SOUL SURMISE

I HAVE STOPPED KILLING SPIDERS...

(my Pause For Thought on the Vanessa Show on BBC Radio 2... the theme was The Wonders Of Nature...)

I have stopped killing spiders. Even if they are one step away. Why? Well, I was given a new perspective on all insects. I have a friend called Neville who loves creepy crawlies. And knows all about them. If you are with him and see a spider he will pick it up and no matter how small will tell you the kind of spider and the gender.

So, this summer in Africa he was in his element. He gave a couple of hours palliative care to a dying Citrus Swallowtail Butterfly and spent a lunch in Murchison Falls Safari Park with a Praying Mantis on his head! It was like having the Richard Attenborough of creepy crawlies on tour with you. I learned a lot! 

What Neville’s relationship with bugs does is that it changes mine. I lost my irrational fear and became utterly fascinated. Insects became a wonder of nature and I began to understand their place in the cosmos that, as a believer, I believe God designed. 

I thought of all of this while I watched in horror as English footballers were exposed to shocking racist abuse in Bulgaria. A commentator suggested that the Bulgarian fans needed educating. I then thought of Neville’s work with me.

Hatred is compromised by friendship. It is difficult to racially assault people you know. My prejudices in the sectarian atmosphere of Northern Ireland disappeared when I got closer to those on the other side of that divide. It took away my irrational fears and ignorance.

If insects are fascinating, then humans are even more so. As a Christian I believe that God made all the wonders of nature but he left a special imprint on human beings. We are made in his image the Bible suggests. 

If I take that idea into my day then I see all of my fellow human beings with a whole new perspective. In spite of prejudices that I work to eradicate I will not step on other people’s differences but will marvel at them, cherish them and pray that they will find the fulness of their humanity in the image of God.

THE GREAT PRIDE INSIDE OF ME (For Jasmine Grace on Her Birthday)

I saw you through the window

Your face lit up my heart

What Ernest did for the atom

You came and split me apart

Opened me up to miracles

To love what never before existed

A place at the core of my very soul

Glorious joy on every visit.

 

I saw you through your birth

Weeping at the glimpse of your face

God’s goodness gifted in tiny girl

It was so right to name you Grace

I remember you a tiny bundle

Snuggled in my upper arms

No way to tell me what you needed

But convincing me with all your charms.

 

I believe that you can change the world

I know you know you should

You have all potent anger needed

It is righteous and it is good.

 

I saw you on a playground

With children all around your feet

I saw the smile inside your soul

Where your gladness and Africa meet

I knew that I could let you go

When I saw who you were going to be

Whether I tell you enough or not

You are the great pride inside of me.

 

I believe that you can change the world

I know you know you should

You have all right anger needed

It is righteous and it is good.

WHEN MYSTERY SHIMMIES

I am aware inside and outside of Fitzroy of a lot of people who are struggling with loved ones in ill health. I send this out not as an easy fix but as a blues poem of catharsis...

 

When a loved one’s tossed in turbulence

You watch them smashed whichever way

And God never seems to bring the calm

No matter how hard you pray

May unseen threads of mercy

Weave in, the unravelling doubt

May God grab you by the finger

Before life’s hurting drags you out

 

Knowledge loves the questions

Cos it has a seamless answer

But mystery shimmies all around

She’s an awkward little dancer

And when she dances out of sight

Leaving the soul that lonely ache

May God send a holy comforter

Before you crack up in the heart break

 

Lord, we flew on wings like eagles

Then landed with reality’s thud

We ran but soon were walking

Now crawl through this tear soaked mud

We mature in a world that’s broken

Confessing what our part is

We sing these songs to temper grief

And hope in their catharsis.

THE ORPHAN BRIGADE LIVE IN THE BLACK BOX, BELFAST

photo: Gerry McNally

 

Watching The Orphan Brigade live was the strangest experience for me. When they played the title track of their new record, To The Edge Of The World, I was immediately looking out from Kinbane Castle towards Fairhead. I could feel the breeze, and see the wind blowing off the surface of the Seas of Moyle. 

This is where the song was written and so I went there in August to listen. The sounds and visions are now indelibly blended, even if I am listening in the windowless room of Belfast’s Black Box.

