Author: Jonnyfun.E

Now retired, and enjoying making music and writing. Living in Gloucester, historically an important port on the river Severn, and situated with The Forest of Dean and the Brecon Beacons to the west, and the beautiful Cotswolds to the east.
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Song for Today #10

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Grave Angels by Joe Henry.  I can’t find a link toa Youtube video, but you could probably find it on a music streaming service. 
I first heard a Joe Henry song in around 1994, and was hooked.  It was a track from the ‘Kindness of the World’ album, but I can’t remember which one.
This is a track from Invisible Hour.  I heard Joe Henry talking on a podcast a while ago.  He talked abpout his parents’ strong Christian Faith, and the way that music does a similar thing for him.  Music takes him to a place that is at the same time within him and yet beyond him.
The first two lines in this song talk about the way we know only so much about another person, even the ones we are closest to.  We are gathered together – physically in the same space, sharing life … We are hidden from view – still hiding, or at least hidden to an extent behind our innermost thoughts.  It reminds me of the Johari Window.  I’ll post on that next time, if you’re curious and want to know what that is all about.
By the way, if you want to listen to Joe Henry in conversation – it’s here: 
We are gathered together,

We are hidden from view—

In a tangle of laurel, we tear at our sorrow

Like bread and we start up anew;

Where a circus stands blazing

And steam engines brake and whine,

In a razed hobo jungle your lost and found wonder

Has risen and mixes with mine.


Then, foolish we are, in the presence of God

And what all his grave angels have done—

In love’s growling weather, if we’re dreaming together

Of a heaven apart from this one…
Apart from our own

I take this to be holy—

If futile, uncertain and dire:

Our union of fracture, our dread everlasting,

This beautiful, desperate desire.

The cloud darkens now just to harrow,

It crosses your heart like a hand,

But it’s cool like the shadow of all we can see by the

Light that we can’t understand

There’s a new year starting backwards,

From high up in naked trees,

That threw all their clothes like burning money

To the ground and all around our knees.

But we live outside of reason

And we’re called to stand out of time—

To hover above the rough river of love

That runs ahead but calls from behind.
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Christian Community

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a beautiful book ‘Life Together’ in 1938, during Hitler’s rise to power.  It’s an acknowledged classic.
He has much to say about community – here’s the heart of it:
Christian community is not based on anything that we have in common from a human point of view.  That is – it’s not to do with having similar backgrounds, or interests, or political views, or ethnicity, or social status,  etc, etc.
All of the above are about our natural, human relationships, desires and ideals.  These may well form the basis for political parties, clubs, and other activities, but the Christian community is not a common interest group. By contrast, Christian community comes into being simply because of our common faith in Jesus Christ. 
Anything else that becomes a foundation for Christian community will eventually fail, as we discover that our imperfections and our differences outweigh what humanly draws us together.
The only genuine uniting force is that common faith in Jesus.  We are one with each other only because we are all connected to Christ.
Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual, and not a human reality.  In this it differs from all other communities.  When the scriptures call something spiritual, it is talking about that which is created only by the Holy Spirit, who puts Jesus Christ into our hearts as Lord and Saviour.
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, page 18, slightly paraphrased.
So, when we look at our own Christian communities, we must keep this at the centre of our minds and hearts, to avoid some kind of visionary dreaming that would set us off looking for the perfect community through some other route.
And, when we look at our sisters and brothers in Christ, we remember that it is God who unites us in Christ.  If we lose sight of that, we will end up judging one another by some other human standard, and lose what is a most precious gift, our life together in Christ.
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Song for Today #9

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So much modern Christian worship music is clogged up with the same religious words and phrases that no longer have the power that they might have had once upon a time.  (if they ever had them).
This song is refreshing, using images that I find hopeful but not trite.
All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things …

You make me new, You are making me new

You make beautiful things …

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Song for Today #8

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The line that always gets me is the final line – Don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them.
You know that feeling when you’ve messed up, and you know you have.  Those times when we are our own fiercest critic, but it’s hard to own up to that to someone else.  Often it’s hard to honestly admit when we are wrong.  Here he does just that.  Jackson Browne wrote this song when he was 16.  Unbelievable.
Well I’ve been out walking
I don’t do that much talking these days
These days-
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
For you
And all the times I had the chance to

