SOUL SURMISE

BE A BUILDER OF A CITY OF GRACE - DURING 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2020

Building A City Of Grace, The 8th Annual 4 Corners Festival kicked off this morning at the University of Ulster, York Street campus with Sixth Formers from schools across Belfast coming together to imagine what a City of Grace would look like. They have been looking at architecture of the city and creating poetry that will be published as soon as Monday night!

So… we are up and running. Tonight to a sold out crowd in Fitzroy I will be asking Gary Lightbody what he eats by the word grace when he sings it in Chasing Cars. Tomorrow knitters from across the four corners will be knitting the city together and we will be under the cranes in the evening listing to the poetry of Beano Niblock and Linda Molloy as fellas the songs of the legendary Tommy Sands…. and for the next ten days the programme goes on!

This morning I surmised… what if we all did some gracious act during the Festival. What if we went across our boundaries and helped someone do something? What if we gave food to or volunteered at a Food Bank. What if we helped a homeless person? What of we cut our neighbours grass or left a real for an elderly person on our street? What if we went somewhere in our city that we have never been and spoke to someone from “the other side”. What id we sent a card to the last person we would vote at Stormont and tell them we are praying for them.

What if we started intentionally these next ten days to build a city of grace… did some good neighbourliness as Alan McBride calls it… even loved our enemies? 

Would the city be worse off for it? Would we? Might we make a wee shift in the direction of this wonderful and wounded city and start something that could go deliriously out of control!

Let's start tweeting "What if?" ideas and adding the #4Corners2020 hashtag. Your idea might inspire someone else.

Go on… be a builder of a city of grace!

BE A BUILDER OF A CITY OF GRACE - DURING 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2020

Building A City Of Grace, The 8th Annual 4 Corners Festival kicked off this morning at the University of Ulster, York Street campus with Sixth Formers from schools across Belfast coming together to imagine what a City of Grace would look like. They have been looking at architecture of the city and creating poetry that will be published as soon as Monday night!

So… we are up and running. Tonight to a sold out crowd in Fitzroy I will be asking Gary Lightbody what he eats by the word grace when he sings it in Chasing Cars. Tomorrow knitters from across the four corners will be knitting the city together and we will be under the cranes in the evening listing to the poetry of Beano Niblock and Linda Molloy as fellas the songs of the legendary Tommy Sands…. and for the next ten days the programme goes on!

This morning I surmised… what if we all did some gracious act during the Festival. What if we went across our boundaries and helped someone do something? What if we gave food to or volunteered at a Food Bank. What if we helped a homeless person? What of we cut our neighbours grass or left a real for an elderly person on our street? What if we went somewhere in our city that we have never been and spoke to someone from “the other side”.

What if we started intentionally these next ten days to build a city of grace… did some good neighbourliness as Alan McBride calls it… even loved our enemies? 

Would the city be worse off for it? Would we? Might we make a wee shift in the direction of this wonderful and wounded city and start something that could go deliriously out of control!

Let's start tweeting "What if?" ideas and adding the #4Corners2020 hashtag. Your idea might inspire someone else.

Go on… be a builder of a city of grace!

SNOW PATROL - TAKE BACK THE CITY

“It’s a mess

It’s a start

It’s a flawed work of art

Your city, your call

Every crack, every wall”

 

At the launch of the 2016 4 Corners Festival, Hannah McPhillimy took Snow Patrol’s Take Back The City in an original way, keyboard led, reshaping chords and revealing other angles into the anthem that was. She made us feel old that it was all over the radio when she was at school!

Snow Patrol have also reworked Take Back The City since Hannah’s version back in 2016. Last year’s Reworked album brings a yearning poignancy to the song. Every time they sing “I love this city tonight/I love this city always” I realise that I do!

When Take Back The City was the lead off single on Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns it was is a bit of a departure. Up until then Gary Lightbody was writing about romance, mostly the melancholy side. In a Q magazine, at the time of the single’s release, Lightbody explained that the song is about his home city of Belfast which he has learned to fall in love with all over again. When Lightbody left for University in Dundee at the beginning of the nineties Belfast was a besieged city. 

There were a couple of years when every road into the city had police checks and people were being shot almost daily. By the time Lightbody returned, around 2005, the city had had a decade without bombs and bullets; it was a place revived with new shopping centres, city centre bars and clubs and music venues big enough for Snow Patrol’s success. Just like its returning sons, Belfast is thriving!

