SOUL SURMISE

TOMORROW IN FITZROY 1.11.15

Tomorrow morning (11am) in Fitzroy we will be thinking about death and hope in its midst. We will be realising that hope is about renewal not escape, about now and not some pie in the sky. We will be surmising where in the Scriptures Stephen King was inspired for Shawshank Redemption (actual footage) and we will be marching in with the saints and Bruce Springsteen (actual footage!)We will exegete the following and more...

"Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies" 

- Shawshank Redemption

"I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."

- Shawshank Redemption

"Some say this world of trouble
Is the only one we need
But I'm waiting for that morning
When the new world is revealed" -

- When The Sainst Go Marching In

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

Revelation 21: 1-3

In the evening (7pm) we will be watching and discussing, with Rev Dr Peter McDowell, the film A Step Too Far? A Contemplation in Forgiveness. This is part 2 of a 3 part series and last week's was stimulating in theology and discipleship. My reflections on Pt 1 can be read here... 

This week's Working Preacher website suggested that while we need to remember the saints it is more important to live like a saint. It then suggested loving our neighbour was a good place to start. This event will help us love our enemies too. This is prophetically important in Northern Ireland. All Welcome!

HOW THE LORD'S PRAYER OBEYED NOT JUST RECITED COULD HAVE ENDED THE TROUBLES

Imagine it. If, after every atrocity in the Northern Ireland Troubles, the “Tribe” who had had loved ones shot, murdered, disabled or traumatised had sent a delegation to the “Tribe” that had caused the attack, to offer forgiveness and indeed friendship. 

Your imagination would not take long to realised that the atrocities would probably have petered out rather quickly and that peace would have arrived a whole lot sooner than it had. Thousands of lives would have been saved and we would be living in a very different political frame of mind that we are currently.

Your imagination would also have quickly concluded the madness of your dreaming and the utter impossibility of such a situation becoming reality. Yet, in a part of America, they don't imagine forgiveness like that, they live it out.

The film A Step Too Far? A Contemplation On Forgiveness, produced by Lurgan man Paul Moorhead, investigates the behavioural forgiveness of the Amish Community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and ultimately asks what we in Northern Ireland can learn from their simplistic but profound belief in forgiveness and the cultural reality that puts it into practice? 

Last Sunday evening, in Fitzroy, Rev Dr Peter McDowell led a discussion on the first part of the film. Paul Moorhead and his wife Marina who is the presenter in the film were on hand to answer some questions. 

The Amish are an eccentric Christian grouping and there was no sense in which Paul and Marina were trying to somehow present them as perfect in theology or practice. It was this one area of their religious practice that the Moorhead’s found refreshing, relevant to us in Northern Ireland and a very real outworking of the message of Jesus.

The film begins and is driven by the Amish community’s response to an awful act of violence carried out against their “Tribe” by a man from another “Tribe” who shot dead five of their young girls in a school house in 2006. It was the Amish response to such a horrendous and senseless act of obscene violence that drew the Moorheads to investigate why and how. They immediately forgave and befriended the family of the killer.

When asked how they forgive the Amish simply answer that Jesus tells us in the Sermon on The Mount, right in the middle of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Our forgiveness from God is inextricably linked to our forgiveness to one another. That is not for some discussion or debate but simply to be lived out, the Amish believe.

It is hard to argue. As I watched the film, took part in discussion and listened to the Q & A with the Moorheads, I couldn’t help but ask where had the rest of us lost the simplicity of Jesus prayer, theology and command? How had we made it a debate? Where had we found all the layers to put on top of the liberating truth, the truth that would have ended our 40 years of Troubles after the first week. There were enough Jesus followers in both our “Tribes” who prayed the Lord’s Prayer weekly, if not daily, to  have become the delegation to bring God’s grace in reconciliation to the other "Tribe".  

How had we been so "forgiveness for me" orientated in our Gospel presentation that we lost the "forgives for you" part of it? We had somehow got utterly self indulgent about the Gospel. Indeed, there was almost an "I am forgiven and they are damned" self righteousness. Was it simply that it was too difficult to share forgiveness with those who hurt us so we contrived debate and discussion rather than obedience? 