And I had a lover
It’s so hard to risk another these days
These days-
Now if I seem to be afraid
To live the life I have made in song
Well it’s just that I’ve been losing so long

I’ll keep on moving
Things are bound to be improving these days
These days-
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them

There are some great covers of this song, but Jackson Browne is impossible to top.  Glen Campbell comes close. 
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Song for Today #7

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Black Muddy River – Grateful Dead
This is the best version I could find – the original album version.  I was looking for a live version, but this is pretty hard to beat. It’s a Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter song – Bob Hunter wrote the lyrics to Black Muddy River when Jerry was in a diabetic coma in 1986. It was the second to last song that the Grateful dead played at the concert on 9th July 1995, just a month before Jerry Garcia died.  If you listen closely to this song from their last show at Soldier Field Jerry actually says “the LAST muddy river” in one of the verses. He emphasizes the word very clearly so there is no doubt that it was not an accident.  
The song that closes the 1995 concer is another Bob Hunter lyric, from much earlier – Box of Rain.  Hunter wrote the song with bassist Phil Lesh, at a time when Lesh’s father was dying.
“Lesh wanted a song to sing to his dying father and had composed a piece complete with every vocal nuance but the words. If ever a lyric ‘wrote itself,’ this did – as fast as the pen would pull.”  Lesh practiced the song driving to the nursing home where his father lay with terminal cancer.
The river picture in ‘Black Muddy River’ is a very ancient metaphor for death, and here in the lyric ‘I don’t care how deep or wide, if you’ve got another side,’ the hope is held out that this life is not the end. 
Even more than that … the words can speak not only of the aloneness that we face when dealing with suffering, but also of the hope that we will get through the trials that we are currently facing.
When the last rose of summer pricks my finger
And the hot sun chills me to the bone
When I can’t hear the song for the singer
And I can’t tell my pillow from a stone

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain
And the stars start to splatter in the sky
When the moon splits the southwest horizon
With the scream of an eagle on the fly

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And listen to the ripples as they moan
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

Black muddy river
Roll on forever
I don’t care how deep or wide
If you got another side
Roll muddy river, roll muddy river
Black muddy river roll

When it seems like the night will last forever
And there’s nothing left to do but count the years
When the strings of my heart start to sever
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And dream me a dream of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
And sing me a song of my own

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Song for Today #6

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I’m having a think about what I’m looking for when I’m choosing a song to share.  Work in progress. In the meantime, here’s today’s …
Bring ’em all in, bring’em all in, bring ’em all in,
Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all into my heart
Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in
Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all into my heart

Bring the little fishes
Bring the sharks
Bring ’em from the brightness
Bring ’em from the dark

Bring ’em from the caverns
Bring ’em from the heights
Bring ’em from the shadows
Stand ’em in the light

Bring ’em out of purdah
Bring ’em out of store
Bring ’em out of hiding
Lay them at my door

Bring the unforgiven
Bring the unredeemed
Bring the lost, the nameless
Let ’em all be seen
Bring ’em out of exile
Bring ’em out of sleep
Bring ’em to the portal
Lay them at my feet

Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in,
Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all into my heart
Bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in, bring ’em all in
Bring ’em all in,bring ’em all in to my heart

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Sacred Value

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One of my friends was talking to me about what he calls – ‘your sacred value’ the other day.  He had told me a while ago what his sacred value was, and I remembered it was something to do with not claiming to be the fount of all knowledge, but being open to others.
At the moment, he describes it in this way.  “I know nothing”
I hadn’t thought about it in a while, so I’m going away to have a think.
What’s your sacred value ?
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Slowing Down to Catch God

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What a great phrase.  I love the way that language works, and this phrase conjours up a brilliant image.
After watching the 30 minute video ‘godspeed,’ we realised that in lockdown, we have slowed down.  I know we’ve been very fortunate, and many haven’t had the luxury, but we have been in garden and that’s slow work.  Plants don’t just mature overnight.  We planted an apple and a plum tree about 18 months ago, and I know it will be a few years before we get much off them in the way of fruit.
We’ve walked pretty much everywhere in the last 10 weeks in lockdown.
I’ve been learning about baking bread – having mixed results, but making progress … slowly
We’ve cooked some tasty meals that take time to prepare.
We’re slowing down, and being more attentive to the world around us, and to the daily round.