5th Sunday Worship

When people tweet about it on Sundays and tag their church or worship team I often wonder what makes for a brilliant/amazing worship service/experience.

Yesterday we the worship team at our church were publicly thanked in the service by the minister for the worship. This is as rare as a month with five Sundays.

There’s not a particular formula we follow to get a 'good' result. We put in the practice as we do during most weeks and through warming up on Sunday mornings. 

We are all unpaid amateurs who love Jesus and love music as much as each other (work out what I did there.)

We have a fairly strong core of rhythm and bass most weeks. The music is mainly led from the keyboard and we three keyboard players have different styles. Within the group we have different ideas about; what we like; what works and doesn’t; songs that we like that don’t get picked; songs that we don’t like as much that get picked just a little too often.

My actual personal preparation that I do when I’m on the rota to lead, is for an hour or two on the Saturday:

• play through all the songs, partly about word familiarity and partly muscle memory exercise*
• work out and finalise how the songs in the first set might link together musically if we’ve not already done it in the week
• think about instrumentation, particularly if there are strengths and or weaknesses among the players on the rota
• drink in the words, which is often a deeply personal act of worship and prayer and nearly always for me more meaningful than Sunday itself

I can honestly say I didn’t spend ages praying when I woke up yesterday morning. And as more often than not we were a little late leaving the house for church to get there for the time I’d asked everyone else to be there. My left ear was a little blocked and I forgot my glasses too (*lack of glasses is where the muscle memory practice really kicks in.)

And so I will continue to say it's something of a mystery how things turn out.

The majority of the time we turn up, do our stuff, and someone might say ‘thank you for the worship’ if they are stuck next to you in the coffee queue after the service or if the minister has done a ‘be thankful’-type message.

If we had a prayer/preparation formula that we followed it would cease to be about God. And God doesn’t actually need us to do the work of corporate worship, but He wants us to.

Not a deep piece. Random musings. Just musician, writing here and recording thanks.

when a month is a wipe out

This has been a month of protracted sadness, more where the see-saw has been doing its up and down daily work as usual but it has been harder to bounce back out of the down parts. Hard slog and wrestling.

It is fast approaching those two months of the year when the journey to and from work will be in darkness, encompassing each end the light in between while I work the hours at the job which may or may not run into next year.

In the middle years of life I have greater self awareness than ever to know when the sad times are taking over and more self-help tools and other people walking the same walk than ever to deal with them.

I know this month was situational triggered, a small insignificant thing looking at it, which underneath has created currents pulling me helplessly this and that way. I have much to look forward to with the imminent arrival of a grandchild. Right now I fear I will not feel the joy when this happens.

I know I will rise again eventually, life-savers keep hauling me towards the surface. Singing  is restorative in a way that nothing else is (even when as this week others are bantering over the top their preferences on the finesse of presentation.) There was a glorious rainbow end refracting against broody skies last Monday, just a brief vertical show on the day six years after Mum died. Enough to remind me that I am remembered.

I have been quieter on Social Media and more under the radar in life for a while but like a lot of others (either on Social Media or in life) it mostly goes unnoticed unless I say something. Which is mainly awkward (for others when I say something and me when I don't.)

So for those of you who are complicated, quieter and more under the radar than usual...

Yeh darkness is doing its darndest to snuff out the light, but it is always light somewhere else and I am hopeful that sooner or later it will come back again.

a big fat 3 good things

The checkout assistant waited whilst I rummaged through my handbag for my purse. Not surly, gum-chewing impatience, just a quiet, all-the-time-in-the-world patience. As I inserted the credit card in the machine she said ‘You do like butterflies and turquoise don’t you?’ It hadn't even occurred to me that I was all matchy, matchy and I was genuinely impressed with her attentiveness and observation.

This weekend just gone we visited our son and daughter in law for the last time before they move south, taking them and our grandchild-to-be an extra 2.5 hours away. I have mixed feelings about them being so far away but I know they have heard and prayed about the God-whispers calling them into a new chapter of their lives. (And should you southerners not look after our grandchild there will be wigs on the green.)

We attended morning service at the church where D has been working for the past few years. We have been there a few times before and in different contexts. The prompt to recount these things is strong. It feels good to be thankful, but I know in tiredness, vulnerability, and motorway traffic jams, gratefulness will easily evaporate.

