SOUL SURMISE

PRAYERS FOR LEBANON

“They say the skies of Lebanon are burning

Those mighty cedars bleeding in the heat

They’re showing pictures on the television

Of women and children dying in the street”

 

Those old words of Paul Brady were playing in my head today as we watch the devastation in Beirut. 

I connected with my friend Elie Haddad a Lecturer in Leadership and Missional Ecclesiology at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary.

Elie wrote, “Despite the devastation, thankfully our team is all safe. We are preparing our guesthouse and student housing to host families that have lost their homes in the explosion.”

Elie then sent me this prayer letter from Nabil Costa CEO of Lebanese Society For Educational and Social Development. It might be helpful as you pray for Lebanon in these tough days: -

The massive blast that took place at the port of Beirut late in the afternoon today left an important part of the city laying in apocalyptic ruin. The rumble of the explosion was felt all the way to Cyprus.

Beirut looks like a war zone as the devastating shockwave shattered windows and vitrines sending debris and glass flying in all directions. Initial footage shows collapsed buildings and homes while the national wheat silos have been eviscerated. Hospitals are not able to cope with the number of injured and maimed while the Red Cross is in desperate need of blood donations. The number of casualties is not known at this stage but material losses are in the billions of dollars.

This calamity could not have come at a worse time for a country on the brink of financial collapse and social implosion while the number of coronavirus cases have surged in recent days.

The reasons behind the explosion are still unknown.

• Please pray for those who have lost their homes and loved ones so that they may find comfort and healing.
• Please pray for the doctors, nurses and paramedics who are caring for the injured.

 

• Please pray for the rescue teams that are trying to find missing family members and neighbours.

 

• Please pray for people who are in places of responsibility as they manage the catastrophic human and economic consequences.

 

• Please pray for the Church as it seeks to comfort and serve the distressed and brokenhearted.

 

• Please pray for the People of God as they seek the Lord and humbly cry out to Him for mercy.

 

• Pray for LSESD/MEBO family of ministries and in specific for the Beirut Baptist School and the Gateway Bookshop, which suffered important material damage and for the staff who have been injured by the glass debris.

 

In Christ,

Nabil Costa

 

for more information - https://mebo.org

JOHN HUME - THE LEAP HE TOOK FOR ALL OF US

 

I have just finished Colum McCann’s astounding novel Apeirogon and above everything else that struck me was a Rumi quotation - “Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there”.

 

Surely, of all our Northern Irish politicians John Hume got closer towards that field than most of the rest. Though I grew up to be suspicious of the nationalist SDLP it was a lazy binary politics that heaped John Hume on the other side of the barricade amongst the IRA.

 

Fr Martin Magill have long debated with Sinn Fein that there was a better way to take the anger and frustration at the injustice and inequality of the Protestant state for a Protestant people that Northern Ireland was built on. Why violence we ask?

 

John Hume was the one who took the Martin Luther King Jr road rather than the ANC route. Hume didn’t believe in the violence. He worked for peace. I always think of that day that Fr Alec Reid brought him the envelope containing the conditions by which the IRA would enter talks. 

 

Fr Alec had just attempted the kiss of life on two British soldiers, brutally murdered at an IRA funeral outside Casement Park. He had to get a new envelope at Clonard Monastery before driving to give it to John Hume because there was blood from the soldiers on the original. 

 

In that one afternoon, yet another tragic one in our Troubles, with paramilitaries and British soldiers and bloody murder there was a priest and a politician seeking the field beyond the right and wrong.

 

It is that evening that I thank God for when I watch my children grow up in a different Northern Ireland than I did. That day ended with a dawning after the darkest of beginnings. 

 

David Trimble would join that process on down the road and again today I was giving thanks for his courage. The most difficult thing in bringing two intransigent sides together especially after decades bloodshed, murder and grief is to bring your suspicious, hurting side along with you. On Good Friday 1998 Hume and Trimble achieve that rarest of things in Irish history. They well deserved their Nobel Peace Prize.

 

That field at the other side of whoever has their opinion of right and wrong. Oh I dream about it, I try to imagine it and I attempt to make my own tiny contribution on our journey towards it. John Hume gave us all a huge leap down that road. He did it for all of us, whoever we are, wherever we are from and whatever we think about him. 

 

I know many on the side of the barricade that I grew up might not see that today but I believe that when we get past our right and wrong we will come to understand that.

CLINGING TO THE CRAGGY CLIFFS OF NORTH ANTRIM

Through a gap in the shadow of trees

The sun breaks light across Glenshesk

The careful patch work of 40 greens

God has gone all Rothko-esque

Clouds do their black and white Irish waltz

Ever threatening to rip the heavens apart 

I don’t mind that its going to lash

Just tell me when its going to start

When the wind blows our bullying flags

And the Moyle throws waves like tantrums

You’ll find me hoping for the pearl of summer

Clinging to the craggy cliffs of north Antrim.

