SOUL SURMISE

DEACON BLUE - PEOPLE COME FIRST

The near graffiti protest of the visuals for the video of Deacon Blue’s brand new single lights up the the compassionate punch of the prophetic message in the song.

In a new world that is all about me and us and seems very quickly dismissive of them, here’s a song remind us of something old fashioned, woke and so much better - People Come First. 

It’s a daring title, layered in meaning. In a messy foundation of a world that is dark and confusing both in the personal and in the wider society, this is a pop rock declaration to put people first again.   

 

Give me your tired folk

Yearning to breathe

Your huddled masses

Longing for freedom

 

Obviously it echoes Emma Lazarus’s poem The New Colossus pinned in bronze to the Statue Of Liberty, that old woke imagining of a welcoming America tragically trampled underneath a Trumpian selfishness for our own profits and wealth without sharing or caring.  

I have a little smile on my face as I consider a band without the right to be still going 38 years after I fell in love with their debut album Raintown, still climbing charts and declaring relevant mission statements like this across the airwaves.

For me it rings true about the Church too. I have lived and worked in the Church for as long as Deacon Blue have been making records and I often see things other than people becoming the priority. 

Doctrine, denomination, legalism, pietism all take their place as the drive in people’s lives and work. Jesus did not become a human, live among us and die on a cross over doctrinal meticulously worked out or for laws to be kept absolutely. 

The Father sent the son for the redemption of people and the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church for the healing of people and for those people to become themselves healers of people. 

We are not called to wealth but to people, we are not sent to doctrinal purity but to people, we are not asked to be law keeping perfect but to people.

As God looks around he sings People Come First. His compassion and servant heart longs to reach out to the huddled masses, tired, confused and rejected. His humility puts people above himself. If God did rise every morning he’d open the curtains of the Universe and cry - People Come First. It is amazing grace. 

I WILL TAKE THIS HERESY...

If this is what it's like to be unholy, man

If this is what it's like to be lost

I will take this heresy

Over your hypocrisy

And count any cost

 

These words from the last track, Carry On, on the new Mumford & Sons record really caught me. Theologically breathless I might call it.

Marcus Mumford, who I am assuming wrote these lines has almost expressed my life and forty years of ministry. 

If I could exegete the rock lyric with the Scripture I would bring John 8:1-11 to open it up. 

The story captured there is of the religious leaders, the theologically sound, the legalistically holy, bringing a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. 

They are declaring her unholy and lost. By the law they are right. Jesus could easily be declared the heretic by not helping them stone her as the law prescribed. 

Instead he is happy to be labeled the heretic, it would be such Hersey that would get him crucified, to take out the religious leaders hypocrisy. It is possible that they have set up this act of adultery, hence the absence of the man in the adultery sin, in order to catch Jesus out. 

It is the religious leaders who then become unholy and lost when Jesus reaches deep into their own souls and asks which of them is perfect enough to throw the stone. 

Ultimately Jesus love and salvation is what glows across the Temple as this story ends. The hypocrites go off to hide and a woman declared lost and unholy is found and sent to a new and different life, sensing the mercy and amazing grace of God.

A lot of the Church today is much the same as it was that day when Jesus walked the temple courts and forgave a woman caught in disgrace. I am even aware of “holy” men who try to catch out brothers and sisters in Christ for theological error; judging and damning almost for fun.

I also believe that there are three things that could become our driver in the spiritual life. Over emphasis on two of them are ultimate errors.

There are those who concentrate on theology. Pure theology. They think that they have seen better than Pau’s through a glass darkly, they are near infallible and somehow their job is to call out the lost and unholy with wrong doctrine. 

I just heard of a friend of a friend , leaving a church because of where the minister stood on the Calvinist/Arminian pendulum. Oh dear!

Legalism too. People are in and out dependently how they perceive or respond to the law, that list of dos and don’ts. Sometimes it is going to a pub, or listening to certain music or who you might be friends with. I heard of a couple thrown out of their church when one of their children changed faiths. Oh my.

Theology and the law have their place but I prefer to be driven by Jesus, his love, his way of life and his ability to work through the conundrums of behaviour and judgement, as he did with the woman dragged to him in the Temple. 

