SOUL SURMISE

LYRIC FOR THE DAY 3.9.10 - from Snow Patrol's Hands Open

 

“It's not as easy as willing it all to be right
Gotta be more than hoping it's right
I wanna hear you laugh like you really mean it
Collapse into me, tired with joy”

                   From Hands Open by Snow Patrol

I am pretty sure that Snow Patrol’s chief lyric writer Gary Lightbody has never read classic Christian author AW Tozer but when I first heard Hands Open from Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open album these lines immediately brought to mind something I had read from Tozer. In writing about our pursuit of holiness Tozer suggested that we were as holy as we wished to be but not as holy as we wanted to be. His point was that wishes are fanciful but empty. We almost wish and know that our wishes won’t come true. In the context of holiness that means we can wish all we like but actually do nothing about it. When we want something we really go after it. That is when a wish, through the conduit of imagination, becomes a tangible thought that we go to work on. We then plan, strategise, scheme and even wheel and deal because we have such a yearning for what we want that we will do anything it takes to make it happen.

Jesus wasn’t about wishful thinking. Yes, he left us dreams and fired our imagination with possibilities and potential for how the world could be but he didn’t leave the disciples wishing. They knew from following him for three years though the confrontations, controversies and the cross that this was about so much more than wishful “willing it all to be right.” They knew that it was going to take more than “hoping it’s right.” This was a cross on the shoulder wanting. Paul is his letters in the New Testament frequently uses phrases like “make every effort” or “press on” or “strive.”

Christianity is in essence a following of Jesus and that is so much more than a wish. It is hard work in collaboration with a God who promises to empower us in our wanting and work. Then our satisfied laughter will be authentic and we will collapse tired with joy not duty, contentment not comfort and real human experience not fanciful wishes.

GETTING OUT OF THE BAWN

 

At a recent Special Assembly of The Presbyterian Church In Ireland (in which I am a minister) Rev David Bruce gave a very inspirational and challenging address about the withdrawal of Presbyterianism to the north eastern edges of Ireland. David is the Director of the Presbyterian Church’s Board Of Mission Ireland and his interest is our missional impact across the island and was using the statistics of north eastern migration for more than mapping reasons.

David’s talk was inspirational and prophetic in a few places but there was one image that has remained with me and its implications have come up in two different settings since which leads me to be very attentive. David took us back to the very start of Presbyterian encroachment onto the island of Ireland. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by way of Plantation the British colonised Ireland and that was the door through which Presbyterianism landed, primarily from Scotland.  

To defend their security in an environment obviously hostile to the Planters they set up their “bawns.” “Bawn” is derived from two Gaelic words for “cow” and “fort” and would have been courtyards for people and livestock protected by walls. Ever since, Protestants have lived in Ireland with a siege mentality, defending their interests in insular ways. David suggests very convincingly that this historical practice has been at work in the conditioning of the modern Presbyterian and has therefore a deep impact on the potency of our mission.

Indeed, as I read the Northern Ireland press this very morning, the front page is all about Northern Ireland being a broken society, full of social problems like poverty, drug abuse, divorce etc, while page 3 is the story of another inner city Presbyterian Church closing down. I am surmising that the two stories might be linked. A church that has stayed within its bawn has failed to impact the society while dying because it lacks vision and the purpose for its existence.

All this surmising is being done in the context of concluding a sermon series on Mark’s Gospel. One of the eclectic mix of commentators I used in the series was a Scottish Presbyterian Leith Fisher who concludes, “It ill behoves any Church seeking to follow Mark’s Jesus to settle behind secure stockade protected by doctrinal razorwire.” Jesus ministry was a constant breaking of the bawns that Judaism had built around itself, failing to fulfil its mission of being a light to the Gentiles, not just themselves.

I then focus my attention on my own situation. I am the minister of a vibrant, passionate and gifted body of believers. They are on a daily basis taking their faith outside of our Sunday service Church walls and into their places of work and residence. Yet, we are not making our impression in the needy areas of our neighbourhood. I am asking myself and my congregation if the Church would be missed if we closed down and walked away. We would miss the relaxed and contemporary worship, the warmth of our fellowship, the nurturing of our own souls but would our neighbours miss us? Are we investing all our energy within the bawn? Are we stuck in old habits that we don’t even know the history of? I fear that we are and that we need to break out of the bawn to be our true identity – salt and light in the world we are called to be salt and light in.

RUSTY ANDERSON - Born On Earth

My favourite Wings combo was the Wings Over America quintet that added the amazing guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Joe English to the ever present McCartneys and Denny Laine. They were the most successful too being responsible for Venus and Mars, Wings At The Speed of Sound and a good bit of London Town as well as that aforementioned live album. Of those records Speed of Sound was the most collaborative. Why do I say all this in the introduction to a second album by a Californian guitarist. Well, he happens to be in the current McCartney band and it might be the best McCartney band since those halcyon mid seventies days and perhaps the one that McCartney should have another go at collaborating with Time Exposure would sit well on a Wings album whereas Where Would We Go could be from a McCartney solo album; it would fir snuggly onto Flaming Pie for example. It is the title track and Under a White Star that might give McCartney a little injection of rock show that hasn’t been heard since the young Scottish McCulloch (as opposed to the Irish McCullough) left the band. Under A White Star soars towards U2 territory and Born On Earth after an orchestral start rocks out with chunky guitars in an attempt to find the meaning of our existence and struggles on the planet, with a powerful swipe at Bushian theology and it’s Christian behavioural outworking - "all the ice is melting away / but its alright / cause all we gotta do is pray."

