Sun, St Paul, Clean Bandit and Madness - Day one!

I promise not to write something every day. Who wants to know what I had for breakfast, lunch or tea? I'll only blog when something interesting happens that's worth the odd reflection or two. However, having said that, day one is probably worth a blog.  All that space ahead of me. How will I fill it?  When will I l finally cast the diary aside?

Sun, St Paul, Clean Bandit and Madness. A good place to start!

The long anticipated heatwave also begins but will it continue for 13 weeks I wonder?

Today I revisited the Biblical story which sort of underpins my theme. Paul found himself in Athens confronted by spiritual but not religious people. He treated them with respect and drew parallels between the unknown God they idolised and the real God he knew in Jesus Christ (Acts 17). Some hearers scoffed, some walked away but some believed. May I follow that example of patient engagement with the Spirituality of others.

Clean Bandit is my favourite techno dance classical fusion band at the moment (!) Watching them at my Glastonbury carpet picnic, it struck me that they are a perfect symbol of our multi-cultural, multi-dimensional spiritual but not religious society.  E.g. from the title song on their current album, 'new eyes':  these opening lines have been compared to a prayer of Adoration and supplication: (http://www.metrolyrics.com/new-eyes-lyrics-clean-bandit.htmlhttp://www.metrolyrics.com/new-eyes-lyrics-clean-bandit.html)

‘In the quiet of my room

I gather up my thoughts and questions

Could I ever be like you?

Could I ever be a person, so real and so true?

It seems implausible

I look at my reflection

If only I could say

The things I never mention

The things you never knew

And I'd like to thank you for the human I've become

I'm sorry if I've let you down

I'm trying, I'm learning as I stumble along

To see this new world through new eyes'.

Or later in the same song:

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved the world so much she gave her only begotten sunshine and dried her stained eyes....' (Discuss!!)

As for Madness - apart from the obvious- I'm taking a morning off sabbatical next Monday to conduct a funeral. The person we'll be remembering wouldn't have described himself as religious but was deeply into music of all kinds. His family was spoiled for choice in selecting three numbers to play at the service. One they finally settled on is an unusually mellow song from the normally nutty Madness, 'Forever Young' - 'so stay forever young; don't do what I have done, before paradise lost and innocence gone. '

 So my message will draw out some of God's eternal truths about repentance, hope and eternal life from the words of Suggs. How Apt!