Sunday 27 April 2014

Alzheimer's At Easter


The morning mist hangs
shapeless, without detail,
but clearly there,
 like the memories
which peel away to swirl
about me like a shroud.

But I don't mind
my life has been good,
by and large,
my memories are warm
and colourful, misty,
comforting around me.

I hear a voice,
in the distance,
very like mine,
swear words and crudity,
unwanted anger.

So I stay in here
where the small light shines
warm and comforting
like a candle
pushing back the dark.

Who was it who said
"I'll be back"?
I don't remember

http://gronow-one-name-study.blogspot.co.uk/

Sunday 20 April 2014

Seeing & Believing

“Thomas, Thomas, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty and the women have seen him!”

“Come off it, John, the women are deluded. I saw him with my own eyes: he’s dead!”

“Thomas, Thomas, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty and now we’ve all seen him!”

“Don’t be daft, Peter, you’re all deluded. He’s dead, we were wrong, it’s over!”

“Thomas, Thomas, I am alive. Come and see, come and feel.”

“Jesus, my Lord and my God!”

“Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.”
...

Thomas, ‘Doubting Thomas’, gets some unfair stick, it seems to me, largely because people get confused about doubt and faith thinking they are opposites. But the opposite of doubt is certainty, and church history shows only too well that blind certainty has little to do with faith. Faith is about trust, active trust, and the Bible’s use of ‘believing’ carries the same meaning, more often than not.

I know a lady whose life was kicked apart a few years back, from many directions at once, like Job’s. Her beliefs about God were smashed with it. Yet, somehow, in all the fog of doubt, there remains a spark, and still she is able to continue to follow God, with tiny faltering steps. She is amazing! Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.

I used to know a man, some years back, who was a recovering addict. He became clean at a Christian rehab, and picked up there a simple faith of hard certainties. It was necessary: addiction is an evil, horrible thing, which will attack and exploit any weakness, any uncertainty. It makes for a difficult walk in the outside world, with all its complexity and ambiguity, but he walked that line, through the glare of crystalline certainty, with precise, carefully placed steps. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.

Sometimes people have no choice, but what about the rest of us? How diligently do we investigate our doubts, how humbly do we see other points of view?
...

Thomas, Thomasina, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty. The women have met him, the men have met him, hundreds have seen him, most of whom were still alive when the bulk of the New Testament was written. The disciples were persecuted, tortured and killed, for claiming that Jesus is alive, raised from the dead, yet they carried on doing so. Most of all, as Jesus once told John the Baptist: 
“The blind receive sight,
The lame walk,
Those with leprosy are cleansed,
The deaf hear,
The dead are raised,
And the good news is preached to the poor.
...

Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed.

... Happy Easter ...

Sunday 13 April 2014

Harvey Andrews - Glad To Be Grey

 

Another weekend, another concert ... and another long drive and another late night. I wonder why this CFS flare-up is taking so long to clear! Yesterday was Within Temptation and Delain at Wembley - booked ages ago and postponed from January, so not really to be helped. Last Saturday was Harvey Andrews at Portishead.

Harvey Andrews is a singer-songwriter who was a major influence on my teenage self. I had a friend who played the guitar and had Andrews' Writer Of Songs album on constant repeat as he gradually learnt the guitar accompaniment, for what seemed like months. Angry songs, happy songs, sad songs: songs that told stories, often songs that took an unusual point of view.

There's a song about one of the students shot at Ohio Kent State University by the local national guard; a song about a British soldier in Ireland (see the link); a song about an early morning 'knock on the door' in any of the many totalitarian countries which go in for that sort of thing; a song about a bitter and angry gossip, questioning how she got that way (see the video at the bottom of the page); a song about a teacher who put his hand on a young girl's knee.

As I say, Harvey Andrews was a major influence; he retired a few years back, and now only does the occasional charity concert in the area he lives, around Shrewsbury. So for him to be as far south as Portishead is an unmissable treat (actually he'd been in Thame the previous weekend, but even I'm not that daft).

These charity concerts, under the banner Glad To Be Grey, are advertised as  “A celebration of maturity, with songs, stories, humour (and the occasional rant)”, which is an accurate enough description. Harvey Andrews gigs always included a fair amount of chat and stories mixed in with the songs (see the video at the top for a typical example). Now there is a bit more reminiscence, and a couple of stories from his autobiography replace a couple of songs, but he remains consummately entertaining and a fantastic singer (the very first song, I thought his voice did show slight signs of age, but after that it warmed up and was as good as ever).

At Portishead he sang a mixture of songs old and new, told stories, and played his guitar. The sound was good, and the atmosphere brilliant. A lot of people there had never heard of him before (they were there for the fund-raiser) but I think everyone enjoyed themselves enormously, singing along with the chorus songs, listening to the music, joining in the nostalgia (it was a church-organised event, so the average age was older than me), and laughing at his humour. Harvey and his wife, Wendy, were friendly and approachable as ever after the show, and I was able to pick up a fresh copy of Writer Of Songs to replace the old vinyl one I cleared out when we moved house.

All in all an excellent gig, long may he continue.


Friday 4 April 2014

Unfortunate Timing II

http://thetriffids.com/bad-timing/
So, was my last post, Unfortunate Timing I, just a moan about a difficult weekend? Whilst I reserve the right to moan and rant on my own blog, in this case no, it was always intended to be a lead-in to thoughts about, well, difficult weekends, or rather difficult times in general. It was also a bit of a review of a live show (most of it, grrr!), and the two themes didn't really work in the same post - hence parts I and II.

