SOUL SURMISE

SUNSHINE ON LEITH - ALL GROWN UP

I am a believer in songs that grow up. Songs that might be received well on release but over the years become more weighty, more powerful, more important.

Late last night as I flicked channels I caught Coldplay on BBC Radio 2's Piano Room right there on TV. I came in near the end. They were going to do a cover.

Band member Guy Berryman tells us that three days before he heard The Proclaimers' song Sunshine On Leith for the first time. He was in the bath. Now how a Scottish musician could have avoided such an iconic song mystifies me but he sent it to Chris Martin who hadn't heard it either. Not Hibernian fans obviously. 

Martin speaks of it as having quality and soul, 'astonished good' he calls it. He does mention listening to Hibernian fans singing it. He also speaks of The Proclaimers catalogue and their importance. The Reid brothers are two of our most underrated songwriters. 

For me, it was almost tattooed on my heart in 2016. Something truly spectacular happened and my and The Proclaimers' favourite Scottish football team that I had followed since I was 8 years old won the Scottish Cup… for the first time in 114 years. Yip, since the year my Granny Stockman was born!

As the captain lifted the Cup the crowd broke into the Hibees’ Terrace anthem Sunshine On Leith. A sea of green scarves singing in unison at such a moment is a wonderfully emotional moment (catch it on YouTube) There have been articles written about it as a terrace chant and how special it is that Hibs fans only sing it in very special moments. 

Yet there is so much more to this song than a Cup winning chant! As a hymn this has everything. As well as its sense of place, Edinburgh’s beautiful Leith, and its sense of the personal romantic love, there is deep spiritual connection. It has its transcendence. God as Chief is recognised and the song rings with thanksgiving and praise! 

It has catharsis and the hopefulness of healing. In my Masters dissertation I highlighted what I called “prophetic stimulants”. The core of a song that gives it potency for personal or social transformation. This song has a range of them in just a few minutes. 

Another Scot, one who had his finger on the musical pulse more than Guy Berryman, was David Tennant, a Doctor Who. Tennant did a very understated version on the BBC Children In need record Got It Covered. It threw another hue. That Coldplay were involved with another Doctor Jodie Whittaker on her fine version of Yellow on the same record... come on boys. Pay attention!

Of course it is a film too but me the most authentic cover has to be Blue Rose Code when they add it to another ode to the city - Edina (catch it on YouTube). It is soul tingling in its sense of grace, gratitude and devotion.

When I bought Sunshine On Leith as a CD single in October 1988 I could not see it becoming what it has, a song to be sung around all human camp fires. 

 

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

You saw it, You claimed it

You touched it, You saved it

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Your beauty and kindness

Made tears clear my blindness

 

While I'm worth my room on this earth

I will be with you

While the Chief, puts sunshine on Leith

I'll thank Him for His work

And your birth and my birth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I am a believer in songs that grow up. Songs that might be received well on release but over the years become more weighty, more powerful, more important.

Late last night as I flicked channels I caught Coldplay on BBC Radio 2's Piano Room right there on TV. I came in near the end. They were going to do a cover.

Band member Guy Berryman tells us that three days before he heard The Proclaimers' song Sunshine On Leith for the first time. He was in the bath. Now how a Scottish musician could have avoided such an iconic song mystifies me but he sent it to Chris Martin who hadn't heard it either. Not Hibernian fans obviously. 

Martin speaks of it as having quality and soul, 'astonished good' he calls it. He does mention listening to Hibernian fans singing it. He also speaks of The Proclaimers catalogue and their importance. The Reid brothers are two of our most underrated songwriters. 

For me, it was almost tattooed on my heart in 2016. Something truly spectacular happened and my and The Proclaimers' favourite Scottish football team that I had followed since I was 8 years old won the Scottish Cup… for the first time in 114 years. Yip, since the year my Granny Stockman was born!

As the captain lifted the Cup the crowd broke into the Hibees’ Terrace anthem Sunshine On Leith. A sea of green scarves singing in unison at such a moment is a wonderfully emotional moment (catch it on YouTube) There have been articles written about it as a terrace chant and how special it is that Hibs fans only sing it in very special moments. 

Yet there is so much more to this song than a Cup winning chant! As a hymn this has everything. As well as its sense of place, Edinburgh’s beautiful Leith, and its sense of the personal romantic love, there is deep spiritual connection. It has its transcendence. God as Chief is recognised and the song rings with thanksgiving and praise! 

It has catharsis and the hopefulness of healing. In my Masters dissertation I highlighted what I called “prophetic stimulants”. The core of a song that gives it potency for personal or social transformation. This song has a range of them in just a few minutes. 

Another Scot, one who had his finger on the musical pulse more than Guy Berryman, was David Tennant, a Doctor Who. Tennant did a very understated version on the BBC Children In need record Got It Covered. It threw another hue. That Coldplay were involved with another Doctor Jodie Whittaker on her fine version of Yellow on the same record... come on boys. Pay attention!

Of course it is a film too but me the most authentic cover has to be Blue Rose Code when they add it to another ode to the city - Edina (catch it on YouTube). It is soul tingling in its sense of grace, gratitude and devotion.

