SOUL SURMISE

PRAYING WITH A TRAMP WHO WAS ACTUALLY A GREAT IRISH POET

(This was my Pause for Thought on Vanessa on BBC Radio Ulster on September 22, 2020. The theme was Lessons Learned)

 

It was 35 years ago and I was on the Stranraer to Larne ferry.  We found seats and were quickly joined at our table by a man who looked like a tramp. He was dishevelled from head to toe, a little dirty and the loudness of his voice hinted that he had been drinking.

He started swearing loudly about British rail and soon everyone sat around us was focused on our table. I eventually leaned in and asked if he would mind stopping the swearing.

“What would you know about swearing?” he asked. “I am a great Irish poet and I know the power of words. What would you know? Where did you go to University?” 

When I proudly said Queens University in Belfast he shouted something derogatory about it being a sausage factory. 

Then… he walked off throwing some books on the table. People started gathering round to see what the books were and indeed the books were his - Padraic Faicc was a great Irish poet.

The Bible talks about entertaining strangers well… because some have entertained angels without knowing it. It is a small lesson in a Bible full of the preciousness of every single human being. Everyone, even the dishevelled tramp whose language is a bit strong. 

After a few minutes Padraic came back to the table and eventually shared with us about his brokenness. Born in Belfast he grew up in the poverty of Hells Kitchen in New York city. He returned to Belfast in 1969, his wife left him and his best friend was a victim of the troubles. It played havoc with his nerves.

As we left the boat I had one of the great privileges of my life as a great Irish poet asked me to pray for him and all those issues of brokenness that you can read about in his poetry. 

That boat trip was maybe as good a seminar as I ever attended. Don’t judge a book by the cover or the poet by his clothes.

PEACE AT THE CORE OF GOD'S REDEMPTION PLAN - For International Peace Day

The stories of Jesus birth and the theology within is not just for Christmas. It is for all year round!

The peace that the angels sang about that first Christmas is not some Christina side show but at the core of Jesus incarnation and the purposes of God.

My favourite band Over The Rhine have been exemplary at the first. They make records like Blood Oranges In The Snow. It is not just another great Christmas album. It is another great album - period (as their fellow Americans would say!).

I love that record and it was indeed a song on it that opened up the importance of peace in God's redemption plan in ways I had not got the full impact of before. A few of the lines jumped out from the rest of the brilliance and torpedoed its way into my soul surmising. 

As they sang…

“I hope that we can still believe

The Christ child holds a gift for us

Are we able to receive

Peace on earth this Christmas”

… something clicked. It is not a new line. I have been living with this line most of my life. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I didn’t hear it at Christmas time. I heard it for years before I even believed that what it was talking about was any kind of reality. For the last thirty years I have worked the phrase annually. One of my other favourite bands U2 even had a song called this and I have written about that song.

However, in this song that near over familiar line, “Peace on earth this Christmas”, struck a chord as loud as any Jimmy Page strum and as spiritually powerful as an Old Testament prophet or actually a New Testament angel on the night God came to earth! 

“Peace, Steve, Peace” is what my soul kept repeating. It is not about justice or vengeance, it is not about proving who was right or wrong. It is not about us and them and us winning. The point of this mission that God had in coming to earth was peace. That peace was not just for my soul. It was about peace on earth. Anyone following this Jesus whose birth is heralded in this angel’s song should be all about peace. 

This of course is not an out of the blue declaration of a God reaching for some Plan B or C. The Old Testament was all about this peace; shalom is how the Jewish people said it. Shalom was God’s intention in the law given, for the King’s to achieve and for the prophets to critique the lack of. A favourite verse on the subject that I have blogged often is Jeremiah 29:7 “And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.” (NKJV)

Those who claim to follow the baby born when the angels sang need to find that priority of peace. That God’s people would seek shalom wherever they were was a way of being God’s holy nation, a people set apart, different, in all the right ways, from the other nations. We need to not blend in to the world’s intuitive response to seek to be proven right, in control and avenging all who would come against us. We need to be about that ministry of reconciliation that God told us we would be about just as we are connected to God himself through that same ministry of his peace making.