With Jesus and his grace as the energy of faith, I can hold different theologies with brothers and sisters and be in close fellowship. I can also find myself re-humanising those lost and unholy in the eyes of others. 

For me, discipleship is a daily dilemma of decision making. I’ll take this heresy to stay as close to the Jesus of John 8 as I can. I want to follow him so close that I gather his dust on my clothes.

SUNSHINE ON LEITH - ALL GROWN UP

I am a believer in songs that grow up. Songs that might be received well on release but over the years become more weighty, more powerful, more important.

Late last night as I flicked channels I caught Coldplay on BBC Radio 2's Piano Room right there on TV. I came in near the end. They were going to do a cover.

Band member Guy Berryman tells us that three days before he heard The Proclaimers' song Sunshine On Leith for the first time. He was in the bath. Now how a Scottish musician could have avoided such an iconic song mystifies me but he sent it to Chris Martin who hadn't heard it either. Not Hibernian fans obviously. 

Martin speaks of it as having quality and soul, 'astonished good' he calls it. He does mention listening to Hibernian fans singing it. He also speaks of The Proclaimers catalogue and their importance. The Reid brothers are two of our most underrated songwriters. 

For me, it was almost tattooed on my heart in 2016. Something truly spectacular happened and my and The Proclaimers' favourite Scottish football team that I had followed since I was 8 years old won the Scottish Cup… for the first time in 114 years. Yip, since the year my Granny Stockman was born!

As the captain lifted the Cup the crowd broke into the Hibees’ Terrace anthem Sunshine On Leith. A sea of green scarves singing in unison at such a moment is a wonderfully emotional moment (catch it on YouTube) There have been articles written about it as a terrace chant and how special it is that Hibs fans only sing it in very special moments. 

Yet there is so much more to this song than a Cup winning chant! As a hymn this has everything. As well as its sense of place, Edinburgh’s beautiful Leith, and its sense of the personal romantic love, there is deep spiritual connection. It has its transcendence. God as Chief is recognised and the song rings with thanksgiving and praise! 

It has catharsis and the hopefulness of healing. In my Masters dissertation I highlighted what I called “prophetic stimulants”. The core of a song that gives it potency for personal or social transformation. This song has a range of them in just a few minutes. 

Another Scot, one who had his finger on the musical pulse more than Guy Berryman, was David Tennant, a Doctor Who. Tennant did a very understated version on the BBC Children In need record Got It Covered. It threw another hue. That Coldplay were involved with another Doctor Jodie Whittaker on her fine version of Yellow on the same record... come on boys. Pay attention!

Of course it is a film too but me the most authentic cover has to be Blue Rose Code when they add it to another ode to the city - Edina (catch it on YouTube). It is soul tingling in its sense of grace, gratitude and devotion.

When I bought Sunshine On Leith as a CD single in October 1988 I could not see it becoming what it has, a song to be sung around all human camp fires. 

 

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

You saw it, You claimed it

You touched it, You saved it

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Your beauty and kindness

Made tears clear my blindness

 

While I'm worth my room on this earth

I will be with you

While the Chief, puts sunshine on Leith

I'll thank Him for His work

And your birth and my birth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I am a believer in songs that grow up. Songs that might be received well on release but over the years become more weighty, more powerful, more important.

Late last night as I flicked channels I caught Coldplay on BBC Radio 2's Piano Room right there on TV. I came in near the end. They were going to do a cover.

Band member Guy Berryman tells us that three days before he heard The Proclaimers' song Sunshine On Leith for the first time. He was in the bath. Now how a Scottish musician could have avoided such an iconic song mystifies me but he sent it to Chris Martin who hadn't heard it either. Not Hibernian fans obviously. 

Martin speaks of it as having quality and soul, 'astonished good' he calls it. He does mention listening to Hibernian fans singing it. He also speaks of The Proclaimers catalogue and their importance. The Reid brothers are two of our most underrated songwriters. 

For me, it was almost tattooed on my heart in 2016. Something truly spectacular happened and my and The Proclaimers' favourite Scottish football team that I had followed since I was 8 years old won the Scottish Cup… for the first time in 114 years. Yip, since the year my Granny Stockman was born!

