'You're Not A Ghost Anymore (Faith)' by Joseph Arthur

I recently reviewed for International Times Joseph Arthur's recent gig at West Hampstead Arts Club together with Melanie Gabriel and Gonzalo Carrera:

'Highlights from a stellar set included ‘No Weapon’, based on the freedom that is found through forgiveness – ‘faith is hard but the only solution in a world full of spiritual pollution’; ‘Nobody’s War’ – ‘Nobody here wants your war’ and ‘More money, more death, more greed, makes the children bleed’; as well as the raucous singing of a Ho’oponopono mantra together with the crowd during the encore – ‘I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, And thank you’.'

Today Arthur's latest album You're Not A Ghost Anymore (Faith), which he has been promoting through his latest tour, was released. The album is the latest in a stream of recent releases on secular labels that reference religion and engage with Christianity in particular. These include: Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Lux by Rosalía, Days of Ash and Easter Lily by U2, Holy Island by Sister Ray Davies, Sad and Beautiful World by Mavis Staples, Hallelujah! Don’t Let The Devil Fool Ya by Robert Finley, Troubled Horses by Martyn Joseph and the reissue of Fire Of God’s Love by Sister Irene O’Connor.

Paul Cashmere writes that:

'Arthur has announced You’re Not A Ghost Anymore, a sweeping new body of work conceived as a single narrative and revealed in three connected album movements titled Faith, Heart, and Fight. The first instalment, You’re Not A Ghost Anymore: Faith, will be released on Friday, April 2 via Arthur’s own Lonely Astronaut Records, marking his first new solo project since 2019’s Come Back World.

Rather than a conventional album cycle, Arthur has structured the project as a long-form arc written across six years, shaped by personal collapse, recovery and creative renewal. Each chapter reflects a state of being rather than a musical category, with Faith establishing the emotional and spiritual foundation of the wider work.

The album opens with I Wanna Know You, a stark and searching song that sets the tone for what follows. The track is accompanied by an official music video filmed by Arthur himself, captured in a single continuous take while travelling through Europe. The unplanned footage, centred around an image of Jesus Christ mounted on the back of a truck, became a visual extension of the song’s themes of attention, presence and chance encounter.

Arthur’s writing on Faith leans into spiritual inquiry without offering easy conclusions. Across twelve tracks including Hey Satan, Bear Your Own Cross, Thank You Is My Mantra and In The Shadow Of The Cross, he examines belief, doubt, endurance and responsibility with the unfiltered directness that has defined his career since the late 1990s.'

Arthur says:

'The 36-song album I’m releasing over the course of this year, You’re Not a Ghost Anymore, unfolds in three sections:
Faith.
Heart.
Fight.
I could have begun anywhere.
But for me the story starts with faith.
When you’re at the bottom of life, when things feel uncertain, faith is often the only thing left. Not as an ideology. Just as a quiet decision to keep going.
Heart and fight came after that.
This is a reflection on why I chose to begin there.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph Arthur - Hey Satan.

A moment in which eternity touches time

Here's the reflection that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Malcolm Guite writes that ‘the Annunciation, the visit of Gabriel to the blessed virgin Mary, is that mysterious moment of awareness, assent and transformation in which eternity touches time.’ As we reflect on this mystery, through meditations and poems I have written, let us think ‘about vision, what we allow ourselves to be aware of, and also about freedom, the way all things turn on our discernment and freedom.’


Angelic announcement of peace and goodwill
come in the form of the child found
by night workers, swaddled and lying in a manger.
His mother ponders these things -
annunciation, nativity, incarnation - in her heart.


Bethlehem begins.
Here, human hands hold God for the first time.
Here, God is fed from a human breast for the first time.
Here, God is struck on the back,
takes his first breath, utters his first cry.
Here, heaven and earth are rejoined.
Here, humanity is taken into the Godhead.
Here, God becomes vulnerable.
Here, God experiences created life.
Here, God enters his creation.
Here, God moves into our neighbourhood,
Becomes one with human beings.

In a place of forced migration,
Where no room could be found
For a pregnant woman
whose baby was not the child of her betrothed,
In less than ideal circumstances
Here begins peace on earth
Goodwill to all.
Salvation is birthed and named
The King of the Jews is sought and found,
The Messiah is recognised and praised.

Here the dividing wall
Between Jew and Gentile,
Male and female, slave and free,
Begins to be removed.
Here begins salvation, redemption,
Restoration for one and all.
Reconciliation between
the human and divine.


You have come to us wordless Word, flesh of our flesh,
as a small child, with no words but a hungry cry,
the Word that made humanity
crying for a mother’s breast;
gravity making creativity become a child
that can be dropped and left unfed.
This is the greatest of all gifts,
the gift of eternal vulnerable love;
the infinite clings with tiny arms to a mother's neck.
Caress us now with your tiny hands,
embrace us with your tiny arms
and pierce our hearts with your soft, sweet cries.

