I recently had the privilege of playing at the 2010 Easter Monday Youth Pilgrimage, an annual youth event at Canterbury Cathedral, some mumble years after the band I was in with my brother played a set in the Cathedral cloisters at the same event.
I mentioned that this was happening (and posted a picture of us playing) on my Facebook page and someone asked whether I still had the bass I’d played that day. It was the third bass I ever owned. (The first isn’t worth mentioning and the second had a nasty ‘decapitation’ accident, in fact I told the sorry story in my most recent ‘Hello Hastings…’ blog).
As it happens, I do still have it so, for no practical benefit other than pure nostalgia, I decided to take it along this time; I don’t have a picture of me playing it, but here’s one of it in the cathedral, just before the pilgrims arrived.
It was great fun playing for this event, the pilgrims were really up for singing and worshiping God – so much so that, just for a moment, the thought wandered through my head, ‘hey, this seems to be going really well’… before reality kicked in and I remembered what we were all there for and got on with joining the pilgrims.
It was a long, but brilliant day and had a little built-in reminder of how easy it is when people invite us up onto (even a low) platform to get distracted by the privilege; I guess in a ‘secular’ setting that goes with the territory, but when you’re a musician worshipping God along with other people that’s really dangerous. I’ve seen too many folk start to believe their own hype and in a ‘ministry’ setting that is deadly! Thank God for good friends who keep our feet on the ground, our heads straight and our eyes fixed on him.
