SOUL SURMISE

ROAD NOT A ROUTE - BETHLEHEM TO CALVARY

“A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”

 - from Immortality by Milan Kundera

I was taken with this quotation when I first read it in the early 90s. It stuck with me. Any travel in rural Africa and you find that roads are more important, to Africans, than routes. You would never take a route. The quickest way might cause you to miss someone or something along the way. Roads are for travelling and learning and maturing and experiencing. 

The difference is a strong challenge to our stressed out schedule keeping world where we spend our life on routes and short cuts and miss so much of the wonder of life in all its fulness. 

The Kundera quotation came back to me one night when I was interviewing songwriter Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue. Ricky had brought his brand new record Pale Rider into the studio with him and told me I would like the track Calvary… and that it was about Christmas! Ricky went on to explain that when he was growing up he noticed, in his Church, that as soon as Jesus was born they had him on the cross. 

We need to make sure that we take Jesus on the road from Bethlehem to Calvary and not by the quickest route. If we have him on a route to the cross then we miss the road of his teaching and life. The destination therefore becomes meaningless as we have no idea what to do when we have gotten there!

MARK 1: 16 - 20

16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him.

19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

We need to follow Jesus as he invited his disciples to follow. As we follow down the roads of Galilee, Samaria and Jerusalem we can pick up all his insights. Like fruit off a tree we should put them in the baskets of our souls and then follow Jesus through the cross… and out the other end of resurrection… to live the fruit of his ministry on the other side. 

NOT A ROUTE… BUT A ROAD?

Not a route to

Too fast, too functional, too distracting

But a road through 

Slow to pay attention for impacting

Not a route to

Too easy, too brief, too matter of fact

But a road through

Taking in all that we’d need, to act

Not a route to

Too cold, too instant, to get it done

But a road through

 

From Bethlehem to Calvary

It was never meant to be a quick route to

But a following, 

Gathering all the things we’d need

A road that would take us right on through…

PRAYER: Lord, saturate us in the roads you walked, stop us at every helpful place that we might picks up the lessons we need to learn from your life, so that we can live like you… through the cross… to the life of resurrection power. Amen!

50 WORDS FOR FORGIVENESS - Our Belfast Telegraph article 13.12.18

Scandalous Forgiveness.” That is the name of 2019’s 4 Corners Festival. We believe it is a vital theme for our city and country in our current political inertia and any possible vision we might conjure for a peaceful future. Forgiveness has been a recurring word from the contributors and audience at our last few festivals. Last year at a panel event it came as a question from the floor. “Do we have to forgive people who have wronged us?” Fr Brian Lennon was on the panel and in his answer, he threw up another question, “Forgiveness? What does that look like?”

It was a fascinating question. Here was a word that we hear weekly in churches across Northern Ireland, no matter what denomination. It is at the very centre of the Christian faith and yet we were asking what it looked like. Surely that question should have a quick and confident answer. In the context of Northern Ireland forgiveness is complex but surely it is vital if we are ever going to be able to deal with our past.

Fr Brian’s words fired the direction of the 2019 Festival. Professor John Brewer, from The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University has for some years challenged us in the Church to keep words like forgiveness in the public conversation. That is what we will be doing in the 2019 Festival.

The Festival planning committee took time over adding the word “scandalous.” We believe that Jesus was constantly doing scandalous acts. Whether it was the forgiveness he showed to a woman caught in the act of adultery or having dinner with a tax collector, sharing a drink at a well with a Samaritan woman or telling a Roman Centurion that he had never seen such faith in all of Israel. In Jewish culture these were all scandalous acts and forgiveness is somewhere in the mix.

In Northern Ireland many will see it as scandalous if someone forgives the person who killed their husband or wife or son or daughter. It could easily be seen as a scandal if a paramilitary murderer was forgiven. Some might suggest that that isn’t justice.

Yet, it might also be scandalous if those of us who talk so much about God’s forgiveness are not acting in forgiving ways - if forgiveness is not at the forefront of all that we do.

There was a scene in a television documentary where a woman, whose mother had been murdered many years before, was being told how miserable her mother’s murderer was in prison. She was so pleased to hear that. He deserved that. We have sympathy with her thoughts but at the same time on the wall in front of her was a big cross with another small cross by its side. The cross is a symbol of forgiveness and seemed to be a major symbol in her own life. Yet, it was not at all in evidence as she spoke. Have we concentrated ourselves on God’s forgiveness to us but somehow blocked out and ignored that Jesus asks us to follow him by forgiving others the way he forgives us?

We are both convinced that forgiveness is a key contributor to peace building. We believe that it can contribute to personal peace as well as societal peace. To forgive someone who has caused us deep pain is not so much for the good of the one forgiven as much as it is for the one who forgives. The bitterness that we hold can damage us even more. Forgiving can let go some of the hurt and indeed control that the perpetrator holds over us.

