International Times - Bill Fay: not your typical rock star

My latest article to be published by International Times is a profile of Bill Fay:

'Taylor has accurately summed up Fay’s work as “beautiful music that makes sense of life” noting that: “In an age of endless noise, his whispered attention grabs were a godsend that enraptured a legion of folks hungering for something calmer”. Through his creative engagement with the ideas of Teilhard, it may be that Fay’s greatest achievement was to take a form of music that has sometimes been characterised, by both supporters and opponents alike, as ‘the Devil’s music’ and convincingly and calmly enable it to sing of God.'

For more on Bill Fay see here and here. See also my co-authored book 'The Secret Chord' which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. For more of my writings on music click here.

My earlier pieces for IT are an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, plus reviews of: 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, albums by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku; 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley; Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel; T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone; Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition, 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller; 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album - 'Zany in parts, moving in others, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more unusual, inspired & profound album this year. ‘Pissabed Prophet’ will thrill, intrigue, amuse & inspire' - and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published several of my poems, beginning with The ABC of creativity, which covers attention, beginning and creation, Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

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Bill Fay - Omega Day.

On the third day I finish my work

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine’s Wickford and Christ Church Wickford:

The singer-songwriter Bill Fay died recently aged 81. A very private man, he rarely performed in public, but his songs nevertheless touched the hearts of many people.

This was despite a long period, from the mid-1970s to the 2000s, where he was without a recording contract. Such setbacks didn't seem to phase him and he found other work while continuing to record his songs. Eventually, the strength of his early work, which had been overlooked at the time, brought attention back to him and he recorded three well-received albums before he died.

His life mirrored the faith and belief that he poured out in his songs. Songs which are laments for the violence and lack of care often seen in our world together with celebration of the everyday acts of love and care undertaken by ordinary people. The latter reveal God's love in the midst of difficulty and point towards a future day when love will reshape the world in the image of Jesus Christ.

In today's Gospel reading (Luke 13:31-35), Jesus, himself, is facing the forces of violence as Herod is seeking to kill him in the context of a conquered nation ruled by the Roman oppressors. His response is to continue working in the face of the threats around him and to lament the effect the oppressive forces have on the people around him.

He longs to gather those around him and shelter them from the storms of life as a mother hen does with her chicks by bringing them under her wing for warmth. In this way, he shows us the mother heart of God, which is overflowing with love towards us. Lovingly, Jesus is saying he wants to be like the mother hen gathering God’s people to him where they will then experience safety and love. At the same time that he makes this specific statement to the people of Jerusalem, he is also paying a wonderful tribute to motherhood itself by equating the love which God shows towards us to the love that mothers show towards their offspring.

This is one of several passages in scripture where God is described in feminine terms. Given the patriarchal nature of the society in which the Bible was formed, it is surprising to find any references to God as feminine and it is particularly significant to find this reference on the lips of Jesus.

The Bible tells us that God is Spirit and therefore not male or female. When human beings enter the story of creation, it is as beings made in the image of God, both male and female. So, God is ultimately not gendered in the way that we are and it is important for us to understand and celebrate the way God expresses his love through both genders.

Jesus laments here over the patterns of response in our world which see those who are different from us and have a message of change being scapegoated and killed. Scapegoating others is the way in which we consistently act as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel.

That is what Jesus knew he was facing and his response was to double down on his work of healing and care until such time as his death came when the people would then say 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’

That change would come about because on the third day his work would be finished; the third day being the day he rose from the dead. The scapegoating and crucifixion of God is the ultimate demonstration of God's love for humanity but it is the resurrection that then changes the arc of human history away from oppression and towards peace. Jesus is resurrected as the first-fruits of a new way of life wholly characterised by love and where there is no more mourning or crying or pain.

In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here. When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.

All of this is also to be found in the songs of Bill Fay. In ‘There is a valley’ he sings:

“There is a hill near Jerusalem that wild flowers grow upon
Flowers don't speak, but they speak to each other of a crucifixion
Just because he said he was the son of God
And the fury of the moment they felt they could only silently look upon
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written upon the palms of the Holy One
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written in the palms, in the palms of the Holy One”

In ‘Still some light’ he encourages us to go on in the face of this world’s troubles because we have seen the light:

“Still some light for this frail mankind, still some hope, some end in sight
Still some light for this frail mankind, still some grace in troubled times
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
And it’s all to easy, for a soul to grow cold
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
God knows it ain’t easy, don’t give up on it all, still some light”

The light that we have seen is ‘The Healing Day’ that is still to come:

“It'll be okay
On the healing day
No more goin' astray
On the healing day
Yeah we'll find our way
On the healing day
To where the children play
On the healing day

When the tyrant is bound
And the tortured freed from his pain
And the lofty brought to the ground
And the lonely rage

Ain't so far away
That healin' day
Comin' to stay
The healing day”

In the face of violence and oppression, Jesus doubled down on his ministry of healing and his acts of love and transformation. Following in Jesus' footsteps, Bill Fay continued to sing of this world's transformation into the image of Christ despite being ignored and overlooked for many years. In a changing world where hatred of others is on the rise and where authoritarian figures are increasingly being given power to oppress, we are challenged by their examples to continue to act in the ways of love as a sign of the coming kingdom of love. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Still Some Light.

Bill Fay R.I.P.

Dead Oceans recently announced the passing of Bill Fay, who died peacefully in London, aged 81.

They wrote: "Bill was a gentle man and a gentleman, wise beyond our times. He was a private person with the biggest of hearts, who wrote immensely moving, meaningful songs that will continue to find people for years to come.Bill’s first two albums, Bill Fay and Time of the Last Persecution, found a modest but loving audience upon their release at the dawn of the 1970s. While they weren’t considered commercial successes at the time, they continue to inspire devotion decades on, now known as overlooked classics from the era.