Who was to blame for the rough weekend? It is hardly reasonable to blame the family I helped move: they were at the mercy of their landlords and moving house always takes longer (and is more stressful) than you expect. Myself, for overbooking? Not really, my original schedule over the last few weeks was fairly busy, but not unreasonably so - one really can't duck out on life 'just in case' something else turns up and blows my CFS. The RAC route planner mistake didn't help, but that's why I normally look at both map and directions so I understand where we are going before we start ... in this case I had no time and BlackLin couldn't get the map to print. Maybe it's easiest to just blame God: he has broad shoulders.

Why blame anyone? By and large I don't trust the blame game and try to avoid it: sometimes bad stuff happens, that's life. But there's an inconsistency there: if we had made it on time, in spite of the tightness of the timing, I'd have said a quick "thank you" to God. Gratitude is a good thing. So surely it's only fair to respond to it all going wrong with a sarcastic "thanks a bunch"? Especially since I had been helping someone out.

http://www.thedirtyyouth.co.uk/But then, we did get all the furniture and stuff moved successfully, in the end. And we did safely get from Reading to Brighton and back, through some very heavy traffic, without accident or breakdown. Although we missed most of The Dirty Youth's set, the other two did get to do their fangirl bit and had posters signed by the band. One reason I try to avoid that blame game is that there's always more involved than my initial focus, and in the heat of indignation it is easy to get priorities topsy-turvy.

Anyway, I don't actually believe that every single thing that happens to us is because God made it happen ... not in that simplistic a way. I believe that we live in a world which was made beautiful but has become flawed, damaged so that things no longer work as they should. One day it will be fixed, but in the meantime good things should never be taken for granted and when things go wrong, that's the way it is. It's always worth considering if there are lessons to be learned, of course, but we have no entitlement to an easy ride, sometimes garbage will happen and we just need to pick ourselves up and get on with it.

Just perhaps God occasionally tilts things a bit in our favour, when it doesn't mess some other situation up, so it is still always good to be thankful, I reckon.

There is a balance, it seems to me, between being fatalistic, not even trying to make the world a better place, and taking everything too personally, obsessing about every little problem. An elderly rabbi once said, talking about far more serious issues, that the Jews have never believed that God will save them from going through difficult times, but have never stopped believing that He will always bring them through to the other side. That, for him, is a central part of what it means to be God's people.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Unfortunate Timing I

http://heavensbasement.com/?no_redirect
I'm not quite sure what I did, but somehow I mangled my back the weekend before last, leaving me unable to drive for part of last week. That was unfortunate timing, as friends were moving house this weekend, and had asked for help on Saturday, including with the driving. Luckily the back was less bad by then, especially after a hot bath, and I coped. I even managed to mostly resist helping carry stuff ... mostly.

They had someone else to drive on Sunday, which was useful as we had tickets to a concert in Brighton that evening, quite a long drive away, to see The Dirty Youth opening for Heaven's Basement. Unfortunately, in a piece of bad timing for all concerned, that driver's wife fell ill after his first run, so I got the call early Sunday afternoon. Just one more run needed to transport the last few bits and pieces, then get the van back to Berkshire Van Hire (although the dirty great Luton was a scary beast to drive, it was a nice - and surprisingly comfortable - piece of kit). "The last few bits and pieces" - except they had managed to forget to check a room that morning, so it was the last few bits and pieces, plus a fair bit of furniture, plus all the other stuff that goes with being "90% complete".

So we got the van back quite a lot later than I'd hoped, and I was quickly picked up by BlackLin and BlackSar in our car, and set straight off for Brighton, with just about time to get there for the start of the show. But not enough time to go via home, so not enough time for me to persuade the PC to print off the map of Central Brighton which I had found. So we depended on a print-out of directions from the RAC route finder. Which had Brighton Pier a mile down the road from where Brighton Pier actually is. Which is a tad inconvenient since BlackLin didn't have the postcode of The Haunt, which was the venue, but she did know that I'd said it was just opposite Brighton Pier.

That meant we made good time into Brighton, but still ended up getting to the venue late. Which was unfortunate timing when it was the opening act we really wanted to see. We managed to see a song and a half of The Dirty Youth: the sound was really good (this time), the venue was pleasantly busy, the band were brilliant ... and we got to see them for a song and a half!

The second support act were Glamour Of The Kill, a band from Yorkshire. Wikipedia describes them as 'post-hardcore'; I'd call them generic 21st-century pop-punk. They are like all the least interesting tracks on Kerrang, whizzed up in a blender and poured out, lukewarm. This Yorkshire band sings its own songs with an American accent - how's that for artistic integrity! What really got me, though, was the drumming. Generally I like hard working drummers, and he was working hard. He was also drumming absolutely flat, on the blandest possible beat - no push, no pull, no interesting offbeats, nothing creative at all: one two three four wibbly bit wibbly bit one two three four and so on. I really didn't enjoy Glamour Of The Kill.

Headliners were Heaven's Basement. They were much more convincing: for a start they had genuine stage presence - you could tell they were the headliners. They also played their brand of modern heavy rock with energy and skill (and proper drumming). I genuinely enjoyed their set, but there was no doubt they were dinosaurs: from the posey guitarist to the "if God invited me to Heaven I'd choose Hell' woffle (Dio did it far better decades ago) to the acoustic ballad with a heavy finale, they were basically reworking ideas from the Classic Rock era, just heavier ... nothing really new. One entertaining moment was when the lead singer went off to allow the posey guitarist to sing lead on a song: the sense of presence just vanished; for all his posing he had the stage charisma of a damp towel dropped by a supermodel. Although, to be fair, he was good on guitar. At the end of their set there was no real enthusiasm from the crowd for an encore, but they gave us one anyway, as the audience slowly trickled away ... including us.

I'd say Heaven's Basement were a decent band, but anachronisms - out of time.