It has been said that the Eskimos have fifty words for snow. Should we in Northern Ireland have fifty words for forgiveness? We often hear from friends at Stormont that, never mind not getting into the chamber together, some politicians hold such resentment that they won’t even share a greeting when they meet certain others on the stairs. The name that we call a city can cause all kinds of bitterness of heart. Wearing the wrong football shirt in the wrong place can be a dangerous thing. Self-forgiveness might be something that we don’t find easy either. These all call for different shades and weights of forgiveness.

Then there is the heavier forgiveness that will be necessary if we as a society truly seek a way to deal with our bloodied past. We need to be able to find forgiveness for what our communities have done to one another for hundreds of years, the hurt, the pain, the prejudice, the killing.

We believe that forgiveness is a resource, maybe the most powerful resource in delivering a better future. The Bible has the hope of “shalom” at the heart of God’s dream for the world. We believe forgiveness between human and human, community and community as well as God and humanity are intrinsic to God’s intentions for redeeming the world. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem that first Christmas and angels sang, “Peace on earth” they were already looking ahead to Easter when God reconciled himself to the world in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus uttered the words “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Interesting!

We encourage the city of Belfast and beyond to use the events planned for 4 Corners Festival 2019 to look at forgiveness from a whole range of angles. We will look at how CS Lewis portrayed forgiveness in a family friendly event, “The Gospel According To… Narnia;” how Seamus Heaney took up Greek myth to speak into our modern dilemma in a reading of The Cure Of Troy, with public figures playing the parts; a new documentary Guardians Of The Flame in which people, impacted by “The Troubles,” share their different takes on forgiving; Belfast songwriter Brian Houston will share themes of forgiveness in his body of work; and David Porter along with Nicola Brady will inspiring us to live as a forgiving city moving forward. We are delighted to have Fr Greg Boyle whose idea of bringing boundless compassion to the violent gang members of LA gangs has deeply impacted lives and communities. We want to use poetry, song, drama as well as personal story, practical teaching as well as theological wrestling to open up and highlight the pearl of forgiveness.

It will be messy and difficult. We will struggle with it, find complications in its outworking. At times it will get scandalous but maybe as we surmise it over the ten days of the Festival, and beyond, we will journey to the very heart of God and towards our own salvation and the transformation of our country.

Rev Steve Stockman and Fr Martin Magill are co-founders and co-chairs of the 4 Corners Festival, now in its seventh year, which runs from January 30 to February 11. Further details at 4cornersfestival.com

PERIPHERAL VISION - GMU THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 12.12.18

Peripheral vision. I love watching the wonder of peripheral vision. Maybe right now somewhere on the roads and streets and avenues of Northern Ireland, you might be benefiting from it - the driver with peripheral vision. 

A driver with peripheral vision never gets too absorbed in his or her own car, route or destination. No the driver with peripheral vision sees all the options happening around them. He or she will see you in that car waiting for ages on in a side street. They will see the traffic light changing just a little bit up ahead, so they can adjust to let you across the traffic without interrupting the flow of cars in the main thoroughfare. They stop, flash a light at you and let you across the road. Peripheral vision.

They are just like the players who play the the most beautiful moves in the game.  You know Manchester City’s David Silva, Ireland’s Jonny Sexton, Dublin’s Ciaran Killkenny or Jude Winchester from table topping Ballymena United. These kind of players play with their heads up ever alert to what is going on around them… they see things out of the corner of their eye, the whole pitch, every player, where the team mate is where the gap in the defence is… then the cutting game changing pass… beautiful. 

The Christmas Christ child took this kind of peripheral vision into life. A prostitute here, an outcast tax collector there, a Samaritan woman with quite a story at a well. Jesus was a player who saw everything and everyone going on around him. Every driver would have benefited from his generosity of vision. Jesus knew the move to make to bring everyone into play and allow everyone else to score the winning goal. 

So, this morning on the way to work or wherever. May we all benefit from the gift of peripheral vision. In our lives too, whether in family, neighbourhood or even politics. The players, that are not so consumed in their own self indulgent needs or narrow ideological vision that they miss the man or woman on the margins, are prepared to sacrifice their own glory for the good of others, for the good of all. 

Peripheral vision - beautiful! 

 

SNOW PATROL LIVE AT THE SSE, BELFAST - 8.12.18

photo: Janice Gordon-Stockman

At the end of Snow Patrol's Run the house lights go up and shine across a packed SSE arena. Every hand is in the air. Both hands. Every voice is blowing their lungs out. I am thinking this should be Northern Ireland’s National Anthem. 