With enormous help from producer Joshua Henry, who tracked Bill down and convinced him to make another album, Bill later went on to make three more albums with Dead Oceans: Life is People (2012), his first release for forty years; Who is the Sender? (2015); and Countless Branches (2020), enjoying his cult status in real time.

Only a month before his passing, Bill was busy working on a new album. Our hope is to find a way to finish and release it, but for now, we remember Bill’s legacy as the “man in the corner of the room at the piano”, who quietly wrote heartfelt songs that touched and connected with people around the world."

'Bill Fay Was a Hidden Gem. One Musician Made Finding Him a Mission.' was the New York Times headline for an article exploring the background to Fay's album 'Countless Branches.'

Bill Fay made two albums at the beginning of the 1970s before losing his contract and disappearing from the scene. The strength of these albums, particularly the second 'Time of the Last Persecution,' led several musicians and producers to find Fay and assist in releasing more of his music.

Fay’s first two albums since his rediscovery, “Life Is People” in 2012 and “Who Is the Sender?” in 2015, were both profitable and effective follow-ups to the records he’d made 40 years earlier resulting in the recording of the most recent 'Countless Branches.'

Grayson Haver Currin notes that Fay's: 'self-titled 1970 debut featured idealistic odes to friendship, nature and peace swaddled in swooping strings and cascading horns. But only a year later, he’d turned to thorny rock for “Time of the Last Persecution.” Fueled by the horrors of the Vietnam War and the violence of the Jim Crow South, Fay railed against social corruption for 14 fractured songs, framing life as a revolving door of chances to get right with God.'

With the more recent albums Fay is: 'still writing about his distrust of governments and his belief in the goodness of people. Henry smartly dressed those songs in chamber-pop elegance. Tweedy lent his voice to a jangling tune called “This World,” while Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce added subtle harmonies to “Bring It On Lord,” a paean to valuing the days you have left. Fay’s voice wavered and rasped with age, the seams worn like proud wrinkles of wisdom.'

A Bill Fay song is often a 'deceptively simple thing, which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply.' They are musical haikus on 'his recurring themes: nature, the family of man, the cycle of life and the ineffable vastness of it all.' The most recent releases being 'as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded, as if songs waiting for their time have finally found their rightful place within our current zeitgeist.'

Bill Fay - Countless Branches - 'Countless Branches is the third of Fay's later-period albums, following Life Is People (2012) and Who Is the Sender? (2015). It might just be the best, too. It's palatable and concise, comprising ten tracks with bonuses pushing the total to 17. An incorrigible grouch might bridle at these guileless, gently philosophical songs, but they're delivered with such obvious sincerity that the rest of us will be charmed. As ever, Fay focuses on the search for meaning and substance in everyday life.'

Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.

The song 'Who Is The Sender?' on Bill Fay's album of the same title is about the phenomenon which Fay sees as 'songfinding' rather than songwriting:

'Ask Bill Fay about his relationship with his instrument and he says something revealing, not "Ever since I learnt to play the piano", but "Ever since the piano taught me..."

What the piano taught him was how to connect to one of the great joys of his life. "Music gives," he says. And he is a grateful receiver. But, it makes him wonder, "Who is the sender?" ...

joy and sadness are indeed deep in this material, which Bill describes as "alternative gospel". Though it clearly stems from his belief, he doesn't seek to proselytise or convert anybody, but just hopes to share the concerns he puts into the words and the feelings that he receives from the music:

"Goodness, beauty, comfort. If something gives in the world, that's a good thing, isn't it? Maybe that's what music wants to do."'

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.

'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)

Bill Fay's Life Is People is an album to treasure produced by a man of real humility with a wonderful back story. The story is as follows:

"Bill Fay was born in North London, where he still lives. His debut on the underground Decca Nova label, Bill Fay (1970), included spacious big band jazz arrangements by Mike Gibbs, but it was the follow-up, Time Of The Last Persecution (1971), that cemented his reputation — a harrowing, philosophical and painfully honest diagnosis of an unhealthy society and a messed-up planet, that featured the cream of London's fieriest jazz session players such as guitarist Ray Russell. Unable to make ends meet as a musician, Fay wandered through a succession of jobs for years, writing songs privately. His albums were reissued in 1998 after being deleted for 27 years, and when the likes of Jeff Tweedy and David Tibet (Current 93) began singing his praises in the early 2000s, Bill began to come back into view. A third album, recorded piecemeal in the late 70s, was released in 2005 as Tomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow, by The Bill Fay Group. And Wilco even convinced the shy singer to join them onstage in London in 2007.

A CD of Bill's early demos and home recordings has also since emerged, but Life Is People is his first properly crafted studio album since 1971. He was motivated by American producer Joshua Henry, a fan who had grown up listening to the Bill Fay albums in his Dad's record collection. Spooling through Bill's home demos, Joshua discovered an incredible trove of material and decided to do something about it. Guitarist Matt Deighton (Oasis, Paul Weller, Mother Earth) assembled a cast of backup musicians to bring out the songs' full potential, Tim Weller (who's played drums for everyone from Will Young to Noel Gallagher and Goldfrapp), and keyboardist Mikey Rowe (High Flying Birds, Stevie Nicks, etc). In addition, Bill is reunited on several tracks with Ray Russell and drummer Alan Rushton, who played on Time Of The Last Persecution."

Fay's humility seems to run throughout this project - in his low-key, almost hestitant delivery, 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'), and in liner notes which simply express profound gratitude for the support he has received from others in the making of this album.

His songs are simply astonishing - simple and melodic yet with unusual imagery and insights delivered with gravity and grace:

"Ranging from intimate to cosmic, epic but never grandiose, Bill's deeply committed music reminds you of important, eternal truths, and the lessons to be drawn from the natural world, when the materiality and greed threaten to engulf everything.

