The past few days…

Yes, it’s another “The Weekend” post, except that I didn’t entitle it “The Weekend” 🙂

So… what have we been up to the past few days? Well. On Saturday (note that I skipped Friday evening this time — although having said that, Philippa did go and see “Miss Potter” which was apparently very good), we did a bit of shopping during the day. I bought a couple of CDs – more on that later – and a few other bits and pieces. In the evening, we went to see the choir performing Bruckner’s Mass in F Minor. We both really enjoyed it – it was good to have a Mass based around liturgy which I actually knew quite well (it was all in Latin, but they had the English translation as well, and it was very similar to a lot of the liturgy they have in Anglican services). I thought the Credo was done particularly well, and the music really seemed to fit around the words of the liturgy to put the emphasis in the right places. Bruckner certainly seems to have been a man for whom faith was very important – I will have to try and hear some of his other work!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then didn’t do very much for the afternoon… in the evening we went to the Rover’s Tye and met up with Simon, Chris, Jon and Sarah. It was a really nice evening – we hadn’t seen Jon & Sarah in quite a while, so it was good to catch up with them, and it’s always good to see Simon & Chris 🙂

This week we have the week off work to do various things with the flat. Today Phil’s parents came round and we were planning to put some blinds up in the window… unfortunately, we couldn’t manage it: the aluminium supports for the windows were actually too tough to drill into! So we had to rethink that plan a bit… it was still good to see them though! In the evening we went round to Alex’s, and chatted for most of it!

Right, I mentioned buying a couple of CDs. Firstly, I bought “Absolution” by Muse (following Joe’s Recommendation). I haven’t listened to it very much yet, it sounds good though. They have a very “full on” musical style, I can see how they would be amazing live. The songs are all quite intense, so I reckon it would take a while to get into, but I’m looking forward to giving it repeat listenings (preferably on quite a high volume…)

The other album I bought was “Under the Iron Sea” by Keane. A few years ago, I listened through “Hopes and Fears” but wasn’t that impressed. There were a few good songs on there, but in general I felt the melodies weren’t quite strong enough. However, they’ve started playing some of their new songs on the radio recently, and as I really liked them (“A Bad Dream” I particularly like) I decided to buy it. It’s fantastic! If you like artists such as Coldplay and Embrace, you’d definitely like “Under the Iron Sea”. I think it’s a lot stronger melodically than the last album – the standard is higher. I think they’re coming into their own, and it really shows!

Finally (sorry this has been a fairly long blog! – this will be short): I read today that apparently the U2Charist is coming to England! I’m not sure what to think about it really, however if it gets people into church I’m sure it’s a good thing. Rev Paige Blair, the priest who came up with the idea, says:

“The Methodist hymn writers once wrote contemporary music. Are we worshipping Bono? Absolutely not. No more so than we worship Martin Luther when we sing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

And I think I agree with that. A lot of Christians are far too resistant to change in terms of music. Why are we still singing hymns which were written 100, 200, 300+ years ago? They may be theologically accurate, but they’re just not what people sing anymore. If we want people to actually come to church, we need to be relevant to people, and if that means writing songs which are theologically accurate but sound like U2 then that’s what we’ve got to do 😉

Oh, yes, by the way – I realise that what I’ve just said people have been saying for years and years and years. All I can say to them is, “Bite my shiny metal… um… toaster!”

Side Note: I wonder what the people at Fordham would think if I suggested we hold a U2Charist? I can just imagine the faces of some of the members 😉