Though the negative side of Northern Ireland’s conflict haunts Take Back The City it is a song about loving the city, enjoying the city and reshaping the city. Lightbody sings about the broken record of entrenched political sectarianism and about the futility of picking sides in a historical fight he doesn’t understand. 

The main thrust of Lightbody’s ode to home though is about sucking the marrow out of the city, sometimes admitting to partying too much. Where I have personally been inspired is in the verse:

 

“God knows you put your life into its hands 

And it's both cradled you and crushed 

But now it's time to make your own demands.”

 

I am sure Gary Lightbody does not have the same missional intent as those of us who organised the 4 Corners Festival but this is a very interesting take on our relationship with our home cities, towns or villages. 

The city shapes us, cradles and crushes us into the adults we become but after that we are the shapers of the city. Our task as the Churches is to engage with our city as “World Formative Christians” to take a phrase from theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff.  

Since he released Take Back The City in 2016 Gary Lightbody has put his money and time where his mouth was. Whether encouraging young artists, or doing In Conversations like the one he is doing with me at 4 Corners Festival, he has contributed hugely to this mess, this start, this flawed work of art. Every time I hear it I want to get up and go and build a city of grace!

POETRY AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2020 - AND A BOOK OF IT

Words are a powerful thing. Oh I have always been quick to suggest that in many contexts we need actions to back up our words but that does not mean I do not believe in the impact of words. I preach every Sunday. I write a blog every day. I have written books and poems and songs. 

God is described by the apostle John as the Word. That is the power of words. In the poetry of it all we rare told that by those words of God, creation was formed. 

The Bible is full of words and though the greatest expression of those words was for the Word to become flesh and live for a time among us the Bible never rejects the power of words. The words of history, Gospel, poetry, song, letters, proverbs, prophetic imagination and lament. Hebrew and Greek words transforming the world.

At this year’s 4 Corners Festival we are putting some emphasis on the poetic word. Among the singers and preachers and story tellers there are a few poets. Some will write their very first poem, others are published and legendary.

At our very first event Sixth Formers will be writing poems about what their dreams of a future Belfast would look like.

There is a John Hewitt wander through the traces and to the places that inspired one of our greatest poets.

Grace Under The Cranes will give us the opportunity to hear Beano Niblock and Linda Molloy read while the legendary Tommy Sands sings. Beano is a former UVF prisoner and Linda lost her son in a sectarian attack in 1996. Tommy’s songs like For The Roses are internationally known for their emphasis on peace.

Damian Gorman is known as a BAFTA award winning film maker as well as playwright. He’s also a poet and works in communities trying to encourage people to tell and hear stories of the conflict. This will be a powerful evening and adding Anthony Toner a very literary songwriter to the bill is mouthwatering. The two artists are excellent together.

Some of these poems will appear in a book of poems from the Festival called Building A City of Grace. We hope the book will be launched at the Damian Gorman event and will include poems written by those Sixth Formed students just three days earlier. A Stockman poem might sneak int here too as well as work from other members of our planning group. Photographer Philip McCrea will make the entire piece even more beautiful with some great shots of the city.

GETTING TO INTERVIEW GARY LIGHTBODY AND KEN HADDOCK!!!

When I was 17 years old I wanted to be a journalist. Since I can remember, I had always had a pen and paper in my hand. It might have been taking down car number plates or playing my own football leagues but always writing. By Sixth Form I was recording my own radio shows on C60 tapes and writing a Youth Club magazine with record reviews etc. 

I applied for journalism courses at University. I actually went to Sunderland Polytechnic to do such a course but two days later came home. A quick interview with my school headmaster and I went back to school, took RE in one year and set off on a different route to theology and ordination. 

Yet, as I travelled down that different vocational path the journalism was never left behind. I ended up a blogger, editing a Christian music magazine, hosting a radio show and in the next two weeks get the chance to interview Gary Lightbody and Ken Haddock at the 4 Corners Festival.

I would be wrong to say that I am not excited.

The Gary Lightbody In Conversation is one of a series. At the last three Festivals I have had Conversations with Iain Archer, Ricky Ross and Brian Houston. They all took different shapes as will this year’s with Gary.

The biggest difference with Gary is that I have never met him. Oh I am friends with some of his best friends and so I feel a little more connected to him than most other rock musicians but there will be something fresher and edgier about this interview as a result of the fact that we will meet on the stage.

