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 seventh:
Brave – Sara Bareilles
When this song was released in April 2013 I was working part-time for two charities supporting LGBT+ young people in Merseyside. Through this work I became aware of International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia & Transphobia on 17th May. The date was specifically chosen to commemorate the World Health Organization’s decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
I discovered the song two years later when the United Nations Human Rights Office ‘Free And Equal’ campaign released a video called ‘Faces’, which asks: ‘Can you see past the label?’ The Free And Equal website explains the video’s message:
Let’s celebrate the contributions that millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people make to families and local communities around the world! There are no actors in this video, only real people filmed in their workplaces and homes – among them, a firefighter, a police officer, a teacher, an electrician, a doctor, and a volunteer, as well as prominent straight ally UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The video’s soundtrack was an extract of Brave by Sara Bareilles, with lyrics that are very appropriate for the spirit of the campaign:
You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody’s lack of love
Or you can start speaking upNothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if youSay what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
By May 2015 I had left my roles at the LGBT+ young people’s charities on Merseyside and volunteered as an LGBT+ role model with three national charities. In developing my role with the charity I now run, I developed LGBT+ and faith awareness training and began using the ‘Faces’ video as a resource to humanise the conversation so that it would be rooted in reflection on the lives of people, not ‘labels’ or ‘issues’. I still recommend it today.
The official music video for the song has an extra verse:
And since your history of silence
Won’t do you any good,
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia exists because silence has harmed too many lives. Long after homosexuality was removed from diagnostic manuals, the effects of shame, fear, and enforced quiet have lingered – in families, churches, and inner lives.
As I look back over my own story, shared across these Advent reflections, I can see how much of my early faith was shaped by silence: about who I was, what I feared, and what I believed God might ask of me. Brave names something I learned the hard way – that silence does us no good. Speaking did not solve everything, but it made life healthier, and that, in itself, was an act of courage.
Perhaps courage, for individuals and communities alike, begins simply with telling the truth and allowing ourselves to be seen.
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