Sundry musings and gobbets from the web and from the head of an ordained minister and occasional human being …
[youtube]M4oRpcG_hR4[/youtube]
Someone reminded me of Belle and Sebastian last week.
It drove me to dig out my old cds and remember just why I bought them: tuneful, fey, humorous, yet sometimes viscous and unsettlingly off kilter.
I will be listening more. Meanwhile, I am trying to learn this: I like this song- there is a really good setting of it over a mournful French black and white film. Youtube have blocked it, which is a shame as it sums up Belle and Sebastian’s music so well.
[youtube]DPw8H-PmhGM[/youtube]
My random ipod shuffle this week unearthed one of the bleakest songs that I have in my collection.
If I was to name one band that I have not seen that I really want to, it would be this one, and this song- a tale of rape, unwanted pregnancy and despair- is one of their finest.
Still: it is not easy listening is it?
Posted for no other reason that I have been in Scotland these last few days and this is a Scottish group. And I like them.
[youtube]2fT6pssrES8[/youtube]
Music by this group, especially music from earlier in their career, reminds me of autumn. I don’t know why that should be the case, although the first music I ever bought by them over 10 years ago was on a chill autumn day.
There is something about the thin yet weary voice, a few simple chords and a wistful longing that suits my mood at this time of year. The singular world view of the lyrics also attract me. Not off this track but earlier in the album, the couplet:-
‘So I gave myself to God
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok’
always gives me a wry smile…
Plus this is from the closing scene of a Truffaut film; what could be more artistic for a Friday in late September?
[youtube]Q5SMsuz0yrE[/youtube]
OK it may not be much in the world of blogging: eg http://perezhilton.com/Â probably gets that many hits an hour (true…I don’t have quite so much celebrity chat and A listers, B listers and Z listers don’t want me to notice them), but last week I hit 10,000 hits on this blog (around 1300 on the old one).
For someone as anally-retentive as me about numbers, that is a big deal (in fact it is nearly 12,000 now. Not that I’m counting. Much…ok I am…).
Thank you for reading and the comments.
This blog has been useful for me as a kind of confessional, a way of forcing me to read, a way of making me reflect (I hate that word), think and issue random rants….. even though as Stuart Murdoch (above)sings on ‘This is just a modern rock song’:-
‘I’m only lucid when I’m writing songs’
….I’m only lucid when I blog.
Thank you/diolch yn fawr
Â
Â
‘I’ll only buy a book for the way it looks
And then I stick it on the shelf again’
(Belle and Sebastian: ‘This is just a modern rock song’)
I’ve got to that stage: I really could do with sitting down, carving out some space and reading. I read a lot, but mostly just surf- both web stuff and printed stuff.
I finally got down to reading something, but it was only a booklet. However, it was so good, I read it again and again….and I’m now poring over it once more.
Now I am suspicious of anyone recommending a book, particularly a Christian one. Especially if it has a title like ’17 steps to finding your destiny’ or ‘Cure your church from all ills in 4 easy steps’. At 43, I don’t want to know how to fix x, y or z and I distrust people who want to tell me.
I picked up this booklet called ‘The road to growth less travelled: spritual paths in a missionary church’ from  http://www.grovebooks.co.uk/cart.php?target=product&product_id=17246&substring= and I’m finding it to be one of the most sound, profound and practical things I’ve ever read. I plan to post bits of it over the next few days, although maybe not every day.
Here’s one quote that sets the scene:
‘The very factors that are jolting us into missionary mode-numerical decline and financial crisis- are not, in themselves, Christian motives for mission. In fact they may easily distort both motive and method.’
I’ve heavily underlined that. I wanted to shout ‘Yes’, closely followed by ‘I like you. I want to read you some more’.
I’m tired of panic about ‘saving’ a, b and c. I want to run when I’m surrounded by ecclesiastics playing the numbers game. Boasts about ‘success’ make me depressed and feel hollow. When I hear about ‘how many come’ being the sole measure of anything, the life slowly drains out of me. Kind of like the richness of the Christian life, the big questions and the uncertainty and vitality of following Jesus reduced to beige cardboard…
The author: David Runcorn. Don’t know him, but he has a nice beard. Always trust people with beards…