SOUL SURMISE

LESSONS FROM SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION FOR CORONAVIRUS TIMES

I have blogged many times about my, if I was pushed, very favourite movie Shawshank Redemption. Preaching on Exodus during Coronavirus times I drew upon it again.

If you haven’t watch the movie - do! Andy is in prison after being falsely accused of killing his wife. His buddy is Red, a veteran of prison life. 

Brooks, one of their fellow prisoners gets parole. He cannot deal with the freedom. The speed of change in the world outside leaves him in a kind of culture shock. He cannot deal with freedom and takes his own life.

So with the Israelites in the wilderness. Security in captivity. Fear of the unknown in freedom. As they journey in towards the Promised Land they are in culture shock and spend their time grumbling and complaining to Moses and God.

There is a scene in the prison yard where Andy and Red are discussing Brooks’s sad death and Red says, 'At first you hate these walls, then you accept them and eventually you become dependent on them”.

So many of us critique the world we live in, fight for justice and demand change but when we are hurled into the unknown of lockdowns and social restriction we seem to miss the walls.

Later in the film Red gets released too. He ends up where Brooks stayed and sees Brooks’ name carved into the roof beam that he hung the rope upon. Will Red follow?

He doesn’t. Why? The difference with Red is that he has hope. It is something outside of himself and his circumstances that allows him to believe in something else. 

Andy had escaped before Red was released. Red had been suspicious of hope but after one slot in solitary confinement Andy said, “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”. Andy had a dream of an alternative. Andy had a vision. Hope.

Andy has told Red that if they ever get out he would leave him a message under a tree in the countryside. Red goes and finds a tine with money and a ticket to Mexico. 

The movie ends utterly beautifully, with Red travelling on a bus down the Mexican coastline. We see the panoramic view of the ocean. Deepest blue colour to contrast the grey drab world of Shawshank prison. Andy is across a beach working on a boat. It’s a little glimpse of the heaven we hope for.

Two stories. Two outcomes. Brooks was hopeless. Caught in the culture shock of freedom and unable to cope.

Red had hope. Something transcendent. It helped him cope. Saw him through.

The Israelites shifted from being Brooks to being Red. Sometimes hopeless in their surroundings, other times believing God was with them. 

We in Coronavirus Times need to remember that Emmanuel - God with us - is not just a phrase for Christmas but for all the year round. In moments when we the Covid 19 culture shock hits we need to remember there is transcendence with us, hope is the best of things and better days are up ahead. 

ARE WE ALL WHINGERS?

 

(this is my Belfast Telegraph Coronavirus Column that I retake weekly with my friend Fr Martin Magill... published on September 26, 2020) 

We all seem to be Whingers. We have lived such a free and comfortable life that six months of restrictions due to a killer pandemic has us grumbling about everything that a government under pressure attempts to do to save lives and our livelihood.

There is nothing new in whinging. If we go back to the Old Testament story of exodus we find the Children of Israel in the wilderness whinging. God has freed them from slavery and an oppressive Pharaoh. He has miraculously rescued them through the Red Sea but soon they are grumbling to Moses about food and water.

The grumbling could be seen in another way. A lack of faith. They have watched God doing amazing things for their liberation but so quickly they have stopped trusting God and start grumbling.

There are obvious lessons for us in a Coronavirus world millenniums later. Indeed, this might the time when we learn more about God and ourselves and the Bible than we could learn in those more comfortable pre virus days.

There are very few places in the Bible where anyone is comfortable. There are people on the run or in slavery or in the wilderness or in exile or under an oppressive Roman Empire. It is in these difficult places that the people encounter God.

In the Bible it is not so much about where you are as who you are. Finding an identity and trust in God allows tough times like Covid-19 times to become an exciting adventure inside your soul to find faith, resilience, hope and vision.

Last week a friend put a message on Facebook that read “Some things break your heart but fix your vision”. That could be a theme through much of the Scriptures!

When we stop grumbling and start trusting, focus on who we are through God’s grace, Christ’s life and death and resurrection and ascension and not where we are then we might find a vision for a better day.

