Missed it by that much.
Notice came out last night that Mumford and Sons are playing one of their surprise club shows tonight in Toronto – a small venue called Lee’s Palace. Tickets went on sale for the show this morning – it was a long shot (and should be such an amazing show tonight) but no luck in getting tickets.
So as I wallow in the disappointment of missing this, let me reprise an older post I did on Mumford and Sons a few years back. It seemed like their music was, and still is, a really fine soundtrack for Lent.
My Soundtrack for Lent
Lent begins this Wednesday and I’ve landed on this year’s soundtrack for this season of repentance – Mumford & Sons Sigh no more. I know I’ve blogged on them earlier here, but this album continues to capture me and much of the honest, plaintive confession of Lent.
The title song Sigh no more confesses: “My heart was never pure / You know me” and then hopes for a “love that will not betray you / dismay or enslave you, it will set you free.” The Cave cries out the hope of Lenten penitence – “I need freedom now / and I need to know how / to live my life as its meant to be.” Lent is a long study in giving up all the
ways we try to find life, finding life as its meant to be lived in Jesus and his passion.
And it keeps coming. In Roll Away Your Stone, they name the empty, endless chase to fill our hearts with things which always end up as ashes, and yet the hope found by every prodigal returning home to God: “You told me that I would find a hole / within the fragile substance of my soul / And I have filled this void with things unreal / And all the while my character it steals / But darkness is a harsh term don’t you think? / And yet it dominates the things I seek / it seems that all my bridges has been burned / you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works / it’s not the long walk home that will change this heart / but the welcome I receive with a restart.”
Awake My Soul is an honest probe of a lumpy heart: “How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes / I struggle to find any truth in your lies / And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know / This weakness I feel I must finally show.” Isn’t this what Lent is – an invitation to the painful journey of revealing our weaknesses, our broken hearts and disjointed lives, praying that God would awaken us to resurrection life?
And then there’s Little Lion Man, my choice for this year’s Lent heart song. Likely written about a love lost, it’s a powerful, pounding, holding-nothing-back lament of regret and heartbreak, equally applicable to my unfaithful heart for God:
“Weep for yourself, my man / you’ll never be what is in your heart / Weep little lion man / you’re not as brave as you were at the start / Rate yourself and rake yourself / take all the courage you have left / wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head / But it was not your fault but mine / … Tremble for yourself, my man / you know that you have seen this all before / tremble little lion man / you’ll never settle any of your score / your grace is wasted in your face /”
And don’t miss the spot in the song (2:48) where the band begins a sung cry, a gut-level, lyric-less lament – listen to it (see below) as the voice of Lent.
The album title comes from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about nothing” (Act 2, scene 3: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never”) – this band is wonderfully literate. In this scene from Shakespeare, Balthasar urges the other women to sigh no more, to let go of the disappointment and expectation for men to change and, instead, accept and love them as they are. Throughout Lent I’m faced with my own shadows, left sighing with disappointment again, wishing for change in my fickle heart. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is the stunning call to sigh no more, telling me I’m accepted in spite of myself. That is the work of Lent and the starting point of any real change, of a resurrection.
Below is the video for Little Lion Man (just a word of caution – if you’re offended by the use of the f-bomb, then do avoid this song).
Squinch 