When I bought Sunshine On Leith as a CD single in October 1988 I could not see it becoming what it has, a song to be sung around all human camp fires. 

 

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow Sorrow

My heart was broken, my heart was broken

You saw it, You claimed it

You touched it, You saved it

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you

My tears are drying, my tears are drying

Your beauty and kindness

Made tears clear my blindness

 

While I'm worth my room on this earth

I will be with you

While the Chief, puts sunshine on Leith

I'll thank Him for His work

And your birth and my birth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

HOME?

The theme for the 4 Corners Festival 2025 is Home? This was my take, as I read on the first Sunday evening of the Festival.

 

Home - question mark.

Where is my home?

Is it Ballymena 

My hometown

Galgorm where the Stockmans are from

Harryville, the Kernohans

Is it where I was nurtured in Granny’s cottage beneath the thatch

Where I kicked my ball against the wall

The shops where I bought The Beatles

The church where God told me that I’d found him

Or is Belfast my home

Where I have now lived more than twice as long

Where I met my wife

Raised my children

And live out my vocation

Home?

 

Home - question mark

Home is where the heart is

What does that mean?

Do I need to go to some home because my heart is there?

Or is finding my heart wherever, home?

When all of me stretches out relaxed

In contented belonging

As if swaddled in a warm embrace

The arms of God’s grace

In Janice and Caitlin and Jasmine

All around me

Whether on sofas, or at a table, or on a beach or singing at a Ryan McMullan 

Whether in Belfast or Ballycastle or Cape Town or Arua

Home?

 

Home - question mark

We are always heading for home

Or hearting for home

Or souling for home

Pilgrims tumbling and stumbling behind Jesus

Close enough to gather his dust

Following him home 

And 

As we journey

There are moments on the way

Where home comes and meets us

Which makes eternal sense

Because this will be home - no question mark

At the end of the ancient text

On the very last page

As everything comes to its end

Or the end of the beginning

Home comes down out of heaven

To us 

Here

In a garden of shalom 

With a tree of forgiveness 

A river of justice

Where love is the air we breathe

Then,

Then, 

Recycling will be recreation

Repression relieved

The riven are repaired

Reprobates redeemed 

And remembering will become that hoped for resurrection

Home will be where my heart

Is known

Is healed

Has all it should have longed for

All it ever needed

Home.

SURMISE ON ST. BRIGID'S DAY

There's a lot of fascinating but unfounded myth surrounding St. Brigid that my own spiritual sensitivities dismissed but as her day lands during 4 Corners Festival this year and our Knitting Event made St. Brigid's crosses I surmise a truth I found in the myth...

 

In a myth

That needs not be true

To shine truth

We gather

Around St. Brigid’s hearth

Inside mercy's threshold

The peat 

Smoky waft of wild outdoors 

Smoored through the night

Fanned back into flame at dawn

Perpetual light and life

That darkness and death has never snuffed out

Bright Emmanuel

Home?

I'LL CALL YOU HOME - 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025 CLOSER

I have said for many years that worship on a Sunday should never be a cul-de-sac. It should never be sent singing up to God and remain there. God never meant worship to be just about him. Indeed, that is why in Romans 12 Paul wrote that our real worship is when we sacrifice ourselves to God for love and service.

Worship is not a cul-de-sac but a highway out into the week that is ahead. In worship we remember the greatness of God and the brokenness of ourselves, we re-align in God's order of things, we offer ourselves and fix up or fuel up for the week ahead.

So, at the end of the 4 Corners Festival. On our last Sunday night we don't want to be caught up in a festival cul-de-sac. We don't want to gather up the week's events and horde them for our own enjoyment. We want to end our week by crashing out into the rest of the year to bring morsels of peacemaking across our wonderful but wounded city. 

So at this year's festival we will close with a look at the week's events but then Rev Neil Craigan, Belfast born but now a pastor in White Bear Lake, Minnesota will draw the different perspectives of home that we have seen or heard or felt and consider how we can go to find hime for ourselves and help create one for others.

About 25 years ago, my friend Rev Doug Gay who closed last year's Festival spoke at the wedding of Iain Archer who has sold out two of our Festival gigs at the Lyric Theatre. In That sermon who spoke of how we were heading towards home but that as we journey, home comes to meet us on our way.

How does that affect the way we live?

To finally take us out of 4 Corners Festival 2025 and into the rest of our lives Dana Masters who will sing throughout the evening will sing one final song. I'll Call You Home is a song about our wee piece of earth. It is also the story of how one young African American woman traveled here and found and made home. It seemed the most appropriate way to end a Festival called Home.

We are then thrilled that Dana's husband, Andrew, who is pastor at Lagan Valley Vineyard will lead us out in refection and prayer. Then we can go... 

 

I'LL CALL YOU HOME is on FEBRUARY 9, 2025 at 7pm in St Colmcille’s Church, 191a Upper Newtownards Road, BT4 3JB

BOOK HERE

 

TRIBUTE TO MARIANNE FAITHFUL (1946-2025)

( when I read my friend John Trinder's social media that Marianne Faithful had passed away I let out a little gasp... noooooooo! I had such a soft spot for this intriguing lady who lived the celebrity, the drug addiction, the comeback and, in latter years, this regal way of making songs sound weighty like classic poetry. Indeed her last record was her reading poetry over Warren Ellis's music. 

