‘The Right On Marvin Gaye/Holler love across the nation... we proclaim love our salvation’
July, 2021
After Listening to Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album ‘What’s Going On’.
“We can rock the world's foundation / Everybody together, together and holy” (Wholly Holy)
I love everything about this record. In this appreciation piece (thankyou letter?) I wanted to show it’s beauty and it’s toughness and the vulnerability throughout. The title seems a bold assertion that we are about to hear the truth but it so easily becomes a question too: What is going on? I can scarcely think of a better description of the Christian condition, or at least mine. Sometimes you’re high on the mountain, others you’re down in the pit. Gaye’s ability to find beauty, and find God, in the torn up ghettoes of 60′s America is inspiring in the good times and reassuring in the bad. He saw the seeds of love longing to grow under the concrete and in the hearts of Americans twisted by hatred, attack and revenge, action and reaction. It’s also way ahead of its time in linking how we treat Creation to how we treat each other and the totally holistic nature of Christ’s saving love for the world. It also doesn’t flinch from the holistic nature of the destrcution that awaits all things if we don’t bring this love to pass. It’s a record full of humanity, full of love and full of hope that never ignores how difficult it can be to feel these things yet never forgets the neccesity of it.
“God is my friend, Jesus is my friend / He made this world for us to live in / And gave us everything / And all He asks of us / Is we give each other love” (God is Love)