After I asked where we had lost the Christian practice of forgiveness, I then asked how we could somehow find it again. It became obvious, and I think the next two Sunday nights as we watch the rest of the film will bear it out, that forgiveness as an act towards those who sin against us is something culturally practiced from the moment you are born in the Amish society. It is practiced in the home and at school so when as an adult you are sinned against you respond in not an easy but nevertheless natural way!

We somehow have a different cultural default propelling us. It is one that seeks justice, getting our own back, making sure they take the blame and we can bring down vengeance. It is again difficult to understand how a wee country so steeped in the words of Jesus ended up here but we have. So I was asking how to recoil that cultural norm to work our way back to where the Amish are propelled forward to. 

There are many more issues raised by this thought provoking film. I look forward with a little apprehension as to how I will be challenged this week.

A STEP TOO FAR? A CONTEMPLATION IN FORGIVENESS PART 2 led by Rev Dr Peter McDowell will be at Fitzroy on Sunday November 1st @ 7pm

 

LASTING LIGHT IN THE MOMENTARY DARK - Pause For Thought 29.10.15 (on Saints)

If you’re a County Antrim man like Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Brendan Rogers (Liverpool sacked him too soon Penny)… and me… then Slemish looms large in your landscape. 

This mountain was just a few miles out the road from where I grew up in Ballymena. I knew two things about Slemish. It was volcanic, a little disconcerting to a child, AND it was also the mountain that St. Patrick had lived on, tending sheep. 

Every March 17th… St Patrick’s Day… I see Slemish in my imagination, though I can no longer actually see it from my home in South Belfast.

And I think of a young Patrick, kidnapped into slavery, sitting on that mountain. What was he thinking? How did he like the Irish? What about home?

The story goes, that while tending sheep on Slemish, Patrick reflected on his relationship with God and it changed everything. Patrick wrote about God guiding him to a port where he would find a boat home. Escape. The ordeal done. The Irish put behind him.

But… that discovering God for Patrick meant that he would feel called back to those who had kidnapped and enslaved him so that he could tell them the Good News of the Christian Gospel and convert them to the ways of Jesus.  

Some Fourteen centuries later Belfast would be the port that would ban the slave ships, influenced by that Gospel that one slave came back to bring. Patrick’s time on Slemish didn’t only change everything for him but for the entire island.

It is an amazing story of redemption and forgiveness. It reminds me of Biblical stories where long lasting light dawned in the momentary dark… Jacob wrestling with God… the children of Israel in slavery in Egypt… Paul blinded on the way to Damascus or Peter hearing that cock crow as he denies Jesus a third time…. 

So, today, whatever the dark time we are caught up in, there is hope of transformation. It might just be that this very place of misfortune or injustice is our Slemish, the place where our destiny finds its beginning to change us and maybe a nation.

CAUGHT BETWEEN THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE LIFE OF JESUS - Derek Webb's Wedding Dress

On Sunday morning I wanted to use Derek Webb’s song Wedding Dress just before the sermon. I was preaching on Blind Bartimaeus from Mark chapter 10. Like many of the other people Jesus meets, this is a man who is least likely to be on Jesus agenda. His name means literally “son of impurity” for goodness sake. Those around Jesus try to stop him shouting and bothering Jesus.

I have always been frustrated with our middle class respectable take on Christianity. It is not only a very bad reading of the Biblical text but is missionally at odds with what Jesus was all about. Jesus was the friend of the sinners that today’s Church pushes away. He had very few of the kinds of people who fill our pews around him at all. 

As I thought about Jesus in this context I was drawn to Rich Mullins song Man Of No Reputation (actually written by Rick Elias). That would be a nice scene setter I thought. 

“Oh, He was a man of no reputation

And by the wise, considered a fool

When He spoke about faith and forgiveness

In a time when the strongest arms ruled

 

But this man of no reputation

Loved the weak with relentless affection

And He loved all those poor in spirit just as they were

He was a man of no reputation”

I asked my mate Chris Wilson if he would sing it and Chris said that he didn’t know it but reckoned, on what I was telling him that I wanted, that Derek Webb’s Wedding Dress might do instead. That started an entire weekend of internal dilemma. There are a couple of strong words in the song that I wasn’t sure that my congregation could take in a Sunday morning service. In some ways that in itself confirms my fears about the context of Church being rather different to the context of Jesus. Anyhow, I decided against the performance.