When we hear the whinging of the Children of Israel in the wilderness it seems that they might have settled for a merely a slightly improved slavery in Egypt rather than the milk and honey of the Promised Land.

What of us? As we have travelled through these months I have heard so many people say that we do not want to go back to the old normal. I have heard people talk about what they learned about their previous heavy work schedule, about enjoying more time with their children. Many have been pleased that the environment has had a bit of a breather. Lots of us have felt our faith growing because we have had to stop leaning on a service or mass but up our time in private devotion. Let us hold on to these lessons and move on to better days.

The comparison with the Children of Israel is interesting. They were coming out of restrictions towards liberation. We, on the other hand, are sacrificing our liberation for a period of restriction. Either way, our the honed over time understanding of God is challenged. We encounter God in a different place and in different ways. God gets reshaped in the changed circumstances.

It is time to quit the whinging. It is time to encounter God in new places. It is time to concentrate on who we are. It is time to use this virus that is breaking our hearts to fix our vision. It is time to commit to the Promised Land.

(this is my Belfast Telegraph Coronavirus Column that I retake weekly with my friend Fr Martin Magill... published on September 26, 2020) 

We all seem to be Whingers. We have lived such a free and comfortable life that six months of restrictions due to a killer pandemic has us grumbling about everything that a government under pressure attempts to do to save lives and our livelihood.

There is nothing new in whinging. If we go back to the Old Testament story of exodus we find the Children of Israel in the wilderness whinging. God has freed them from slavery and an oppressive Pharaoh. He has miraculously rescued them through the Red Sea but soon they are grumbling to Moses about food and water.

The grumbling could be seen in another way. A lack of faith. They have watched God doing amazing things for their liberation but so quickly they have stopped trusting God and start grumbling.

There are obvious lessons for us in a Coronavirus world millenniums later. Indeed, this might the time when we learn more about God and ourselves and the Bible than we could learn in those more comfortable pre virus days.

There are very few places in the Bible where anyone is comfortable. There are people on the run or in slavery or in the wilderness or in exile or under an oppressive Roman Empire. It is in these difficult places that the people encounter God.

In the Bible it is not so much about where you are as who you are. Finding an identity and trust in God allows tough times like Covid-19 times to become an exciting adventure inside your soul to find faith, resilience, hope and vision.

Last week a friend put a message on Facebook that read “Some things break your heart but fix your vision”. That could be a theme through much of the Scriptures!

When we stop grumbling and start trusting, focus on who we are through God’s grace, Christ’s life and death and resurrection and ascension and not where we are then we might find a vision for a better day.

When we hear the whinging of the Children of Israel in the wilderness it seems that they might have settled for a merely a slightly improved slavery in Egypt rather than the milk and honey of the Promised Land.

What of us? As we have travelled through these months I have heard so many people say that we do not want to go back to the old normal. I have heard people talk about what they learned about their previous heavy work schedule, about enjoying more time with their children. Many have been pleased that the environment has had a bit of a breather. Lots of us have felt our faith growing because we have had to stop leaning on a service or mass but up our time in private devotion. Let us hold on to these lessons and move on to better days.

The comparison with the Children of Israel is interesting. They were coming out of restrictions towards liberation. We, on the other hand, are sacrificing our liberation for a period of restriction. Either way, our the honed over time understanding of God is challenged. We encounter God in a different place and in different ways. God gets reshaped in the changed circumstances.

It is time to quit the whinging. It is time to encounter God in new places. It is time to concentrate on who we are. It is time to use this virus that is breaking our hearts to fix our vision. It is time to commit to the Promised Land.

WILDERNESS ROAD - TOMORROW IN FITZROY: 27.9.2020

In our Fitzroy Sunday service tomorrow (going live on FITZROY TV at 11am) we will be staying on the wilderness road that we found ourselves on last week. A couple of social media messages this past week focused my preparation. 

After I posted the photo at the top of this blog last Sunday morning my friend Clive Price posted:

For years I thought 'wilderness' meant a really bad place. 'Oh he's having a wilderness experience' used to be a common expression - and not a nice one. Then I read about the wilderness motif in the Bible and its true meaning. It is a place of encounter.

