I love the Beatles song PennyLane, a portrait of a
village virtually teeming with ‘nowhere men’.
Written by Paul McCartney, recorded during
the Sgt. Pepper sessions, and released in February 1967 as one side of a double
A-sided single, along with Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever".
Beatles producer George Martin has said he believes the pairing of these songs
resulted in probably the greatest single ever released by the group.
Penny Lane is a study in ‘mundanity’. The
simple sights and sounds of an ordinary suburban neighbourhood; of completely
commonplace and inconsequential people and events, all set to that rich melody,
with the horns, the flute.
The chorus: "Penny Lane is in my ears
and in my eyes/There beneath the blue suburban skies..." highlights the
importance of memory - the importance of experience - the way the smallest
visual and aural details build up to form and inform this amazing thing we call
Life.
All around us are ordinary phenomena –
people, homes, school, shops, shopping centres, neighbourhoods, parks, phone
calls, emails, street scenes, routine family life, artistic and cinematic
depictions of how we live our lives, everyday work and commercial situations,
sociable occasions, non-professional sports activities, transportation contexts,
venues of legal and political action, viewing televised entertainment,
consuming information from various media, and so on and so on.
These are the places of the ‘uttermost
parts of the world’ and the immediate world where real people live and die.
This is where the incarnation happens. Not in the disconnected glamour of Rome
or Hollywood but in the mud and marketplace of Bethlehem or Cana.
This is where we go with the Word and the
Spirit. This is the place of the Mustard Seed Kingdom; the place where the
small and foolish confound the powers of the world.
What we find as we reflect on the events
and places and people ‘under blue suburban skies’; will astound us if only we
attend to them with the seriousness they do not typically receive. These
unnoticed, unmarked aspects of our communities are often the most important
indicators as to what God is up to.
Anyway, this blog is where I jot down
musings around this – hence the name ‘Beneath Blue Suburban Skies.’ I went by
the web-name ‘revhead’ for many years - hence the blog address!
I live in the northern suburbs of
Melbourne, Australia with my wife and a number of loud possums in the
roof. I have three adults married kids and six wonderful grandkids. I have been at various times a student,
stirrer, minister, teacher and gardener.
I was reading a couple of articles by one of my former professors who observes that we are: "In an era of change not just a change of era." The era of modernity is unravelling. See HERE and HERE.
I wonder how we as followers of Jesus will respond to the pluralistic and uncertain era we are called to. I wonder what God is up to, in this post-enlightenment and post-Christendom time.
I hope you enjoy the read!
Cheers,
Martin
