Blessings #177 – Rediscovering lost music

Tonight I’ve been doing some voluntary ‘design’ work for church and I was looking for some music to accompany it. Borrowdale Boxing DayI wanted some instrumental background music to help my concentration so started up Spotify and picked a radio station.

After a little while I heard some music that I haven’t heard for what must be nearly 20 years.

I used to have it on cassette tape, that’s how old it was. The tape got played over and over when I was ay Polytechnic and trying to study.

It was played so often that it just wore out.

Hearing those notes reminded me of a little red JVC portable cassette player that I used to play it on when I wanted to focus in on myself. imageIt was the red one in the picture:

The particular music is a stripped back instrumental piece with a guitar and very minimal strings accompaniment.

The melody brought back all sorts of memories of early married life when Sue and I lived in a rented bungalow. We had time to sit and to listen and to be together.

It revived memories of pray times when I felt the presence of God in a way that I can neither explain nor describe.

The rhythms of those days rang down the years straight back into my mind and my spirit.

It’s left me with a bit of a dilemma though. Now that I’ve remembered it and know what it’s called should I purchase it and return it to my music collection? Or should I leave it as a memory, a reminder that I may one day again rediscover?

We can’t live in the past and yet the past is so much of who we are.

A friend recently quoted someone else on twitter saying:

The Bible describes salvation in three tenses: past, present, future. To ignore anyone of these tenses will skew our view of salvation.

How true.

(The music was from an album by John Michael Talbot called The Quiet)

Blessings #176 – Hovis Digestives

One of the most popular posts on this blog is one about McVItie’s Chocolate Digestive. I want to be clear though, it’s not the only digestive in my life. McVitie’s Digestives, and McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives specifically, are only good as sweet biscuits. When it comes to a biscuit to accompany a piece of well matured cheese then the king of biscuits is the Hovis Digestive.

Assending GrassmoorI want to make this point clear because there seems to be a bit of confusion for the owners of supermarkets when it comes to the placing of the Hovis Digestive biscuit. There is only one place to put the Hovis Digestive and that is with the cheese biscuits, that is its rightful home. And not on some lowly shelf hidden away but on the middle shelf at eye level where it can be seen and found by all.

What I would like to know though, is what is going on with the supply of this most delightful of cheese biscuits. They are really hard to get hold of. I’ve asked in a few places and they always give the same answer – "we can’t get hold of them either".

imageThere’s something about the combination of the more angular Hovis Digestive with a good mature English Cheddar or French Camembert that is just perfection. You might have your own choice of favourite cheese but I’m yet to find someone who would disagree that the perfect accompaniment is a Hovis Digestive. I’m also yet to find someone who eats them plain.

There’s something about the Hovis Digestive that means that is needs the company of another to make it truly sing. Perhaps that’s why I like them so much, because that’s precisely what I am like. I’m not much good on my own, I need others to bounce off, to inspire me, to draw me out of myself. The Hovis Digestive needs to be in community with others and so do we.

Blessings #175 – Reading the Christmas Cards

Before Christmas we are normally quite busy so we don’t all get a chance to read all of the Christmas cards before they get put on the doors as decoration for the period. It’s become a bit of a tradition to sit down and read through the cards after we have taken them down.

Tarn HowesIt was lovely to read through the kind comments from friends near and friends far.

It was a special thing to take note of who had taken the time to send cards.

I really enjoyed reflecting on them all and it reminded me of an early blessing when I talked about a study done with people over the age of 95. They we asked what they would do differently if they had their life to live over again. Their answers were:

  • They would risk more.
  • They would reflect more.
  • They would do more things that would live on after they were dead.

I keep reminding myself in the busy days to reflect more.