It's bluebell season.

why we call it 'some melodious sonnet'

credit: jen-den1

Some Melodious Sonnet. It's awkward to say, and awkward to spell. Not exactly an ideal name for a blog, but still, there it is.

If you've worked with me, you'll know that am a somewhat reluctant worship leader. On a team of ten people across the Emerald Isle, I am the only guitarist, and although I'm not very musically proficient I love it enough that I ended up taking on this role. Nothing makes me more nervous, but I recognise that this is about more than my nerves or abilities - it is simply, wonderfully about God and what He has asked of me. In this case, it was getting over myself and leading His people in songs of praise to Him. So I surrendered to it.

In my age group, Christian contemporary worship songs have become the norm for sung worship. I will stress here that I love contemporary worship songs. I love the freedom and creativity they give us to express our worship to God, and I love that they equip us for those times when sometimes all we can sing are simple, repeated phrases of adoration. But somewhere along the line, they've become all that many young Christians feel sung worship is. The hymns we have sung for many years are left in the dusty pages of forgotten hymnals, dismissed as the dated ways of the elderly or fundamental. Of course, there are the exceptions of modern hymns - for example, some works by the Gettys or Stuart Townend - but generally speaking I feel that as a generation, we've lost our respect for hymns.

This is a shame, because although there are many times that call for simplicity in sung worship, there are also times that call for elaborate poetry sung in rousing voices or caressing whispers. Hymns are packed full of beautiful descriptions of God, and were my earliest education in theology. Some may have outdated language, but this serves to remind us of our ancestors in the faith and the fact that God's love spans all generations and eras.

I love hymns. But I also love imagination.

And finding reimagined hymns is one of my greatest joys. A change in instrumentation or melody can add a very different facet to our view of the poetry in hymns. Rend Collective Experiment's version of Love Divine, All Loves Excelling is a beautiful example - I adore the arrangement/s as we sing in church but this version offers a more reflective take on it, which adds a beautiful simplicity for times of personal devotion.

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is a beautiful hymn, lyrically and melodically. My favourite is the modern melody (used by Sufjan Stevens in his version), and this is the one I use when leading worship as I find it that it is easier to sing and offers a beautiful reflective angle to the words. 'Some melodious sonnet' is part of a line from the first verse of the song, where we ask God to tune our hearts to sing his praise. The reason that I used this as the name for this blog is that this is what I want my life to be. A life-song of praise to the Father, Son and Spirit, a life spent in worship in harmony with His will.

It is a beautiful hymn, and it is the last verse that speaks the loudest to my heart.

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let that grace now like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, O take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts about.

A fetter is more commonly known as legcuffs or shackles these days; a type of restraint used on a persons legs. In language, it's where we get the phrases "to be fettered with" and "unfettered" from. Fettered by our responsibilities and our vices, bound, weighed down. Unfettered, unbound, free.

We don't often talk about fetters as such, but in modern Western Protestantism we talk a lot about chains. We talk about the chains of sin, the chains that bind us to that which hurts us and fetter us with our vices and baggage. We talk about God's power to break every chain, about how grace gives us freedom from our trappings. But these words turn that image upside down - instead of grace breaking chains, it becomes is a fetter of its own that binds us to the God who gave us grace in the first place. Chains that take the hearts - the selfish, human hearts - that wander to 'other lovers' and hold them fast and tight to our Lover and God.

We sing a simple Christmas carol each year:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb

If I were a wise man, I would do my part

Yet what I can I give him,

Give my heart.

A simple offering, but the only one He asks for. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

So we submit these, the broken, contrite, wandering hearts to God. We surrender and ask that they are bound to God with the beautiful golden fetters of grace. There, only there can we rest, and sing wholeheartedly some melodious sonnet that lifts Him up and gives Him the glory He is due.

violet scent

credit -joopmilder

Forgiveness is the scent the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

- Mark Twain

Forget me not

I challenge you not to smile. Too cute.

oceans

I will call upon Your Name
Keep my eyes above the waves
My soul will rest in Your embrace
I am Yours and You are mine

one day

credit: thatLeeLee

“‘Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with you passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at… something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”

- David Nicholls, One Day

songs of home, I

picture: mine

Belfast, home.

I think everyone in the world has mixed feelings about their hometown, and never more so when you're from Belfast.

I love Belfast - now. Growing up, there wasn't a lot about it to love. I grew up in post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland, in a country trying to move forward from the muck and the dirt and the ashes, struggling against those who wished to drag it straight back again. I grew up in a place where I was blessed enough to be born after the worst of the violence and in a small town only just far enough from the city that most days I only saw the stories on the news, but lived in the frustration of the clean-up and still seeing a great amount of fear. If we take off our rose-tinted spectacles, we can see that it was still pretty scary even when it wasn't a warzone, and there was a lot about it to hate.