From the Eden-like hope for a better world in the opening "There Is A Valley" to the street sweeper gazing past the neon lights to the heavens in "City Of Dreams"; from the grand historical sweep of "Big Painter" to the compassionate hopefulness of "The Healing Day"; Bill's perceptive songs strike at the heart of the big issues facing us all today. But they're humble and down to earth too, full of striking images: witness the panoramic "Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)", with its windblown seeds and grandmas blowing kisses into prams: as rapturous and soul-stirring as any music you'll hear this year."

'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. This is music to stir the soul, as Jim O'Rourke has stated "Bill Fay has quietly held his head high above the fray of chaos for years with the beauty of his music and the power of his spirit."

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.

Bill Fay was profoundly influenced by Teilhard de Chardin:

"Shortly after his debut was released, Fay stumbled across an old biblical commentary and quickly developed a fascination with the books of Daniel and Revelation. With the Vietnam War still escalating and the Kent State massacres in the headlines, the dark, apocalyptic tone of the ancient prophetic literature seemed disturbingly relevant. About this same time, Fay also began reading the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a mid-twentieth century Jesuit, scientist, and philosopher, who believed that all of reality, both human and non-human, is rapidly evolving toward an eternal state of unity and peace. The earth’s present travails (war, poverty, injustice), however overwhelming they may seem, are really the birth pangs of the coming paradise—evidence of both the deficiencies of our current existence and the imminence of the world to come.

Armed with these new intellectual resources, Fay fashioned a second recording that was darker and more desperate but ultimately more hopeful than the first. Time of the Last Persecution is dominated by Fay’s vision of the coming apocalypse, vividly described in songs like “’Til the Christ Come Back,” “Plan D,” and the bleak, bombastic title cut. Fay’s eschatology on the recording is a far cry from the Us-vs.-Them cynicism of religious orthodoxy, in which the chosen people are eternally rewarded while the rest of us are cast into a bottomless lake of fire. For Fay, as for Teilhard before him, deliverance is deliverance for all (hippie and soldier, young and old, human and non-human) from the structures and institutions that oppress and alienate us. And the coming of the messiah signifies that all of reality—however senseless it may now seem—ultimately has value and significance. “The album was a commitment,” Fay recently explained, “albeit a reluctant one at first, to the belief that there will be, and has to be at some point, some spiritual intervention in the world.”'

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Bill Fay - Thank You Lord.

Top Ten 2020

This is the music, in no particular order, that I've most enjoyed listening to in 2020:

Bruce Springsteen - Letter To You: '... you just need to turn it up really loud on a long, fast drive through a heartbroken summer night to hear Springsteen for the damaged hero he is. But that ensemble euphoria does work best live, when the bass is rattling through the blood and bones of hundreds of collected humans. The live recording of this record really helps deliver that communal feeling. They feel so present and close that listeners might feel they’re violating the pandemic rules. They rollick through the “Janey Needs a Shooter” and the Dylanesque “Song for Orphans”, both of which Springsteen wrote back in 1973. But it’s the new material that really catches fire. The band blaze through “Ghosts” and “Last Man Standing”, with “House of a Thousand Guitars” soaring above the lot. Driven by the supple rise and fall of a hymnal piano melody, the song is a commentary on songwriting. Springsteen, who’s been wonderfully frank about his lifelong struggle with depression, expresses solidarity with other writers “bitter and bored” who “wake in search of the lost chord”. As the champion of the working Americans who’ve been sold out by the Trump presidency, he delivers a verse on “the criminal clown” who has “stolen the throne”. But he offers the communion of music as a way to rise above and beyond material misery.'

Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways: '“I sing the songs of experience like William Blake,” Bob Dylan growls, introducing his 39th epistle on the follies, frustrations and secret strengths of a species at war with itself, “I’ve got no apologies to make.” He’s the rebel poet, approaching twilight, laying out generations of hard-earned wisdoms with no punches pulled and no regrets. At 79, following a trio of covers albums of American standards largely associated with Sinatra, you might expect Dylan to make a world-worn and contemplative sort of record, but one that had little left to say. Instead, with ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’, he’s produced arguably his grandest poetic statement yet, a sweeping panorama of culture, history and philosophy peering back through assassinations, world wars, the births of nations, crusades and Biblical myths in order to plot his place in the great eternal scheme. Rough? Perhaps, but it certainly has the warmth and lustre of the intimate and home-made. And rowdy? Dylan’s sure been rowdier ... Instead he requires of his band just a series of soft and simple canvasses, woven largely from gentle spiritual, lustrous country, Southern blues or gothic Americana – often resembling enclosed, traditionally structured atmospheres rather than songs – onto which he can project his sprawling literary visions of death, degradation and the horrors of history.'

Deacon Blue - City Of Love: 'They continue to conjure anthems that celebrate love, work, faith, hope, going out, and coming home ... we find Ricky Ross writing from a more personal – and maybe more vulnerable – viewpoint than before. City of Love seeks out the quiet moments, far from the bombast. From the solace of shared candle-light (the glorious, Fleetwood Mac-invoking 'In Our Room') to the solitude of nature (the gospel-rock of 'A Walk In The Woods'), it is poignant, pensive, yet never maudlin. If 'Intervals' stunning, astral pop reminds us of the ticking clock ('so little time'), then the swoon-inducing soul of 'Come On In' urges us to make the most of our days, and nights.'

