Tag Archives: christian faith

Steve Harley made me smile – some thoughts

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In 1991, Steve Harley played the Greenbelt Arts Festival at Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire. Greenbelt had it roots in the Christian music scene, and for some Steve was a surprisingly inclusion. For others – who wanted to check your faith credentials at the door, he perhaps shouldn’t have been there.

He chided the audience jokingly about why they had not been in church this morning instead of hanging around in a field in Northampton. What they hadn’t realised was that at the time Mr Harley was warden at the church he was part of in his home neighbourhood.

Steve suffered with polio as an infant and as a child spent at least 4 long periods in hospital. This hobbled him physically, but it gave him room to develop his love of words and to develop his art.

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A Comforting Old Wooden Chair (Foreword to a Bob Dylan book)

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(Sometime over the last few years I was approached to write a “blurb” for the cover of a book of thoughts about Bob Dylan by an Australian author, Phil Mason. I’ve never met Phil but I’ve been privileged to help him with his research. By the time the book was approaching readiness, the idea had expanded and I wrote a foreword for the book which eventually appeared under the title of “A Voice From on High”. As well as reproducing that foreword here, I take the opportunity to recommend Mr Mason’s book which can be obtained through Amazon in softcover and for your kindle.)

 

“Well I’m sitting in church
In an old wooden chair
I knew nobody
Would look for me there”

Bob Dylan – Marchin’ to the City (Disc 3 of Tell Tale Signs 1989-2006)

In 1707, Isaac Watts, the Christian hymnwriter, wrote a lyric called “Marching to Zion” in which he referred to Zion as the beautiful city of God. Now, this was long before Zion had become a short-hand for some Western European political scheme to establish a physical homeland for disenfranchised Jewish people in the middle East (a scheme commonly referred to as Zionism). It is Watts looking forward to the end of an earthly journey where all the faithful people of God, Jew and Gentile, would be gathered in to an eternal home.

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