SOUL SURMISE

TOMRROW IN FITZROY - 24.3.19

I am delighted to say that I am back on Sunday morning (11am) in Fitzroy and it should be a good one. I am wrestling with the texts of Luke 13 and Isaiah 55 in the context of the incomprehensibly sad, frustrating and even angry week when we have mourned with Christchurch, New Zealand, got even more despairing and confused about Brexit and, closest to home, buried three of our northern young people in County Tyrone after the most horrendous tragedy at a Cookstown hotel on St Patrick's night. we will find Jesus not so much playing mind games with such mysteries but calling us in the midst of such events to bear the fruit of a people who have turned their lives and world around, from self absorption to selfless compassion.

There will be guitar edged worship and a Bono/Daniel Lanois song, with poignant near prophetic rewrites by John Trinder, that will beautifully link our worship, prayers and reflections.  

 

OVER THE RHINE - LOVE AND REVELATION

It would not be news or a surprise to any regular Soul Surmise readers to know that having Over The Rhine play in Fitzroy in March 2017 was a highlight of my life. We were just a few weeks into Trump’s America at that point. They were Americans on tour of Europe. The questions as to “how on earth” can only have added to their gloom. They spoke of the need for songs to see us through and their gratitude for such. 

Love and Revolution is an album of loss and break up. It’s nothing new for Over the Rhine who have been giving us beautiful pieces of heartache for thirty years, this very year. I remember at the funeral of our dear friend Lindsay Emerson how What I’ll Remember Most and Ohio somehow caused even more tears but with also threw us little nuggets of catharsis. When my own mother died I sought solace and soothing in the songs of Over The Rhine.

This collection seems to have been written in an intensity of loss. The lead-off tracks, Los Lunas and Given Road are saddest blue. When on Broken Angels, four songs in, Karin sings…

 

“I want to take a break from heartache

Drive away from all the tears I’ve cried

I’m a wasteland down inside

In the crawlspace under heaven

In the landscape of a wounded heart

I don’t know where to start”

 

… she’s not escaping anywhere soon on this record. 

Not that there isn’t hope as well as Love and Revelation on here. This verse from Let You Down is trademark Over The Rhine wonderful:

 

“If grief is love without a place to go

Well then I've been there, you’re not alone

And if a song is worth a thousand prayers

We'll sing 'til angels come carry you and all your cares”

 

The title track, stolen from the words by which their friend and most recent producer Joe Henry, not available this time, signs his letters and emails calls us to live something of kindness and grace in such a melancholy world:

 

“Baby, it can't wait

Make a little space

Pay a little time

Baby, just be kind

Make a stronger case for it

Extend a little grace

Return, delete, backspace

Do it face to face

And call it…

 

Love and Revelation

You and me and inspiration.”

 

Surely though all of this loss and heartache and disappointment is about the new landscape across Berquist and Detweiler’s beloved America. Songs to help us through. It also fits those of us mourning Brexit and its post vote chaos too. On the final song that has a lyric on the record they sing:

 

There is no land of promise here

There’s only wilderness

You may not recognize this place

You live here nonetheless

 

That is how so many of my American friends are feeling in Trump’s America and I am feeling about Brexit! There are many mourning the loss of values and dreams they hold dear. 

The title of that last song and the last words on the album say a lot about why I love Over The Rhine. It is not their bleakness that intoxicates me. Their realism is a vital ingredient but its their hopefulness, like scattered benedictions, that I love the most - “May God love you like you’ve never been loved.”

It is almost a throwaway line, like a feather but a feather fluttering with the weight of gold. Which is a great description of Over The Rhine in general and this record in particular. Top players on Love and Revelation add their different hues but the entire album floats on gentle acoustic strums and tinkling piano. As always Karin’s voice is angelic across the top and on Love and Revelation the duets with Linford, Let You Down and Betting On The Muse, are particularly strong.