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension: Stevens 'felt inspired to create a whole record that examined the world he was living in, questioning it when it felt wrong and “exterminating all bullshit“. The sprawling results of this personal interrogation, which play out over a glitchy 80 minutes, serve as a powerful dissection of modern humanity. Filled with universal anguish and anxieties, ‘The Ascension’ ... takes a weary look at the outside world and out comes a deep sigh ... anxious instrumentals echo the album’s uneasy outlook and fear of the future, and when they combine forces it often makes for an astonishing listen. The world is pretty shitty at the moment and it’s easy to feel helpless, but as the horror show that is 2020 continues to rumble on, ‘The Ascension’ is yet another ample soundtrack to rage-dance to.'

Gregory Porter - All Rise: 'It’s not all just about that great voice. Gregory Porter also has a mighty generosity of spirit, plus empathy, warmth and optimism. And he has gathered a superb team around him to make a strong album with plenty of scale and depth ... All these contributions weave around Porter himself and strengthen what he does. The singer has written of “Revival Song”, written in memory of Freddie Gray, the 25-year old who died in police custody in Baliimore in 2015: “It’s about finding your source of strength to bring you back to seeing who you truly are so that you can be restored to the giant that you are.” That is what Gregory Porter, with help from some fine musicians has achieved with All Rise in 2020.'

Michael McDermott - What In The World: 'Chicago born McDermott’s poetic reflections on the parlous predicament of American politics and humanity in general always repay closer investigation, and “What in the World..” must rank as his most compelling offering to date. The Dylanesque title track points an accusing finger at the inhumanities perpetrated by the Trump regime via a tumbling flood of memorable lyrical images, contrasting beautifully with the much more low key charms of “Positively Central Park” and “New York,Texas,” a subdued gem strongly reminiscent of “Nebraska” era Springsteen at his brilliant best.'

Scott Stapp - The Space Between the Shadows: 'This album is powerful, it is beautiful and I can guarantee that every person reading this will be able to relate to the lyrical content throughout…we have all fought our demons to one extent or another but Scott has laid his soul bare and I am sure he is a very different man from the one prior to writing and recording The Space Between the Shadows. The album title tells a story of its own and although this is as dark as hell it is also full of light, hope and redemption. Scott Stapp is back and I lay odds he is better, stronger and much wiser than before.'

Bill Fay - Countless Branches - 'Countless Branches is the third of Fay's later-period albums, following Life Is People (2012) and Who Is the Sender? (2015). It might just be the best, too. It's palatable and concise, comprising ten tracks with bonuses pushing the total to 17. An incorrigible grouch might bridle at these guileless, gently philosophical songs, but they're delivered with such obvious sincerity that the rest of us will be charmed. As ever, Fay focuses on the search for meaning and substance in everyday life.'

Buddy & Judy Miller - 'Breakdown on 20th Avenue South': '... out of the ashes of loss, abandonment and melancholy, the songwriter has emerged like a phoenix for the sizzling Breakdown on 20th Ave. South (New West Records), the couple’s first duet record since 2009’s Written in Chalk. As much a testament to faith and forgiveness as it is a pulsating chronicle of a marriage beset by physical and emotional challenges, the album, which takes its name from the Music Row-adjacent street on which the couple resides in Nashville, ranks among the year’s finest.' 

The Innocence Misson - 'See You Tomorrow': Don Peris says, “There is a longing there to be transformed and a hopeful expectation that it is possible,” he explains. “I find joy, or a similar type of joy, in all of the songs,” he concludes. “A humble recognition of challenges and hardships, the acknowledgment and comfort in knowing that they are both personal and universal, and the expression of light and hope.” 'Focusing on the world that exists within our own heartbeats, The Innocence Mission has created a disc that finds truth in the connections binding us to each other. See You Tomorrow radiates a sense of love and warmth to help us through moments when those same commodities may be in short supply.'

My previous Top Ten's can be found here - 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

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Bill Fay - Filled With Wonder Once Again.

Hidden Gems - Bill Fay & Malcolm Morley

2020 has been labelled a Biblical year for TV with 'The New Pope' following 'The First Temptation of Christ' while 'The Two Popes' is still on cinema screens. Fascinating as these are for those who explore the interface between faith and culture, the most interesting work is often that which is or has been more hidden.

'Bill Fay Was a Hidden Gem. One Musician Made Finding Him a Mission.' is New York Times headline for an article exploring the background to Fay's latest album 'Countless Branches.'

Bill Fay made two albums at the beginning of the 1970s before losing his contract and disappearing from the scene. The strength of these albums, particularly the second 'Time of the Last Persecution,' led several musicians and producers to find Fay and assist in releasing more of his music.

Fay’s first two albums since his rediscovery, “Life Is People” in 2012 and “Who Is the Sender?” in 2015, were both profitable and effective follow-ups to the records he’d made 40 years earlier resulting in the recording of the most recent 'Countless Branches.'

Grayson Haver Currin notes that Fay's: 'self-titled 1970 debut featured idealistic odes to friendship, nature and peace swaddled in swooping strings and cascading horns. But only a year later, he’d turned to thorny rock for “Time of the Last Persecution.” Fueled by the horrors of the Vietnam War and the violence of the Jim Crow South, Fay railed against social corruption for 14 fractured songs, framing life as a revolving door of chances to get right with God.'

With the more recent albums Fay is: 'still writing about his distrust of governments and his belief in the goodness of people. Henry smartly dressed those songs in chamber-pop elegance. Tweedy lent his voice to a jangling tune called “This World,” while Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce added subtle harmonies to “Bring It On Lord,” a paean to valuing the days you have left. Fay’s voice wavered and rasped with age, the seams worn like proud wrinkles of wisdom.'

A Bill Fay song is often a 'deceptively simple thing, which carries more emotional weight than its concision and brevity might imply.' They are musical haikus on 'his recurring themes: nature, the family of man, the cycle of life and the ineffable vastness of it all.' The most recent releases being 'as pointed and as poignant as anything he’s ever recorded, as if songs waiting for their time have finally found their rightful place within our current zeitgeist.'