Fast-forward to now and it's hard to recognise the place. I read an article which described it as an "up-and-coming cosmopolitan city" and nearly spat out my C&C orange, but I have to admit that these days that quote may actually be on the mark. It's still not perfect, but Belfast, she becomes more vibrant every day. Tourists are flooding in, the streets are clean and no one lives in fear of the next bomb anymore. Bars, theatres and hotels are opening every second and I swear the place is even beginning to look a bit sunnier (although it still rains every 5 days out of 7. That never changes.).

Northern Ireland is a beautiful country with a lot to love, and a lot to look forward to. The scenery is stunning, the craic is mighty and the people are the friendliest in the world, even if our accent is a bit stinkin'. God has moved in incredible ways here, and seeing hearts and communities slowly but surely being healed over the years is enough to make you weep with joy.

And man, do we have a lot of music to be proud of.

Showcasing that is a new film, Good Vibrations. I'll write my thoughts on that sometime - it was honestly, truly wonderful. It may be the best film to come out of Northern Ireland.

These days, we have so many Northern Irish artists to be proud of. Two of the fellas currently in Snow Patrol, Iain Archer who used to be in Snow Patrol and now flies solo, Lee Mitchell, Foy Vance and Two Door Cinema Club all come from my own small wee hometown - and that's one little town from a whole country. On the wider scale, we have legends such as Gary Moore, Van Morrison, Ruby Murray, Brian Houston, Duke Special - and Ash, who everyone knows at least a chorus of. We even have some amazing worship artists - Keith & Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend, Robin Mark, Rend Collective Experiment...

And, in case you didn't know, the first live performance of 'Stairway to Heaven' was in Belfast. If that doesn't make it honourarily Norn Irish I don't know what does.

So I'm going to run a series of (probably sporadic) short little posts with some wonderful songs by Northern Irish artists. They're wonderful and deserve to be shared.

We begin with a well-known piece of Belfast punk, which Good Vibrations showcased.

My 'da' was a punk. To me, this always meant that there are a lot of hilarious photographs from the late seventies. But as the film pointed out, punk meant a lot more in the Belfast of the Troubles. It was a place to belong, the only subculture that wasn't tainted by the all-encompassing political climate. It was a place where it didn't matter if you were Catholic or Protestant - 'just that you were a punk'. It was a place for frustrated young people to declare that they wanted more out of life. A place to live outside of bombs and shootings and violence.

Joe Strummer went on to say this about it:

“When punk rock ruled over Ulster, nobody ever had more excitement and fun. Between the bombings and shootings, the religious hatred and the settling of old scores, punk gave everybody a chance to live for one glorious burning moment.”

I don't know enough about punk to give any insight, and I'm probably too young to be able to write about many of these bands but I am going to play one of the catchiest tunes ever, and it's Belfast punk.

Alright, if you're going to be fussy about it, Derry/Londonderry (whatever you're into) punk, but it was produced in Belfast so I'm claiming it. We all know it, we all sing along, air drum the opening beat and even sometimes headbang when we're in the mood. John Peel declared it 'the most wonderful thing [he'd] ever head."

So here it is, simply legenDerry (I'm sorry, I know, I should be able to resist. But I can't. Blame the 2013 City of Culture gambit): Teenage Kicks, by the Undertones.

Guiding Light

Well the air is cold,

and yonder lies my sleeping soul,
by the branches broke like bones,
this weakened tree no longer holds
but the night is still,

and I have not yet lost my will,
and so I will keep on moving 'till,
'till I find my way home.

Guiding Light, by a fellow Bangor kinsman and a creator of beautiful music: Foy Vance. 

some chocolate ganache cupcakes

Six hours of baking this Saturday. 

My mum and I decided to bake to raise some money for the fund that keeps me in a job by taking some cupcakes to our church on Sunday morning and running a donations bucket. In six hours of baking we made and decorated 72 cupcakes and 50-odd shortbread butterflies. They flew off the foyer table (like hotcakes... ba dum tsh...), so much that lots of people were left complaining that they didn't get any... Altogether, my wonderful church family donated over two hundred pounds, all for a few cupcakes. Such lovely people.

(me with a tiny sample of all of the cupcakes we made)

I love to bake, but I wouldn't say I have an especially sweet tooth. My huge vice is bread, but I rarely eat the sweet things that I bake - part of the joy of baking comes in the sharing of food, in pleasing other people with delicate sweet things. 

So for that reason I love baking cupcakes. My church is full of some serious chocoholics, so some chocolate cupcakes were in order. I love ganache icing for the beautiful shine, and it was a new challenge for my mother to decorate with ganache, so that was the job. 

Here's my recipe, and some pictures.

chocolate ganache cupcakes.

The cupcake recipe is adapted from a Hummingbird Bakery recipe. With the ganache icing, these would be too rich to eat if made with butter alone, so for that reason, we use milk. Ensure the butter and dry ingredients are well-combined.

