SOUL SURMISE

MY PRAYERS ON THE SUNDAY WE REMEMBERED CHRISTCHURCH, MOZAMBIQUE, ZIMBABWE, MALAWI & COOKSTOWN

My prayer in Fitzroy, the week after the Mosque Massacre Christchurch, in the week of a cyclone in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, just see days after the Hotel Crush in Cookstown.Brexit goes on in chaos too...

The Lectionary reading was remarkably Luke 13: 1-9 where Jesus deals with a violent massacre and a crushing by Siloam Tower. Immediately afterI prayed this the band played Bono and Daniel Lanois's Falling At Your Feet. Beautiful! 

 

Our God

It has been a wordless week

We have gasped

And sighed

And cried

At what we have lived through

We have been speechless

Trying to describe the distraught

Of Christchurch

Of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi

Of Cookstown

Of Carlingford

Of Cushendall

Of Westminster

Lord, people at worship gunned down

People in their homes washed away

Teenagers going out to a St Patrick’s Day party, not coming home to their parents

Ruth and Nicola lost to their families

And a Parliament in chaos and confusion and crisis

Lord, it is almost too much

 

So, Creator God

We find inspiration from our Muslim neighbours

And prostate ourselves before you

Falling at your feet

To find our place in your order of things

To be realigned

To be put back in-sync

To your place

Your world

And our place in it.

 

Lord, Jesus called the Spirit a Comforter

So, may the Spirit break into Christchurch

Southern Africa

Co Tyrone

May your compassion made flesh in those neighbourhoods.

 

And Lord falling at your feet

We give ourselves

To whatever we can do 

Out there

But more urgently what we can do right here

In our homes

On our streets

In our places of work and leisure and socialising

Lord urgently call us afresh

And energise your presence within us

That we might be particles of your light 

Shining across Belfast and beyond

Lord, into our old broken world

Shine the new healing of your Kingdom.

 

And Lord, start with me

Give my soul a paradigm shift

That I might see this last week

And place in it.

May that might make everything different

In how I live this week

May we never abuse your grace  

To feed our own self righteousness

But use your grace 

To feed and clothe and comfort the world’s deepest needs.

Lord, I am falling at your feet.

Amen

 

 

TOMRROW IN FITZROY - 24.3.19

I am delighted to say that I am back on Sunday morning (11am) in Fitzroy and it should be a good one. I am wrestling with the texts of Luke 13 and Isaiah 55 in the context of the incomprehensibly sad, frustrating and even angry week when we have mourned with Christchurch, New Zealand, got even more despairing and confused about Brexit and, closest to home, buried three of our northern young people in County Tyrone after the most horrendous tragedy at a Cookstown hotel on St Patrick's night. we will find Jesus not so much playing mind games with such mysteries but calling us in the midst of such events to bear the fruit of a people who have turned their lives and world around, from self absorption to selfless compassion.

There will be guitar edged worship and a Bono/Daniel Lanois song, with poignant near prophetic rewrites by John Trinder, that will beautifully link our worship, prayers and reflections.  

 

OVER THE RHINE - LOVE AND REVELATION

It would not be news or a surprise to any regular Soul Surmise readers to know that having Over The Rhine play in Fitzroy in March 2017 was a highlight of my life. We were just a few weeks into Trump’s America at that point. They were Americans on tour of Europe. The questions as to “how on earth” can only have added to their gloom. They spoke of the need for songs to see us through and their gratitude for such. 

Love and Revolution is an album of loss and break up. It’s nothing new for Over the Rhine who have been giving us beautiful pieces of heartache for thirty years, this very year. I remember at the funeral of our dear friend Lindsay Emerson how What I’ll Remember Most and Ohio somehow caused even more tears but with also threw us little nuggets of catharsis. When my own mother died I sought solace and soothing in the songs of Over The Rhine.

