music

“Better off for all that we let in”– a BBC Pause for Thought

/ Trey Hall / Leave a comment

Here’s the text for the 14 September 2026 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Sara Cox Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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The first CD I ever got, a Christmas gift in 1990, was by the American folk-rock band, Indigo Girls. I hadn’t known them before, but when I played the CD, their lyrics hooked right into my soul. And over time, their music became the soundtrack of my young life.

The first festival I ever went to, a few years later, was to hear them play live. I can still feel the energy pumping through us, thousands of young adults singing our hearts out in sunny rainy muddy fields, jumping and stretching our bodies to the stars, to the stage, to each other.

Meeting other kids as in love with their music as I was was a revelation, a homecoming.

I love that festival experience: when your own personal journey intersects with masses of other people whose journeys share the same tracks. Like everybody dancing in Stirling this weekend, united by the music of Lulu and Chaka Khan.

But for me, the miracle of a festival is way more than just loads of individuals having loads of individual experiences next to each other in the same field. The miracle is that Something Extraordinary might happen to us together: as a whole community, as one body, we might open up to some equal mystery.

When I’m lost in the music, the defensive lines I sometimes keep around my heart blur a bit. I feel more porous to others, more open and permeable to the transcendence I call God.

As a Christian, I think we humans spend way too much time imagining ourselves as tightly-defended, self-contained individuals. I believe in our hearts we’re made for relationship. Actually, it’s more than that: we *are* a relationship. We are invisibly connected to every person and all of life.

As the Indigo Girls sing it: “Don’t know where it all begins, don’t know where it all will end, we’re better off for all that we let in”.

I went to hear them play a few summers ago at another festival, Greenbelt, in the UK. And in another field, in another country, I found that community again. We weren’t young adults anymore: definitely more wrinkled. The music filled the air, some of us dancing, some of us sitting at the edges of the crowd, but all of us still pulsing with the connection and joy of Something Extraordinary.

“Switching on Radio2 Christmas” – a BBC Pause for Thought

/ Trey Hall / Leave a comment

Here’s the text for the 1 December 2025 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

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A few years ago, I went to a concert. Not pop music or rock – but organ. Can I admit that on Radio2? I love Bruce Springsteen, Belinda Carlisle, but I also get giddy for some J.S. Bach.

The concert was at Christmastime in an old church. Candles, stained glass, and the first song was so beautiful I could actually feel it passing through my body, slowing my heart beat, relaxing my soul – one of those rare moments when all is calm, all is bright.

After the last chord from the organ, the sound was just echoing through us. We were holding our breath, savoring the reverb. And then, in that gorgeous stillness, we heard: ARRHH-ARRHH-ARRHH.

From the street outside, a car alarm – a blaring, old-school car alarm. The audience laughed and the organist played on, but in the quiet movements, you could still hear it. We sang a carol; there it was: it wasn’t stopping till it drained the car-battery. The music was glorious, but that alarm clashed hard.

For me, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. School nativities and human cheer, searching for stars in a midnight clear. So I’m thrilled that we’re switching on Radio2 Christmas today. Come on, Mariah! All I want for Christmas is you.

But amidst all that joy and cheer, alarms are still sounding: children in poverty, unending war. Grief, money trouble, mental health struggles. One Christmas, my own depression was so deep, I couldn’t sing a note.

And it’s tempting to drown out those alarms with festive noise, to numb ourselves and pretend we don’t hear them. But many Christmas carols invite us to do the exact opposite: to tune our ears to the suffering, to remember peace and kindness aren’t just feelings – they’re a way of life.

In the Bible, those alarms? They’re called prophets. They cry out for justice because none of us are okay until we all are.

At the end of that concert, the organist sat down for an encore. We waited, in silence—well, except for ARRHH-ARRHH-ARRHH. But the organist listened to that alarm – and then he wove it into something extraordinary. He improvised a whole new song around it, adding harmony and transforming it into something strangely-beautiful.

This season, Radio2 family, can we do the same? And try to hold the joy and pain together, the discord of the world and the harmony, so we can really hear that promised miracle song: O Holy Night, when every soul feels it worth – and all oppression shall cease.