As the captain lifted the Cup the crowd broke into the Hibees’ Terrace anthem Sunshine On Leith. A sea of green scarves singing in unison at such a moment is a wonderfully emotional moment (catch it on YouTube) There have been articles written about it as a terrace chant and how special it is that Hibs fans only sing it in very special moments. 

Yet there is so much more to this song than a Cup winning chant! As a hymn this has everything. As well as its sense of place, Edinburgh’s beautiful Leith, and its sense of the personal romantic love, there is deep spiritual connection. It has its transcendence. God as Chief is recognised and the song rings with thanksgiving and praise! 

It has catharsis and the hopefulness of healing. In my Masters dissertation I highlighted what I called “prophetic stimulants”. The core of a song that gives it potency for personal or social transformation. This song has a range of them in just a few minutes. 

Another Scot, one who had his finger on the musical pulse more than Guy Berryman, was David Tennant, a Doctor Who. Tennant did a very understated version on the BBC Children In need record Got It Covered. It threw another hue. That Coldplay were involved with another Doctor Jodie Whittaker on her fine version of Yellow on the same record... come on boys. Pay attention!

Of course it is a film too but me the most authentic cover has to be Blue Rose Code when they add it to another ode to the city - Edina (catch it on YouTube). It is soul tingling in its sense of grace, gratitude and devotion.

When I bought Sunshine On Leith as a CD single in October 1988 I could not see it becoming what it has, a song to be sung around all human camp fires. 

 

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

You saw it, You claimed it

You touched it, You saved it

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Your beauty and kindness

Made tears clear my blindness

 

While I'm worth my room on this earth

I will be with you

While the Chief, puts sunshine on Leith

I'll thank Him for His work

And your birth and my birth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

IMAGINE - A SECULAR SONG... A PRAYER!

photo: The John Lennon Wall in Prague by Paul Bowman

 

Gareth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood sang John Lennon's Imagine at former US President Jimmy Carter's funeral. The commentators on BBC fumbled with why this song, a secular song, might be sung. Many of you might wonder. 

As a kind of amateur Theo-musicologist I find it perfect for a human being who was always imaging a better world and giving himself to it.  We need to imagine before we can act and transform. Here's my take on this classic song.

 

“Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try…”

 

Imagine is John Lennon’s finest moment. It is his Yesterday. His Something. A year after The Beatles, in his big house in Surrey, Lennon wrote this hymn to change the world. It is utterly beautiful from the piano playing, to the melody, to the lyrics, to the brother and sisterhood of humanity sentiment. Klaus Voorman is right when he says that they should have released just the piano version.

If the whole song is Lennon’s attempt at his own Sermon On The Mount then that opening line is most iconic of all. Many conclude that this is an atheist hymn, a humanist hymn. Some whacky Americans who think that any kind of interest in helping of the poor is Soviet styled Communism might even find reason to refuse a man a Green Card because of such a song. 

Now I need to not be naive. John Lennon ran on a lot of momentary surges of adrenaline. As his son Sean said, while hosting a radio documentary to mark his dad’s 40th Birthday, Lennon changed his opinions every couple of years. 

Imagine was written at a time of political interest that was very absent from his final Double Fantasy record. From 1969 to 1972 John Lennon was all about revolution and Imagine was perhaps the most beautifully crafted protest song ever written. As he said himself it was Working Class Hero with a big dollop of sugar on top! 

When you imagine something you are thinking beyond the reality before you. Imagining no heaven kind of suggests that there is a heaven and you need to somehow imagine it away.

This is not creedal or theological. It is poetry. Lennon is making a point, not about the existence of heaven but about doing something about the state of the world now. It might even be a dig at the church for lying back and waiting for the sweet by and by rather than bringing God’s Kingdom here… now.

I have grown to see Imagine as some kind of prayer. Interestingly Lennon cited about prayer “in the Christian idiom” given to him by African American comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory as an influence on the song. In his book The Gospel According To The Beatles, Steve Turner tells us that Gregory didn’t remember what the book was but it was about positivity. 

The Imagine idea came from Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono; many of his ideas did. She had a book called Grapefruit in which she imagined weird things in keeping with her avant garde art approach:

 

Imagine the clouds dripping.

Dig a hole in your garden to

put them in 

 

Lennon took Yoko’s crazier idea and earthed it.