The between songs chatter tonight was a fascinating drive up the Antrim Coast. Ben Glover talked about scaring the life out of band mates Neilson Hubbard and Joshua Britt in a dark midnight writing session in Glenarm Forest - “it was the trees!”. Hubbard spoke of being out in Glenarm Bay in a boat. A thorn tree half way up the mountain was far enough to draw on St. Patrick On Slemish Mountain. As Glover introduces Mad Man’s Window, I was imagining looking through the rock formation. I could see the sea, still in this windowless room! 

Indeed, I couldn’t help but think that if these guys were Bruce Springsteen, there would be films projected behind them of all of the East Antrim locations featured in tonight’s show. Oh for the bigger recording budgets of the good old days!

I couldn’t also help but think that if this was the early 70s these guys would be a super group. Something like Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. If songwriting was held in the same esteem as back then, then Glover, Hubbard and Britt would be stars for sure. Another advantage of this gig was picking up the solo CDs. All three of The Orphan Brigade’s solo records are carefully honed collections of the highest quality of song-smithery.

Together on stage it is the harmonies that light up the room. This is Crosby, Still and Nash stuff. Voices perfectly blending and bringing lament, wonder and mystery to songs of myth and history. Lots of people die in an Orphan Brigade record but it doesn’t make it miserable. 

Far from it. There is a vibrancy to this collaboration. Tonight we benefit from having Colm McClean and Conor McCreanor in behind the Orphans. McClean’s slide guitar deserves special mention.

Occasionally Hubbard moves to the drums and sprinkles some percussive magic into a few songs particularly Marching On Christmas Day off their debut Soundtrack To A Ghost Story. 

Centre to the whole musical thing is Joshua Britt’s mandolin. I never thought I’d want to be a mandolin hero. Like this trio’s Stephen Stills, Britt plays with a flourish, adding drive, sparkle and a little intensity to the muse.

The live setting suits The Orphan Brigade. Whether in a haunted house in Kentucky or caves in Italy or, as in most of tonight’s set, in East Antrim, these create in organic ways. So for me To The Edge Of The World sounded even more alive, live. The voices more powerful. Everything more imperfectly perfect.

Oh yeh, I would have taken some additional Uilleann pipes from Barry Kerr and the song Black Nun but hey! Most poignant and beautiful of all tonight was To The Edge Of The World’s near benediction Mind The Road; Glover's first dabbling at singing about the Irish Troubles:

 

“Slow river cuts through the land

The dead are talking to the dark

Tribal, twisted, stained

The lingering shadow of a gunman

 

Mind the road you go

Mind the road you came”

DAVID PARK - AMSTERDAM

Amsterdam is my kind of novel. It begins at George Best's funeral and before long one of the main characters is trying to get his son to join him at a Bob Dylan concert in Amsterdam. These are my kind of events. Park is a Northern Irish writer and his Baptist upbringing brings a spiritual dimension to his observations of people and relationships.

In Amsterdam Park follows the paths of three people with differing relational fractures; one has made a sexual slip, messed up his marriage and needs some parental time with a withdrawn teenage son; another is a one parent mother whose involvement in her daughter's stag weekend leads to a major rift; one feels her marriage is in such a state that she comes up with a bizarre scenario for her husband during their weekend break.

The time that all three of these characters spend in Amsterdam becomes like a spiritual wrestling where they all find themselves whether they are trying to her not. There is a lovely scene where two of them meet and go into an old church. There is a holy beauty in this place that in some ways is where Parks is dreaming for all his "flock." Don't get me wrong, there is no Christian theology or preaching in the book at all but Park sees something in the world that needs a transcendence.

Park is a wonderful writer. His development of characters is deep and always intriguing and insightful, almost in a pastoral way. There are moments when you feel that he writes like a painter, sitting in the middle of places and instead of sketching or using oils, writing what he sees in meticulous details.

Amsterdam comes alive with this detail and his record of George Best's funeral and his review of a Bob Dylan gig are great. He is without doubt another addition to the long line of great writers from our wee country. As Bono said, a "We don't design bridges or send people to the moon, we write." David Park is more proof of that and Amsterdam is yet another example.