Nigel Cross explains that Malcolm Morley’s 'first musical steps into the public eye came as the leader and chief songwriter of Help Yourself, and it was with them that Morley made his mark, recording four albums for UA (and a posthumously released fifth one) between 1971 and 1973': 'Ignored by record buyers at the time, there are now many who believe these albums rank as some of the most musically enduring and unique releases of their era. Post-Help Yourself, Morley played with a diverse array of musicians including Bees Make Honey, Wreckless Eric, Kirsty MacColl, and Man, long-lived Welsh rockers whom he has recently re-joined.'

'The songs on his new CD started to flow after a bout of illness over the winter of 2017/18.' 'Sound-wise with the sizzling organ and his newly-acquired Telecaster on some of the songs they suggest vintage Band or even the Dylan of Highway 61 Revisited and Tempest.'

Richard Gould writes that:

'Malcolm’s voice now bears a rich smoky timbre and the imagery in his lyrics carries a certain world weariness of the experiences of life.

As for the tracks themselves, proceedings open up with ‘To Evangeline’ – a mid paced effort with the aforementioned organ nicely to the fore. The couplet regarding the woman and the babe on the bridge is nothing short of brilliant by my book. It almost has the feel of being from the lineage of ‘Paper Leaves’ – one of the early Morley classics that still sounds so good today. Next up is ‘Forgotten Land’, and this has a feel about it not a million miles from Tony Joe White – we tend not to have too many swamps in the UK, maybe we could settle for some fertile moist woodlands with a moody groove.

‘A Walk On The Water’ carries some great biblical imagery in its lyrics. ‘What Hurts’ has a JJ Cale swing and growl to it. The only cover here is ‘Two Brothers’ and is an American Civil War tale – anybody else remember the early 60s TV series ‘The Americans’ – the Clanfield family where Jeff joined the Confederates and his brother Ben the Unionists ? You’ll be impressed by Malcolm’s acoustic picking. ‘Broken’, as with ‘All Washed Up’, the mood belies what the title may lead you to suppose. Not for the first time, you will find the lyrics intriguing in their imagery. Some lovely organ breaks courtesy of Daisy Rollins.

‘Must Be The Devil In Me’ – sounds as though it could be an old Blues Standard. The title track, ‘Infinity Lake’ comes across as perhaps the most perfect piece among those on offer here – the understated music allows the lyrics to bite and hit. ‘All Washed Up’, although hardly a joyous sentiment, the track kicks along with another set of quality lyrics. Matters conclude with ‘Rambling Boy’ and its tone is perhaps the closest to that which Malcolm put to such good effect on the previously cited ‘Summerlands’. There is a magical air to its rural purity and imagery.'

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Bill Fay - Countless Branches.

The 10 albums that I enjoyed most in 2015

Here are the 10 albums (in no particular order) that I've got hold of and enjoyed the most in 2015:

Sid Griffin, writing on 'The Importance of The Basement Tapes,' describes in Biblical terms how the 'beat poetics' of Dylan's political and urban songs 'morphed into whimsy or Biblical-like prophecies'; 'songs derived from old sea shanties, melodic reflections about life's absudities, hard-rockin' and often hilarious fictitious character sketches, musical tributes to past heroes which bordered on pastiche, musical pastiches so authentic they bordered on being tributes, devout spirituals, C&W laments, a new take on blues balladry, and, yes, love in all its guises'

To mark the 50th anniversary of the freedom marches as well as the Staple Singers’ performance at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, their concert has been remastered and restored to its original setlist and runtime. Pops Staples, patriarch, bandleader and musical visionary, had written a song about the freedom marchers called ‘Freedom Highway’ which was debuted at this concert and which became the family’s biggest hit to that date, a pivotal record, connecting gospel music with the struggle for civil rights, that inched them toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing their gospel message for a secular audience.

'The Staple Singers have left an imprint of soulful voices, social activism, religious conviction and danceable “message music.”' 'Pops and the family were rooted in gospel, blues, and "message music" traditions. He sang about darkness, and he sang about light. He's done it again [on 'Somebody Was Watching' from Don't Lose This], and while the song's arrival might be belated by over 15 years, it's a total gift to hear one of the greats completely owning his lane.'

Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.

Carrie and Lowell is a meditation on grief observed that channels the emotional honesty of C. S. Lewis' reflection on his time in the shadowlands. 'I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams.'

Carleen Anderson said in an interview for Huffington Post: 'the spiritual element in my life comes from miracles, in the form of love, like my child being born, or the way my grandparents raised me. It's emotional rescue. Love is a miracle, and from that music is made, as is all art.' 'The one piece of music I'm most proud of is probably a gospel song I wrote called 'Salvation Is Free' [Soul Providence, 2005]. It's about how I feel when everything in life is going wrong; it's about finding peace within all that.'

'Look Out Machines! is ... probably [Duke Special's] best, most complete work for a good while ... it’s broad enough to encompass the big issues. ‘Son Of The Left Hand’ is religious guilt with a dash of William Gibson. The title track is big enough to call down the apocalypse, with the help of Shakespeare and Betjeman: “What’s done is done, so drop the bomb”.' ‘God In A Dive’ is the best song I’ve heard for ages, about religious acceptance of one’s own kind. 'In A Dive', he says, concerns 'my living in Belfast and finding beautiful and profound qualities in people in the most unlikely of places.'

'On The Life Pursuit [by Belle & Sebastian], [Stuart] Murdoch treats church almost as a matter of course – yes, he goes to church, doesn’t everybody?! The references are simply there; they don’t attract attention themselves. Christianity (and church) is portrayed as an almost unspoken factor in the everyday lives of real people, one that is in turns pathetic and profound, but a factor nonetheless. In other words, his references ring true.'

Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices is the second album by The Welcome Wagon, the musical duo of Vito and Monique Aiuto, a Presbyterian pastor and his wife. 'Vito explains: “This album has a somewhat liturgical structure, ordered loosely like a worship service. It begins with the existential and cosmic dread of ‘I’m Not Fine,’ immediately followed by ‘My God, My God, Parts 1 & 2,’ a prayer that rails against God’s seeming absence from this world and our lives. The words are adapted from the prayer of Jesus while he hung on the cross."'

'"Banga" ... opens with the first of two songs about Europeans’ discovery of the New World. Piano and strings drive the rhapsodic, epistolary "Amerigo." On this and other tracks, [Patti] Smith sings with more depth, timbre and richness than perhaps she ever has ... Writing and art-making are recurrent themes on "Banga." On "Constantine’s Dream," the second track about voyages to America, Smith tackles the very nature of art - and the art of nature. Halfway through the 10-minute opus, painter Piero della Francesca shouts this "Horses"-worthy Patti war cry: "Oh lord let me die on the back of adventure/ With a brush and an eye full of light." ... "Banga" is both a return to form and her best album in many years.'

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Carleen Anderson - Salvation Is Free.

Art as Gift

Here are my reflections on 'Art as Gift' as given today at the exhibition reception for María Inés Aguirre's 'Via Cordis - The Way of the Heart' exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook:

‘Had a song delivered
Through my door today
From an unknown sender
Far away

Had a song delivered
Through my ears today
Through the chords on this piano
That I play

Who is the sender?
I'd really like to know.

I wanna say thank you
To the unknown sender far away.’

Singer-songwriter Bill Fay asserts that songs aren't actually written, but found. "Music gives," he says, and he is a grateful receiver. It makes him wonder, as we have heard, ‘Who is the sender?’

Some years ago I read a book called Written In My Soul, a series of interviews with some of the most well-known singer-songwriters from the 1950s onward, and was struck by the extent to which these great artists – Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and others – felt that their songs were given to them in moments of revelation, that their songs were already written and ‘came through them as though radio receivers – without much conscious effort or direction.’

MIA has identified similar words of Paul Klee as describing her own creative process: “Everything around me dissolves and interesting works emerge as if of their own accord. My hand is entirely the instrument of a distant sphere. It isnʼt my head that is working, but something else, something higher, something somewhere more remote. I must have great friends out there – obscure, but also brilliant - and theyʼre all very good to me.”

What these artists and musicians are describing is a sense of art as gift. On a practical level, there are several different ways in which this experience can occur. The practices of the visionary artist Cecil Collins are instructive in this regard as they cover much of the relevant territory.

Collins said that he had ‘two ways of working’ and that he ‘alternated between these at different periods of his life.’ His first method was to ‘reflect on a particular vision within his imagination, often down to the smallest details.’ Because he had the ‘faculty of inner sight of the painting,’ it was ‘rare for him to make any preliminary studies beyond a rough sketch in pencil.’ In this, he was similar to William Blake who, when asked by a lady, amazed at his detailed description of a pastoral scene he had recently witnessed, where he had seen it, replied, “Here, Madam,” while touching his forehead. Stanley Spencer was another visionary artist to whom the vision of the painting was given first in his imagination before transferring this vision whole to canvas using under-drawing based on a grid. This method can be clearly seen in Spencer’s unfinished painting of ‘Christ preaching at Cookham Regatta’ which is at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham.

When Cecil Collins did not know what he was to paint but nevertheless had a strong impulse to do so, he would use a process he called ‘the Matrix.’ He would choose two complementary colours, then, with his eyes shut he would paint a number of brush strokes. He would then open his eyes and consider the marks on the paper or canvas. As he looked images would suggest themselves and he would select and paint the one that he wished to impose as the predominate image. The point of the Matrix was to ‘penetrate deeper into the creative imagination so that it is that which speaks to the artist and not the shallower levels of the mind ... The Matrix ... stands for all the hidden desires of the soul.’

This process of being led by the marks one makes on canvas or paper is also experienced by artists in terms of a sense of gift. In this instance, rather than being given the image whole, the artist is led to the image by the mark making process itself. MIA has, I think indicated that she may use a similar approach, in speaking about the emotions inherent in colour and line. As Michael Hutchinson-Uzielli has noted, ‘Mia's paintings map her emotions and imagination, with colour, texture and sinuous lines depicting the landscape of her thoughts.’ By following and depicting the emotions of colour and line the painting is gifted to her and she taps into the divine.

Another phrase which has been used to describe this process is ‘truth to materials’, a phrase that emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement, through its rejection of design work (often Victorian) which disguised by ornamentation the natural properties of the materials used. The phrase has been associated particularly with sculptors and architects, as both are able to reveal, in their way of working and in the finished article, the quality and personality of their materials; wood showing its grain, metal its tensile strength, and stone its texture. Henry Moore, for example, whose altar is central to this space wrote that, "each material has its own individual qualities … Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh … It should keep its hard tense stoniness." Such artists search stones or wood which of their own creative potentialities. In these cases, the sculpture is gifted to the artist by the materials they use and their sculptures retain the personality and characteristics of these materials even at the same time as they may be transformed into characters and forms of myth and metaphor.

In a Christian context, such experiences and approaches can be described as experiences of the Holy Spirit inspiring or coming on the artist. Certainly that has been my experience both in creating and preaching. I will often reflect or meditate on an experience, a song, an image, a Bible passage, by putting it in my mind, carrying it around in my mind over several days or weeks, reminding myself of it from time to time and just generally living with it for a period of time and when I do that then I find that, at some unexpected moment, a new thought or idea or image will come to me that makes sense or takes forward the experience or song or image or passage on which I had been reflecting. To my mind that is the Spirit coming and making connections, bringing clarity, making sense.