Derek Webb wrote Wedding Dress as a strong reaction a book called Prayer Of Jabez which sold millions of copies around 10 years ago. The book suggested that praying this prayer from the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles would make you wealthy. 

Webb rightly found this at odds with what Jesus taught. Wedding Dress is almost a confessional of a man living between the pursuit of the American Dream and the upside down world of Jesus (Webb’s next record was actually entitled I See Things Upside Down). 

Webb uses the analogy of the believer being an adulterous wife. There are shades of the story of Hosea in there. Hosea actually lived out the grace of God by taking back his adulterous wife. 

For Webb all we need is Jesus BUT we want more. 

“If you could love me as a wife

And for my wedding, gift your life

Should that be all I’ll ever need

Or is there more I’m looking for”

The powerful lines for me are: -

“So could you love this bastard child

Though I don’t trust you to provide

With one hand in a pot of gold

And with the other in your side

 

'Cause I am so easily satisfied

By the call of lovers so less wild

That I would take a little cash

Over your very flesh and blood…”

“With one hand in a pot of gold/And with the other in your side” is such a line. In Mark chapter 10 before Jesus meets Blind Bartimeaus there are a few such people. The Rich Young Ruler wants to follow Jesus but his commandment keeping is compromised by his other hand in a pot of gold. He cannot give over his wealth. James and John who literally have a hand in Jesus side, as his disciples, put their other one into asking Jesus for position. Jesus explains that this kingdom is not about ruling but about serving.

And we are back to Blind Bartimaeus. The blind man sees! For him it is not about a pot of gold at all. He is just thrilled to have been given a wedding dress. He throws off his cloak and runs down the aisle…

“Oh I am a whore, I do confess

But I put you on just like a wedding dress

And I run down the aisle

I run down the aisle

 

Oh I’m a prodigal with no way home

I put you on just like a ring of gold

And I run down the aisle

I run down the aisle to you

To you”

DRESS YOUR DREAMS IN DENIM

I wrote this at the end of 1992 while I was living in Dublin. I came across the “dress your dreams in denim” phrase in a book by Charles Swindoll that I bought in Toronto earlier that year. 

I was preaching a lot at that time on U2’s song I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and concluded those sermons by saying that I hadn’t yet found what I was looking for in my own life, in the Church and in the world. I gave each of those a verse.

I had forgotten about this “dress your dreams in denim” idea until a friend, Michael Blythman, reminded me of it on Facebook recently. For Swindoll, denim was working in. As a child when my uncle had his denim dungarees on I knew he was at work. He was a carpenter. This is a poem about giving your all to the vision you believe in. 

In the past twenty three years I have watched some of these dreams coming true but there is still work to be done. On with the denim…

 

Down by the edge of the ocean

I’m splashing with a laughing child

Dancing in the joy she brings me

She has her mother’s eyes

Then in the moonlight evening

I hold her mother tight

Discerning minds and burning hearts

Through the shadows and the light.

 

I’m going to dress my dreams in denim

And I’m going to work for what is true

With one eye on forever

I’m going to see this vision through.

 

Intolerance and arrogance

Give way to divergent unity

Those who have give those who need

In a loving community

Vision becoming crystal clear

Dressed in purist white

The groom delights at the altar

In the beauty of his bride.

 

I’m going to dress my dreams in denim

And I’m going to work for what is true

With one eye on forever

I’m going to see this vision through.

 

Bars of steel and stigma

Fall away before the just

The needy not only want no more

They’ve also learned to trust

And every colour’s neutral

The streets give up their names

My people learn to love my people

Where we are all the same.

 

I’m going to dress my dreams in denim

And I’m going to work for what is true

With one eye on forever

I’m going to see this vision through.

TOMORROW IN FITZROY 25.10.15

Tomorrow morning (11am) in Fitzroy we will be asking some serious questions about Back To The Future and what that wonderful movie teaches us about what's important in life. The questions we ask and even the tiniest decisions we make all shape our future. We will look at insights from the most fascinating of chapters in the Gospel According To Mark. 