Then, with all the news about Covid-19 on Tuesday my friend Brendan Mulgrew Tweeted:

That is a day full of bad news. Where is the light?”

So, we will ponder such things as we continue to journey with the Israelite through the wilderness and the culture shock they are facing after 4 centuries as slaves in Egypt. This culture shock becomes a place of encounter with God.

With the help of Rich Mullins song Hard To Get performed by Belfast songwriter Andrew Patterson and the movie Shawshank Redemption we will exegete Exodus 17, apply it to the news of the week around us and ask "where is the light?" 

MICHAEL KIWANUKA - KIWANUKA

There are a few things that make a record great for me. It’s good if it is eclectic, cohesive and thematic. It is good if it is beautiful, familiar in many ways but full of surprises.

Michael Kiwanuka ticks every box on his Mercury Music Prize winning album Kiwanuka. His third record is the culmination of the development in his imagination and musical implementation from his debut record Home Again through his second record Love and Hate. Home Again as an acoustic record in the traditional songwriter style, Love and Hate brought in electric guitars and riffs and grooves.

The third record simply called Kiwanuka has all of those albums and more. It is tender at times, riffed up at other times with all kinds of intricate little joins in-between. There are all the great influences - Curtis Mayfield, Pop Staples, Bill Withers, Donny Hathaway and lashings of the psychedelic guitar sounds of Jimi Hendrix. Kiwanuka throws tablespoonfuls of all of these into the most original of rocked up concoctions.

For me, I am particularly chuffed that Kiwanuka won the Mercury Music Prize as I claim him as Ugandan. Soul Surmise readers know how dear that country is to my heart. Kiwanuka’s parents were Ugandan and left to escape the oppressive regime of Idi Amin. I happened to be in Uganda when Love and Hate came out and the location of first listens added resonance.

There is a personal introspection to Kiwanuka’s work. He has admitted to self doubt and naming the album after his surname is a statement of pride in who he is and has become. There is a spiritual light to his music too and he is a not without social critique and political comment. 

Kiwanuka is everything I look for in a great record.

GALGORM - MY VILLAGE, ALL OVER THE TV

From as early as I remember every time we drove over the Sourhill Road in Ballymena my father would point down to one side of the road and say that the piece of land would make a great golf course.

Fifty years later and I am watching on Sky Sports as the Irish Open is being played in those fields my father pointed out -  now Galgorm Castle Golf Club.

As far as I am concerned the Stockmans are from Galgorm. When my dad was very young he moved from a house across the road from what he prophesied as a golf course, to a thatched cottage in the middle of Galgorm village. The cottage was renovated around 1710 probably for the staff of the nearby Castle where the golf course now is.

Glagorm was tiny then though houses and an industrial estate have since caused the village to be too narrow for all the traffic. My first home was in a housing estate just behind the cottage in Maine Park. I lived there until I was 7 and after that spent all school holidays in my Grandparents cottage in the village. The cottage is no longer ours but my uncle still lives in the house he built beside it. Another aunt and uncle live in Maine Park. 

The Castle grounds loomed large in my childhood. My aunt Jean worked in the big Castle and we used to stop at the gates regularly because they had a vending machine that dispensed eggs. Looking back, that was pretty ahead of its time for rural Northern Ireland in the early 60s.

My dad would have stories about the Castle and he certainly played in the trees that Padraig Harrington hit a few shots into today as well as the river. I was too young and have only one vague memory of me and my mates only climbing the fence.

I never imagined that a world class sporting event would come to our wee village. To hear the commentators wax lyrical about the River Maine and how beautiful a place it is. We never knew! We failed to appreciate it. Today it is on televisions across the world. 

My mum played a lot of golf at Galgorm Castle. We always said that she should take me for a round. We never managed it. She presented a Cup for a women’s match between Ballymena Golf Club where I grew up a member and Galgorm Castle. Oh how she would have loved this. My dad too, if he still had the mental capacity to grasp it.

My cousins are members at Galgorm. They too should be proud tonight. Not only did the course look amazing but no one tore it apart. Maybe of the weather improves over the weekend someone will but it looked a tough track today. 

Galgorm. That’s where I’m from. There aren’t many of us. I am proud.