Don’t overlook Kindness on the way to Pilgrimage
Kindness
Artist: Steve Bell (www.stevebell.com)
Label: Signpost Music
Length: 12 tracks/47 minutes
Steve Bell is marking his 25th anniversary as
a solo artist with Pilgrimage, a four
disc set releasing on September 15, 2014.
In the meantime, I want to look at Kindness (2011), which I failed to negotiate when it was released. Bell’s
only recording since then is Keening for
the Dawn (2012), a collection of songs celebrating Advent.
If you are a stranger to Steve Bell, he seeks “to
encourage Christian faith and thoughtful living through artful word and song.”
Mission accomplished on Kindness.
The first and second songs are about the centrality of
love and kindness. “Love is patient. Love is kind.”
We can never be reminded enough about kindness. Ravi
Zacharias, an internationally known evangelist and speaker, once lamented that
in his travels he often witnessed the lack of it between married couples. The
quotation featured prominently on the inside of the CD cover reads: “I have
sought how I might make God more loved by other souls … And have not found any
other or more powerful way than kindness” (Lucie-Christine/1844-1908).
The title track lists Brian McLaren with the writing
credit. It is an adaptation of Teresa of Avila’s Christ Has No Body, “Christ has no body but yours/No hands, no feet
on earth but yours.”
This, like several of the other tracks, has a peaceful,
acoustic sound. Here and elsewhere Russ Pahl’s pedal steel adds to the
serenity.
Another standout is Mike Janzen on keyboards, who
contributes a delightful piano solo toward the end of “About Love.”
If potential listeners are intrigued by the thought of
combining poetry and music, this offers a wealth of it. The wildest form is
“Stubble and Hay,” which sounds like the soundtrack for a Flannery O’Connor
novel that was made into a Western. There is plenty of grit in sound and
sentiment as singing collides with spoken word. This is not a typical Steve
Bell song.
In stark contrast to the preceding, when Bell begins the
next song with “God is everything to me/I myself can do nothing/Spare nothing,
bare nothing,” it’s like following the “All is vanity” of Ecclesiastes with the
sublime intimacy of the Song of Solomon. The lyrics, the vocal inflections and
the graceful notes in “Birth of a Song” convey wonder and beauty.
Does having a sense of wonder matter? Without it, it’s
like having eyes but not seeing, having ears but not hearing and having a heart
that is lifeless. “I hear music,” said the character in the film as he tried to
describe how he felt about his supposed lover. That describes the power of
wonder. “Birth” makes my heart sing.
Listeners descend from that height, as they listen to
King David lament in “Absalom, Absalom,” a song written by Pierce Pettis. The
light acoustic touch makes this a pleasure instead of something heavy.
I cherish the opening lines, which express the desire for
forgiveness: “Come and smear me/With the branches from that tree/Hyssop dipped
in innocent blood/To make me clean.”
David admits that Absalom was watching when the former
made a series of sinful choices. Absalom became “Caught in the tangles of
deceit,” which foreshadowed his “Hanging lifeless from that tree.”
I first heard the closing “Was it a Morning Like This” on
a Sandy Patty recording. Strings aside, Bell is not headed for overly
inspirational territory. He succeeds in updating a well-written song that
employs a device used in Scripture that here translates the joy of the
Resurrection: “Did the grass sing/Did the earth rejoice to feel you again/Over
and over like a trumpet underground/Did the earth seem to pound He is risen.”
Creation, as a stand-in for all things, is depicted as praising God for Christ
rising from the dead.
Shortly after I wrote the first part of this piece, I
came across the following in an old, forgotten devotional (author not given):
“Have you ever had your sad path suddenly turned sun-shiny because of a
cheerful word? Have you ever wondered if this could be the same world, because
someone had been unexpectedly kind to you? You can make today the same for
somebody. It is only a question of a little imagination, a little time and
trouble. Think now: What can I do today to make someone happy—old persons,
children, servants—even a scrap for the dog or crumbs for the bird! Why not?”
I’m sure Bell will be pleased if Kindness
produces the kind of softening towards ones fellows that leads toward charity.
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