SOUL SURMISE

MANDELA AND JESUS BEING REMARKABLE AND REVOLUTIONARY

This is the script of my Thought For The Day on BBC Radio Ulster on June 19th 2019...

 

I hope you are enjoying the long evenings. Daylight to near 11 o’clock. I love it. In my youth I eeked out every minute of light for another game of football. Yet, come Saturday and you’ll hear it all round the country - "nights are fair drawing in!"

Friday is the longest day. It’s all down hill to 4.30pm darkness in the heart of December.

I wonder how many are aware that June 21st is a Day Of Reflection in Northern Ireland, a chance to remember those killed or effected by The Troubles. Started in 2007 by Healing Through Remembering, it is offered as a day of private reflection rather than for any large public events. I always take the opportunity to reflect and pray. 

The Summer Solstice seems a good day to look back and forward.

Of course our looking back can often hamper our going forward. Even in our remembering.

I recently remembered something I heard on Robben Island, that island off Cape Town where Nelson Mandela was in prison for all those years.

Apparently, when the prisoners were finally allowed to study for High School or University qualifications, some of the white wardens wanted to study too. The ANC prisoners were enraged but Mandela told them to stop the protest. The Wardens he said were as much victims of the apartheid system as they were. 

Seeing your oppressor as much a part of the injustice of the system as you are is quite an attitude. Mandela was showing an empathy with his enemy that was as remarkable as it was revolutionary.

I think Jesus was onto the same remarkable and revolutionary when he told his disciples to love their enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. Jesus was speaking this into the same kind of brutal violent society as apartheid South Africa… or indeed Troubles effected Northern Ireland. 

So, on Friday, the longest day, the day of Reflection, as we look back and ahead, I wonder what it would do for the future of our wee place, if we saw our enemies as Mandela and Jesus did… everybody a victim and everyone to be loved, blessed and done good to.

ROMANTICA LIVE IN FITZROY, BELFAST - 17.6.19

There were a few moments during Romantica’s concert in Fitzroy, when I closed my eyes, raised my clasped hands and felt my soul utterly bask in a sound as beautiful as I have ever heard in my entire life. I have been to a lot of concerts, seen most of my very favourite artists and enjoyed them more than immensely but it is the first time I have ever caught my body and soul in this posture of utter bliss!

You can tell that I enjoyed it! 

I found myself in the whispy thought trails of my post gig imagination asking why? Romantica’s sound is so effortless. I am reminded of the Pernice Brothers or Band Of Horses. It’s a sound that gently washes over you like the caressing of a refreshing wave. It seems so effortless and simple.

Yet, when you marinate on how they make it seem so easy, you become aware of the complexity. The melodies, the poetry, the harmonies, every guitar lick, bass note, drum beat and that gorgeous yearning pedal steel cry. It is all so intentional. All so utterly perfect to my ears.

Then there is Ben Kyle’s voice. Oh my goodness. There is no need for rasp or power. Like velvet. Seductive of ears and soul. 

During the set, Kyle courageously opened up to the audience, asking for questions. When asked how he kept the passion he answered in a humble Ben Kyle way, “You take what you’ve been given…”

That is what he does with that voice. It’s a divine gift and Ben takes what he has been given and sets the most most spiritual nuggets of wisdom into every day songs. This is not some throw back to Christian music in the 90s. This is the authentic alt country thing. Yet, into every day songs of friendship, love and family, Kyle dabs little couplets of light, sometimes into dark places of heartache and grief.

I was, as the fan in me always is, chuffed to have God Walks On The Water dedicated to me. A song I have used to deal with grief, there comes that dab of light:

 

God walks on the water

I walk through the rain

One day we're gonna walk together

When he comes back again

 

Being greedy I shouted for Drink The Night Away about School’s Cup winning hockey buddies of Ben’s who died in a car crash in Donegal. There’s teenage bravado in drinking the night away and Ben asks what Jesus was thinking of to have these boys die… but then finished with:

 

"What was Jesus thinking, 

When he let you sink in to the arms of the Lord?

When he took the cup, 

Lifted it up, 

Drank the night away”

 

It is one of many moments when I let out a little gasp!

After hearing with a post song gasp, Get Back In Love, Give Your Heart Shelter, Don’t Settle and Mercy I was becoming aware that maybe the most of my favourite songs from the last few years have come from this Belfast boy now living in Minneapolis. 

Best of all is Harder To Hear, a song about a soul seeking a compass in a world that drowns out the voice we most need to hear:

 

It’s getting harder to hear from God these days

Harder to hear from God

There’s so much religion in the way

So much superstition in the way

 

Oh somebody save me

Somebody save me

I don’t want to be cool

Somebody shine a light

somebody shine a light on this soul tonight

I don’t wanna be right

 

I cannot get enough of this. So thrilled to have them in what pretty much is my office on a Sunday morning. It’s always good to have a soul soaked bask in a familiar space!

GO, BE GRACE

(written for a post communion sending liturgy, in Fitzroy) 

 

Go, be grace

In a graceless world

Be grace to those whose labels

Exile them from belonging

Be grace to those whose failures

Have them losers in the winners’ enclosure

Be grace to those pushed and pulled by Empire

Until they lost the grace within themselves

Be grace to those who don’t think like you

They are not bad people, just wrong

(Or maybe we are!)

Be grace to those who have hurt you

Love them, pray for them, bless them

Go, be grace

In a graceless world!

 

Go, be grace

Like Jesus

Who humbled himself

Became meek

Who mourned focus

And hungered and thirsted for justice for all

Go, be grace

Like a loser

Cursed on a tree

Dying to power

Then rising, to be grace

From the right hand of the throne of mercy

As God gifted us a lavish and ridiculous grace

Go, be grace

In a graceless world.

REACH OUT AND TAKE MY HAND (A PARENT WITH DEMENTIA)

photo: Caitlin Stockman

 

Sam, reach out and take my hand

Even though you don’t know who you give it to

Like when I used to put mine in yours

To do everything I wanted to do.

 

You taught me, keep my eye on the ball

And then to swing the club right through

They talk about the sins of the fathers

I got so much more than that from you

You did your job as my front runner

I tucked in and you set my pace

It’s hard to watch you step off the track

To leave me to find my own space.

 

I turn off Tim Wheeler at the Roundabout

A round about a mile away

Take a long deep breath in the silence

To find the resilience and something to pray

The knot in my soul when I’m going in

Is only bigger and tighter when I’m leaving

Walking and talking in your glass coffin

Living in the pain of perpetual grieving.

 

Sam, reach out and take my hand

Even though you don’t know who you give it to

Like when I used to put mine in yours

To do everything I wanted to do.

EPIC WEEKEND - TOMORROW IN FITZROY 16.6.19

This weekend is different in Fitzroy. On Friday night we had a hilarious evening of wit and laughter that could have taken the Never Mind The Buzzcocks TV title and changed it to  Never Mind The Westminster Confession. It was literally side splitting at times. Well done Dave and Lorraine Thompson for being the curators and all who took their turn.

Today (Saturday) we are all off to Castlewellan Castle for a bit of a walk and some aul craic! It'll be 90.

Tomorrow morning at the much earlier time of 9,3o we will have our EPIC Service. Starting with coffee we will break into some worship and then out into break out groups. There will be no sermon but 8 little discussion groups on a range of relevant subjects. There will also be Messy Church. At 12 we will all gather back for communion we learned from Church Of The Servant in Grand Rapids, Michigan and we will be coming for the bread and wine to the sound of Damien Rice's Trusty and True sung by a choir. It will be EPIC. All Welcome!

At 7pm we will gather for some youth fuelled worship for all the family.