I die hallelujah! Bye bye I'll fly away ..." and that's exactly what I think we want to say." In 'Wonder of Birds', from the first album, they talk of building homes with windows to fly through and this is an apt description of their songs. 'Bright As Yellow' for example, from their third album Glow, is a joyful celebration of that open-handed, open-hearted approach to life, as exemplified by Peris's mother. Peris writes conversational songs that draw significance from the everyday while the band on the earliest albums set these to a swirling, chiming, transcendent version of the 'big' music.
Leslie Phillips sang in Sunday School with Maria McKee and recorded several albums for the CCM label Word before a name change to Sam, a marriage to T-Bone Burnett and a series of critically acclaimed albums often produced by Burnett. Phillips combines a cool pop sensibility with razor-sharp lyrics. A mix that finds her ethereal voice, tinged with melancholy, soaring over like a seagull skimming waves.
Jim White inhabits a world where the natural and supernatural are intertwined and where the ordinary slips seamlessly into the extraordinary. White says in 'Still Waters', "Well, don't you know there are projects for the dead and projects for the living?/Though I must confess sometimes I get confused by that distinction". White's characters have ghosts in their homes, curse ships which promptly sink and serenade the dying ('Still Waters').
Victoria Williams has a naive, folky style which uses images and characters that would not be out of place in a painting by Marc Chagall. This style, however, conceals a great subtlety of approach and a willingness to experiment with musical form in a similar to fashion to that of Van Morrison. Williams builds songs that are not simply a melody running through verses and chorus but which, in tandem with the lyrics, veer off in directions that are consistent with the emotional ebb and flow of the song as a whole. She sees the divine through the local, the ordinary, the common-place, and the natural finding the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing through the building of a raft and duets with a fellow-traveller on the New York underground ('Holy Spirit').
I write more about some of the above in my co-authored book 'The Secret Chord'.
Here are the 10 albums (in no particular order) that I've got hold of and enjoyed the most in 2012:
Taken from the Latin and literally meaning 'within the walls', Intra Muros is the album of "spooky" Christian music Bryan MacLean was completing at the time of his death. Due to 'the great strength of songs like the amazing Love Grows In Me and My Eyes Are Open', Intra Muros 'stands as fine testament to the ability of a great songwriter.'
The darkness, loss and wandering that suffuse Babel is fused with the transcendent sound and anthemic choruses that Mumford and Sons conjure up with banjo, double bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals.
The Bob Dylan of Tempest, 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' and so many other songs, is the faithful watchmen who sees the storm of the apocalypse on the horizon and who warns his people before it is too late. Tempest is, therefore, a profoundly religious album.
Bill Fay’s songs on Life is People are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights delivered with gravity and grace. 'Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)' is a highlight from a collection of stand-out tracks; a celebration of the miracle of ordinary life, the infinite variation in each human face, which stirs his soul.
The Laughing Stalk - Woven Hand’sDavid Eugene Edwards says, 'The myths of our country are in the songs. The untold stories and gaps in history books are in the songs – our recollection is preserved in this music. Those songs as well as the stories that my parents told me, the bible and the books I read, all this is the foundation of my imagination of America.'
The fluid, flowing lines of Aradhna’sNamaste Saté possess the something more that comes from an ability to inhabit and then transcend the spirit of your sources.
Wrecking Ball is a masterful summation of Bruce Springsteen's strengths and an inspirational call to real hope in the face of genuine despair. The album is propelled forward by the anger of its storytelling songs before seguing through 'Wrecking Ball' into songs of hopeful fortitude for which Springsteen appropriates the language of faith and the imagery of the Bible.
Home Again - Michael Kiwanuka, who has been compared to Bill Withers and Al Green, has an "honest, unpretentious and raw style" that "is straight to the matter, unspoilt soul music at it’s best." Alexis Petridis wrote that "Kiwanuka addresses The Lord with such frequency that you picture Him hiding behind the sofa and pretending to be out. At first, it just sounds like a lyrical tic, but by the time you reach I'm Getting Ready – "to believe" – it's pretty clear that it runs substantially deeper than that."
One of the things I love most about the work of Leonard Cohen is his self-deprecating humour. There is real self awareness and humility on Old Ideas combined with the distance and irony of setting many of the lines ostensibly about himself in the third person. Leonard the man speaks to Leonard the persona. All performers seem to need to create a stage persona that is in some way separate from the reality of who the person actually is. On this basis, ‘Going Home’ is to do with the experience of leaving the stage in order to experience reality - "Going home / Behind the curtain / Going home / Without the costume / That I wore."