Yet, for me imagining is what prayer is. You have to imagine what you are asking God for. If that is a change in my own life, I need to imagine it. If that is a change in someone’s life around me I need to imagine it. If that is transformation across my neighbourhood, city, nation or world then I need to imagine it. Peace needs imagined. Justice needs imagined. Hope needs imagined. Love needs imagined.

Yoko Ono still believes that the imagination is the power in itself. I don’t. I believe that the imaging leads to prayer and from prayer to action. When I recite “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” it fires some serious imaginings. I then have to open my eyes, get off my knees and offer myself to God as an answer. Just imagining ain’t cutting it with me… or the world!

Which brings me back to that opening line. I have often said that imagining no heaven is easy. What if… what if John… what if we believed that there was a heaven and then imagined what it was like and imagined what it would look like right here on earth… now. That John would be in keeping with the spirit of your amazing song for the human race but it would now come with the creativity of God the Father, the revolutionary teaching and work of Jesus the son and the continued out working power of the Holy Spirit to make it happen. Imagine that!

DUST/DIVINITY by JOY OLADOKUN - Spiritual Songs Of 2024

Joy Oladokun is one of the songwriters keeping God in the conversation of the zeitgeist. On her brilliant new record. Observations From A Crowded Room, she has a number of spiritual depth charges going on. She is perhaps the ultimate in soul surmising.

I have been particularly drawn to some lines in Dust/Divinity where tells us where she is on this God thing.

 

'Cause though it hurts me to believe, it kills me not to
And I am trying to find my way through the middle

I surmise that that is how so many of our 20s and 30s who grew up in church feel today. What they were raised on hasn't equipped them well enough for the challenges of secular world yet though they stop going to church being bereft of it doesn't satisfy either. As Joy sings on:

 

And I am desperate to receive every good thing
From now until eternity, from dust until divinity

 

As a pastor who cares deeply about the generation who have attempted to deconstruct the ancient faith I long to be able to lead them to what Oladokun describes as the "middle".

I have surprised myself about my new obsession with Rome. One of the many things I love about the city is that it has reconstructed endless amounts of times, you can see a few of them in the one Basilica - San Clemente - but it has never got rid of the ancient. You are likely to find a thousand year old wall in some brand new state of the art building.

The finding your way to the "middle" as Joy talks about it, is knowing what to keep and what to let go of and how the reconstruction can bring out the best in the ancient parts that we do keep. As my friend Doug says,  "There is sustainable theology". What that is, is the journey of the pilgrim. I am keen to track it. Oladokun has given us a wonderful song companion for the road.

 

 

I WANT WHAT I DON'T NEED by VILLAGERS - Spiritual Songs of 2024

I stumbled across Culture Night on RTE and there was Conor O’Brien, who is Villagers, with an orchestra conducted by the awesome David Brophy singing I Want What I Don’t Need. I was enraptured. What a song.

 

And I want to feel like I'm in charge

Like an angry bull in a house of cards

And they'll all fall down when they don't take heed

Because I want what I don't need

 

Actually, every time I hear this song it stops my soul in its tracks. 

O’Brien is opening up what I think must be the most everyday, every moment dilemma of the modern human. What we need and what we are tempted to want that we have no need of.  

It reminded me of Rich Mullins’ (whom O’Brien will never have heard of) who sings: “I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want/Than to take what You give that I need”. 

Even the Christmas 2024 TV Call The Midwife dealt with this in a speech from Trixie, Lady Franklin, played by Helen George. Lady Franklin now living the high life in New York makes a fleeting return to Poplar helping a very poor woman deliver her baby in shocking conditions. 

Trixie speaks of the beauty and truth of the her work and the birth and then adds, “I have learned not to crave things that hurt me but I can’t stop craving the things that make me whole.” As in her vocation of serving those in need.

This is what this Villagers’ song is all about. It speaks to the individual soul and the entire society: 

 

And in the future I'll get better at

Buying shares and growing fat

And when there's less to share and I've gone to seed

I'll still want what I don't need

 

Jesus spoke of the wording of chasing things that last rather than things that fade away. He spoke of not worrying about things but seeking God and righteousness and/or justice. 

There are a lot of things out there that we don’t need. There are spiritual things that it would be good to have greed for.  

 

There's a fairytale we call "Free Will"

It was funny then, and it's funny still

And at the heart of it lies an endless greed

Because we want what we don't need.