I have followed Gary’s career for longer than most. My friend Jonny Quinn became his drummer. Iain Archer was living with me and giving me some early stories. I remember Iain telling me they had had to change their name from Polar Bear to Snow Patrol. After first being called Shrug, I thought they should be called The Band With the Silliest Names. Snow Patrol - not so silly now!

Gary was chosen for this year’s festival because we were wanting to build up the city. Lift our morale. Few people have contributed to developing our city than Gary Lightbody. I want to know why? When did he fall in love with Belfast? Did he always? Or was it when he was away? 

I am also keen to know more about his Granny Rea. I love what he sings about her. Oh there are many other things. Lyrics that fascinate me. 

The week after we have an event at the Festival called The Belfast Songbook with Ken Haddock. As I have met with Ken about the event I have been intrigued by his story of growing up in Belfast. We will be hearing some songs about the city and some that have helped Ken through his life here. Ken does amazing covers, reworking songs in ways that bring out things you have never heard in the familiarity. There will be a couple of Ken songs too!

The Songbook… event has been moved from The Black Box to Fitzroy because of the demand. That means that there are still places available. It will be a powerful evening!

Can I ask you to be precious with the tickets. We use Eventbrite to guide us on numbers. If you have tickets for either of these events and for whatever reason now do not intend to attend please let us know so that someone who wants a ticket might get along.

There is music at most of our events. Please check details: - Music at 4 Corners Festival 2020

https://4cornersfestival.com

MEAT LOAF, ME AND JESUS!

Meat Loaf. Now that might be a really guilty pleasure. I was watching a documentary on Meat Loaf. It took me back to early 1978. 

I do not only remember Meat Loaf’s debut performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test but the conversations the next day in school. Those of us particularly interested in music were all over this performance. We had seen or heard nothing like it. Bat Out of Hell blew us away.

The album however was not easy to get. Bat Out of Hell was originally a slow burn (forgive the pun!). It took awhile to find its way into Ballymena record shops. My first copy was a recording on cassette. It would be the end of the summer before I bought my own copy, during The British Open at St. Andrews!

I remember days where I listened to that record all day long. That was not something I tended to do. I had played Sweet’s Block Buster so many times in a row that I tended not to do that. 

I could not get enough of it and even now I see what caught our attention. Bat Out Of Hell was Queen through a blender with Bruce Springsteen. Indeed, E Street Band member Roy Bittan played piano and it was how a friend introduced me to Born To Run. Bat Out Of Hell was bombastic and dramatic but Jim Steinman’s songs were so strong that you forgave that and maybe secretly liked it. I mean Two Out of Three and You Told The Word Right Out of My Mouth are great songs.

It was full of desire, a lot of it sexual. It is not lost on my looking back four decades later that I was sixteen and not doing well with girls so it probably reached my teenage hormones. Jim Steinman’s songs though have more going on than sexual lust.

There is a lust for life. These are songs about milking all that life has to offer. I was a year away from finding Jesus. In my favourite verse in John 10:10 Jesus speaks about “life in all its fulness.” Bat Out of Hell might not have the creed, though heaven and hell are a core part of Steinman’s lyrics, but it is an adrenaline rushed soundtrack of that life in all its fulness.

To be fair it really helped that producer Todd Rundgren understood songwriter Jim Steinman’s vision and crafted the songs into a stunning piece of rock music. The melodies are strong. The playing has flourish. Meat Loaf has charisma. Some songs are long but there is not a wasted second.

For Meat Loaf it never got better. Oh I enjoyed Jim Steinman’s solo record Bad For Good and Meat Loaf’s eventual follow up Deadringer but nothing ever quite reached the heights.

Indeed when in 1993 Bat Out Of Hell II was contrived from its sound to its cover to how they sold it. The music business svengalis conned us all into buying the follow up. They gave us the sound, the image and took us back but I was almost twice my age with different tastes in music and at a different stage of life. We all bought the nostalgia and though there were some good songs, it was no longer who we were. When I took it to a second hand shop they refused to take it. They had so many already!

Don’t get me wrong. I still come across Meat Loaf’s songs that I like. I am not sure I have listened to an entire album through since about 1982 but every now and again I want to hear that voice, that Steinman arrangement, a little bombast. Maybe I am looking at that wee bit of nostalgia that was over dozed on Bat Out Of Hell II. Maybe I am looking for that adrenaline rush that thankfully for me is more than a rock roll dream come through but a real life imaginative way to live come true! 