On this International Peace Day, I commit afresh to the Gospel priority and commit to it with renewed courage, hope and all the grace that is intrinsic to the baby born and sadly often lacking on our streets, political buildings and even our churches - all the year round!

I PRAY… I WISH… (On A Daughter’s Leaving)

We are not who we are in the moment

We are always moving through the years

We are growing in what life throws us

In the laughter and the tears

 

I pray you’ll know the grace I believe

And forgive all the sins that I committed

That you’ll carry my love ever with you

And forget all the time that I omitted

I pray you’ll take our family values

And discern all our smudged fingerprints

You’ll realise deep gladness is a marathon

And never a fleeting happiness sprint

 

I pray that whatever breaks your heart

Will be a missive to fix your vision

When you throw sand back across your path

You’ll see the wonder of God given decisions

I pray you’ll find your life’s vocation

It will be a healer of this world’s pain

Go girl as far as you can go

And always find your way back home again.

 

I wish I could sneak inside your heart

And never have to say goodbye

To smile every time I watch you soar

And hold you every time you cry.

 

#proud #loveyoubabygirl

FITZROY SUNDAY SERVICE - 20.9.2020

Tomorrow in our Fitzroy Sunday Service (going live at 11am) we will be thinking about the whingers! We follow the children of Israel through the wilderness and as they whinge. I will use an amazing quotation by Miroslav Volf to help us ask some questions about our own fragile times and whether we are going to settle for just an improved Egypt or strive for the Promised Land? I'll also be using some Brian Zahnd wisdom to help us realise we might be in the best days for a long time to understand God's Word. We will ask what we believe, who we are and what we do. A variety of worship with a beautiful song performed by Erin Humphrey. 

LEAVING DAUGHTER TO UNIVERSITY - EMOTIONAL SONGS

So, we have had an exciting Road Trip to leave Jasmine off to University. The Stockies have always had music on such trips. It used to be the old CD for holidays. This time it was an 8 hour playlist made up of favourites by all 4 of us and Daddy adding all the old favourites like The Sawdoctors - “get the wasp off my sandwich”! 

This mix was a whole lot more poignant and deeply emotional. 

Jasmine herself chose a Maisie Peters (she’s always teaching her dad about new artists) song called The Place We Were Made and as I listened in the tedium of an English motorway I heard loud and clear what was in her ‘leaving home’ mind:

 

I know every streetlight

And maybe the colours will fade

This is the place we were made

By the late nights and the fires on the beach

Made by the small town secrets we'd keep

All that I know is

No matter how far away

This is the place we were made

 

Indeed!

Caitlin was intentional in her choices too. She carefully picked Belfast boy Ryan McMullan’s Letting Go For A Little While. His leaving song is from the child, not the parents, point of view as no doubt he goes off on tour: 

 

I know you love me, but now it's time to let me go

And I know you're sad but please don't cry

After all it's not goodbye

We're just letting go for a little while

 

Since the release of Deacon Blue’s great new record City Of Love Janice has been loving the song Intervals, surely about such moments in the Ross/McIntosh family life, and singing loudly the lines: 

 

When you grow up to be a star

Don't leave home for anything less than you are

 

For me another of this year’s top records has been tugging my heart strings, preparing for this seismic moment in our family life in general and Jasmine’s in particular. Jason Isbell is at the very early stages of watching his child grow. Letting You Go begins with him strapping his daughter into her baby car seat. At the end of this road trip I will be unclipping Jasmine’s for a last time, in some symbolic sense. Tears were creeping when this one came up on shuffle:

 

Being your daddy comes natural

The roses just know how to grow

It's easy to see that you'll get where you're going

But the hard part is letting you go

The hard part is letting you go

 

I am a very proud father this weekend. I am so inspired by how my daughters have turned out. Nothing like the plan I had for them, they are living a far better vocational plan of their own and prayerfully God's. As Jazzi starts International Development at Reading University I am excited for her and believe she is going to make her contribution. What an adventure! What a girl! BUT still… “the hard part is letting you go”… love you baby girl!