Let us run to Mary, and, as little children,
cast ourselves into her arms with a perfect confidence.
Let us watch the baby Jesus sweetly sucking
the sweet breasts of his glorious Mother,
laying his hand upon his Mother's bosom,
looking up and smiling at her all joyous and full of rapture,
as she holds him, her Lord,
at once so great and so little, in her arms;
kissing over and over again her little infant.
Blessed is that mouth, blessed are her kisses.
Let us calm and quiet ourselves,
like weaned children with their mother;
like a weaned child, to be content in the God
who desires to gather her children
as, under her wings, a hen gathers her brood.


Guite writes of Mary as: ‘a woman who, like so many others then as now, bore the appalling consequences of decisions made by men of power. She fled with her child as a refugee, she saw her son wrongfully arrested, beaten, and mocked by the occupying military force and then tortured to death on a public cross, in what was intended by the Romans to be shameful humiliation, but has, in fact, become the revelation of the full extent of God’s Love.

So, I find myself drawn again to the compassionate figure of Mary, not just in empathy with her own sufferings, direct and vicarious, but also because I believe that her compassion, the compassion so perfectly sculpted in Michelangelo’s Pietà, continues in and from heaven: that the compassion of Mary the Mother of God is still a force for good in the world.

As I think of the soldiers who call for her protection or cry out for her pity, on both sides of the war in Ukraine, I, too, yearn towards her, and with her, towards heaven, from this, our exile. I think of her, watching her Son’s torment, still steadfast in agonised love, and I sense her solidarity with all the mothers who are currently compelled to feel such pain.’ As he thinks of her in these ways he sees her ‘ holding up, once more, all the grief-stricken, to be folded in the mantle of her prayer.’

 

Jesus meets his mother

Mother,
you bore me
so that I
can bear the world
on my shoulders.

Mother,
you birthed me
so that I
can give birth
to God’s children.

Mother,
you sheltered me
so that others
can find shelter
under my wing.

Mother,
you carried me
so that I
can carry others
into heaven’s kingdom
on earth.

Mother,
you bore me,
birthed me,
sheltered me,
carried me,
to release me
and give me
in broken pieces
to the world.

Mother,
in a little while
you will not see me
and your heart
will break.

Mother,
in a little while
you will see me
and the shattered
shards of your heart
will be gathered up
and restored.


Jesus is taken down from the cross
And a sword pierced her heart,
as the whip flayed his back,
as the cross made him fall,
as the nails pierced his wrists and feet,
as the spear pierced his side,
as she held the limp, lifeless adult body
she had once held, as a newborn babe, to her breast.


Guite concludes:

Jesus meets his mother

This darker path into the heart of pain
Was also hers whose love enfolded him
In flesh and wove him in her womb. Again
The sword is piercing. She, who cradled him
And gentled and protected her young son,
Must stand and watch the cruelty that mars
Her maiden making. Waves of pain that stun
And sicken pass across his face and hers
As their eyes meet. Now she enfolds the world
He loves in prayer; the mothers of the disappeared
Who know her pain, all bodies bowed and curled
In desperation on this road of tears,
All the grief-stricken in their last despair,
Are folded in the mantle of her prayer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Malcolm Guite - Annunciation.

Mary's fiat

Here's the sermon I shared at St Catherine’s Wickford and St Gabriel’s Pitsea this morning:

The Revd Matthew Askey has said of Mary: “Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is one of the most significant, but neglected, figures in our shared cultural story. Mary was remarkable for the time and she has many things to show us and inspire us with today. She was an unmarried teenage mother, on the run, a refugee really, and at the same time through both her vulnerability and her determined strength she embodies so many positive characteristics of motherhood and what it means to be a woman today. Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this is something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Church has 2 billion members today world-wide, is still growing, and about 32% of the world’s population are involved in some way with its acts of charity and life-transforming message of forgiveness and love for all people. Mary is right at the root and start of this movement of love.”

Mary was engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred. As she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. Our experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks us to trust and persevere while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening. So, let’s look at some of her experience in more detail.

‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord,’ said Mary, ‘let it be with me according to your word.’ Mary said ‘Yes’ to God. As we have already begun to reflect, there is much more to saying that simple one syllable word ‘yes’ than we might at first imagine.

The poet-priest Malcolm Guite describes the Annunciation as follows:

‘a young girl stopped to see
With open eyes and heart. She heard the voice;
The promise of His glory yet to be,
As time stood still for her to make a choice;
Gabriel knelt and not a feather stirred,
The Word himself was waiting on her word.’

