Foo Fighters

I’ve got another confession my friend, I’m no fool! However I am deeply into the Foo Fighters and I just wanted to share my joy that i have just got tickets to go and see them in concert in London! (I have already bored all my friends and everyone in the office) I last saw them last year at the Isle of Wight Festival and it has become one of my gig going highlights. I don’t know the words to all their songs, but I know a lot, and I jumped up and down shouting them out until me feet were stamped on and my knees ached. Can’t wait to do it again in November.

One of my friends who is not a Christian and has rarely been to church went a couple of years ago to a retreat on a yoga ashram. When she came back we talked about it and one of the most interesting things she said (to me) was that there was an incredible power in communal singing. Going to church on a regular basis, whether it’s established or emerging, you have no idea of what a life might be like without that experience of listening to or being part of communal singing – unless you go to a rock concert. And there it’s even better than church because you can jump about and shout to your hearts content and nobody blinks an eyelid – you’re even expected to. It’s a liberating and exciting experience, it’s great.

But what of God? I hear you say. Well what of them? I have experienced incredible love and freedom with God in all kinds of music, and in all kinds of musical situation: from the first time I heard “Sunchime”, totally sober, in a massive club in Bournemouth and finally understood what the clubbers were seekingin their pills; to the first time I heard “Se a vida e” when I was exiting a very difficult time in my life and clearly heard God in it telling me “Come outside and see a brand new day, the troubles in your mind will float away…Se a vida e, I love you” to the huge joy of dancing to Coldcut last weekend and the rising need to move with social justice against the continued destruction of our planet for commercial gain.

None of these experiences was explicitly intended to make me consider God, but as Bible states, “the very rocks will cry out” if God’s message is not being expressed.  And ifrocks can cry out despite themselves how much more musicians?