*****

26 years ago we attended just the one service in the same church when D was a baby himself. We stayed with the minister and his wife. She observed me with him and suggested I might have depression. She was the first person to ever mention it. Then I had no idea, but now I am grateful to her more than she will know. Young motherhood was one of those pressure points which made the depression rise to the surface. It is not until much more recently that I have accepted depression as part of who I am, not just another sorry episode of failure (except during the tired and vulnerable moments.)

Thankful she noticed.

Much more recently we went to another service at the church as a family, a rare free Sunday when we could all be in the same place with all our grown up children. The speaker was talking about times when money was tight for him and his family, when their children were growing up. Hand-me-down and severely price-slashed winter coats, familiar to ours in the years when we were still a clergy family. 

At the end of the service D turned to me and said to me ‘You gave up a lot so you could spend time with us when we were little and we always had everything we needed’ (Rough translation ‘almighty cock ups notwithstanding I think you did an alright job’ - I’ll take the compliment). I know that whichever way motherhood had been done, stay at home or working, the way would have been littered with mistakes on all sides.

Thankful he noticed.

And on Sunday just gone within those same old stone walls we sang these words:

You are my rock in times of trouble

You lift me up when I fall down

All through the storm, Your love is the anchor

My hope is in You alone

I was overwhelmed with thankfulness at what God has done with, for and through us over the years. In spite of all of us really.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer saying “Thus far the Lord has helped us” 1 Samuel 7:12

*****

This morning as I left for work a butterfly was gently flexing its wings on the wall by the front door. And then in the revoltingly overcrowded, standing room only train my nose was pressed up against the blouse of the woman in front (unobtrusive evidence and truly honestly not a selfie)

my heart will go on

I’m not a Celine Dion fan although I did once go to a concert of hers because someone had a spare, free ticket. And by virtue of tagging along I discovered the music of The Corrs, whose music I do love, so clouds, silver linings.

When our children were in primary school I did a little piano teaching. Celine’s song ‘My heart will go on’ sprang up everywhere at that time, making it a piece that a number of pupils wanted to learn to play. It was actually a great piece to teach balance between hands, with the aim of making the melody line sing against a flowing accompaniment. All too often as students wrestled with mastering notes, fingers and pedals the efforts sounded more like the deep, dark depths of the ocean that Jack Dawson sank into. But occasionally a pupil would master it well enough to perform in the end of term concert.

As the teacher teaching those who were not quite able to master it, the lessons were something of an endurance feat, and sometimes could not end soon enough. I’ve not been put off the song for life, but neither is it top of any playlists.

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2 Chronicles 7: 1-3

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. ² The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. ³ When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”

This morning we sang the Matt Redman song based on this passage ‘Lord let your glory fall’. And we sang it twice during the service, second time after an excellent message on Praise and Revelation. I was leading worship from the piano today, so given the time spent practising in preparation at home, warm up practice prior to the service and repeating it during the service I’d ended up singing those words quite a few times.

I’m never bored of hearing these things. It is one of the best ways in which God enables His goodness to sink into my bones, in repetition and rhythm, allowing thankfulness to diffuse into my heart and to know that His love endures.

Not endurance as in long-suffering, resignation, tolerance or sticking it out, but enduring timeless love as constantly encountering, meeting with, persisting and holding on.

Without resorting to cheesy song, He says ‘My heart will go on’ long after yours has given up, cooled off, forgotten or wandered off and I am committed to running after You, whatever.

she (5minutefriday)

Joining with the writing flash mob that is Five Minute Friday at the home of the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. #FMFparty

Five minutes on She

We often have the pleasure of knowing some remarkable people (we as in anybody, not just us personally.) One particular person in our life was Vi and she was already old when we came to know her, the sort of age that always made children gasp in disbelief.

She loved Jesus first and foremost and everybody loved her. Her face lit up when she was with other people and that joy spread infectiously, melting the meanest. Her prayers were like desert rain even though she was very self deprecating.

With failing health, at events she would often upstage everyone else by needing medical attention, either from a doctor friend or sometimes an ambulance would be called due to her advancing years. She often forgot to drink enough anyway and in her excitement of being with people, she would frequently eat too fast, or have just a little too much wine..

On the weekend of her 100^th birthday, she joined with us, her Jesus family at church. After the service we were to troop across the Car Park into the little hall to light the gargantuan birthday cake and sing our birthday wishes to the lovely Vi.