 

Indeed.

WE PRAY by COLDPLAY - Spiritual Songs of 2024

One of the 5 Spiritual Songs of 2024.

The one with the most massive impact has to be Coldplay’s We Pray. A central piece in their eclectic and excellent album Moon Music, we first heard this one right in the middle of their headline Glastonbury set. 

It reminded of Stormzy, taking Glastonbury to church on the same stage in 2019.

It was not the first time that Coldplay had touched on the worshipful. Broken and the title track on Everyday Life headed that way too but here was a song not only about prayer. It is a prayer.

It’s personal and very Biblical:

 

I pray we wake in, pray my friend will pull through

Pray as I take in onto others, I do

I pray in all your love, pray with every breath

Though I'm in the valley of the shadow of death

 

It goes cultural:

 

Pray that we speak in a tongue that is honest

And that we understand hearts be modest

Pray that she don't lose herself in the mirror

She's a queen, she's a goddess

 

And ends up with the hope of heaven:

 

And so we pray

I know somewhere that heaven is waiting

And so we pray

I know somewhere there's something amazing

And so we pray

I know somewhere we'll feel no pain

Until we make it to the end of the day

 

As I wrote in my review of that Everyday Life record I am not going to declare Chris Martin as your latest Christian superstar. Martin grew up in a Christian home and has constantly returned to that well for lyrical inspiration and as with We Pray some of the practices of his childhood. He has distanced himself from that evangelical branch of Christianity and now calls himself an all-theist. 

Perhaps We Pray is about all faith’s praying. No one can be against that. It seems to suggest that wishing might not be enough. The prayer word suggests something more robust. It caused us to do The Gospel According To... Coldplay in Fitzroy!

As a song for Glastonbury, it seems to me to be perfect. It never ceases to amaze me where a God, dismissed by a modern British culture, turns up so many times in the midst… see also Nick Cave and Charlie Mackesy!

VAN MORRISON - FULL FORCE GALE

“And no matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will always return to the Lord

In the gentle evening breeze
By the whispering shady trees
I will find my sanctuary in the Lord

I was headed for a fall
Then I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale, I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again by the Lord”

        From Full Force Gale by Van Morrison

As the Storm Darragh has us cancelling everything for the next 24 hours, I couldn’t help be drawn to this Van Morrison hymn. Released originally on Van’s Into The Music record, Elvis Costello and the Voice Squad’sversion on the Van Morrison tribute album No Prima Donna heightened the spirituality of the piece. 

It was that version that was used to make it into a choir introit to my installation service in Fitzroy in November 2009. 

Full Force Gale a simple song of trust and dependency. It is a song of belief that God will draw us back and lift us up in the image of the Spirit as a full force gale. The strength of the Spirit blowing through our souls will bring life.

The Old Testament Hebrew word ruah and the New Testament Greek word pneuma mean wind but are used for the Holy Spirit. The image of the Holy Spirit is of a wind that blows through, sometimes gentle and refreshing, other times like a hurricane or full force gale.

The image of the full force gale in the life of a follower of Jesus that I love most is found in John chapter 3 where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. In verse 8 we read, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 

Now, first of all, let us note that the wind that blows here is not the Holy Spirit but the one born of the Spirit. As we fear the power of Darragh, hopefully from the safety of our homes, let us ask if the image we have of followers of Jesus is one of such power and energy and unpredictable force. If not, the Church needs to ask, why not?

If I go back to the sentiment of Van Morrison's song then my prayer is that those of us who feel that our lives are a little lost and directionless might find the full force gale of the Spirit itself lifting us up and returning us home. 

“And no matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will always return to the Lord

In the gentle evening breeze
By the whispering shady trees
I will find my sanctuary in the Lord

I was headed for a fall
Then I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale, I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again by the Lord”

        From Full Force Gale by Van Morrison

As the Storm Darragh has us cancelling everything for the next 24 hours, I couldn’t help be drawn to this Van Morrison hymn. Released originally on Van’s Into The Music record, Elvis Costello and the Voice Squad’sversion on the Van Morrison tribute album No Prima Donna heightened the spirituality of the piece. 

It was that version that was used to make it into a choir introit to my installation service in Fitzroy in November 2009. 