I should mention the instrumental at the end. An American In Belfast suggests I should be particularly thrilled. I am. Th story, as I see it, is that when Karin and Linford played Fitzroy in Match 2017 they had just cancelled two gigs in the Netherlands because of coughs and lost voices. That meant that, instead of me touring them round CS Lewis and Van Morrison sites, they were prisoners in their Dukes Hotel bedroom on University Street. Valuable idle time it seems for Linford to find a tune on his guitar.

30 years. I have been a fan for 27 of them, always thrilled when a new record comes along. It’s been five years since their last studio record. As always… so worth the wait!

STOCKI'S "CARRY IT GENTLY" PRAYER

Carrying our faith needs the Jesus posture... a posture of gentleness... in its courageous conviction...

 

God, give us a confidence in you

But let grace keep us from arrogance

God, give us a strength of conviction

But let us share it humbly

God may we believe courageously

But help us carry it gently

Lord, may we go forward with vision

But help us to be careful that we do not abuse your grace to feed our own self righteousness

But use your grace to feed the world’s deepest needs.

AMEN

A CALL TO... PRAYER IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Brexit? What is going on? Does anyone know? The uncertainty is palpable.

Stormont? We have been 800 days without a local government. There seems no sign of that changing. The uncertainty is beyond frustrating.

All of this impacts our daily lives. There is uncertainty right across our community. 

What can we do? We feel helpless.

On Sunday March 24th at 3pm, 24/7 Prayer are giving us a way to respond. Meeting at the front gates off Stormont at 3 they are calling us to "unite to prayer-walk up the hill and then take a gathered moment to humble ourselves, kneel at the top of the hill and pray God’s kingdom come."

This will be a humble quiet walk in resilient unity and a short moment of reflective prayer in a time of uncertainty.

If you are the praying kind...

http://www.24-7prayerireland.com/events/2019/3/14/prayer-for-the-land-in-a-time-of-uncertainty

 

SURRENDER DON'T COME NATURAL TO ME...

“Surrender don't come natural to me 

I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want 

Than to take what You give that I need 

And I've beat my head against so many walls 

Now I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees 

And this Salvation Army band is playing this hymn 

And Your grace rings out so deep 

It makes my resistance seem so thin 

I'm singing hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf 

You have been King of my glory 

Won't You be my Prince of Peace”

-      From Hold Me Jesus by Rich Mullins

 

It is Lent, a season when Christians consider self denial on the run up to Easter. Of course, self denial should not be for just 40 days. It is the call of Jesus by his grace to follow him; “anyone who comes after me must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” “Daily” he calls, not “annually”.

Mind you if there has ever been a time in history where these words are difficult it is now. In a world where self gratification is instant in that we can message, bully, buy and sell instantaneously from our phones Jesus call really is counter intuitive. It breaks the defaults of the conditioning of our society.

Rich Mullins’ words here say it all - “Surrender don't come natural to me/I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want/Than to take what You give that I need." 

Rich's words sends me off immediately to the last few verses of Matthew 6: 30-34. Eugene Peterson's paraphrase (The Message) puts it poetically: -

“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."

Jesus tells us to stop fighting and worrying about getting things and start responding to God's giving. This is wisdom for any age.

God doesn’t call us to self denial to spoil our fun. We fight God to hold onto what in eternity and even in the here and now we don’t need. We don’t take what God has to offer that would transform not only our own souls but the world we live in. Those who lack attachment are those who make the difference and live at peace. This Lent may Jesus' grace ring out deep and may it redeem us into what we were made for.

 

HERE

In difficult times, it is not about escaping from where we are as much as taking the time to take in all that is going on… to learn about ourselves in the waiting… This is heavily influenced by David Wagoner’s poem Lost, that a friend sent me in my recent convalescence…

 

Here, was once for Peter

Cowering disillusioned in an upper room

Where Mary muttered the impossible

And he ran to an empty tomb.

 

Here, was once for Paul

Thorns he couldn’t get rid of

Where the end of all the prayers he prayed

Was God’s grace to be enough.

 

Here, was once for Jesus

A bloody cross, all God forsaken

Where even the very sky grew black

As the interruption of mad love beckoned

 

Here… now… this… for me

I stop, take time and breathe

I gaze out at my surroundings

From my shelter of belief

Though my soul is bruised dark blue

I hear a holy call to embrace it

Gently, I hold on to my very self

Because no one is going to replace it.

