Here we are, just a few weeks after the launch of the album. It’s so exciting seeing the impact the songs are having on peoples’ lives – do get in touch through the website to share your stories!

In the days of rehearsing and recording, we as a band had a number of beautiful God moments. Probably the most precious memory was when for each of us, the truth of the song Stay impacted our hearts, all at the same time. There was only one appropriate response – we each lay down where we were to take time to simply ‘be’ in the presence of the relentless and beautiful lover of our souls. That sealed the deal for the title track, with a massive bright yellow heavenly highlighter, a holler of ‘YES!’ from the heart of God. This was much to the relief of some friends who feared an element of truth in my comment that the album’s working title was ‘Let’s go kill some orcs!’ Marginally better than ‘Stuff Mordor’ but neither quite captured the essence of the whole as ‘Stay’ does!

I was able to tell some of these stories at the pre-launch gig, which was also a chance for me to present the songs with more of a performance vibe than I would when leading worship. I miss performing … and had a blast. A local photographer gave his time and skill to capturing the event – here are a few memories – thank you Alastair Currill. Do contact him if you need a photographer – he did a great job!

More posts to follow shortly, picking up on some of the artwork that accompanies some of these songs on YouTube. Every picture tells a story!

Yes, after 20 years, a new album is about to launch! These past 4 months have been a glorious non stop whirlwind, highlights being working with these awesome musicians, creating sounds and experiencing moments from heaven. More to follow, this is a taster blog post!

The glorious band

As tall as a dandelion

Playing with placing has long been a passion. As a child I would climb the shelves of my yellow wardrobe – complete with painted 70’s orange flowers – and sit on top to read. The danger of it toppling never occurred to me. It was pleasing both to read from there, and to glance around the room from superhuman height. I could see more of the garden through the window, if less of the skyline.

Staying in one place was never a realistic option for this world thirsty explorer, although I can only count a modest 7 different places to have lived in 6 times the number of years. I am graciously allowing myself the inclusion of 4 months in Bolivia in my late teens.

Privileged to be at the launch of the space shuttle Columbia from Kennedy Space Centre, Florida in 1981, I had no idea at the time of the significance of seeing such a feat, still reeling myself from surviving my own first transatlantic flight. A related visit to Cape Canaveral led to the compulsory tourist photo of my sister and I holding up rockets, as dad turned us momentarily into Superwomen. Who would have thought we had that kind of strength or would have been trusted with such a degree of responsibility. You wouldn’t want to drop a rocket.

Enthralled in my teens by a passage from a book where a child explores a jagged broken railing, seeing within it a whole cityscape, my love of perspective was set. Different eyes on familiar places give new perspectives. Different places do the same. As does a re-placement of subjects. A flower can dwarf the Vendee’s setting sun. Giants can emerge from people who are significantly less blessed with height than their friends. Wardrobes or cameras, re-placement makes me tall.

Next time you take a photo, try subverting it. Turn the flower into an enormous people-eating plant. Dwarf yourself or another. Turn the marble into a planet. Next time you read a book, do so from an unconventional vantage point. Play with placing, and as you do, contemplate the value of seeing with new eyes, of seeing other than what we readily assume is the norm. For really, there are no norms, but there is much to imagine, if we will only place ourselves, with new eyes, where we will be stretched, and free to wonder.

My tiny friend and I

Roses in Aberdour

It was a spectacular June evening. For the previous few years I had loosely brushed shoulders with a beautiful family who now, just weeks before I left Scotland, had kindly invited me to dinner. Working within a community of 700 people, there would always be more friendship possibilities than actualities. The late discovery of treasure is still vastly preferable to an unawareness of its existence.

I traversed the Forth Road Bridge earlier than needed, to make the most of the iridescent light. Aberdour, one of Fife’s many riches. The sky was bright, the waves gently crashing, and there was a sense of something poignant lingering in the air. I quickly spotted the roses, resplendent on a rock, confidently displaying their own vibrant colour. Unashamed of standing out, they added a stunning complementary hue to the seaside palette by doing so.

On closer glance, they were not untouched by their surroundings. These flowers had been trailed in the sea. Camera in hand, I contorted myself next to the flowers upon the rock, close and personal, to capture their rightful place at the centre of the landscape. I wondered what their story was. Whether an unaccepted apology. Perhaps a bashful lover unable, in the end, to declare his love, instead bestowing the beauty of his offering upon a beach that would not reject his affections.

Photo taken, I began to amble back to my car, dinner on my mind. I happened to glance at a pattern in the sand, an intricate print of a shoe. Spirals and flowers. I was delighted that a designer had thought to add beauty to a side of shoe naturally unseen, but quickly turned my thoughts to legacy. I wondered whether the shoe wearer had any idea that where they had walked left a lasting impression. That everywhere their foot trod, beauty lingered.

Back at the car I dusted down my shoes – and laughed at the familiar pattern. It seems the shoe wearer had been oblivious after all.

Over dinner I discovered a family who would undoubtedly have become fellow sojourners had we ‘met’ sooner. And I learnt that there had been a funeral that day of a young person from the village. Taken much too soon, and missed by so many. Ah. The flowers. I thought again of legacy. Of the way this young person’s life had touched so many. Of the fact that we all leave footprints, visible or invisible.

As I crossed back over the bridge, I was pensive and grateful. I could lament the bitter sweet nature of friendship, found too late. Instead, I chose gratitude that we had built friendship at all, however much the tides of change may seek to wash it away. Gratitude for the way these new found friends had left glad patterns on my soul. Inspired by footprints and flowers, I chose gratitude for the life I have, the places I had trod and would yet tread, and other footprints that had yet to take their place alongside my own. And I determined never again to assume the story behind a rose, or to take my life for granted.