5. The Rhyme and Reason- Garth Hewitt

This one is slightly obscure, few people have heard of Garth beyond certain Christian circles and people over the world who he’s been involved in speaking up for. He is a lover of justice and speaking up for the poor. He taught me a lot. We had all his records in our house when we were growing up, my parents were friends with him and my Mum worked for him. I couldn't escape him. But I am indebted to him. However nasal the voice, however strange the songs, I owe him my love of American music, my appreciation of singer songwriters and my love of people who can make you cry with the passion they put into singing the songs they write.

He didn’t write easy to understand songs at first. Talking through the meaning of lyrics with my brother taught me to listen to songs, to listen to the stories that you can tell so much better with a guitar. He taught me of a world that is wrong, a world that is messed up and that telling the stories of that world is important. He expressed things about the God who cared about these stories too.

This song, the rhyme and reason, was one I spend time trying to work out. Time dwelling in the lyrics and taking them on as my own. Which is something we all do with songs, we find ourselves in the story, we look for the point of identification and the expressions that put into words the deep corners of our souls. This was one of the first songs that I can remember doing that to me. The cry at the end “I long to be of value, I long to have a friend, I long to have a home to go to when my life should end” became my cry, and later on the answer as well became mine “And just as I start thinking that this could not be mine, he contradicts me with his body and a cross far back in time”. I spent lots of the dark times crying out for these things that could only ever come through that cross.