BE A KEY NOTE LISTENER

We need Key Note Listeners as much as Key Note Speakers. It is a mantra of Fr Martin Magill’s. We were probably only in the second year of our 4 Corners Festival when he coined the phrase. We as Church leaders or community leaders or political leaders or whatever kind of leader we are are often incredibly fast to speak but very slow to listen.

The 4 Corners Festival has attempted to give a space for people to be listened to. We have listened to young loyalist bandsmen; we have listened to the Brighton bomber Pat Magee and Jo Berry the daughter of the British Cabinet member Anthony Berry who was killed in that bomb; we have listened to Stephen Travers from the Miami Showband and the possible security forces collusion in the massacre that killed his band mates; we have listened to loyalist leaders remind us of the loyalist contribution to the Good Friday Agreement; we have listened in various ways to various of the Troubles.

Listening. As George Michael said (and I don’t quote him too often) listen without prejudice. I find it difficult and as we have encouraged us all to be Key Note Listeners it has been a constant challenge for me.

This year the Festival is giving more opportunities to listen. We will be listening to the stories of Presbyterians caught up in the Troubles. There will be specific stories read out at Considering Grace with Gladys Ganiel at St John’s Parish on the Falls Road. Bishop Donal McKeown will be listening and then we listen to his response.

We will be listening to Bishop Alan Abernethy tell us how watching a riot attacking a Catholic Church on the Woodstock Road when he was 15 made him rethink what it was like to love your neighbour in a divided city. We will be listening in the very Church that he watched being attacked. 

We will be listening to the Chairmen on Belfast’s 4 soccer teams. They will tell us the difficulties and frustrations that they have as fans do sectarian things that the clubs take the blame for. How do we use sport to build a city of grace?

We will be listening to Stephen Travers in a different way as through music he will tell us how got through life a lot more traumatic and less ordinary than most of the rest of us. 

We will be listening to poets and singers, throwing different literary hues across our fractured corners. 

It is a tough call to be a Key Note Listener. Most of us think we should be listened too. Most of us think we know what others think without listening to them. Some of us do not even want to listen.

If we are to build a city of grace then listening will be all too vital. Indeed, listening is a gracious act in itself. Listening rehumanises the other as well as being an avenue to making us more empathetic. At the very least it might confirm what we think we already think! 

If we are not listening to one another in this wounded place then hope and grace will have no fertile soil to grow in. Can I encourage you to glance across our programme and pick one that might resource your listening. Can I invite you to be a Key Note Listener at 4 Corners Festival 2020.

https://4cornersfestival.com

TOMORROW IN FITZROY - 26.1.2020

Tomorrow morning (11am) in Fitzroy we will be looking at the utter madness of Jesus way to live and that repentance is about a head shift in thinking. This is the God of the manger, the donkey and the cross and we need to get our heads round this radical alternative way to live because he asks that we follow. 

We will also be responding to what David Livingstone was teaching last Sunday night about the environment and singing a Robbie Burns song, on Burns weekend, as a Creation Liturgy. 

In the evening (7pm) we have a special night of art and reconciliation. For the last two weeks an Arts Cohort from Calvin University in Michigan have been with us learning about our wee country. They have been responding by creating art in song, painting and other forms. We will have not only the opportunity to see their art that will hang in Fitzroy's Grace and Imagination Gallery over the 4 Corners Festival but to hear them talk about their work.

In between the art we will be hearing from Gladys Ganiel about her Considering Grace book and Malaina Yoder will tell us about her Masters at the Irish School of Ecumenics. 

 

The photo was taken at last year's Calvin University Art Exhibit...

PRAYING FOR ARLENE, MICHELLE ETC IN CLONARD... AT THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY

God

We thank you for the week of prayer for Christian unity

We thank you for this attempt to respond to the prayer of Jesus that we would all be one

Forgive us when we have been divided

Forgive us when we been arrogant 

And that arrogance has turned to bigotry.

Forgive us for our complicity in a divided society

And the pain that we have caused one another.

 

God we thank you that you promise that when we confess our sins that you are faithful and just to forgive us of our sins

And purify us from all our unrighteousness

Lord purify us in our relationships with one another.

