Peek-a-boo music!

I often feel like a small child these days. Clumsy, unable to master a simple drinking exercise without spillages, and increasingly aware of how little I know.

I imagine that most folk will have played peek-a-boo with a baby, or at least watched it being played. The child understands full-well that you are there all along, and can usually still see most of you, but will enjoy waiting expectantly for you to pop out at them. They take enormous delight in your appearance, which happens at unpredictable moments, and from a variety of strange angles.

This is the closest analogy I can find to describe how I most frequently experience God. I will go to meet with Him regularly, but I never know when, or where he will pop out at me. My greatest joy is in the times that He side-swipes me at a random moment, and in such a strange way.

Perhaps, if we should be seeking to be like small children, my regression is not as regrettable as I first thought!

Well God’s been making me jump quite a lot recently, and this evening, He did that through a book which explores an author’s relationship with a particular selection of songs. In Chapter 5 (all 3 pages of it!) Nick Hornby focuses on Rufus Wainwright’s cover of One Man Guy. I happen to really like Wainwright’s music, but Hornby’s writing doesn’t rely on any knowledge of the track.

I find it wonderful that this man, a self-proclaimed Atheist, is able to best express how through music, and often the most unlikely type, God leaps out at us in an undeniable way.

(I wish I could type-up the pages to add here, but I’m sure I’d be breaking copyright.)

If you love music, you’ll enjoy this book. Even if you don’t, I can highly recommend you read this chapter. (I’ll have my copy handy if anyone would like a peek.)

There Hornby, despite his supposed disbelief in the divine, manages to pull-off one of the best arguments for the existence of God I’ve heard in a while!

He begins:

"I try not to believe in God, of course, but sometimes things happen in music, in songs, that bring me up short, make me do a double take..."