I usually decorate these with one raspberry apiece - sweet and simple. But on Saturday my mum came back with a Malteaser bar. A MALTEASER BAR. Who knew they existed? So we got overexcited and sliced them to decorate the cupcakes and they were amazing. I'm going to try baking them into the cake mix at some stage... stay posted...

pre- decoration

post-icing

where I visited Andy Warhol

via Anita Brown Design Studio

Proper art. Or at least, pop art.

I am by no means a sophisticate when it comes to art - I don't know much about it and only really appreciate things that I find pretty or are steeped in history. Pop art was never really on my radar, but today I met up with a very dear and beloved friend from university and we decided to educate ourselves by visiting the Andy Warhol exhibition at The MAC Belfast.

We tried our best to bluff our way through artspeak, pretending that we knew what we were talking about when it came to silk screening for as long as we could, trying to analyse colours. We would whisper, until we entered the Silver Clouds  room, observed the floating rectangular balloons and had no choice but to stay silent.

These balloons were not my favourite, but I did love the cow wallpaper, because cows are adorable (if a little frightening in real life.) The other pieces were steeped in pop culture, from sketches of the famous Marilyn work to film and festival posters that I recognised from only goodness knows where.

In the upper room were what I can best describe as the 'duplicate pieces'. It was a little like playing 'Spot the Difference'. In the Paratrooper Boots painting, we spotted a fleck of red on one half (accidental? Damage? Who knows?), and a random white spot on one half of Repent and Sin No More... (Deep analysis, I know. I told you I don't quite get it.)

My only criticism - as I am no art critic - is that a little explanation of context for the paintings may have been helpful. Were they a reaction to an event, to a person? Maybe the point is that the art should be relevant outside of context. Regardless, I did learn a little and actually have begun to admire the bright colours and their standout against the bare walls of the gallery.

via Harlem Cafe

But my favourite part of the day was our catch up over lunch. We shared the stories we've missed in the interim space, the pieces of our lives that had been missing from view. We ate really good chili paninis while she updated me on her new relationship. We looked on at a group of older women laughing and chatting over wine and seafood and looked forward to the days ahead when we will do the same.

Harlem Belfast is an eclectic cafe in a large room with bare floorboards, comfy chairs and. The shadow-box tables are filled with quirky objects - today, our table was filled with brightly coloured shells and plastic starfish. The bar, ceiling and counters are wrapped in delicate fairy lights that make the room sparkle like Christmas even in the middle of spring. The food was lovely, the staff were amazingly pleasant and all in all, it was a very sweet lunchtime.

And in the art gallery, the cafe and the conversation, I caught a little glimpse of the life I've left behind, and have found another puzzle piece of the reason why I left - but most importantly, learned that my time in that life has not been forgotten by anyone, and in fact, the fact that it was so short may have been that which made the most impact. Because it was short, it was bright and apparently it stood out - a patch of pop art on a white wall.

Where I tell you about myself

A little about myself, with the help of Instagram.

My name is Laura, and I am right-handed, green-eyed, wavy-haired and Northern Irish - and this is my word-space. I've tried to work this many times in many different ways and it has never quite kicked off, but I have a good feeling about this time.

I have worn many hats in 20 years, including schoolgirl, sales assistant, hairdresser, medical student and international student ministry co-ordinator (amongst various literal hats). I am now a full-time church youth worker on a year-long missions team with the Irish Methodist Church. 

Books were my first great love. Words are powerful and precious, letters joined to give colour and sound, beautifying a blank page and a blank life with jewels and song. The type inside the binding of a book breathes life to new worlds, endless Creations and Characters, opening up a beautiful harvest of new hearts to know.

I'm an inadequate musician, but love to make music regardless. Songs are transcendent; the proof that beauty was never meant to be purely about the visual. Music connects us to God. One of the only things that is carried with us into eternity is our sung praise to Him and so one piercing note of a song gives us a glimpse of forever.  I am a reluctant worship leader, who loves nothing more than finding a reinvention of a good old hymn - which is where the inspiration for the title of this blog comes from.

I grew up, live by and love the sea; so much so that I can't believe that my heartbeat doesn't sound like the shore.

I am a desperate romantic.

One of my favourite places in the world is a beautiful tea shop in the medieval streets of Norwich, England. I spent the best days of a beautiful year hidden there, drinking every type of tea in every colour, and aroma known to man. Since then, I've done little but drink teas that look like they should be part of an art project rather than swallowed (although I'd never turn down a cup of fresh coffee), and I spend more time and money than is recommended in local coffee shops and tea houses. 

I love love love to bake

This is my church. I believe in God my Father, Christ my Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit my Guide. I believe in the Everlasting, the Beautiful One, that he is my Provider, my Shepherd and my Peace. This is what defines me: I am Christ's. His Beloved, bought with His blood.

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