WALKING IN THE RAIN (THE "VIRTUAL" ORGAN DONOR’S RACE)

 

On Saturday, I did something I do not do. I walked 5 km (nearer to 6 I’d say!) in North Antrim rain. A confession is that I kinda liked the Partridge Family’s song Walking In The Rain, though it would be cooler to have cited The Walker Brother version, but I don’t like the actual walking in the rain. 

I have a condition that I refer to as Stocki-itus. My Grandmother had it (so it should probably be Luke-itus), my father had it and my daughter Caitlin has it. It is a dose of runny noses and sneezing sparked not by virus but by cold drafts coming into warm rooms or getting soaked through. My Granny would have warned me against “heats and colds” and ‘wet hair”. 

So, on Saturday at 6pm just after the dry part of the day ended we were out walking. It was not torrential rain but not Irish soft either. I had taken precautions. My O’Neill’s rain coat, waterproof trousers and a hat underneath my coat hood.

Why? Why would I, on holidays, do the last thing on earth I ever want to do? Lucia Quinney-Mee. She is why. 

If it wasn’t for Covid 19, Saturday at 6 would have seen the Donor’s Race at the British Transplant Games in Coventry. Lucia was blessed with four donors in her life. She was so grateful to those donors. In the pool on race day she swam with them in her mind, even though she never knew who they were. She won many medals for them as much as her.

We, Lucia’s friends, will be ever grateful for those donors. Soul Surmise readers will know that we lost Lucia in May after a brave battle to recover after her fourth liver transplant. Lucia was our neighbour in Ballycastle, soul mate of our daughters. We miss her so much. 

All over Great Britain and Northern Ireland people were doing their 5k in a kind of Virtual Donors Run. So, today the Stockies walked with Lucia’s mum Rachel, dad David, sister Alice and a few friends. I tried a wee jog but my right knee screamed “Don’t be daft!”. We got wonderfully soaked. Rachel and David even took a dip in a very cold sea. 

What I was hating at 5.55 and was enjoying by 6.30. It was the most joyous walk in the rain. It was a tribute to Lucia. She would love that we were soaked. I could hear her laugh at the state of me. I could hear a few humorous jibes in her lilting north Antrim accent. 

As a sixteen year old, waiting for her third transplant, Lucia started Live Loudly Donate Proudly a charity to encourage us all to talk about organ donation. We wore bracelets with the Live Loudly, Donate Proudly logo. 

The Transplant swimmers and athletes made a video for Lucia. She got to watch it in the last days of her young life. It was deeply moving. I was particularly taken by the deep friendship, peer mentoring and the fun life memories that the Transplant Games generated. Many of them had Lucia stage centre, quiet, humbly being a role model and strong friend to many. That laugh too! 

Organ donor families made brave decisions that created all of those moments. Lucia’s donors gave us twelve extra years of Lucia memories. They have become even more precious to us who hold dearly to them now. 

Talk to your family. Offer your organs that your death might allow others to live. From your death you could help make friendships and fun and life long memories that would have been missed. Live Loudly, Donate Proudly. Do it now!

http://live-loudly-donate-proudly.org

STOCKI'S TEN TOP HOLIDAY SONGS OF THE WEEK #1

10 tunes that particularly caught my attention in my first week of stay-cation...

 

LUKA BLOOM - THE BEAUTY OF EVERYDAY THINGS

Bloom’s new record Bittersweet Crimson deserves a review. Maybe next week. It is all perfect Irish coastal scenery reflectiveness and as this one states, The Beauty Of Everyday Things!

 

RORY BUTLER - WINDOW SHOPPING

Butler has that Scottish John Martyn sound but adds a contemporary energy in sound and content.

 

FONTAINES DC - HERO’S DEATH

These boys are conquering the world Kinda The Velvet Underground meet The Pogues. They don’t write unless the song has a reason to write.

 

JASON ISBELL - LETTING YOU GO

About his daughter. I relate so well.

 

RANDY NEWMAN - IT’S MONEY THAT MATTERS

A Mark Knopfler guitar riff fuels yet another Newman cultural critique. 

 

SAMMY BRUE - TRUE BELIEVER

One of the more reflective songs from Teenage Mayhem. 

 

TAYLOR SWIFT - MIRRORBALL

Yes! That Taylor Swift. A lo-fi album to sit beside Bon Iver who actually features on the album. Lovely haunting melodies. A very different beast from the beauty of pop.

 

SNOW PATROL - REACHING OUT TO YOU

This EP will get its full review in late August. Songs written in lockdown along with fans on Facebook. Only Gary Lightbody! Then produced by Iain Archer.

 

SARA BAREILLES - SAINT HONESTY

Dipped in Bareilles for the first time. Saint Honesty seems a relevant song in such times.

 

DEACON BLUE - WHAT SO FUNNY ‘BOUT PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING

Why indeed? From their Lock Inn Session, I love how they almost make this Nick Lowe song a Gospel hymn.