Victoria Emily Jones has reflected that ‘When Gabriel came to Mary to tell her she would bear a son, she was at first troubled, afraid, guarded. How was it possible that she, being a virgin, could become pregnant? But with the angel’s words of reassurance and promise, she yielded to the divine plan …” This is known as Mary’s fiat (Latin for “let it be”)—her consent to become the mother of God—and it’s celebrated by the church as the moment at which God became flesh, setting salvation in motion.

Theologians have debated the nature of Mary’s fiat—whether she really had a choice in the matter. After all, Gabriel comes speaking in terms of what will happen, without mentioning any conditions. However, most believe in the criticality of Mary’s “yes,” of her willing bodily and spiritual surrender. Between the angel’s ‘Hail’ and Mary’s ‘Let it be’ was a moment of supreme tension, one that Luci Shaw explores in her poem ‘The Annunciatory Angel’:

‘… We worry that she might faint.
Weep. Turn away, perplexed and fearful
about opening herself. Refuse to let the wind
fill her, to buffet its nine-month seed into her earth.
She is so small and intact. Turmoil will wrench her.
She might say no.’’

Why might Mary have said ‘No’? In the same poem Luci Shaw suggests there was a ‘weight of apprehension’ at the Annunciation because what had to be announced would ‘not be entirely easy news.’ As a result, Alan Stewart, in an Annunciation monologue, has Mary say ‘I said yes to my God / And I have come to question those words / For I did not know where they would lead’:

It was a day like any other day
Kneading bread. Lost in my thoughts
And then from behind
This light
An amazing light that filled the room
I turned round, holding my hand to my eyes
Backing away from it
And from inside this light, the figure of a man
Standing there. Looking at me
I felt I should run
I wanted to run
But his gaze fixed me to the spot
Like some rabbit charmed by a fox
But actually
His eyes were kind
And I felt strangely safe
‘is this an angel?’ I suddenly thought
have I sinned?
Has he mistaken me for someone?
Someone of importance
And then he spoke
‘Mary’
he knew my name
‘Mary’, he said ’don’t be afraid’
‘I have news for you’
‘in 9 months you will have a child and you are to call him Jeshua; God saves’
before I knew it, I was speaking
‘but I’m not married yet, I don’t…’
‘the child will be fathered by the Holy Spirit and he will save his people
the lord God will give him the throne of his father David’
the Saviour?, the Messiah?
I knelt down
And whispered
Simply
‘may it be to me as you have said’
I said yes
I said yes to my God
And I have come to question those words
For I did not know where they would lead

Where they led was to an immediate future of gossip, rumours and insult from those who thought of Jesus as illegitimate and in the longer term to a life of gathering gloom, ultimately one of sorrowing and sighing before a stone-cold tomb after the experience of viewing her son’s torture and cruel death; which was like a sword piercing her heart.

And yet, although she did not know it and could not have articulated it, there is a sense that she accepted all this when she accepted the challenge that the angel Gabriel brought from God. It may also have been that for having Jesus as her son she was, like many parents, more than glad that she had said yes, accepting the trauma, the gossip, the exile, the insults that she might bear her child, the promised Saviour.

Mary could have said ‘No’ but her ‘Yes’ was a ‘Yes’ to new life, to growth, to new birth. As we have already noted, Matthew Askey says that: ‘Mary ultimately said ‘yes!’ to life, and gave herself into the hands of God’s love, and this was something that resulted in the life of the most inspiring person who has ever lived, Jesus, and then the birth of the world-wide Church that followed. The Incarnation was predicated on the willingness of the teenage Mary to respond to God’s call.’ Mary, he says, is right at the root and start of this movement of love. This means that every act of Mary is an act of love:

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice entails.

Love is waiting for your man to realise that what you have said is true and to support you.

Love is enduring the arch looks and snide comments from those who know you are bearing a child conceived out of wedlock.

Love is support from your cousin, your child leaping in your womb, and your magnifying God.

Love is enduring the discomfort of travel to your husband’s hometown when you are close to full-term.

Love is accepting a stable when there is no room at the inn.

Love is laying your newborn child in a manger when there are no extended family around to support you.

Love is being welcoming when shepherds unexpectedly arrive in the night soon after you’ve given birth.

Love is treasuring all their words and pondering them in your heart.

Love is giving your child the name an angel requested.

Love is fleeing to another country knowing that the life of your newborn child is under threat.

Love is making a life to bring up your child separated from friends and family.

Love is saying yes to God without knowing what that choice would entail
and it is that choice which creates a cannonball of love that,
from that first Christmas ever onwards,
explodes love throughout the Universe and in us.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Angel Gabriel from heaven came.

Aquael Anthology and Prog 50

Artist, illustrator, author and musician, Maurizio Galia was born in Moncalieri (Turin) Italy, on the 28th May 1963 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, from 1978 until 1986, under the direction of Francesco Tabusso, Enzo Sciavolino and Sergio Saroni. From 1982 he worked for various agencies and specialized as visual designer and illustrator for comics and books.

