Christian Forshaw, Sanctuary, and How Music Restores the Soul.

I've spent the last ten days in Paisley and away from home. Snow. No other explantion needed. Two big splurges a few days apart made travel North to Aberdeen a rreally daft idea. Anyway, on Monday, the day of the big blizzard, my wee Jazz got half way up a hill and then the traffic in front started sliding back towards me. Reversing on wet fresh snow is tricky but I got into the side and out of the way. At which point it was clear the car was there for a while. Three days in fact. And the campus closed for those three days too.

So I stayed with friends. Until today I finally got back to Aberdeen, and while checking email and finding my way around the house I decided to listen again to the best rendering of the most theologically profound and spiritually enriched piece of Advent music I own. Let all Mortal Flresh Keep Silence is for me unerringly centred on the essential truth that the Word became flesh, and the light that enlightens everyone has come into the world, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. That translation is brilliant – the darkness neither understands nor overcomes the Light; bewildered and defeated darkness is the ontologically reverse truth of "the darkness comprehendeth it not".

I seldom advertise on this blog – I often recommend and enthuse. But Forshaw's music is in my view uniquely evocative, touching deep into those emotional corners I'm sometimes afraid to look in. And then when I do, by listening to this haunting, gentle summons, I find that these hidden unsettling corners are places where I don't have to be afraid, or anxious, or ashamed. Music is one of the few keys that can unlock those inner fastnesses and coax, persuade, summon and pull us out to face – what exactly? Well ourselves to begin with; our needs, our losses, our hopes, desires and hurts, and all those human feelings and thoughts and memories that with so much else makes us into the loveable and vulnerable people we are. 

Music therapy is one of those approaches to our need in which spirituality, aesthetics, theology and psychology intersect in the healing of the heart, the calming of the mind, the restoring of the soul. And if these three are distinct aspects of our humanity, or different words that we use for the complexity that is our inner life, still, they answer to those strands of our being that nourish and give content to that which, for want of a more secure term, we call our self. Christian Forshaw's music does this for me, and sure, you and others will have your own source of renewal to which you turn. But if not, or if you want to encounter a master musician whose gift to the listener is more than the music, try Christian Forshaw's Sanctuary. You can order it at his website here. The remastered CD has a different cover from mine, but I'm finding it hard to believe it has been improved!