Later in the set Chasing Cars has similar effect. When it ends and the crowd go wilder, than the wild they are during the song, I sense something more than an ovation for a pop song. This is a city, a country even, pushing out its chest with pride to acknowledge that our boys have written two of the best rock songs of the last twenty years. Belfast celebrates Snow Patrol’s genius!

If you want to see U2, Dublin is probably best. For Snow Patrol it’s being in the hometown crowd as Gary revels in being home. It’s more electric than the other shows. When they sing Take Back The City for instance, only a Belfast crowd is in the city of that song. When Lightbody does a solo acoustic song I Think Of Home he is singing about our fields, our streets and our Granny!

Tonight I raised my respect for Lightbody’s songwriting even more. I became acutely aware, as the gig went on, that this is our modern Heaney and Morrison. With those guitar shuddering shapes that Nathan Connolly throws and Jonny Quinn’s pumping beat it would be easy to lose the poetic subtlety of Lightbody’s songwriting touch. I imagine most, in various levels of inebriated states (we should have to pass a test to be a gig goer!!!), do!

I didn’t. With my wife, I am more aware with each passing day of a need to find our place to lie with each other and forget the world. My life’s greatest deep place is described so well in Heal Me - 

 

I call out your name it feels a song

I know so well

And it whispers and roars like an orchestra

You call out my name

Like no one before

It sounds like I am called to a home that I never had

 

With my girls beside me Run became a song I want them to sing in the last days and hours of their father’s life, just as Janice and I held hands and wept through it in the same venue nine years ago as Janice was losing her mother. 

I’ve already mentioned the Belfast songs. Right through until the final encore and their biggest anthem statement of Just Say Yes Snow Patrol not only celebrates but soothes the wonderful but wounded soul of Belfast.

From the personal to the family to the neighbourhood, they go beyond that and in Life On Earth I hear a cry for resilience in the midst of a world in a state of chassis at our time in history:

 

It shouldn't need to be so fucking hard

This is life on earth

It's just life on earth

It doesn't need to be the end of you, or me

This is life on earth

It's just life on earth

 

Forgive the language, theirs not mine, and let that rocket to your soul. These are hard times but we can live and thrive through it.

That is something else that comes through tonight. The new songs from Wildness are, as I thought, among their very best. They all sit strong, and indeed popular with the crowd, among the hits and old favourites. 

Maybe we will eventually discover that the best one of all is the first encore, What If This Is The All The Love You Ever Get. It is beautiful and in this communal experience I was drawn to the fact that it is almost a secular sacramental call. As I was planning to invite my community of faith to the Lord’s Table the next morning I couldn’t help but hear Jesus calling us:

 

What if it hurts like hell

Then it'll hurt like hell

Come on over, come on over here

I'm in the ruins too

I know the wreckage so well

Come on over, come on over here

 

Spiritual and emotional love and healing in the camaraderie of our brokenness! Oh I will use it soon in Fitzroy for sure! 

I have a couple of negatives. Martha Wainwright’s video appearance on Set the Fire To The Third Bar didn’t work and a live Miriam Kaufman would have been stronger. Also, something about the size of the sound didn’t reach back as far as me in the arena. Nathan’s riffs that usually slam my kardia, while Gary’s words tickle my thoughts, weren’t shaking my core. I was watching a brilliant gig rather than being in the middle of it.

That said, my chest was out too. This was great stuff, These were our boys. Just say yes!

NO SOUL WIPE

We had the privilege of  my dear friend Rev Doug Gay preaching for us in Fitzroy this morning. The lectionary readings of Malachi 3 and Luke 3 had Doug sharing God's desire to purify us, from our self indulgence and lack of motivation towards justice, with fire and soap. 

My heart was warmed with the inspirational challenge. When I had my Damascus Road conversion as a 17 year old I didn't commit my life to Jesus to get a 1/10 or 5/10 life. I wanted 10/10 - life in all its fulness. That is what I sensed Malachi's message of refining was all about.

So, as we went into communion I used this poem. I don't want what Malachi preached against - second best!

 

Don’t give me an analgesic soul wipe

Or a sanctimonious side swipe

But a sacramental hit when I’m just ripe

Burst the bubble of the selfish me

Not a dull dumbed down drab drone

Or a monotonous mumble and mad moan

But the glorious song that I’m not alone

Love to fire what we all could be.

 

Don’t give me easy empty cheap cliches

Or weightless words to get blown away

But some substance of soul to fight the decay

Poetic imagination that redeems

Not a rut that we cut way back when

Not the hurt of history again and again

But a done deal hope that grace can send

Seeing visions and dreaming dreams.

 

Oh this can be useless hobby

And I can be a sad time waster

The the bread and wine and follow

As a radical audacious dreamer.