Gungor’sGhosts upon the Earth is a set of songs for the jaded in which the phrase "fearfully and wonderfully and beautifully made" sums up much of what is experienced on this album. "All praises to the one who made it all and finds it beautiful". Michael Gungor writes, "As the various vocal parts circle the listener’s head when the band’s last chord fades out, one can imagine hearing the voices of all of these elements of creation (moon, sun, earth, wind, etc.) singing the praises of their creator."
Here are some new albums that I'm looking forward to hearing:
Babel- Mumford & Sons: 'Opening with a blistering banjo intro, the title track is a statement of intent. Marcus Mumford spits, "I know my weakness, know my voice. And I believe in grace and choice'". As the chorus hits, the biblical allusions that inspired the album title kick in.' (NME)
Life Is People- Bill Fay: 'Aside from Fay's plaintive cover of Wilco's Jesus Etc, Life Is People also continues with the lyrical themes established back in 1969-70 ... "They need space to convey," he stresses, "but, in a simple way, biblical prophecy. Not in some extreme or fanatical way but fundamentally, that this world - in the hands of different leaders, competing with each other economically - it can't carry on. It's belief in a change. There's comfort in that. I'm not so sure how you could handle the world if you didn't have that. It's God's world, yet we walk around as if it's ours."' (Mojo)
Tempest- Bob Dylan: 'When Dylan convened his band at Jackson Browne's Groove Masters studios in Santa Monica, he's said it was his intention to make a 'religious' album ... The testing of belief in extreme circumstances is a recurring theme ... the charred landscape that much of Tempest occupies ... a forlorn sort of place, populated by the displaced and the lost, to who Dylan gives poignant voice.' (Uncut)
The Laughing Stalk- Woven Hand: 'The myths of our country are in the songs. The untold stories and gaps in history books are in the songs – our recollection is preserved in this music. Those songs as well as the stories that my parents told me, the bible and the books I read, all this is the foundation of my imagination of America. But I do not see myself as a keeper of tradition. I rather am a craftsman who on a daily basis does what he does best: singing and playing guitar. That’s the only thing I've learned. I am following the music.' (David Eugene Edwards)
The Hipsters- Deacon Blue: 'Judging by the content of this album, which contains such portions of well-bred pop as Stars and the harmony-laden Turn, there's enough creativity left to ensure that few hearing these songs for the first time on the band's 25th Anniversary Tour will be disappointed.' (Mojo)
One tradition that he has highlighted has been the Appalachian country death songs; gothic backwoods ballads of mortality and disaster. The Violent Femmes are one band that have taken this tradition and who have used it to confront their audience with the reality of sin. In the words of Flannery O’Connor: “to the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
At one point in his career, T. Bone Burnett found that his songs critiquing society were being misunderstood by people who thought he was simply pointing the finger at others. Because he believed that any discussion of morality has to begin with oneself he switched many of his songs from the second to the first person. So, instead of singing, “He couldn’t help but notice her,” he would now sing, “I couldn’t help but notice her.” To reinforce the point he later wrote a song entitled The Criminal Under My Own Hat. David Eugene Edwards, lead singer with Sixteen Horsepower, sums up this approach when he says that his songs are all about the fact that we are all in trouble, that we all need a Saviour.
In her novels Flannery O’Connor also wrote about the way in which the holy interpenetrates this world and affects it and the group of musicians we are considering has also made use of this way of communicating faith. In her song Holy Spirit, Victoria Williams writes about experiencing the Holy Spirit in very ordinary situations and through very ordinary people. For Victoria Williams, the Holy Spirit is what makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes your heart go ping and it can be found anywhere - on a mountain top, ‘neath the stars, in a churchyard and even in some bars. Another band finding the Spirit or face of Jesus in a bar are Over The Rhine.
You never know just what on earth you'll find in the faces of a stranger or in the dark and weary corners of a mind because, here and there, when you least expect it you can see the Saviour's face. The holy interpenetrates our world and affects it but often we are not looking all that close and cannot see, so artists like Victoria Williams, Over The Rhine and Flannery O’Connor create little epiphanies that reveal Christ for us in the ordinary experiences of life.
How do you think non-Christians hearing these songs from mainstream bands on mainstream record labels would respond to them?