Galia is also the leader of Aquael, a prog rock band founded in Turin in October 1979 that was amongst the last wave of Italian Progressive Rock of the Seventies. As a solo artist Galia recorded Ziqqurat nel Canavese (1997) and Eccitazioni Neoclassiche (2005), although both albums were recorded with Aquael bandmates, and using Aquael tracks. Aquael's Anthology has the best from those albums and a selection of previously unreleased tracks as a prelude for future Aquael albums. "if you enjoy melodic symphonic and neo-prog bands with a bit of the Italian flavor ... you may be richly rewarded for tracking this down."

Galia's Prog 50: Progressive Rock Around the World in Fifty Years is an illustrated reference hand-book where the complete list of world-wide Prog artists of the musical genre are finally given their rightful place in History. With a Foreword by Peter Gabriel, this is a first true encyclopedia collecting over a thousand musicians, most of which have been forgotten over time, and more than two thousand images of sometimes very hard to find records, for the first time ever presented all together in the same book. The tangible proof that Progressive Rock is still alive and kicking even after fifty years.

This book has revived memories of seeing After the Fire and Neal Morse in concert, of listening to King Crimson and Rush and of discovering the music of Geoff Mann and Twelfth Night. Here are more recommendations:

Reviews:

"Even ardent fans will find artists in here he or she will never have heard about, and those not all that familiar with the genre will have a field day or decade) looking up all the artists referenced here. The book itself, and all the artists referenced, makes this production a good starting point for progressive rock fans though, and a hard copy alternative to websites such as Progarchives." - Olav "Pros messor" Bjornsen: April 29th, 2018

"Last year when we reviewed an Italian-language breakdown of the 100 best prog albums, we had one wish: put it all into English. Curated by Italian prog collector Maurizio Galia, Prog 50 does precisely that, and with five other reviewers, along with a foreword by Peter Gabriel, it gamely tackles a huge task. Broken up with artwork and photos, although all in black-and-white, the text is clear, with notable references in bold, and a discography to go with each entry. The wizard hat goes off to translator Christine Colomo for making the content highly readable." - Prog 14 June 2018

"This book is stunning! Really recommended to everyone who wants to know everything about Prog Rock. Peter Gabriel's foreword is the best endorsement for this work. The English language is very good, modern and open to a light reading full of humour. It's almost impossible to count all the artists reviewed into this book. Groups, Songwriters and Bands from all the different corners of our planet. A fantastic 'Interstellar Overdrive' to the Prog Universe!" Baltazar Gloves, Reviews 2017

"In his foreword for this book, Peter Gabriel doffs his cap to a genre which doesn't follow the normal conventions on composition. He describes progressive rock as a rich and quirky vein of music that, at least in his own experiences was born out of letting our musical minds wander far and wide and straight out of any boxes we were thrown in. These words echo throughout PROG 50's deep-drive into the old genre brave enough to incorporate elements of them all, dissecting key artists by country in order of importance (ranging from Kings, then Knights to finally the more obscure Troopers) with notes on their triumphs and releases. It's no surprise the English, Italian and German sections are substantial brimming with names of defiant rule-breakers, many of whom have been forgotten over time though what makes PROG 50 such an invigorating study is its dedication to the visionaries hailing from further afield. Aditus from Venezuela, anyone? While some of the descriptions are perhaps a bit basic, it certainly leaves no stoned unturned in its quest through prog history." AMIT SHARMA, Planet Rock Magazine

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aquael - Murat Begins.

Retail therapy

Just back from Lakeside. Not my usual haunt but I enjoyed a bit of retail therapy after what has been a fairly draining start to the week for various reasons. Came home with Candi Staton's His Hands, Springsteen's Seeger Sessions and Peter Gabriel's Hit; all from the Border's sale.

While in Waterstone's, I was skimming through the Lion Companion to Christian Art when I can across references to four artists - Charles Milcendeau, Henry Simon, Ben Boutin, and Rémy Le Guillerm - which, although uncited, can, I think, only have been gained via my review of Humour et Critique dans l'art d'aujord'hui published in Art & Christianity 48. The artists are not among those who would normally appear in a survey of modern Christian Art as, with the exception of Henry Simon (a regional, as opposed to a national or internationally artist), they do not have major bodies of religious works or commissions. In addition, the works described in the book by these artists are those highlighted in my review and the details given about the works and artists are similar to those in the review.

While the Companion seems to be a generally comprehensive survey of visual arts created by artists regularly using Christian imagery or gaining Church commisions, I was surprised by the relative absence of acknowledgement given to those playing key roles in the visual art produced as part of the French Catholic Revival. Little mention seemed to be made of the works and influence of Maurice Denis and Albert Gleizes or of the artistic circle that gathered around Jacques Maritain.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Candi Staton - His Hands.