 

In this uncertain terrain of tears

Gazing across these unfamiliar fears

I’ll wait ’til my deepest gladness reappears

Here.

SCRATCHING MY SOUL (for the parents of Cookstown)

Heartbroken for the parents of those teenagers who lost their lives in the tragedy at the Greenvale Hotel, Cookstown on St. Patrick's Day... 

 

Angel, you got your wings too soon

Heaven didn't lend you long enough

And you showed me that in this old world

There's nothing like a parent's love

And everybody's conversing words

That I'm thinking only God can say

While I just sit here scratching my soul

And long to hold you 'til your body decays.

 

I guess you can't look both ways

And avoid what this life throws at you

But while we shake our fists at God

Maybe God is angry too

Maybe God is weeping too.

 

Angel, you got your wings too soon

There was so much love still to do

When I think of all my reasons for living

Most of them stopped breathing with you

They say that you dance on higher ground

My heart is stretched trying to reach those ways

While I just sit here scratching my soul

Longing to hold you 'til your body decays.

 

I guess you can't look both ways

And avoid what this life throws at you

But while we shake our fists at God

Maybe God is angry too

Maybe God is weeping too.

 

 

 

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS AND U2 LIVE IN THE MCMORDIE HALL 1981 - BBC FOUR

What a treat! I suddenly became aware that BBC Four were doing a St Patrick’s Weekend Irish music evening. As I flicked through I could hardly believe my eyes. Stiff Little Fingers and U2 in The McMordie Hall, Queen’s University, Belfast in 1981! I was sure that this tape was lost. I am sure I had asked at some stage and been told so. I remember watching this at the time. I was a big Stiff Little Fingers fan. I had heard of U2 but I wasn’t paying much attention.

The McMordie Hall was a legendary venue in the Queen’s University Belfast’s Students Union. It is a dark dingy cellar like basement hall. You might even call it Belfast’s Cavern! Over the decades band like The Clash, Snow Patrol, Mumford & Sons and Ed Sheeran played their early gigs as they set out on successful careers. 

In 1986 the The McMordie Hall controversially changed its name to The Mandela Hall as Queen’s students joined so many across the world in solidarity with Nelson Mandela. On July 28th 2018 the curtain came down on The Mandela Hall. After 50 years it held its final gig because it is collateral damage in a new Students Union development. Quality local acts, David C Clements, Ryan Vail and And So I Watch You From Afar assured a fine send off!

My own highlights include Belfast’s own Energy Orchard when they looked to be the next big thing, more recently Jake Bugg and best of all Radiohead in a secret warm up concert for their OK Computer Tour. The fascinating thing about that Radiohead gig was that they banned the press, so when the BBC were doing a documentary on the evening almost 20 years later they discovered that the only review of the night in the entire world was the one I wrote the next day, for this very blog!! 

Watching these 1981 McMordie Hall concerts, almost forty years later, is fascinating. U2 were recorded one night and Stiff Little Fingers the next, the two shows then spliced together, song about. 

I found myself wondering how Stiff Little Fingers didn’t become as crucial as The Clash. The power punk pop of Alternative Ulster and Suspect Device are blisteringly brilliant. Belfast’s finest were a division above the upstart gatecrashers from Dublin at this stage of development but no more promotions were achieved. Where did Jake Burns muse go. Did it remain in Belfast when they relocated to London? 

U2, of course, didn’t relocate. They stayed in the city of their youth, if not in the same neighbourhoods. Having said that U2 were only setting out on the search of their muse. Yet, I was struck by the fact that the producer of this television show chose two songs, Electric Co and Out Of Control, that the band would be still delivering live, forty years later. Not that these performances would have convinced anyone of the longevity ahead!

However, there were a few fragments in this show that gave glimpses of the future. Bono’s charismatic front man magnetism is already very much in evidence. His energy and the intensity of his engagement with the crowd. He’s a star, in his own mind, long before he actually becomes one! Though at times his voice is ragged, there are subtleties, particularly during 11 O’Clock Tick Tock, that suggest the singer he would become.