As we rose from our seats after the final song to make our way, music started. There was only ever going to be one song that could be played that encapsulated the moment and the person so perfectly.

when it gets too loud

Each weekday morning at the station at approximately 7:29am the tannoy on the opposite platform starts to make the announcement for the next southbound local train. And without fail the London express comes thundering through drowning out all the calling station names. Then all that is left of the announcement after the cacophony passes is an almost apologetic ‘operated by Northern Rail.’  I’ve no idea how the timing manages to be absolutely spot on each day.

***

That is life reflection at the moment.  

I know my well-being is not great and hasn’t been for at least a few weeks now. Way too much medicating with chocolate. Life, work and social media feel like they are all drowning ‘me’ out. Half the time I don’t know what I feel, another news topic flares up or a hot subject whizzes around twitter and my senses short circuit.  And the monkey on the shoulder hops from foot to foot jabbering amongst other things ‘you’re just jumping on the back of recent blog posts on depression and mental health, copying others by thinking of taking a social media break..’

Truth be known I’m not sure what I will do, but I am on a list for counselling. I also think I feel for the first time that I’m not totally scared shitless at the thought of darkness loitering again. One of those seasons which comes around periodically and lets itself in through the door for a sit-in.

I want to be able to articulate ‘it’ perfectly but for sure I don’t always know what ‘it’ is

How can I explain what deep down I don’t know?

***

I have also longed to explain how music has often saved me in tough times. How my soul has a deep affinity with interpretation of the dots and lines on a page. I don’t know how a particular combination of sounds (harmonies) in music might move me deeply. That Chopin’s dark thoughts have probably mirrored my own. Perhaps it is the best way for some of those pesky feelings to be dragged up from the deep, from the coal face to the surface?  

Time and again when I’ve turned up and sat at the piano with heavy heart and began to move fingers over the keys, whatever the piece of music may be, I’m not the same as I was before I started the piece. 

When I prepare songs for leading worship on a Sunday it turns out I am not just playing them over to make sure I am aware of how things might flow from one song to the next.The very act of exercising physical, mental and spiritual muscles together is something which irons my soul.

***

The whole effort of trying to explain sometimes turns in on itself. 

And the perfectionist pitches in for good measure, screeching grammar, poor choice of words, no good, no-one will understand, too much me, me.

But I do need to create, write, to sift and to dredge. 

And even if I don’t come out with understanding, the creases are a little smoother and the noise is not quite so overwhelming.

rhythm (5 minute friday)

Joining with the writing flash mob that is Five Minute Friday at the home of the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. Writing not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

Five minutes on RHYTHM

When we first came into being we lived so close to our mother’s heart. Our rhythm of growth and movement developing in time with the steady pulse of the beat of blood, coursing and intertwining round both our bodies.

Middle child used to carry and play bass drum in a Yorkshire Brass Band*. Charged with keeping everyone in step so they could construct their rhythms and harmonies around him he was the band's heartbeat. It was really pretty much out of the conductor’s hands once they were on the move.

And sometimes pulse is a completely noiseless; it is the lifeblood that underlies stanzas of poetry and the great symphonies of music.

Silent, constant and steady Your Holy Spirit is the foundation of our thoughts, our beings and our very lives.

Finally the very last thing to stop when we die is our own heartbeat, before we dance across the threshold and home into the arms of Our Father.

END

*anyone who knows anything about Brass Bands will know that Yorkshire is home to some of the worlds best. Not just a mother's boast :-)

a splintered song [25 minute friday]

I normally join with the community that is Five Minute Friday with the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. But it just didn't turn out that way and was more of a 25 minute friday :-) 

So to keep true to the #fmf spirit I've not linked up there this week...

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Do birds ever get sore throats? Their songs never seem to run out as they flit from tree to tree, freely tweeting. You never see the invalid in the nest having a duvet day with lemsip.

Sometimes I feel like an inarticulate, wordless mass of person. Like a dodo extinct or some other form of wingless bird.

But give me a song and my vocabulary can soar high above everything, like an eagle on smooth on the thermal wind currents. (But if it is the early morning the initial sound can be a little inelegant, rather like a gangly flamingo on take off.)  

In flight my heart sings with fluid melody and the words are poetry, not stuttered staccatos with hiatus, concomitant with shame flushing on my face.

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A thousand songs in the rainbow stacked books. Unending ways to paint You with scripture and song. We have so much, yet we have so little, so rich and yet so poor.

With voices, brains and hearts we have the innate ability to sing and express our inner selves. But sometimes in the process, short-circuits cause a block in the communication.

