playing music

The school didn't have their usual assembly today.

Instead they had a full blown concert sort of thing. I went along to sit in on it all. It was really very good.

Loads of different children were involved. Maybe as much as a third of all the school. Either singing or playing an instrument. Solo or part of a group. Or even a large-scale orchestra.

Of course, they're only learners. The pieces they played reflected that. But to see them there, using and stretching their musical skills - well, it did the heart good.

And I e-maiiled the head later on to say just that and how impressed I'd been. He was the one who'd set the whole thing up and twisted arms to get them all to put the concert on.

It crossed my mind it's not all that much different from what we're about in what we're doing here.

It isn't quite 'music' as such we're encouraging folk to play. More 'life' itself. But the folk involved are spread across the spectrum of both age and stage.

We have quite a number of older folk who come through our door week by week.

There's a group from one of the local hospitals which comes and has a morning cup of tea (and scones). Rosaly's come to be a sort of unofficial chaplain at the hospital. She takes services there and gets to know the patients in one part quite well.

So now a group of them come here. It's great to have them come around. Though it sometimes brings its problems, too.

Like yesterday. When one of the patients collapsed. First I knew about it was a knock at my door and an urgent request for some 'screening' to put around the man still there on the floor.

The moment was a cameo of what we are about. The 'Reception Area' became a sort of recovery room. It's messy, of course, having bodies lieing around like that.

But we happily live with the mess and we constantly hope that the place can become a refuge where people recover from all of life's hurts.

It helps that Rosaly's training's as a nurse. And the man himself was fine in the end of the day. But we hope the whole environment, the 'ethos' of the place, the friendship and the service and the laughter and the quiet - we hope all that enables real recovery, across the board.

Today there was the midweek lunchtime service. Again, it's mainly older folk who come along to that. The time and the duration suit them well. And there's lunch together afterwards.

One of the ladies got stuck in the ladies' toilet after lunch. Locked inside a cubicle and couldn't get out.

Another knock at the door. Another rescue mission!

This time with a ladder in the busy ladies' toilets. Climbing up and reaching down a long right arm to pull the lock aside and open up the door. And set this lady 'free'.

Another graphic picture in this fleeting little cameo.

How many people are there in society today who've somehow locked themselves inside some prison in their lives - and can't get out?

And how prepared am I, are we, to enter into realms where somehow etiquette suggests we shouldn't really go - and help release the lock inside that prison they are in?

Isn't that what Jesus did? Unlock the doors from inside people's lives and set them truly free.

But it isn't only older folk who come around us here.

It's like it was at school. A right old mix, throughout the different age groups that there are.

Some Mums are in on a Wednesday. With toddlers and babies alike. And sometimes the din that they make can be - well, pretty loud!

But we can live with that as well. We're glad they're all around. Learning to play the music of life.

There's one little girl who's often there on a Wednesday over lunch. She always likes to come and feed the fish. She's plainly quite at home. Which is lovely. The way it should be.

She stands on the table and pours in a hand-ful of fish-food (for fish already well fed, I have to say: I mean, one is getting huge!).

Are these little incidents really a part of my 'work'? I like to think they are. As important as all of the letters and e-mails I write. As important as all of the hospital visits I make. As important as all of the 'sermons' I preach and prepare.

These little daily incidents create, I think, in people's minds and hearts, a picture of the pleasures that there are in learning how to play with one another all the music of God's life.

Orchestras and symphonies are all made up of individual players and of individual notes, which on their own may not amount to very much at all.

But joined together, carefully and patiently, they start to make and play the music which captivates the soul.