Full Force Gale a simple song of trust and dependency. It is a song of belief that God will draw us back and lift us up in the image of the Spirit as a full force gale. The strength of the Spirit blowing through our souls will bring life.

The Old Testament Hebrew word ruah and the New Testament Greek word pneuma mean wind but are used for the Holy Spirit. The image of the Holy Spirit is of a wind that blows through, sometimes gentle and refreshing, other times like a hurricane or full force gale.

The image of the full force gale in the life of a follower of Jesus that I love most is found in John chapter 3 where Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. In verse 8 we read, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 

Now, first of all, let us note that the wind that blows here is not the Holy Spirit but the one born of the Spirit. As we fear the power of Darragh, hopefully from the safety of our homes, let us ask if the image we have of followers of Jesus is one of such power and energy and unpredictable force. If not, the Church needs to ask, why not?

If I go back to the sentiment of Van Morrison's song then my prayer is that those of us who feel that our lives are a little lost and directionless might find the full force gale of the Spirit itself lifting us up and returning us home. 

COLDPLAY'S FIX YOU AS A PASTORAL SONG

There are things that if done in church take on different perspectives. I think of how I watched the Doubleband documentary 14 Days about the darkest days of our Northern Irish Troubles and Fr Alec Reid’s interruption for peace with hope and blood on his face. I watched it on BBC and thought, that would be a great sermon in church. It was.

The last song of Fitzroy’s The Gospel According To… Coldplay was another such moment. As Alison McNeill sat at the piano and sang perhaps Coldplay’s biggest song it became powerfully pastoral.

Chris Martin wrote the song for his then wife Gwyneth Paltrow after her father passed away:

Tears stream down your face

When you lose something you cannot replace

Tears stream down your face and I…

Tears stream down your face

I promise you, I will learn from my mistakes

Tears stream down your face and I…

 

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

It is pastoral. Being a husband in your loved one’s grief. There’s a little confession in there too.

As I surmised after Alison’s poignant performance I was drawn back to the morning sermon. We were speaking of the importance of community in the apprenticeship following Jesus. The book we are using is John Mark Comer’s The Way and in it he says:

“Vital that we participate in the “now and not yet” irritation of Jesus family the Church which is both beautiful and deeply flawed.”

What a weighty sentence. We have an honest description of the church. Irritation. Beautiful and deeply flawed. Indeed. 

Yet also a community that we are called to participate in, to be honed by our good and bad interactions with one another. It made me think that instead of criticising one another we understand that we are all deeply flawed. From there we realise and make conscious decision to not judge one another but to fix one another. Be pastorally engaged as Coldplay are…

… to fix you.

GRATEFUL by MARTYN JOSEPH for Thanksgiving

On this day when my American friends sit around, have a rehearsal for the Christmas Turkey and give thanks I am drawn to a song from earlier in the year from Martyn Joseph. For decades my Welsh friend has been writing melodies to the very poetic words of poet Stewart Henderson. 

You can tell a Henderson lyric. It is wordy like Dylan in the 60s but without the drugs and psychedelia. In their place we have words that are like can openers for the soul. Lines leap out at me and send me off in surmises. I am always thankful for them.

The song I am thinking about is Grateful from Martyn’s This Is What I Want To Say record. On such an American day I should add that down the years this co-writing pairing have delved deep into American geography and culture. No different on this one in a verse that crosses the ocean back to Martyn’s beloved Wales:

Grateful for the Rockies and the bobcat's cryptic call

The copper canvas of New England in the fall

Grateful for beloved Wales, the Gower in the spring

The stones of Bannau Brycheiniog from which the poems sing

Do you see what I mean about Stewart’s revelatory wordiness.

As well as love and place Grateful looks at life and its limitations and hope:

I'm grateful there's a countdown on this limited dimension

Grateful for the skylark's hint of infinite ascension

And God is strewn through it too. Having celebrated my own Church building’s 150th Anniversary last Sunday I have particular reason to be grateful and so I was caught by:

“Grateful for the fragrance of the varnished pew

Those long gone chapel Sundays that yearned for "All things new”

Grateful”

Amen. 

So I play this song today and send it out to American brothers and sisters enjoying their pumpkin pie. Stream it right now and have a great and grateful day.