So, as I type, I am listening to No Moon In Paris, having been through her recent reworking of It's All Over Now Baby Blue. I'll be tracing that back catalogue as the evening goes on. Remembering all those covers of Dylan, Lennon, Cave et al. 

Here's my original review of her 2014 record Give My Life To London in which you will pick up my grá (love) for this woman)

 

I am intrigued by Marianne Faithfull. A couple of summers ago I read not one but a couple of her biographies. She fascinates me as a chronicler of those heady London days of the Swinging Sixties. It’s an era I love and often pretend to be researching for a novel when I indulge in its pop history.

Her place in that era that fascinates me gives her a place in my musical world now. When I bought her 20th album it was as much for the he near holy/unholy icon that she is as much as the limited often coarse voice that she carries. Yet, Faithfull makes records that have artistic interest. She is like the female Leonard Cohen though nowhere near as old and a whole lot more surprising that she is with us! 

Indeed she uses a Cohen song, Going Home but it is her collaborations with Nick Cave, as she has done before, the younger edgier Anna Calvi and Steve Earle that bring the real musical intrigue. Earle brings a country looseness to the title track, Calvi adds popped up guitar on Falling Back, a recent success on Later… With Jools, and Cave’s piano melancholy on Late Victorian Holocaust is perhaps the marquee song.   

Just as U2 went back to their youth for inspiration on Songs Of Innocence so Faithfull went back to her London days. Not somewhere she would like to go back to London haunts Faithfull’s life and if you’d read the biographies I’d read you’d understand.

What I remember being blown away about from her writings was how she was absolutely flabbergasted that Edward Fox should become a Christian and leave acting after his role alongside Mick Jagger in the sexually pioneering and controversial film Performance. Everything went in the Sixties accept the outrageous idea of Christian faith! 

Another of the megastar co-writers on Give My Love To London is Roger Waters whose Sparrows Will Sing perhaps bring us up to date with the spiritual state of Faithful -

“A child breaks the ice and peers into the hidden depths

I'm trying to decipher the horror of un-holiness

I have no doubt you'll figure it out someday”

Marianne Faithfull’s 20th record is a woman wrestling with her past and still questing in the present. It is as fascinating a record as the life it describes. Far from perfect it is rough edged enough to tell us much about the 60s and whatever we call this decade too.

 

( when I read my friend John Trinder's social media that Marianne Faithful had passed away I let out a little gasp... noooooooo! I had such a soft spot for this intriguing lady who lived the celebrity, the drug addiction, the comeback and, in latter years, this regal way of making songs sound weighty like classic poetry. Indeed her last record was her reading poetry over Warren Ellis's music. 

So, as I type, I am listening to No Moon In Paris, having been through her recent reworking of It's All Over Now Baby Blue. I'll be tracing that back catalogue as the evening goes on. Remembering all those covers of Dylan, Lennon, Cave et al. 

Here's my original review of her 2014 record Give My Life To London in which you will pick up my grá (love) for this woman)

 

I am intrigued by Marianne Faithfull. A couple of summers ago I read not one but a couple of her biographies. She fascinates me as a chronicler of those heady London days of the Swinging Sixties. It’s an era I love and often pretend to be researching for a novel when I indulge in its pop history.

Her place in that era that fascinates me gives her a place in my musical world now. When I bought her 20th album it was as much for the he near holy/unholy icon that she is as much as the limited often coarse voice that she carries. Yet, Faithfull makes records that have artistic interest. She is like the female Leonard Cohen though nowhere near as old and a whole lot more surprising that she is with us! 

Indeed she uses a Cohen song, Going Home but it is her collaborations with Nick Cave, as she has done before, the younger edgier Anna Calvi and Steve Earle that bring the real musical intrigue. Earle brings a country looseness to the title track, Calvi adds popped up guitar on Falling Back, a recent success on Later… With Jools, and Cave’s piano melancholy on Late Victorian Holocaust is perhaps the marquee song.   

Just as U2 went back to their youth for inspiration on Songs Of Innocence so Faithfull went back to her London days. Not somewhere she would like to go back to London haunts Faithfull’s life and if you’d read the biographies I’d read you’d understand.

What I remember being blown away about from her writings was how she was absolutely flabbergasted that Edward Fox should become a Christian and leave acting after his role alongside Mick Jagger in the sexually pioneering and controversial film Performance. Everything went in the Sixties accept the outrageous idea of Christian faith! 

Another of the megastar co-writers on Give My Love To London is Roger Waters whose Sparrows Will Sing perhaps bring us up to date with the spiritual state of Faithful -

“A child breaks the ice and peers into the hidden depths

I'm trying to decipher the horror of un-holiness

I have no doubt you'll figure it out someday”

Marianne Faithfull’s 20th record is a woman wrestling with her past and still questing in the present. It is as fascinating a record as the life it describes. Far from perfect it is rough edged enough to tell us much about the 60s and whatever we call this decade too.