In April 2021, we packed up our house and moved. The sun shone that morning and to my surprise I wept inconsolably as we loaded the van and surrendered the keys to a tenant. 18 tempestuous months later, I found myself back at the front door, feeling the familiar metallic shudder of the keys in the lock and letting the scent of varnished floors trigger overwhelming relief as we stepped gratefully back over the threshold into what we now knew was our home. My wife wept this time. We had come full circle. The house was the same as when we had left it. But we weren’t.

Life, it appears, isn’t as linear as we might think. Its taken me a while to notice that this pattern of coming full circle is actually a common occurrence and my suspicion is I’m not alone in experiencing it. It seems to involve a journey, an escape, an adventure away from the arc of the typical or preempted trajectory that eventually leads us back to the point of departure as someone changed, perhaps chastised, and positioned for something new. This circle, it transpires, is not a retreat or the hallmark of failure but rather a spiral upwards; a thermal rather than a helter-skelter, a portal rather than a roundabout. It seems to embrace the tension of transformation without transition, a movement forward whilst seemingly motionless. We regress to where we started in order to progress with what we’ve learned; a broken Penrose staircase that appears to trap us in its loop and yet somehow takes us higher.

Anyone who goes on a hike experiences this phenomenon. It is a full circle in its simplest form. You set out from a destination, have an experience along the way and return to your starting point in some way changed by your journey. Maybe you now have a story to tell, a memory to mull, perhaps a bruise to learn from, a route you haven’t realised before. A humble walk in the mountains is illustrative of the wider full circles of life where the apparent end of something at its inaugural point births something new to be extrapolated.

The concept of life being a full circle is expressed famously, and somewhat depressingly, by Shakespeare in his Seven Ages of Man and the description of the ‘second childishness’ of old age. Departing from such humanistic literary hopelessness, we find deeper and infinitely more promising echoes resounding from the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life’. In the reality of death we see the promotion to new life. Our organic full circle experience allows for a birth beyond the natural limitations of our reality. The return to the ground where we started is therefore intended to be the platform to something new.

Biblically there are countless examples. Perhaps the most dramatic is the Wall of Jericho. Full circles here resulted in incredible breakthrough; tumbling bricks that collapsed to the sound of orbiting, faithful feet. As the Israelites returned to the start of their campaign their feet stepped into new territories; the apparent hopelessness of a full circle bringing victory and advance through obedient faith.

At 21 I returned home from University. My feet walked the same stairs to my childhood bedroom but I was no longer the child who had slept there. At 23 years old I returned home from London after 18 months of chasing success with a band. The man who healed quietly in the back garden that summer was very different from the boy who had set out so exuberantly and naive all those months before. At 25 I surrendered my life to Jesus. I had walked away from my faith 7 years before. I came full circle, a true prodigal son, dragging myself broken and penitent to my Father’s house and welcomed in with overwhelming love. The feast that was thrown is still going now. At 28 I came home from a summer in Ibiza irrevocably changed and began a whole new chapter of marriage and ministry. The list goes on. Time and time again I have returned to a previous locus of life and subsequently stepped into something new.

And that is really what this new record is about. Musically it explores the concepts of returning to the familiar with new eyes for the future. It’s the sound of journey and reflection rooted in the atmosphere of my home and surroundings. It’s purely piano solo because that’s where I began; 6 years old and hammering away at Old McDonald. Musically I’ve been on countless adventures, genres, disciplines and discoveries. Returning to my piano to release something new is the most obvious full circle metaphor I could have hoped for.

And I hope this project is encouraging for anyone who feels trapped, anyone who feels caught in the merry go round; wandering in apparent circles and wondering why you keep coming back to the same point. The likelihood is you aren’t in a loop but in a spiral, ascending the hill on stairs of stone and building your lung capacity for higher, loftier climbs. The keys for the door are still yours but how you live on the other side of the lock has changed. Remember that God uses circles to birth new things. Keep marching on.

New EP release ‘Full Circle’ is out on all platforms on the 22.10.23