Nick Cave has written about Mark: -

"The Christ that emerges from Mark, tramping through the haphazard events of His life, had a ringing intensity about him that I could not resist. Christ spoke to me through His isolation, through the burden of His death, through His rage at the mundane, through His sorrow. Christ, it seemed to me was the victim of humanity's lack of imagination, was hammered to the cross with the nails of creative vapidity."

In Mark 10 the drama shifts from children to a rich young religious man to disciples seeking position to a blind man being kept away from Jesus. In the end this blind man sees more than anyone else. My Granny used to repeat a phrase, "I see said the blind man, who couldn't see at all." I wonder if it's origins are in Mark 10!

In the morning we will ask what we are living for and what the upside down kingdom looks like!

In the evening (7pm) we will be starting a series on a film on forgiveness.

A Step Too Far; A Contemplation In Forgiveness is a powerful film that cuts deep into the soul of everyone who watches. Everybody at sometime has been wronged. How we respond will define us and also decide whether healing and restoration happens or whether the dominos effect will go on and on.

Creative director Paul Moorhead, who is from Lurgan, was like me challenged and inspired by the Amish community’s response to the Nickel Mines Schoolhouse shootings in Lancaster County, Pennsylvannia back in 2006. Charles Roberts, a non Amish gunman, shot ten young Amish girls, killing five of them dead. The Amish community immediately forgave the killer, visited his family, set up a trust fund for his children and eventually the killer’s mother became a carer for one of the little girls left brain damaged by the shootings.

Paul Moorehead asked what we in Northern Ireland could learn from this response. Beginning the film with our own Shankill Bomb atrocity of 1993 Moorehead shifts to Pennsylvania where he investigates the Amish community’s philosophy of forgiveness with the help of a few Professors from Messiah College.

It is spiritually potent stuff and won Best feature Documentary at the Peace on Earth Film Festival. 

On three nights (Oct 25, Nov 1 and Nov 8, 2015) Peter McDowell formerly of the Irish Church’s Peace Project will break the film into three sections, giving time for reflection and discussion. We will also hear from Paul Gallagher and how he dealt with being shot in his own home because his neighbours were not around. Now in a wheel chair Paul is a peace advocate studying at Queens University. 

So, come on down and let us ask how forgiveness should work itself out in our lives and society. What does it mean to forgive those who sinned against us as we play so often in the Lord’s Prayer.

PAUL McCARTNEY - TUG OF WAR

Paul McCartney is a songwriting genius, perhaps the most successful of all time. He was a major contributor to the biggest band in rock history. Yet, still you have defend your fandom as if he somehow he is a guilty pleasure.

The reason for the begrudgers are hits like Mull Of Kintyre and All Together Now with the Frog Chorus. For all these pop cheese moments there is a full catalogue of great rock tunes like Helter Skelter, Band On The Run and Hi Hi Hi. The latter was so edgy that it was banned from the airwaves! Add to that his experimental stuff like his Fireman work with Youth, his Twin Freaks album with Freelance Hellraiser and even a collaboration with Allen Ginsberg and you have to ask for a bit more respect for the Macca man.

If a fair critique is that his post Beatles album have been a little patchy, within each record and the catalogue in its totality then Tug Of War is one of his most consistent collections. Recorded just after John Lennon’s death he had just let his Wings band go and to really push out in his solo career had brought back Beatles’ father figure George Martin as producer. All these things contributed to Tug of War’s artistic success.

Lennon’s death hit McCartney hard and his tribute song Here Today  was one of his best and most heartfelt ballads in a long time. Somebody Who Cares is another pastoral type song for those in need of support in difficult times. Ballroom Dancing is one of McCartney’s first song based on his 50s and 60s memories that would pepper his work more and more in the decades since.

Without a band McCartney was free to draw in other players and you could struggle to beat a collection like Stevie Wonder, Stanley Clarke, Carl Perkins, Eric Stewart, Steve Gadd and Ringo Starr! With those players and Martin at the desk it was only up to McCartney to bring the songs. Which he did.

Perhaps, again, Lennon’s death had demanded substance. We got them. The aforementioned Here Today and Somebody Who Cares. Add the beautiful Wanderlust. Then there’s the title track! 

“It’s a tug of war,
What with one thing and another,
It’s a tug of war.
We expected more
But with one thing and another,
We were trying to out do each other
In a tug of war.