Edge on the other hand is fully formed. Oh he would build on the technique and the number of sounds on his guitar palette but here he is swaying side to side, walking back and forwards as if the guitar is an extension of his body. He is a master of sonic subtleties already. It’s natural, it’s cool, and already utterly unique and rock ringingly beautiful. With Adam and Larry pounding out a thumping beat there was surely potential but when this was aired only potential.

Seeing this again was indeed a St. Patrick’s weekend treat. These are the songs of innocence that we can only watch through the lens of experience… and wonder… 

HOW ST. PATRICK'S DAY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD

If you’re a mid Antrim man like Liam Neeson, Brendan Rogers and me then Slemish looms large in your landscape. As long as I can remember there being mountain, a few miles out the road, I remember that it was volcanic, a little disconcerting to a child, and that St. Patrick had lived there. And every St. Patrick's Day I see Slemish in my imagination, though I can no longer actually see it from South Belfast.

So again, on March 17th, I am thinking 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 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. As God forgave him, Patrick becomes forgiving and goes back to forgive and love his enemies. 

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 as today’s celebrations across the world attest to.

It is an amazing story of redemption and forgiveness. 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… like Jacob wrestling with God or 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. 

Today, almost the entire world will be impacted by the day we remember Patrick. Rivers will be coloured green, millions will down green beer, wearing leprechaun hats and sprigs of Shamrock as we celebrate something of the wonder of being Irish. A closer look though and we might find the key to literally transforming the world - LIBERATION! FORGIVENESS! RECONCILIATION! LOVE OF THE OTHER! On a week like we humans have endured that would be a mighty fine St. Patrick's Day!

Christ be with you, Christ within you, Christ behind you, Christ before you. Have a blessed day.

STOCKI'S ST PATRICK'S DAY PLAYLIST 2019

MY LAGAN LOVE - ULIAD & DUKE SPECIAL

from A Note Let Go

 

I’M STILL ALIVE (Live In Fitzroy) - DAVID C CLEMENTS

from The Sound Of The Forest Choir

 

NORTHERN STARS - BEN GLOVER

From Shorebound

 

NEW DAY - GARETH DUNLOP

from No. 79

 

BOWIE ON THE RADIO - RYAN MCMULLAN

from the single

 

EVERYBODY LOVES YOU - SOAK

from Grim Town

 

THE ICE-CREAM MAN (featuring Michael Longley) - DUKE SPECIAL

from Hallow

 

HEARTBREAK WAS HEARTBREAK - URSULA BURNS

from The Dangerous Harpist

 

SAD SONGS TONIGHT - BRIAN HOUSTON

from Carolina

 

BELFAST (featuring Rita Maguire) - JOBY FOX

from the single

 

A WEE BIT OF SOMETHING - ANDREW PATTERSON

from Out Of Babylon EP

 

BELFAST TOWN - KAZ HAWKINS

from Feelin’ Good

 

ONE FOR THE BLACK BOX - ANTHONY TONER

from Our Lady of Wind and Rain

 

SHANDY BASS - ROMANTICA

from Shadowlands

 

RAMBLING IRISHMAN - KEVIN DOHERTY

from Seeing Things

 

THE LAST TRAIN TO LIMERICK (featuring Louise Walsh) - JULES MAXWELL

from Songs From A Cultural Backwater

 

I THINK OF HOME - GARY LIGHTBODY

from Live At Bangor Abbey

 

TWO DAYS IN SAVANNAH - CIARAN LAVERY

from Sweet Decay

 

A NEW ARMAGEDDON - MALOJIAN

from Let Your Weirdness To Carry You Home

 

SONGS I KNEW SO WELL - KEN HADDOCK

from One Night In Willowfield

 

GYPSIES IN THE WOOD - MCPEAKE

from Gypsies In The Wood EP

 

AN AMERICAN IN BELFAST - OVER THE RHINE

from Love and Revelation