This week's episode features audio from a workshop by Ben Keyes entitled, Living with Contradictory Expectations: A Meditation on “Let it Go” and Other Inspirational Break-up Songs.

Daniel Boorstin wrote of Americans in 1961: “Never before has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.” This workshop will examine the song Let it Go from the Disney movie “Frozen” (2013) as a more recent example of extravagant and contradictory expectations. What did this movie encourage young people to expect of life and can we offer a helpful response?

Ben Keyes grew up in Massachusetts at the Southborough L’Abri with the impression that having crowds of strangers in his home was a normal thing. From an early age he loved to play music. When he was in high school his family joined an African American church and Ben became involved in the music ministry—learning how to play gospel piano and bass guitar. He attended Brown University where he studied ethnomusicology. In 2002 he spent 6 months studying at the English L’Abri.

Ben Keyes studied Theology and the Arts at Regent College in Vancouver and directed a large gospel choir as part of his final thesis project. While at Regent, Ben and two of his classmates started a folk trio called Ordinary Time which sings both original songs and arrangements of old hymns. Ordinary Time has recorded 5 albums to date.

In 2007 Ben and his wife, Nickaela began working at the Southborough L’Abri and have been there ever since. In 2016 Ben and Nickaela became co-directors of the Southborough branch. They have twin daughters and a son. Ben loves to cook, lead music at his church, give lectures, read to his children, carve wooden birds, play the banjo, and tie flies.

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