Music

Image Credit Seb (Unsplash); for the prompt Rhythmic – In the wake of the rising sun comes the call of dawn; a song drawn from the chirp of birds, the flutter of leaves, the creak of stirring bones and the lap of waves carried on the breath of the morning breeze. Here on the edge of the morning in the quiescence of a lingering dream, the memory of the patter of your feet lives on. In the sumptuous symphony of nature’s call and response, the perfect fit of the lilt of your voice and the wind in the trees You return.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L6rkCmvP_o[/embed]

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-aJrd-gmo[/embed] Start walking with your head held high The future is bright, Heaven’s gates are open wide. Every trouble that you ever walk through Peace, my child, I am, I am fighting for you Lyrics from the Tenth Avenue North Song ‘ Fighting For You’, from the 2016 album Followers. Apt, for a returning Prodigal of sorts…

Image Source In keeping with one of my resolves this year to make a regular practice of prayer and bible reading a habit this year, I read the second chapter of Mark yesterday. In Mark’s account, Jesus forgives (and then heals) a paralysed man, calls and hangs out with Levi, a noted sinner and allows his disciples skip fasting, as well as pluck grain for nibbling on on the Sabbath. This leaves the establishment figures in a fit, their concern being that outward expressions of the law are being flouted by Jesus and his disciples. ...

It feels like the sort of thing that one knows intuitively; that music and memory are inextricably linked. Finding out that there is a whole slew of science (Google search) that supports this is intensely gratifying, in the same way I imagine that someone who stumbles on a hastily put together recipe for quick delicious food must feel if that recipe ends up being celebrated by what I suppose is the more discerning palate of a Gordon Ramsey or a Jamie Oliver. Time and time again when I reflect on a song from yesteryear, I find that the where, who, what and when are indistinguishable from the song of the time, particularly where it was a song that I had on repeat for what feels in retrospect like days on end. ...

A first taxi ride since July, occasioned by an urgent need to head out into the wider ‘Shire for work, is how I end up in slowly moving traffic on Guild Street one Tuesday morning. As we inch along towards the first set of traffic lights, the announcer on the radio points out what is bleeding obvious to us - that there are long tail backs on our favoured route. The taxi driver, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in that understatedly impatient way the young and restless have, gives things a few minutes before he fires up his TomTom device to assess what our routing options are. It turns out the longer route is the better one on this occasion - his device predicting that it is the quicker one by ten minutes. Being stuck with him, I shrug when he asks if I mind his taking the route. I don’t suppose I have a lot of choice, besides hopping out of his taxi and legging it, or calling off my trip entirely. Once we are out of the snarling traffic and heading out towrds my destination, the incessant tapping stops, all his nervous energy perhaps being dissipated by the manoveuring he has had to do to get us out of our spot of bother. ...

For the Wordpress Discover Challenge Prompt: Song - - 1995 was an interesting time to be young and Christian. DC Talk, The Newsboys and Audio Adrenaline were at various stages in their evolution from being the niche interest of church youth groups to becoming recognisable by mainstream music lovers. Seemingly out of the blue, Christian Contemporary Music was on its way to acquiring a sort of coolness that the work of the likes of Larry Norman and Rich Mullins had deserved but somehow never achieved. In my corner of the world, Hosanna Music’s body of work was the rave, a slew of live worship albums including a couple recorded in post apartheid South Africa (Tom Inglis’We Are One and Lionel Petersen’s Rejoice Africa) building on a collection that included several offerings from the likes of of Ron Kenoly, Don Moen, Bob Fitts and Randy Rothwell. ...

Finally pre-ordered the Let There Be Light album from which one of my favourite songs from this year’s Hillsong Conference comes. Ace!

It feels much longer than 12 days since I was last in London, mixing it with the young, free and saved at the Hillsong Europe conference but I suppose life and adulting can do that to you, particularly when that sometimes indecipherable line between work and life is crossed. Shed loads of emails and the cumulative effect of multiple weekends away finally caught up with me both in my work and personal lives, leaving me wondering if it was all worth it after all. All told, the amount of time I have spent scouring YouTube for snippets of the songs I heard, and the satisfaction going over pictures from that weekend still brings, suggests that there is still some lingering benefit. ...

Last year, I went to a different church for Father’s Day, keen to avoid the big song and dance that usually ensues on the day at my regular one. Being a very single thirty-six year old bloke — a few months shy of turning thirty-seven — does put celebrations of fatherhood in perspective, the realisation being that that phase of life is at least eighteen months away for me. I suppose rather than bemoan my fate, I can ask myself the difficult questions, trying to wrap my head around why I am still a single bloke. To be honest, the year of being thirty-five was the one in which I most seriously began to think and see myself as a father. Still though, a couple of liaisons down the road, the sense is very much one of getting to the party a tad late. ...