SOUL SURMISE

STAMMERING PRAYERS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

the Sunday before October 7th... thinking of Israel/Palestine/Lebanon... prayers in Fitzroy...

 

God of love

Who loved the world so much that he gave...

We worship you, give you praise

God of peace

Whose angels heralded in Christ’s arrival on earth with “Peace on earth and good will to all human beings..”

 

God who hears us in the dark

Because you are up all night

Our world is in a violent, frightening, bleak moment

We can hardly watch the news for the horror

In the place Jesus walked it is mayhem and death

It has been a year, in the recent killings

And we feel hopeless

Helpless

We don’t even know how to pray anymore

 

God, it is such an emotional, divisive conflict

You feel that if you say anything about it

Someone will attack you for prejudice

 

So Lord we stammer a few prayers...

 

Lord we pray for humanity to be restored

Where whether state or rebel forces

All will see the other as themselves

Where every victim will be seen as made in your image

And compassion rather than hate will overcome

 

Lord we pray for the safety of the people 

Comfort for those injured

God of love be around those who have lost loved ones

Children living through the trauma

We pray that ceasefires will be called immediately

So that humanitarian needs can be met

We pray for those NGOs who are trying and planning to help

 

Lord we pray for wisdom and vision

Not only in that local geography 

But among world leaders

May the UN be given imagination

Strategy and courage to end the violence

And bring all side together

May all sides see their people as more important than their land

And compromise for the peace and prosperity of their people

 

God we are week in belief

We are heavy with doubt

But we seek you God of love and peace

To interrupt 

We know about such interruptions 

And are thankful for the peace we now enjoy

As we live between the 30th Anniversaries of our ceasefires

We long to hear news of ceasefires in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon

 

In the name of the Prince of Peace we pray

AMEN 

VILLAGERS - THAT GOLDEN AGE

I had foolishly dismissed the new Villagers record. I knew Conor O’Brien was the real deal but I hadn’t given him the time that I think it takes to be smitten. 

Then one evening I stumbled across Culture Night on RTE and there was O’Brien with an orchestra conducted by the awesome David Brophy singing I Want What I Don’t Need. I was enraptured. What a song.

As a preacher it had that killer punch line of the title in all of its nine verses. It reminded me of Rich Mullins’ (whom O’Brien will never have heard of) who sings: “I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want/Than to take what You give that I need”. O’Brien speaks to the individual soul and the entire society: 

 

And I want to be the only one

Who has reached the peaks they all dream of

And I want the glory of the deed

I want what I don’t need

 

There's a fairytale we call "Free Will"

It was funny then, and it's funny still

And at the heart of it lies an endless greed

Because we want what we don't need

 

That was the door opened and I walked through. That Golden Time became like a spiritual devotional. 

In Truly Alone there’s a wee echo of Gary Lightbody’s Snow Patrol lyric from The Beginning on their new album The Forest Is The Path “‘Cause I wanna be in love/Without being loved in return”. Though neither would have known the other’s line both touch on the theology of the grace of God.

 

To give your love for nothing in return

To know your worth in spite of what you earn

To be at peace with the great unknown

Truly alone

 

Of You Lucky One O’Brien has himself said, “Corruption of the soul and disingenuous motivation are the order of the day, so I thought it best to serve with a side plate of the macabre and sinister.”

The title track begins like Bowie’s Space Oddity, then slips into Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and critiques this post That Golden Time…

 

Before the dulling of the mind

Encased in algorithm blues

Hollowed out the heavy stuff

Replaced it with a careful ruse

 

No Drama has similar theme as Radiohead’s No Alarms, No Surprises… please… 

 

Such a simple life, you're looking for

No drama, knocking at the door

 

Behind The Curtain gets close again to what might be most wrong with the world..

 

We keep passing the blame - it's a funny old game

Everyone is going insane

And we're playing at God 'cause he's gone for a walk

While nobody listens and everyone talks

 

And the closing Money On My Mind takes us to the root of all evil. If I still had my old radio show I’d have played this alongside Bruce Cockburn’s Passing The Cage…

 

I was trying to be someone, anyone but me

Clinging on so tight to a sense of injury

But we're all under the hammer and they've got us on our knees

We've got money on the mind

Monеy on the mind

 

I cannot remember my soul taking such a consistent interrogation since David Gray’s Sell Sell Sell album. Conor O’Brien is like a modern day blend of Jackson Browne’s 70s albums of introspection and the early Church fathers unpacking a spirituality for everyday living. 

Musically That Golden Age is sparse but full of that melodic ingenuity we have come to expect and seductive voice that intrigues to draw us in. It is intoxicating in the very best of ways.

RUNNING THROUGH A CLOUD OF LOVE

(My script for Thought For The Day on October 1st 2024 on Good Morning Ulster...)

Sunday week ago was the Belfast Half Marathon.

I didn’t always have a good relationship with the Half Marathon. Being on a Sunday morning it interrupted church. Our congregation were from all over Belfast and so many roads were blocked especially the one right outside. 

