Blogs • Revd Tim Hurd (Former Chaplain)

Readers may be aware of the recent profile of Selwynesque band the DFenders.

The current College band is recording a song which will soon be heard on a promotional podcast for Selwyn, composed by current students, evocatively titled “Rise”.

The church congregations that meet across the fence from Selwyn (all 5 of us, embracing diverse traditions and ethnicities) were also honoured to have the Selwyn Small Choir perform for us at a gathering on Saturday night, where they ended by performing Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” - both a fab song (watch her perform it live - in a post-modern electronica sense - here), and a really interesting musical and lyrical statement. Best wishes to Small and Large Choirs for Wednesday’s choral competition with Knox!

I’m also beginning two precious weeks of Study Leave where I’ll be working on some of my own music. So forgive me, if I’ve got music on my mind.

Oh, and I’m currently listening to the latest offering from “national treasure” singer-songwriter, Dave Dobbyn, titled “Anotherland”. And rather enjoying it.

I have a book called “What language shall I borrow?” It’s about the way we speak about faith. Where we turn for a language to express joy and emptiness, love and hope.

And really, where we do our spirituality, many of us, is in our music. Music is the language we look to when language by itself proves to be too thin.

Music is the language that many of us turn to, whether we realise it or not, to ground ourselves, to make sense of what’s happening, to get beyond ourselves.

That’s the language of spirituality. Always has and always will be.

Dave Dobbyn is a case very much in point. His rediscovered faith and his music are so clearly and powerfully connected. You can clearly see the man on a journey, little statements of faith, little statements of hope, little questions of self, and those of us who’ve lived with the music are caught up in it.

There are tracks on that journey like “Lament for the numb”, “When I needed you most I couldn’t find language”, “Sudden staring at a naked flame”, “Beside you”. And the song that opened the album marking his overt claiming of faith was interestingly titled “Welcome home”, a wonderful statement of inclusion and identity in itself (see the video here - note the use of flags as markers of identity). I sang too at our gathering on Saturday Dobbyn’s setting of onetime Burns Fellow [50th anniversary this week] James K. Baxter’s “Song of the Years” (text at end).

With another Dobbyn album named after Auckland landmark, The Hopetoun Bridge, I challenge anyone to suggest that New Zealand music culture is not a place of deep spirituality. And it’s not just this one artist.

Why is it that music tends to engulf us at adolescence?

Because music is and has always been about meaning and identifying and… something we just can’t put our fingers on.

The language of the soul.

SONG OF THE YEARS James K. Baxter

When from my mother’s womb I came
Disputandum was my name.

Weeping, hoping, threatening,
beyond myself I had no King.

I drew in with each hour’s breath
the grey dust of the second death.

And when my childhood days were spent
it was to Venus I grew suppliant.

Little tremors woke and died
within the mountain of my pride.

Singing on the gallows cart,
created beauty held my heart,

The aardvark and the onager
were stabled at my sepulchre.

And in that deep den the King of Bliss
broke my heart and gave me his.

“This for your doom and penance take:
be merry always for my sake.”

He gave me a white stone to bear
with my true name written there.

And without end I’ll say
Laus tibi Domine!