Category: Renewal

“Pick Up the Pieces” Live From Daryl’s House (2010)

The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Music, 10 November 2019

Photo by Mr. Chester Ocampo, October 2019.

Today’s Sunday gospel is admittedly very difficult: the resurrection of body and life everlasting.

In our gospel, the Sadducees tried to trick Jesus with their “levirite law” from Moses that decreed “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother” (Lk.20:28).

Right away, Jesus quashed their wrong argument because there is no point in having analogies and comparisons when it comes with the resurrection of the dead. Marriage is something of this world while resurrection is something beyond this world and life.

What Jesus is asking us this Sunday is to focus our sights on our loving and merciful Father because faith in resurrection is faith in a living God.

Moreover, faith in resurrection of the dead is borne out of an encounter and experience of God, moving us to forge on with life amidst all its difficulties and trials because we believe this life would be changed and perfected by God in the end.

And that change, that resurrection begins right here in this life – every time we try to pick up the pieces of our lives, when we try to start anew, whenever we rise again from every little death, that is when we experience our little resurrection.

From that experience we slowly gain passion for life because we are convinced deep inside there is something more bigger awaiting us because we have God on our side who would never forsake us and perfect us in eternity.

In reflecting these things of the above like heaven and resurrection of the dead, I always choose next to prayer the way of music, and believe me, not just meditative or classical music.

I do it with rock and funk and soul!

See how Daryl Hall and his musicians play with so much passion and gusto this classic by the Average White Band (AWB) called “Pick Up the Pieces”: it’s a natural high, feeding our soul deep within, transporting us to somewhere higher in realm and reality.

Released in 1974 by Scottish musicians AWB, Pick Up the Pieces is essentially instrumental with its title being shouted occasionally.

I prefer the version of Daryl Hall when he invited to his internet show Live From Daryl’s House AWB original Alan Gorrie jamming with them in his home-studio in New York state in January 2010.

Just enjoy and feel the music, feed your soul, be assured Jesus is always on your side who journeys with you through this life into eternity. Amen.

Pilgrimage prayer

The Lord Is My Chef Breakfast Recipe for the Soul
Monday, Easter Week II, 29 April 2019
Acts 4:23-31///John 3:1-8
A view from the Jerusalem Wall, April 2017.

Lord Jesus Christ, today we leave for a pilgrimage to your Holy Land. Your people there claim it is also our land, everybody’s land. Thank you very much for coming to us, walking on earth, being like us in everything except sin.

Most of all, thank you very much in bringing us not only closer to the Father through you but most of all, making us experience you in the Holy Land.

Today’s first reading tells us how you have sent the Holy Spirit upon your Apostles and followers after Peter and John were released from prison in Jerusalem.

As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

Acts 4:31

Our group of pilgrims are not that many to shake the Holy Land, Lord; but, we pray that in our prayers and sacrifices during these days especially in your holy sites, shake our hearts, shake our inner selves, move us closer to you and with one another in faith, hope and love.

Some of us are coming with some darkness within us, but most of us shall be praying for loved ones going through so many trials and difficulties, so fearful like Nicodemus who came to visit you at night.

Bless us going on a pilgrimage and those everyone on a journey with you in their work and studies, at home, in their sickbeds, everywhere… that we may experience to be born from above, to be filled with the Holy Spirit to become new persons in you. Amen.

A view outside the western gate of Old Jerusalem, April 2017.