Outside of McCartney, Anderson has an incredibly full CV/resume with session playing credits with the likes of Elton John, The New Radicals, Sinéad O'Connor, The Wallflowers and Stevie Nicks as well as being a member of the band Ednaswap who birthed the song Torn before Natalie Imbruglia made it a worldwide hit. Is Born On Earth album of the year? No. However if you’re a Beatle freak who buys everything surrounding the fab four then this will be one of the pleasant surprises in your barn size collection. If you’re not then it might harder for you to come across but there are many worthy moments. A little of its aggression would be a healthy addition to Paul’s next record.  

 

HAS MY TEAM, MANCHESTER CITY, SOLD ITS SOUL?!

It has never been easy being a Manchester City supporter. When I switched allegiance from the red scum side of Manchester in 1969 a few weeks after City last one the FA Cup (note the “after”) I had no idea that forty years later we’d be dreaming of a repeat! It is fair to say that City fans have been through forty years of thin and even thinner, a laughing stock when we deserved to be laughed at and even when we didn’t! The new abuse is that we have sold our souls for the money and that we are the great destroyers of English soccer.

And... to be truthful... I have lived uneasily with the developments over the last year or so, particularly Mark Hughes’ sacking. I didn’t know whether I wanted City to reach the Champions league or not. Part of the reason for that was that if we had we would have an even better team this week than the one that showed Liverpool on Monday night that they were no longer within a bagel’s goule of the top teams in the English Premier League. If City had had the Champions League to barter with as well as the bottomless pit of cash my fear was that we would have bought our way to the next ten Premier League titles; a monopoly would have been minted. I still think it might be so BUT if we could win the title this year at least it was with one hurdle to jump. I also struggle too to believe that if we do win a few Premiership titles in this next decade that I would then lose interest and start supporting Blackpool instead. Supporting a team that always wins takes something away from supporting a soccer team. I am not sure I like it, though of course I’ve never had the chance.

The money? Well, of course everyone tells us we can’t buy success. My jury is out on that. Chelsea were our relegation and promotion rivals for quite a while in the late eighties and they seem to have bought something! What I do know for sure is that it is no longer possible to have success without money. I have fond memories of the seventies when a QPR, a Watford or a Derby County could challenge for league titles; when there was no such thing as a big four. I would love to have those days back but they are not coming back so if you support the kind of teams who should have a chance of Premier league titles like Everton, Villa, Spurs, Newcastle or Leeds then you are going to have to find a big investor.

I would love that. Ten teams, all well stocked with cash, giving the League twists and turns and a new winner every year for a decade; I really don’t want City to win it, and everything else, every year. Sadly we don’t live in Communist China where we could cap wages, transfer money etc. We live in the west where capitalism has lost all control and accountability. It is not City that has lost its soul, City is a symptom of an entire society. We can’t stoke the fires of greed and wanton injustice and then expect soccer to be some kind of Godly antithesis. Our criticism and protest songs need to target something much, much bigger. Should I continue to support City in the light of what I am writing. You know at times I do not know but that team are part of my identity and so I continue to watch their destiny unfold with this uneasiness as a part of it.

I do laugh at those who point their finger as if City are the first team to spend money. When United bought Rooney from his home club that he loved, did they buy him fairly. No. In the Communist China scenario he would have remained at his beloved Everton with the same wage and opportunity to win honours and play for England. Did Theo move away from Southampton because his ma had moved to London or was money and ambition involved? And Frank leaving his dad at West Ham? Did Torres move to Liverpool for the weather and the accent? Soccer players didn’t become mercenaries when a Sheik bought Manchester City. They have followed the trails of their own career trajectories for fifty years and more. It seems money was OK to buy players until City had more money than everyone else. Well for decades we had less money and that wasn’t fair either!

So my dream would be that we had ten investors of ten big clubs and all would have equal investment. That would be a great league. Until that happens we, as City fans, have an advantage just now and watching City on Monday night against Liverpool was a frightening experience. The touches of class, the vision, the pace, the tackling. City fans are not used to it and once this team gets to know each other’s names they can only lose the success that will be available to them. Fear not though, City has a long history of being good at losing!

TOM JONES - PRAISE AND BLAME

Well when I finally gave in to all my natural resistance and gave Tom Jones’ 39^th album a listen I was not at disappointed. After 38 albums that, as far as I am aware, have contributed little to personal or social transformation the Welshman gives us a reason for his existence. Much has been made of the young producer Nathan Johns whose previous work being the likes of Ryan Adams being to Jones what Rick Rubin was for Johnny Cash and I am not sure whose idea it was to match Jones with the Spirituals but it is revelation. The sound is dirty, live organic and uncluttered with pianos honey-tonkin’ and on Burning Hell guitars that sound like Jack White is in the house. It takes your default position a little time to adjust to Jones’s voice moving from pop trivia like Sex Bomb to the depth of these spirituals but eventually you begin to believe that Jones is actually a soul singer.

The Spirituals have so much to teach the modern Church about life and faith and how to use music to engage with a God who bridges the gap between how we are and how we can be. Praise and Blame is a perfect title. From the confessional and sobering gem of Bob Dylan’s What Good Am I these songs look for God to, by grace alone, navigate us through the reality of humanity’s tainted inclinations to miss the judgement that should be ours. There is constant confession of Blame but always a reason for Praise. These are songs about people who can sneak a peak at redemption from their honest understanding of their profound lostness. These are songs full of serious minded sinners, wayward pilgrims, screams to God for help and burning hell; it is everything that modern Christian worship albums are missing.

The playing is deliciously celebratory on Strange Things and Aint No Grace but also bluesy cathartic on Did Trouble Me and Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But Mine. All in all the whole thing comes across as a surprising flash of light in the midst of a dark place. Tom Jones on my playlist under “songs for a healthy soul”... who’d have thought!