Broken and fading hallelujahs

                                         hallelujahs

                                                 hallelujahs

                                                         hallelujahs

                                                                 hallelujahs

                                                                         hallelujahs

Father I want to be like Matthew, man trapped in a child’s body. He who unrestrained flailed his whole body with wild abandon in a field when we sang these words. He was your cheerleader that day *\o/* we were the unenthusiastic spectators. So rich and so poor:

So like a child in Your sight
I dance to see Your delight
For I was made for Your pleasure, pleasure

And like Mary whose soul magnified You when she knew the most precious thing was happening deep inside her own body and everything came flooding out in word and song.

Pouring out

Your love in transaction with our meagerly offered melody

insistently reaches down to us 

and begins to mend the hallelujahs..

(Oh, and I also wonder if birds get splinters in their feet when they land on branches?)

love that doesn't come back empty handed

Our Senior Pastor has been on sabbatical for a few months, therefore we have enjoyed a variety of visiting preachers. Each one has spoken on a different biblical character and to accompanying their sermons has been a diversity of presentation methods. Yesterday was the turn of Esther and the speaker used classic works of art as backgrounds to his powerpoint slides. (And like a cashier operator in the days prior to automated queuing, he startled anyone who was thinking of napping with a firm ‘next-please!’ to the pc operator).

Esther is one of the books of the bible that doesn’t mention God directly but has His fingerprints all over it (I’m sure this is a statement can be attributed to any number of people.) To be honest I didn’t pay terribly close attention to most of what the preacher was saying; it was largely a plot summarisation. But one phrase did register clearly:

Love letters from God

After the service we chatted generally with people, we are in a large church and still getting to know people. The Scotsman was chatting with a friend of ours who is newer than we are and I was flitting in and out of the conversation. Sadly her dad had died last month and she was telling us about the day of his funeral. How some friends had rallied round and tidied up his garden so they could all spend the afternoon sitting out in the sun after the service, with the feeling that her dad was looking down. The Scotsman shared the story of how the rainbow appeared after my mum’s committal at the crematorium.

Both these things, making sad days special

Love messages from God

Later in the evening I tackled the ironing whilst the feature film Australia was on TV. It has a strong theme of love running through it and several interweaving storylines, great scenery and a good musical score. The song Somewhere over the Rainbow is also a recurrent theme (the character Lady Sarah teaches it to Nullah the boy of aboriginal heritage just after his mother dies and it is later assimilated in song and also on the harmonica.)

I could feel tears pricking my eyes at the first rendition of Somewhere over the Rainbow. By the time Nullah was playing it near the end of the film on the harmonica, for the sound to carry through the fog to the harbour so Lady Sarah (Mrs Boss) could hear it, I was adding more than steam to the clothes being ironed!

I also love Eva Cassidy’s version of Over the Rainbow and have often used that gentle and understated version as a piano piece when playing for funerals. There is much love and hope in rainbows.

The words that come out of God’s mouth are not always physical words and the manifestations of His love are as many and varied as we are.

That is Mystery and Divine and beyond our understanding.

I love it when God reaches down in our interweaving stories with His love messages.

Time after time (if we are listening)

Isaiah 55 v 8-11

I don't think the way you think
The way you work isn't the way I work. God's decree.

"For as the sky soars high above the earth
so the was I work surpasses the way you work
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don't go back until they have watered the earth,
doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
so will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty handed.
They'll do the work I sent them to do,
they'll complete the assignment I gave them.

the piano

The #concretewords link up currently lives at Nacole's place at sixinthehickorysticks join in with us over there. To find out more about #concretewords, click here

This week's prompt was utterly irresistible and you get me just about as authentic as you will get. 

It is - the piano

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88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Frail, tiny, elderly lady leaning with her arm for support, on the curve of the wing-shaped case of the grand piano. Gently waving her arthritic hands in time to my tentative playing of elementary pieces from the old primer. Her long necklaces gently swaying as she moved within confined space, teaching, imparting and carefully cultivating.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Stumbling self-consciously through ‘Solo per cembalo’ for the pivotal grade examination. Teenage hormones crushing confidence, fingers falter and hit right notes at the wrong time. The corner of the eye sees the examiner is disengaged, concurrently absorbed in picking his nose and writing, scratching deeply the scathing remarks into the paper.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Realising in mid-teens that I could use the piano to reproduce songs heard just a few times and without needing music. Guided by intuition and a sizeable aural memory bank, I was able to adopt a style allowing flexibility away from written music and enabling freedom to worship in song. It was a crucial juncture, this acknowledgement of a God-given gift and was the spur to re-engage with it fully and go back to piano study after a break of a couple of years.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Challenging Nanna to a chromatic scale race from the extremities to the middle of the piano playing all 88 keys in sequence, her ascending, me descending. She herself weakened and recuperating after a bout of pernicious anaemia having spent much time with her terminally sick younger sister. Her hands where the olive, Olay drenched skin had long given up its elasticity, still deceptively agile and we reached the 44^th note in the contest at roughly the same time. Motor skills unused in decades still resident in her dancing digits.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

