"Going out to Holywood on the bus
And walking from the end of the lines to the seaside
Stopping at Fusco's for ice cream
In the days before rock 'n' roll
Hyndford Street, Abetta Parade
Orangefield, St. Donard's Church
Sunday six-bells, and in between the silence there was conversation
And laughter, and music and singing, and shivers up the back of the neck
And tuning in to Luxembourg late at night
And jazz and blues records during the day
Also Debussy on the third programme
Early mornings when contemplation was best
Going up the Castlereagh hills
And the Cregagh glens in summer and coming back
To Hyndford Street, feeling wondrous and lit up inside
With a sense of everlasting life..."
from On Hyndford Street by Van Morrison
Last Sunday during an event called The Gospel According... To Van Morrison I read Morrison’s poem Hyndford Street. It is an amazing lyric that takes Morrison back to the street he grew up on and finds him having, “a sense of everlasting life...” and “dreaming in God.” It does what Van does best and lifts the mundane wondrous. As I read On Hyndford Street I felt very moved. The images are real and ordinary but the spirit of it is extraordinary. It finds God in the detail and God bursts out of the minutiae to fill you with awe and light us up inside.
By “chance” just a few days later I was back home. We had been given gift tokens for Galgorm Manor a luxury hotel and Spa about a mile from where I grew up. I wasn’t exactly tickled with the location but hey... How wrong was I. I found myself completely blown away by the beauty of this part of County Antrim, its rolling fertile farmlands and then the tree lined River Maine cutting through it like something out of a tourist brochure for the Rockies or New Jersey. The Carry, as my dad called it when we walked the dog, where the river rushes over the stones gave off a bubbling water sound that became relaxing and intoxicating. It whispered across the silence.
So, this morning I stood on a balcony gazing out over this scene and listened. I literally sensed Morrison’s spiritual experience. I felt “lit up inside.” Where we come from is so important. We always find it easy to find fault but it is where God dreamed us, shaped us. We need to revisit it, be intrigued, reminisce but more than that search deep into our molding and shaping and find the wonder, the eternal, the God given preciousness of our lives.
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