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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Anne Easter

Good morning!

This evening, some friends are going with my husband and me to enjoy dinner and a show at our local Music Hall, which, perhaps rather strangely, has its being in a former Church of England Church which has been transformed permanently into a theatre.

I think of Music Hall as the nineteenth century city dweller’s folk music; where I live, in London’s East End, we haven’t stripped any willows or gathered peas and beans and barley for a very long time and so the songs that everyone knew and joined in with were about people and the things they get up to. Many of the songs are funny and I reckon they would have been sung with actions and much eye-rolling – think of ‘When father papered the parlour, you couldn’t see him for paint’, while others are quite poignant – in ‘That’s what God made mothers for’ we sing very melodramatically ‘she’ll sigh for you, cry for you, yes, even die for you’.

There were lots of songs about romance, of course, humans have a universal interest in love and relationships, and, in an age when so many subjects were taboo, in those songs there’s a good deal of nose tapping and knowing winks. But perhaps the songs to look out for are the tongue twisters – like ‘Sister Susie sewing shirts for sailors.’ The fun is gentle and fairly innocent and guaranteed to get us all laughing.

But I thank God for Music hall, the simple yet profound medium of working class people all those years ago, a tradition still kept alive today.
Lord of music and laughter, may we hear the Heavens ring with a song of love that we recognise as our own.

Amen