University teacher whose often sherry-seasoned breath filled the small, sound-proofed box rooms, where we took lessons. His imagination that paced corridors and opened doors to previously unknown pieces. Favourites were aural impressionist paintings by Debussy and peculiarly, beautiful pieces published after composers’ deaths, where I learned to master the art of complex musical fractions, four against three. ‘Pedal with your ears my dear!’  he often cried, one of the most lucid lessons he left with me.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Now as the teacher watching over pupils who wanted to do-it-all. Listening to the Dying Swan, dead already within a few bars. Admiration for the boy whose fingers assuredly flitted with a feisty lightness through the De’il Among the Tailors, but who otherwise never uttered more than a few words. Adult airline pilot who wanted to play Concertos but vanished from the radar within a few lessons. Tentative pensioner, confidence scarred, Jesus her best friend later in life, duetting  together I know Him so well, art never more appropriately mirroring life. In all the learning, pedagogue always being educated by the apprentices.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Music is an essence that leaks out of my pores and has passed to the next generation. We encouraged each one of our children to pursue the study of at least one instrument and to learn to love music. As a mother at the piano I was able to help them over the years, sitting with them while they practised, to foster the discipline and for them coming through to nurture their own genetically inherited gifts. (This process was definitely not without tears, tantrums and much wallowing of the artistic temperament on all sides). The blessings have multiplied and each child is today involved with music at their own church. I was in floods of tears the first time I heard our eldest son lead worship (not least because he and I probably had the most arguments about practise but also knowing that his musical gifts have been clearly blessed by the Holy Spirit.)

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

To play the black and white keys for Your glory Father whether alone or with a team of fellow musicians. To play, to sing your praises so Your Holy Spirit enables every fibre of my being, heart and soul to give to others a small portion of what you have lavished upon me. Sometimes creating roadblocks by desiring affirmation from others to boost fragile esteem, for them to say that You have blessed them, so in turn I can feel warm, fuzzy goodness within. Other times feeling overlooked because others' personal preferences are different and another musician is exalted with plaudits. 

But exactly who am I to say how your love, grace and mercy are made known to others? Discordant and hollow piano with broken strings and rotting case is left when Your love is absent.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Recently I was playing Abide With Me on the piano to practise for a funeral, where I needed to lead the congregation in singing as well. The hymn has the effect of invoking tears easily, there’s just something about it that does that to me. Perhaps it is having heard it played by Yorkshire Brass Bands (the world's best) or Emilie Sande’s soulful performance at the Olympic opening ceremony. I figured the best thing was to keep playing and singing it out to execute the combination of notes, giving the right weight to rich harmonies and to make the words more habitual so as not to be taken over by emotion.

In the repetitions God suddenly whispered at a junction with only me in the audience, the significance of just these four words ‘ills have no weight’. It is something that I can't explain adequately in words yet, partly because it's one of those situations you need to have lived to understand. So for now I will say it was extremely deep and significant. God is right there in the detail and because he knows me thoroughly the whisper was only for me, in that moment.

And this is why He wanted me to keep playing on so I could hear Him speak.

At the Piano, oftentimes a place of Holy Ground

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After Nanna’s death it seemed appropriate to invest some of the money she bequeathed to us into a new piano. This is the instrument that has so far moved with us three times.

It is one of my most cherished possessions, the Piano.

#lentphotos - 37 - hope

This is the bridge section in the song He became sin by Chris Tomlin:

All our HOPE is in You, all our HOPE is in You

All the glory to You, God, the light of the world

The music hits a long top note on the words hope (and also glory). Everything in the song seems to point to the word hope. 

Musically too the bridge section contrasts with the rest of the song, rising above and lifting out, before returning to another chorus.

Jesus our hope and the hope of all creation.