This collection seems to have been written in an intensity of loss. The lead-off tracks, Los Lunas and Given Road are saddest blue. When on Broken Angels, four songs in, Karin sings…

 

“I want to take a break from heartache

Drive away from all the tears I’ve cried

I’m a wasteland down inside

In the crawlspace under heaven

In the landscape of a wounded heart

I don’t know where to start”

 

… she’s not escaping anywhere soon on this record. 

Not that there isn’t hope as well as Love and Revelation on here. This verse from Let You Down is trademark Over The Rhine wonderful:

 

“If grief is love without a place to go

Well then I've been there, you’re not alone

And if a song is worth a thousand prayers

We'll sing 'til angels come carry you and all your cares”

 

The title track, stolen from the words by which their friend and most recent producer Joe Henry, not available this time, signs his letters and emails calls us to live something of kindness and grace in such a melancholy world:

 

“Baby, it can't wait

Make a little space

Pay a little time

Baby, just be kind

Make a stronger case for it

Extend a little grace

Return, delete, backspace

Do it face to face

And call it…

 

Love and Revelation

You and me and inspiration.”

 

Surely though all of this loss and heartache and disappointment is about the new landscape across Berquist and Detweiler’s beloved America. Songs to help us through. It also fits those of us mourning Brexit and its post vote chaos too. On the final song that has a lyric on the record they sing:

 

There is no land of promise here

There’s only wilderness

You may not recognize this place

You live here nonetheless

 

That is how so many of my American friends are feeling in Trump’s America and I am feeling about Brexit! There are many mourning the loss of values and dreams they hold dear. 

The title of that last song and the last words on the album say a lot about why I love Over The Rhine. It is not their bleakness that intoxicates me. Their realism is a vital ingredient but its their hopefulness, like scattered benedictions, that I love the most - “May God love you like you’ve never been loved.”

It is almost a throwaway line, like a feather but a feather fluttering with the weight of gold. Which is a great description of Over The Rhine in general and this record in particular. Top players on Love and Revelation add their different hues but the entire album floats on gentle acoustic strums and tinkling piano. As always Karin’s voice is angelic across the top and on Love and Revelation the duets with Linford, Let You Down and Betting On The Muse, are particularly strong.

I should mention the instrumental at the end. An American In Belfast suggests I should be particularly thrilled. I am. Th story, as I see it, is that when Karin and Linford played Fitzroy in Match 2017 they had just cancelled two gigs in the Netherlands because of coughs and lost voices. That meant that, instead of me touring them round CS Lewis and Van Morrison sites, they were prisoners in their Dukes Hotel bedroom on University Street. Valuable idle time it seems for Linford to find a tune on his guitar.

30 years. I have been a fan for 27 of them, always thrilled when a new record comes along. It’s been five years since their last studio record. As always… so worth the wait!

STOCKI'S "CARRY IT GENTLY" PRAYER

Carrying our faith needs the Jesus posture... a posture of gentleness... in its courageous conviction...

 

God, give us a confidence in you

But let grace keep us from arrogance

God, give us a strength of conviction

But let us share it humbly

God may we believe courageously

But help us carry it gently

Lord, may we go forward with vision

But help us to be careful that we do not abuse your grace to feed our own self righteousness

But use your grace to feed the world’s deepest needs.

AMEN

A CALL TO... PRAYER IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Brexit? What is going on? Does anyone know? The uncertainty is palpable.

Stormont? We have been 800 days without a local government. There seems no sign of that changing. The uncertainty is beyond frustrating.

All of this impacts our daily lives. There is uncertainty right across our community. 

What can we do? We feel helpless.

On Sunday March 24th at 3pm, 24/7 Prayer are giving us a way to respond. Meeting at the front gates off Stormont at 3 they are calling us to "unite to prayer-walk up the hill and then take a gathered moment to humble ourselves, kneel at the top of the hill and pray God’s kingdom come."

This will be a humble quiet walk in resilient unity and a short moment of reflective prayer in a time of uncertainty.

If you are the praying kind...

http://www.24-7prayerireland.com/events/2019/3/14/prayer-for-the-land-in-a-time-of-uncertainty