This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Show:
I’ve just been away for three months on study leave. Apart from all the reading, writing, thinking, chatting and travelling, I also used the time to catch up on some long lost music. Crowded House, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen got a lot of space, but it was Bruce’s Dancing in the Dark, played loud during a massive thunder storm in Tennessee, that sticks in my memory.
I think part of the reason this one stuck was because a couple of months before I left the UK I had a bit of a stroke – in my brain, not of the cat. As many people know, when something like that happens and is beyond your control, you feel like you are in the dark a bit – even if dancing is the last thing you think of doing.
In my case, it wasn’t a huge deal. It was a minor blip, but it came with consequences. I had to cancel travel and engagements abroad. But, on the bright side, I now have documentary evidence that I do have a brain.
Springsteen might have been singing about a different experience, but I spent a couple of months sleeping a lot, reading a lot and reflecting on what it means to be alive. Because the truth is, we all live all the time in the dark – not in any miserable sense, but just that none of us knows what is going to happen next. Not everything is in my control. I can make plans and imagine a future, but I can’t guarantee it will happen. Tomorrow I will be speaking on the phone with the Bishop of Colombo in Sri Lanka – a more dramatic illustration of my point.
Another Bruce – singer-songwriter Cockburn – once wrote: “Sometimes the best map will not guide you; sometimes the darkness is your friend.” And I know what he means. I didn’t worry when my brain blipped, simply because, as Easter whispers to a mortal world, my trust is not ultimately in me or my own security – it is in the God of resurrection.
Anyway, I am fine, back to work, back to Radio 2, and promising never to dance in the light. If you’ve seen me, you’d know why.
April 25, 2019 at 11:53 am
Wish you could come to the Hideaway Streatham tonight where I am on lead guitar ( and some vocals ) duties for a Muddy Waters tribute. I know we’ve talked about this, but there’s some joyful music! The ability of The bluesmen ( and hey, the Great Texan blues guitar slinger Freddie King once said of Dylan “Bob sings About what he Feels, so he;s a bluesman!”) to turn their own pain and suffering into joy and dance is “what it;s all about”. Touched as ever by the post, and love the last sentence! It’s an irony that whilst I make people dance from the safety of the stage, hiding behind a guitar, I too am not a pretty sight on the dance floor. Ask Lucie!
April 25, 2019 at 2:14 pm
+Nick. Very glad you are back to work – not sure you really stopped though. Sorry about the stroke but it is interesting to see the inside of our brain – I have a photo scan of mine from an incident last year. It does make one wonder, amongst many other things, how God gets to us
April 25, 2019 at 5:32 pm
Reblogged this on hungarywolf.
April 25, 2019 at 10:59 pm
Sorry to hear about your stroke. Praying for you.
Andrew
April 26, 2019 at 10:33 am
Great thought, nice humour, wishing you full recovery & good health!
April 27, 2019 at 2:52 pm
Thank you, Andrew. I hope you and yours are well.