 

God, we thank you for the work of Fr Gerry Reynolds and Rev Ken Newell

We thank you for those at Clonard and in Fitzroy

Who took risks

Who crossed the boundaries

Who learned to love their neighbours as themselves

We thank you for that vision and courage

We thank you that we see the benefits of Fr Gerry and Rev Ken’s work even here this morning

 

God we pray that they might continue to be our role models

That their work would continue to inspire us

We pray for the Reconciliation ministry of Clonard 

And as part of that the Clonard Fitzroy Fellowship

Lord by your Holy Spirit give vision and guidance to show fresh ways to continue that work

 

God we pray for the Clonard pilgrims

We thank you for their worshipping with us in Fitzroy

And all that that means to us

We thank you for the relationships that they have formed across our city and beyond

Create real Christian fellowship in the congregations they visit

Melt hard hearts and create unity in Christ.

 

God we pray for the 4 Corners Festival.

We thank you for the involvement of Clonard and Fitzroy in this initiative

We pray for the programme that starts next Friday

We pray for the speakers and singers and poets

We pray that the events of this year’s festival

Would contribute to the building of a city of grace

We pray for those who come along.

Lord change hearts

Redeem attitudes

And transform relationships across all 4 corners of our city

And Lord begin with me

 

Finally Lord we pray for our Local Assembly

For all of our MLAs and particularly our ministers.

For Arlene Foster

For Michelle O’Neill

For Naomi Long

For Edwin Poots

For Deirdre Hargey

For Diane Dodds

For Peter Weir

For Connor Murphy

For Robin Swann

And for Nichola Mallon

 

Equip them all to do their jobs

Help them overcome the hurdles

Envision them to do their best for all of us

God we pray Stormont would work

For every corner of Belfast

And every corner of the north

Jeremiah asked us to pray for the peace and prosperity of the city

Lord may it be so

For the common good of all of us

God build a city of grace

In Jesus name

Amen

DEACON BLUE'S CITY OF LOVE, THE HOLY CITY AND BUILDING A CITY OF GRACE

On this blog, in review after review of Deacon Blue in concert I have written about the positivity in their music. Even just looking at their recent releases songs like Believers, Bethlehem Begins or Stars all have me jumping off my chair to change the world in whatever ways I can. Deacon Blue are fuel for transformation.

How utterly intrigued I was with the first single and title track of their soon to be released fourth studio record since 2012 - City Of Love.

About to embark on the 4 Corners Festival here in Belfast with the 2020 them of Building a City of Grace, you can see why. City of Love is like a soundtrack for the Festival. 

As always with Deacon Blue there is no pie and the sky optimism. The song starts with realism. Our singer is tired of carrying his burden. He is near dragging it along. It is cold outside and in and he is wondering about giving up.

 

Lost the will for keeping on

Just as the winter is dragging

What can I do with all of this?

Where can I put what I'm carrying?

 

We carry some baggage here in Belfast. We have a wonderful but wounded city. As Jenna Silverman Wilson put it in a poem at the closing night of one of our previous festivals, we don’t so much have scars as open wounds.

It would be easy to feel the drag, to almost give up. How many stutters and starts have we had in this 25 year old peace process. When we started planning this year’s Festival the planning committee had the gloom of this first verse. Then… hope kicked in. Just a glimmer. 

We took a different posture. What if we could find a steely will to keep going. No matter what the circumstances around us and no matter what the naysayers in their fundamentalist blogs said about us? What if we could make our contribution?

 

If you've got the will you've got to keep on going

No matter what the world is saying

No one can stop you, not until

You reach the end and lay down your burden

 

That last line to verse 2 adds a layer to this seemingly simple Deacon Blue lyric. There is an eschatological aspect to what Ricky Ross is singing here. There is a Biblical image of laying down our burdens on the other side of death. 

At this stage of the song my mind shifts between Ricky’s city of Glasgow, my city of Belfast and the Holy City of Revelation 21. In that Holy City we will have left our burdens down, all that we were carrying will be redeemed.

All that remains is love. At the end of that beautiful poem that the apostle Paul writes about love in 1 Corinthians 13, he concludes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love. All that remains.

Deacon Blue’s City of Love is a song filled to over flowing with hope of another day, another city, another way to live. The belief in that hoped for city might just be what we need to help us not give up in the broken, wounded cities that we are currently living in. Let us find the will. Let us contribute. Let us build a city of grace!

 

All that remains is the city of love

All that remains is the city of love

The city of love.

 

Find out about 4 Corners Festival 2020 here...https://4cornersfestival.com