Hello Maggie and welcome back to Soul Food, a delivery of nourishment to your inbox six days a week throughout the season of Lent.
When you ask a group of people what feeds their soul, music is one of the most common answers. Every Friday we’ll be sharing a reflection on a piece of music, written by contributors to the Friday Fix, a blog about how 'secular music' shapes who we are as people and - in particular - people of faith.
Nina Simone – ‘Feeling Good’
I’m a huge fan of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, where each week a well-known personality chooses eight soundtracks that have shaped their life. I’m always amazed at how music speaks to us during the highs and lows of our lives. I wonder if you were choosing your eight soundtracks, what music would you choose?
This week we are thinking about music that nourishes our soul, and I think Plato summed this up perfectly saying, "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything". What kind of music nourishes you? Are there certain tracks that bring everything to life? Songs or tunes that just make the day feel a bit brighter?
The essence of soul music is rooted in African-American gospel and blues, often sung with a strong emotional intensity and expression. This is what I hear in Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’. It’s a song that reminds us that each day is a new beginning, full of potential and possibility. An opportunity for us to start again all over again.
The discipline of naming our daily gratitudes has grown significantly over the past decade as part of mindfulness practice. Taking a moment to notice and acknowledge the things we are grateful for each day improves our mental health and helps us to feel good about ourselves. I sometimes think that we walk around like those horses with blinkers on their eyes – we don’t see clearly the world around us. We need to open ourselves up to a deeper awareness, to notice the things we often take for granted – the conversations, the experiences, our feelings and emotions. This is expressed well in this song – noticing the world around us helps us to live life more fully present in the moment:
Fish in the sea, you know how I feel
River running free, you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good
Perhaps this is a song that might resonate more with the new life of Easter Sunday than the start of Lent. But as we think about soul food, the invitation is given during Lent to think about just that – what music nourishes your soul? How might the music and words of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ speak to you this week? Perhaps you could write down your eight Desert Island tracks or name three gratitudes each day? Or just pause and notice each day what makes you feel good? The more we open ourselves up to the world, the more we begin to see and notice God’s presence in the world and in ourselves.