I have written about this experience of art as gift in a poem entitled ‘The Mark’:

Begin, begin,
let something be.
Make a blot,
a dash, a stroke.
Make your mark.
Obliterate the anonymity
of the white-blank page.
Intervene
in the seeming
infinite abyss
of nothingness.
From nothing
to something
by means of
mark-making.
Creation waits
to be discovered,
uncovered,
never fully conceived,
growing through
relating.
Follow the trail,
the sign,
one mark
at a time
to a novel,
a poem,
a painting.
Begin, begin,
in the beginning
is the word,
the mark,
the world.

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Michael McDermott - The Silent Will Soon Be Singing.

New (and old) music

Bill Fay's 'beautifully hymnal fourth studio album' Who is the Sender? 'contains sublime, heartfelt ruminations on nature and the world.' With less light and shade than Life is People but with a more consistently meditative tone, With profound simplicity, like that of Chance in Being There, Fay mourns the inhumanity of our warlike impulses while prayerfully calling for a new world to be manifest.

Carrie and Lowell is a meditation on grief observed that channels the emotional honesty of C. S. Lewis' reflection on his time in the shadowlands. 'I saw intimacy pass by while going about it's business, like something sung and felt by Sufjan Stevens on his new beautiful solitary and rich record filled with faith and disbelief and the resurrection of trust and dreams.'

To mark the 50th anniversary of the freedom marches as well as the Staple Singers’ performance at the New Nazareth Church on Chicago’s South Side, their concert has been remastered and restored to its original setlist and runtime. Pops Staples, patriarch, bandleader and musical visionary, had written a song about the freedom marchers called ‘Freedom Highway’ which was debuted at this concert and which became the family’s biggest hit to that date, a pivotal record, connecting gospel music with the struggle for civil rights, that inched them toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing their gospel message for a secular audience.

'The Staple Singers have left an imprint of soulful voices, social activism, religious conviction and danceable “message music.”' 'Pops and the family were rooted in gospel, blues, and "message music" traditions. He sang about darkness, and he sang about light. He's done it again [on 'Somebody Was Watching' from Don't Lose This], and while the song's arrival might be belated by over 15 years, it's a total gift to hear one of the greats completely owning his lane.'

I'm also currently discovering the music of Krzysztof Penderecki: 'naturally vibrant, sensual and with a very personal sense of architecture': 'If you simplified the last 100 years of music as a war between the forces of the atonal and the lyrical, Penderecki would be on the front lines of battle. He found fame, around 1960, as a forward-thinking avant-gardist, but later defected to the other side, looking back at the Romantics and even Bach for inspiration ... Much of his music is not for the faint of heart. With its viscerally intense drama (even in his non-stage works), this music occupies a sound world that can often be described as terrifying.' 

'The St. Luke Passion, completed in 1966, was a breakthrough piece for Penderecki, proving he was much more than a trendy avant-gardist ... It was also a major religious statement at a time when, under Soviet rule, the church was officially frowned upon.' 'In his music, Penderecki has approached politics, religion, social injustice and the plight of the common man, both in general terms and by considering specific individuals and events.' 

Arun Rath writes: 'Penderecki is not Jewish — he's not a survivor — but he is Polish. Auschwitz is basically in his backyard. A devout Christian writing authentically liturgical music, Penderecki seems to be wrestling directly with the question of how you can make peace with God after such horrors.'

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The Staple Singers - Freedom Highway.

Who Is The Sender?

In the latest edition of Uncut several musicians speak about the spirituality of music.

One of the feature articles explores the making of many of Van Morrison's best albums from Astral Weeks (Lewis Merenstein - '... it was immediately clear to me that he was being born again') to Back on Top (Walter Samuel - 'I'm not sure how he does it... it just comes out of him. It just happens'). From the musicians who played on these albums there is much talk about 'looking for the spark,' 'channelling,' 'transcendental telepathy,' and 'intuitive communication'. When he channelled or connected with the spark Morrison set everyone else on fire so that the atmosphere was truly transcendental.

In his interview Morrison describes this as 'creating space.' The key to the creation of space - the stretching out of time - is listening, watching and absorbing. Most musicians, he says, don't understand this. They 'might be great technically; but they don't have the feeling;' the ability to listen in order to be in the same space and have 'a collective experience,' The phrase he regularly used for the times 'when he felt it was working' was, 'I think it's all coming together.'

My co-authored book with Peter Banks, The Secret Chord, is essentially an extended exploration of this experience common to artists and musicians, which is often described in spiritual terms, of things coming together - gelling, coalescing - into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Jef Labes, a longtime associate of Morrison, notes that:

'He once said to me that he sees all his work as variations on one piece of music that he channels. He doesn't sit down and work on songs, he gets a rush of energy. He'll grab a guitar and start playing, switch on a recording device, and whatever comes out, he'll write down. It arrives as almost a complete work ... when that goes away he's sad and exhausted, and when it's there, when he's visited by the spirit, he's compelled to get it out. It's scary. He has no idea where it comes from.'

The song 'Who Is The Sender?' on Bill Fay's latest album is about this same phenomenon, which Fay sees as 'songfinding' rather than songwriting:

'Ask Bill Fay about his relationship with his instrument and he says something revealing, not "Ever since I learnt to play the piano", but "Ever since the piano taught me..."

