AS THIS ADVENT SEASON invites us to ponder the mystery of Jesus’s coming at Christmas, I’m sharing a series of reflections inspired by Listening to the Music of the Soul, the Archbishop of York’s Advent book for 2025 by Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani.
In her exploration of faith, identity, beauty and vulnerability, Bishop Guli invites us to listen for the melodies that shape our inner lives and connect us more deeply with God and one another.
In the first post in this series I shared Bishop Guli’s invitation to compile our own Desert Island Discs – eight pieces of music
‘to help you better understand yourself and the things that are important to you… [and] remind you of seminal moments in your life’.
This challenged me to reflect on the ‘music of my soul’ and the stories it evokes that tell me something about who I am now and how I came to be here. In the days up to Christmas Eve I will share one of those reflections – pieces of music and moments of meaning. Here’s my fifth:
I’ll Stand By You – The Pretenders
When this power ballad was released in the UK in April 1994, I had just resigned from my first teaching job, rather than be signed off work with stress-related illness. The future looked uncertain – I took a job as a barman and signwriter for a pub while I recovered and considered my future.
I don’t recall when I first heard the song – it might have been in the pub, or on the radio as I had more time to listen during the day when I wasn’t teaching. The lyrics spoke to my situation, especially:
When you’re standing at the crossroads
And don’t know which path to choose
Let me come along
‘Cause even if you’re wrong
I’ll stand by you
This wasn’t my first ‘crossroads’. In my final year of university I applied to a Catholic seminary to train as a priest, and to a teacher training college to gain more life experience while waiting for the seminary to think I was ready, or so I thought. I was on the point of being recommended for priesthood training when they asked me to choose between it and the teacher training course I’d also been offered. I chose the teacher training for a year, with a view to completing that and my first year of teaching (essential to become fully qualified) before reapplying to the seminary.
I passed my teacher training course and began to teach in a large Catholic primary school in London. By the time I returned to school after Christmas, I was experiencing stress-related symptoms so strong that I decided to resign at Easter rather than stay in that unhealthy situation. My plan was off course, and there was no clear way ahead.
What I didn’t know then was that this was just one of many ‘crossroads’ at which I would stand. I reapplied to seminary after completing a year in another school, but left training for priesthood half way through, again facing an uncertain future. What I thought was a call to ordination seemed impossible.
Yet here I am 30+ years later training for ordained ministry in the Methodist Church. The stressed and confused 23-year-old who left teaching to work in a pub, the depressed 28-year-old who left seminary, would not have thought this possible.
Fast forward to another ‘crossroads’ – I moved to Liverpool in 2003 following a retreat at a spirituality centre on Merseyside, sadly now closed. While on my first retreat there in 1998 I saw that they advertised a weekend for LGBT+ Christians – something else I never thought possible. I made it to my first of these weekends in 2001, and attended most years until the closure of the spirituality centre in 2014.
It was on one of these weekends that this song took on a new meaning. On the Saturday evening, retreatants were invited to take part in a reconciliation service as a community to acknowledge past failures and offer healing, reconciliation and hope for a better future. For those who wanted to speak with a priest, this was available but not required. This was particularly helpful for those like myself who were, or had been, Catholics and for whom the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation (usually 1-1 confession to a priest) could be problematic or even traumatic.
The service included readings, music, and silence. Into the silence came the soft, sustained keyboard chords of this song, which I didn’t recogniseat first. Then Chrissie Hynde’s vocal began gently, as if speaking directly to one person rather than performing to an audience, with a gentle vulnerability – calm, steady, with emotional weight:
Oh, why you look so sad?
Tears are in your eyes
Come on and come to me now
Don’t be ashamed to cry
Let me see you through
‘Cause I’ve seen the dark side too
When the night falls on you
You don’t know what to do
Nothing you confess
Could make me love you less
As I recognised the song it moved me to tears – it was a surprise to hear this secular ballad in a religious context. I heard the words as if for the first time, as if spoken by God, Spirit, or perhaps Jesus, especially these:
So if you’re mad, get mad
Don’t hold it all inside
Come on and talk to me now
Hey, what you got to hide?
I get angry too
Well I’m a lot like you
The experience stayed with me, consoled and inspired me. Then in 2019 I was asked to be part of the team which offers these LGBT+ Christian weekends, at their new home in a spirituality centre in north Wales – something else I never thought possible.
I have now co-hosted these retreats six times – I do my best to honour the quality of the support I received from these weekends, including reintroducing the reconciliation service as the highlight of the weekend.
Looking back now, I’ll Stand By You has stayed with me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated when I first heard it in the mid-1990s. What began as a song that seemed to speak directly into a time of uncertainty has returned at other crossroads, carrying new meanings as my life and faith have changed. It has become part of the story I tell about how I got here.
In the light of Bishop Guli’s reflections, I recognise this as something like the music of my soul: not a soundtrack chosen for comfort alone, but a piece that has accompanied me honestly through confusion, disappointment, and hope. The promise to ‘stand by you’ now sounds less like reassurance offered from a distance and more like presence – staying close, especially, even when the way ahead is unclear.
This Advent, with its invitation to wait and to listen, I’m struck by how often God’s faithfulness is revealed not in moments of certainty, but through accompaniment – through people, communities, and, occasionally, a song heard in the right place at the right time. This is the music I return to, and the melody I continue to listen for.
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