A Brand New Start

I was recently commissioned to write a song for Easter. Well, to be honest, not really commissioned so much as I offered desperately to do anything other than perform a monologue as a Roman soldier at our Divisional Easter meeting. For me, songwriting and musical performance is far less intimidating than that foreign thing people call 'acting'. (Being less scared doesn't make me good at it, but I've learned to move on faster from any embarrassment). Anyway, writing to a deadline doesn't always bring out my best and even after I'd finished singing at the meeting, I was wondering if the songwriting process had quite finished. Eventually I realised that, at the earliest, it wasn't going to get another airing for another year and it was probably time to bite the bullet and put it down on paper. Having done that, I now throw caution to the wind and share it with you.

Brand New Start

My aim was to capture the meaning of Easter now, though with some clear pointers to the historical roots. I've written before that I think it's just as important (if not moreso) for us to live resurrection as it is to believe certain historical facts about the resurrection. If we say that we believe but our lives don't demonstrate new beginnings, if we don't make space for the people around us to experience hope in the midst of despair, I don't think we've known all there is to know about resurrection.

The chorus is somewhat inspired by this quote from Leonardo Boff:

Wherever people seek good, justice, humanitarian love, solidarity, communion and understanding between people, wherever they dedicate themselves to overcoming their own egoism, making this world more human and fraternal and opening themselves to the normative Transcendent for their lives, there we can say, with all certainty, that the resurrected one is present, because the cause for which he lived, suffered, was tried and executed is being carried forward.