In another world,
In another world we could
Stand on top of the mountain with our flag unfurled.
In a time to come,
In a time to come we will be dancing to the beat
Played on a different drum.”

On Tug Of War McCartney exposes the simplest reason for war – “trying to out do each other.” He then does a John Lennon and breaks into a re-imagining of the world. There is a Lennon hopefulness at work here, even in the gentle ease of the arrangement. McCartney has always been much more about the tunes and the melody than the lyrics. He has rarely used his songs to ask the cosmic questions. Tug Of War is an exception.

Ebony and Ivory also has a Lennon message song at its heart. Though it may have been diluted by the sentimentality of its arrangement this anti racist song was quite the hit single. With Stevie Wonder being his ebony to Paul’s ivory it was a cry for racial harmony and is as relevant today as then.

As an entire piece Tug Of War has that wide range of McCartney’s musical palette. Ballad, rock, ballroom, pop, rockabilly, blues and experimentation. This current release in the Remastered series is actually a remix. It really sharpens up the sound, for me the rocked up guitar solo in Ballroom Dancing that could sit very nicely on Venus and Mars was missed until now.

The extra CD worth of demos, unreleased songs and b-sdies is also worth a listen. Tug Of War is more than well worth another purchase for the nerds like me who have bought it a few time before. 

MULTI-FAITH BRITAIN - MY PAUSE FOR THOUGHT (Radio 2 with Vanessa Feltz) 22.10.15

I am always inspired by a story that American activist and writer Jim Wallis tells. Jim is married to anglican priest Joy Carroll who was the adviser on the Vicar of Dibley. 

Anyway… Jim tells the story of Steve Stone, a Christian pastor in Cordova, Tennessee. Steve was initially concerned when he heard that the Memphis Islamic Centre was moving onto the same block as his Church. However, after praying, Steve decided that Jesus was telling him to love his neighbour. 

Having put a sign in front of his Church that read, "Heartsong Church welcomes Memphis Islamic Centre to the Neighborhood,” the new Muslim neighbours were almost flabbergasted at the welcome and very soon both these faith communities were learning from one another and becoming friends. 

Around the same time there was a national media story in America when a another Church pastor took a different approach from Steve Stone and planned public burnings of Qu’rans. A news network ran the story and as part of it interviewed Steve Stone and his neighbouring Imam. 

After this television news clip Steve Stone got a phone call from Pakistan. A group of Muslim men watched the news in a mosque in Kashmir had responded in a remarkable way. They were so moved by Stone’s welcome to the Islamic Centre that they of went out to the local Christian Church and cleaned it inside and out, floors and all. They thanked Steve Stone for what he had done and assured him that they would now be supporting this neighbouring Christian community in whatever way they could. 

There seems some mythical fear that other faiths arriving into our neighbourhoods will somehow dilute our faith and way of life. Steve Stone and his Church did not compromise their faith to love their neighbour. They actually lived it out in a more robust way.

And the great advantage of this multi faith world coming into our neighbourhoods gives us the opportunity to model love and peace in such a way that we can from our own streets effect the world.

FOR BACK TO THE FUTURE DAY - DeLoreans, Aguerooo and Mary at the Tomb...

As a student I took the train home every Friday night, right past the DeLorean factory. Line after line of Belfast built futuristic cars. 

A few short years later and Michael J Fox is jumping into one before finding the 2.21 gigawatts of electricity to fire it to whatever date in history he wanted. Many times I’ve wondered what date I’d put in the dashboard if I found a DeLorean hidden in some bushes in Lagan Meadows.

Forgive the football analogy and bear with me but I’d definitely head to 5.45 pm on May 13th 2012. You see at 5.39 I had left my seat in front of the television, disgusted and utterly gutted that my favourite team Manchester City had blown it again and lost the Premiership on the last day of the season. 2-1 down to QPR with a minute or so left I couldn’t watch anymore and went to the garden where I stood in utter dejection until I heard what I thought was the cheers of Man United fans down the street. 

As I walked back into the house I was met by my mate coming the other way, smiling and all excited, saying that we had won. Impossible. Utterly impossible… BUT if I get depressed about football my mate Monty gets even more. So my disbelief was colliding with what I was seeing. No. Impossible. Could it be. Seconds later of course I believed. We had scored twice injury time while I was in the garden.

