The Food Of Love?

The American writer and minister Frederick Buechner says that we need to pay close attention to those special moments in life when something brings a sudden tear to our eyes.

He’s talking about those moments when, inexplicably, and sometimes embarrassingly, we find ourselves getting misty-eyed for reasons we don’t fully understand.

It could be something beautiful that does it; a sunset or a starry night, or the sight of a newborn child.

It could be something that stirs our souls – a piece of music we love, or a smell or sound or taste that fills us with nostalgia for a past we’d long forgotten.

It could be something we see or hear or read that awakens something within us – some nameless hope that we’re only faintly aware of in the back of our minds most of the time.

Buechner argues that when we find those sudden tears coming from nowhere, for no particular reason, God’s trying to tell us something.

Towards the end of last yearI taped the BBC Choir of the Year programme because Roo's piano teacher was conducting one of the choirs, and though I enjoyed their performance, two other choirs stood out for me.

The London Bulgarian Choir came out in traditional costumes and blew everybody away with their verve and incredible close harmonies. There's a plaintive element that tugs relentlessly at your heart strings, but the harmonies are sweet as honey. It's an intoxicating blend and on the strength of this performance alone I went and sourced a CD on the net so I could listen to more.

Chantage - the eventual winners - performed a remarkable piece called "Christ's Love Song", written by the composer Richard Allain. It's an incredibly complex piece, breaking into 13 parts at one point, but for me it's an aural picture of what it means to be held by the mystery of Christ's love.

Why the tears? Well, once again, it's the ability of music to point us beyond ourselves to the one who is the beginning and end of all things. The more meditative Bulgarian pieces, and Christ's Love Song, speak of the profound yearnings of the human soul, and the sweetness of our ultimate union with God.

And what's God saying?

Your heart is good, my son, and one day its longings will be fulfilled.

London Bulgarian Choir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GEDbKe038o

Chantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0QMkE8-B4M

One of those days

Some days you wake up and it's all just too much. At times in this job, life and work seem frighteningly co-terminous, like a Venn diagram where the two circles are so overlapping they're practically one.

I know that ministry is demanding, but this isn't the life I voted for.

Today I pulled myself out of bed with little or no energy for living; the tiredness spawning ten negative thoughts before breakfast. I am tired, not physically, but spiritually and emotionally. Tired of the drab grey shawl of responsibility which I wear as though it were my very skin. Tired of walking this lonely road with few companions. Tired of myself and what I seem to be becoming. Tired of carrying the weight of things I haven't managed to get done. Tired of feeling like my life is out of my hands. Tired of looking for a life in the middle of all of this. Today I could weep - and indeed have wept - at how utterly drained I feel.

Rosie, who knows me better than anyone, had the good sense to hear me out in the few moments we got together after breakfast. She is a wonderfully caring and strong person and I'd be lost without her. But this malaise runs deep. And my secret worry is that the problem isn't to do with ministry - it's to do with me, and my inability to order things well enough to follow this vocation and still lead a rich and fulfilling life. I don't think I'm any busier than anyone else in this line of work. Why is it I find it so hard to make room for those things that are life-giving?

I held all of this before God in a few quiet moments in the study this morning. It was good to be still for a while, though it felt like a guilty luxury. And in that stillness an unexpected memory surfaced.

It's the memory of a song I haven't listened to for years; a song called 'King of Birds' by REM. And what I was remembering wasn't just the song itself, but hearing it performed live when I saw them on the Green Tour back in about 1987 or 1988. Back then they were in their ascendency - all brash noise and jangling guitars - but in the middle of this raucous set they toned it right down and played this haunting, minimalist piece with Peter Buck on pedal-steel guitar. It was a truly magical moment - they held us in their hands and we knew it. Though you can find it on Document, nothing will ever compare to hearing it live in that context for the first time, and I doubt it would resonate with you in the same way.

Why that memory, though?

God, I need that surprise: that sudden connection with beauty. I need it to fill the cavernous, empty auditorium that is my soul and shock me into the realisation that something new and glorious and transcendent can happen to me again.

For whatever reason, that song (and one or two others) holds out for me a sonic vision of another world to which I know I belong, and which I'm heartsick for. The world where I am truly me, and you are truly you, and "all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well".

I caught a glimpse of that world today, from this dark place I'm in. And though it's not an answer, for now it's been enough.


Follow the link to see King of Birds performed live by REM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49AMohGRtow