I took it to a Lord Mayor. Shift it to the afternoon and we’ll even help you do it… but of course it was a few churches in the morning verses all the shops in the afternoon. Money wins.

As I grumped at the door, one Half Marathon Sunday, a parishioner asked what was annoying me. I told him I was mad that they took no consideration of us. “Well Steve”, he said, “The early church didn’t have access to Lord Mayors or power or feel entitled.” 

Of course. A light went off in my head. The next year we stopped complaining and started enjoying the Half Marathon. The prophet Jeremiah wrote about praying for the peace and prosperity of the city. It was time for Fitzroy to pray.

So, we went out the front on Half Marathon Sunday. We cut up oranges and opened bags of jelly babies. We pumped out positive music and started cheering and clapping.

Oh the early runners were too focused but it wasn’t long until a few started waving, thanking us, taking the oranges and a wee sugar rush jelly baby. We are perfectly placed. Twelve miles in. One to go. They were hitting the wall. Just where you need encouragement.

We found it addictive. Loved it. The church service start time was put back and back. I could have preached from Hebrews, “let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” or we could actually do what it says. Serving others. Particles of light across the city.

And then the feedback. Social media started throwing up thank yous. Many said it helped them through. Some called it their highlight of the race. One said it was like running through a cloud of love.

I loved that. Imagine if every time we were hitting the wall in life we ran through a cloud of love. A bunch of folk cheering us, lifting us, carrying us. That’s a city I want to live in and help create..

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON (1936-2024) TRIBUTE

There was not even a record player in our house until I asked for one for my twelfth Christmas. I came from two sporting parents. No time or interest in music. Eventually dad had a Lena Martell and my mum had Big Tom and The Mainliners and Johnny McAvoy.

Mum then bought Kris Kristofferson’s album The Silver Tongue Devil And I. As an thirteen year old I hated it. Too close to Big Tom for me. Country - uncool in a world of T.Rex, Slade and Wizzard!  I can still see the cover looking at up me from the record pile on the floor. Detested it and Perry Como covered For The Good Times didn’t help even if I had bought Gladys Knight’s Help Me Make It Through The Night!

I heard late last night that Kris Kristofferson had passed away. I was gutted. First thing this morning I was listening to The Silver Tongued Devil and I. How good is that record? That title track, Jodie and The Kid… actually I ended up adding every song. Banger after banger, it’s like a Greatest Hits on one record. The spiritual, the romantic, the road songs, the guns, death and Janis’s epitaph! 

I found the record when I was clearing out my parents house and even if it is too warped or scratched to play on my turn table it has a pride of place in my collection.

I have no idea when I admitted to my mother that I was a Kristofferson fan. I bought the Why Me single with Help Me on the b-side. Two Gospel songs before I was able to admit that God existed. Cliff Richard even did a good version of Why Me on his Small Corners record!

Then Sam and Isabel Hill would sing Me and Bobby Magee on holidays in St. Ives. By the time The Austin Sessions came out in 1999 I was buying Kristofferson on release day.

I loved the Don Was produced This Old Road and eventually bought The Complete Monument & Columbia Album Collection. 16 CDs! 

I loved one of Kristofferson’s last appearances. The pastoral carer who is Belinda Carlile held his hand just as he had done for Sinead O'Connor in the infamous moment during the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert in 1992.  As they dueted, Carlile wove her angelic voice around Kris’s faltering one. A Case Of You, a song that could almost have been written for him.

Sunday Morning Coming Down has become one of my favourite songs of all time. Kristofferson and his mate and mentor Johnny Cash’s cover version gave broken humanity a depth of empathy in that song that I don’t think Dylan, Mitchell or Springsteen ever achieved. 

So, thank you Kris Kristofferson for leaving us a life’s work that incudes many of the best songs of a generation, for the guidance, catharsis and particularly cataloguing that space where broken humanity and redemption meet and wrestle and get lost or found.

As my friend Ryan put it on WhatsApp this morning:

 

All the themes of freedom, individuality, counter-culture, human imperfection and the struggle for redemption, the love, loss and complexity of human relationships, issues of social justice and advocacy for the marginalised, the spirit of hope, resilience and perseverance, it’s all there.

 

Indeed.

SOUL SURMISING

I am often asked why I call my blog "Surmise" as "Surmise" is about guessing rather than being certain. I use it, of course, poetically rather than theologically but it was always my intention. I wanted to throw out ideas and reflections and reviews without arrogance. 

 

Surmising

Pondering gargantuan ideas

Wondering what God knows

Knowing we don’t know much

Never mind it all

Who am I to tell God what he thinks

Surmising

 

Surmising

Translations of ancient texts

Our contexts culturally shocked

To grapple with our day

And how it lands

Peering through a glass darkly

Surmising

 

Surmising

Mesmerised by Rough & Rowdy Ways

Silenced before the Pieta

I hear the poets and philosophers

Seeking to make sense

In every way religious

Surmising

 

Surmising

Afraid of the absence of doubt

Abhorring the arrogance of certainty

Scarred by the know it alls

Heart, mind and soul

Do nothing out of vain conceit

Surmising