Back in the Delorean to another garden. Another time. 33AD. Easter Sunday. Mary has gone to anoint Jesus dead body. It’s not in the tomb. She’s disappointed. Angry. She turns to ask a gardener where they’ve taken him. And… in another garden Mary’s sadness and disbelief is colliding too. She knows the voice first and then realises. That it is not over. he’s not dead. Resurrection. The new life starts here. What must have gone on in her head… her heart… her soul when she realised Jesus was alive. It is hard to imagine what she must have felt. 

Yet, in that other garden over something as seemingly frivolous as soccer I got a wee glimpse of Mary’s change in emotions. Of course if I was being really honest… instead of writing a contrived Pause For Thought script… I’d rather go back to when I left the room and never made it to the garden at all. I’d love to have seen those goals. Live! Still I watched every morning for the next week… tears rolling down my face every single time…

GRETCHEN PETERS LIVE in FITZROY - a review

“This is pretty fancy” is Gretchen Peters opening words as she greets an almost full Church in Fitzroy. This is Belfast’s wonderful Real Music Club relocated and as she reasserts later in the show it is a little different in ambience to the home ground of The Errigle Inn. 

The Church setting seems to at times thrill Peters and at other times disturb her. She is a lady who is not frightened to plumb the darkest of depths. She more than once asks if she can sing this in Church. Blackbirds co-written with Glenarm boy Ben Glover is the first but not the last to be questioned :

“Our father was a farmer he planted fields of cane 

He planted seeds of evil, we harvested the shame 

I’m the last one standing there’s no one left to tell 

When it’s my time I’ll see you both in hell” 

Indeed… if Johnny Cash was around he would be have made this his own. Which is my point. Cash was man of deep Christian faith but loved the gothic ballad. Churches are not only places where we should proclaim the light. They are places to exorcise the demons. The Bible is not shy about confronting evil with some honesty.

The song that bridges the gap between the dark and light tonight is The Cure For The Pain. A poignant song that anyone who hears it can immediately transport themselves to the bed of their own loved one and the heartache, emotion and hope against hope for transcendent intervention : 

“damn the truth, and damn these lies

damn that look behind your eyes

damn this day, damn this night

goddamn this losing fight

…

so bless these pills, bless these sheets

bless this food that you can’t eat

bless the damned who walk these halls

and god have mercy on us all

 

there ain’t no drug, there ain’t no cure

to make it like it was before

ain’t no shelter from this hard rain

the cure for the pain is the pain.”

It is beautiful and heart wrenching. Sitting in a pew watching this artist fill my pulpit I was immediately caught in that line that over rides this entire concert, “And God have mercy on us all.” Amen. Preach it Rev. Gretchen!

Gretchen seemed genuinely pleased to find a perfect concert setting for a couple of other songs like Guadalupe from her duets record with Tom Russell. Here we have worship and prayers and mission wine and in the end:

“And who am I to doubt these mysteries?

Cured in centuries of blood and candle smoke

I am the least of all your pilgrims here

But I am most in need of hope.”

Peters’ voice and these lyrics were more than ably accompanied by her husband Barry Walsh on piano and accordion and two local lads on bass/double bass, Conor McCreanor, and guitar/lap steel, Colm McClean. They’d only been together a day or two but boy they were right on. Walsh was on it tonight and even threw his Jerry Lee Lewis foot on the Fitzroy Yamaha piano (I was equally excited and terrified).

I have to be honest. I have known about Gretchen Peters for years but only dabbled with her songs. Her last two records Hello Cruel World and Blackbirds had me intrigued enough to be excited for this gig. I was looking forward to allowing her music to impact me for the first time. And boy it did. From first to last this was an evening of the highest quality of songs. 

She might not like me saying it but I was immediately drawn to comparing her with Mary Chapin-Carpenter who is no slouch in the songwriting front. For me Peters goes deeper and wrestles more earnestly with life’s often painful core.  

As she gets near her altar call she introduces by saying that she will sing Idlewild, about her childhood and the fact not much has changed, until “it is not true anymore.” I think that is what to do in Church; sing songs of darkness until they are no longer true. That’s the perfect way to marry the real world and Church in songs as good as these! Anytime you want my pulpit Gretchen… these songs are welcome!