What the piano taught him was how to connect to one of the great joys of his life. "Music gives," he says. And he is a grateful receiver. But, it makes him wonder, "Who is the sender?" ...

joy and sadness are indeed deep in this material, which Bill describes as "alternative gospel". Though it clearly stems from his belief, he doesn't seek to proselytise or convert anybody, but just hopes to share the concerns he puts into the words and the feelings that he receives from the music: 

"Goodness, beauty, comfort. If something gives in the world, that's a good thing, isn't it? Maybe that's what music wants to do."'

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Van Morrison - Listen To The Lion.

Practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment

All babies look like Winston Churchill! The story goes that a friend once remarked to Churchill, "Winston! How wonderfully your new grandson resembles you!" and Churchill immediately replied, "All babies look like me. But then, I look like all babies."

Whether a true story or not, the phrase “all babies look like Winston Churchill” entered popular culture as a way of saying that, although we naturally look to see the characteristic features of both parents’ families in the face of a new born child, all newborn babies look very similar because at that stage the distinctive characteristics of their face have yet to develop fully.

Think about that in relation to the story from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 22-40) that we have heard read this morning when Simeon and Anna both knew that the six week old baby in Mary’s arms was God’s Messiah, the one who would bring salvation to all peoples. Now, at that time all six week old babies had to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem. So there would have been other babies there on the same day and Simeon and Anna seem to have both been regular visitors to the Temple looking out for God’s Messiah. They might have seen thousands of six week old babies over the years that they had spent in the Temple. How did Simeon and Anna know that baby Jesus was different from all the other babies that they had seen brought into the Temple?

It was the Holy Spirit that led Simeon into the Temple on that day so that he could encounter Jesus and it was the Holy Spirit that had assured him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s promised Messiah. In addition, Simeon was waiting – looking out, praying for, expecting – Israel to be saved. He was expecting God to reveal the Messiah to him before he died and so he would have been constantly looking for signs of the Messiah. So, we have a combination of the Holy Spirit’s revelation and Simeon’s expectation – his active looking - that reveal the Messiah to him in a six week old baby boy.

Often God’s work in the world and in other people is not easy to spot. God works in and through the ordinary and everyday, through the people and things around us and we need to be looking out for signs of his activity and presence. We need to be listening for his Holy Spirit to prompt us to look at some ordinary thing or ordinary person in order to see God at work.

In the film American Beauty, Ricky shows Jane a blurry video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind among autumn leaves. As they watch he explains that "this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. . . . And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever." "Sometimes,” he says, “there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” To encounter God as that incredibly benevolent force that wants us to know that there is no reason to ever feel afraid, we need to pay attention to the beauty of the ordinary, overlooked things in life, like a plastic bag being blown by the wind. As Saint Augustine said, “How many common things are trodden underfoot which, if examined carefully, awaken our astonishment.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer known for his work Abandonment toDivine Providence and his work with Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France. De Caussade coined a phrase to describe what we have just been talking about. He called it 'The Sacrament of the Present Moment,' which ‘refers to God's coming to us at each moment, as really and truly as God is present in the Sacraments of the Church ... In other words, in each moment of our lives God is present under the signs of what is ordinary and mundane. Only those who are spiritually aware and alert discover God's presence in what can seem like nothing at all. This keeps us from thinking and behaving as if only grand deeds and high flown sentiments are 'Godly'. Rather, God is equally present in the small things of life as in the great. God is there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers ... There is nothing that happens to us in which God cannot be found. What we need are the eyes of faith to discern God as God comes at each moment - truly present, truly living, truly attentive to the needs of each one.’ (Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Life in God's NOW, New City, 2012)

‘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.’ So, 'Contemplative prayer is the art of paying attention to what is.’ (Simon Small, 'From the Bottom of the Pond', O Books, 2007)

Brother Lawrence was a member of the Carmelite Order in France during the 17th Century. He spent most of his life in the kitchen or mending shoes, but became a great spiritual guide. He saw God in the mundane tasks he carried out in the priory kitchen. Daily life for him was an ongoing conversation with God. He wrote: “we need only to recognize God intimately present with us, to address ourselves to Him every moment.”

As a result, "The time of action does not differ from that of prayer. I possess God as peacefully in the bustle of my kitchen, where sometimes several people are asking me for different things at the same time, as I do upon my knees before the Holy Sacrament.”

“It is not needful to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God. When it is finished, if I have nothing to do, I prostrate myself on the ground and worship my God, who gave me the grace to make it, after which I arise happier than a king. When I can do nothing else, it is enough to have picked up a straw for the love of God.”

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

This sort of spirituality - the sense of the presence of God in all things, and the possibility of honouring God in every action is also found in our hymn books. We sing:

‘Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

          To do it as for thee:’

George Herbert’s hymn, originally a poem called ‘The Elixir,’ ends with these words:

‘A servant with this clause

          Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

          Makes that and the action fine.

          This is the famous stone

          That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

          Cannot for less be told.’

If we practising the presence of God in the sacrament of the present moment, as Brother Lawrence and Jean Pierre de Caussade teach us, then we will be like Simeon and Anna, able to signs of God’s activity and presence all around us. Because, as Bill Fay sings, when our eyes are open and our hearts are expectant:

‘There are miracles,

In the strangest of places

There are miracles,

Everywhere you go

I see fathers,

Hold a little child's hand

I see mothers,

Holding a little child's hand

I see trees, trees,

Blowing in the wind

I see seeds,

Being sown by the wind

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.

I see grandmas,

Blowing kisses into a pram

I see grandpas,

Scratching their head in amazement

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul

It's a cosmic concerto,

and it stirs my soul.’

Let us pray: Help me become attentive to this moment which will never come again. May I know you in the sacrament of the present moment seeing that you are there in life's daily routine, in dull moments, in dry prayers. More than that, that all is in you, all is held in the palms of your hands. May I see the present moment as though I were walking on my hands, seeing the world hanging upside to know dependence and rest in the Maker’s hands. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People).

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.