SOUL SURMISE

LEARNING TO LISTEN

(This is the script from my Pause For Thought this morning on BBC Radio 2... The them was Learning To Listen...)

 

They say that when we walk we move at the same pace as the soul. If that is true, I need to slow down. The diary flies - planes, trains and automobiles and all that. 

Personally I find that my mental health is closely connected to my emotional health and even closer to my spiritual health.

I had an interesting experience a couple of summers past. 

I have mentioned before how much my wife Janice and I love Ballycastle beach on Antrim’s north coast. Every night on summer holidays we try to time walking Jed our dog with the sunset.

For some reason one particular evening I was walking back home along the beach on my own. Ten days or so of holiday and my soul had at last slowed down to the right pace but I still had my head racing. 

I can only describe it as God shouting at me when I sensed a voice saying I needed to get rid of the ear phones. So, I hastily turned off my seaside Playlist and breathed in.

Suddenly I was able to take in all that was going on around me. From the distractions cluttering my thinking I started focusing in on every refraction of sea and sand and sky.

Turning off the music, I got to actually listen, to really listen to the quiet of the ocean’s big blue wonder. Of course it wasn’t silent. But the quiet rhythms of the sea. Gentle waves landing and then that sweet soothing sound of water lapping on the shoreline, the percussive noise of sea raking stones in the waves retreat. 

The sand martins were swooping down around and back. The sun was doing that wonderful thing it does before it says goodnight, throwing a beam of light across the sea. I felt I could nearly walk across it.

It was like I’d tuned in to the earth’s allure, the night sky’s encryption. It was like God had prayed a benediction of blessing over my mind and heart and soul.

When I got home I realised that I had had a lesson in listening BUT more than that I had also learned to be grateful, learned to aware of everything around me and learned even to listen to the conversations inside my soul.

So please God, more walks, more quiet and more listening over in these next few weeks.

MY SUMMER PLANS

(This is my script for Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on  July 2nd... the theme was My Summer Plans)

 

I cannot wait for summer. It looks like the first plan is to go chasing summer because here in Belfast summer has not been chasing us. 

Life in the UK can be hard work. Most of the year it’s wet and cold. You are running to find cover from the rain, all bundled up with jumpers and coats and thermal vests. And jumping the puddles to get on to the bus.

What we need is a break. A couple of months where it is like California. T-shirt, shorts and sandals and not plan B and C if plan A is erased by a shower or plan B is ripped apart by Hurricane Horatio coming in off the Atlantic. Next winter will be more difficult without a rest.

So this summer we are off to the Med for 10 days. Chasing the sun. Heat on the back. Slather my Irish skin with sun cream.

We have other time off too. I hope that maybe summer will have reached even the north east coast of Antrim by then.

Whatever the weather, though, I am still making plans this summer to be still. The Psalmist in the Bible talks about God leading us beside quiet waters. It’s a pastoral action. 

We live in a world that is spinning out of control and find ourselves in the vortex a lot of the time. What I need is to be led to a quiet place. To relax. Reboot. Refresh.

My plans are not to agitate the waters. I find that I can get away. Beach, lake, even a sofa because of Irish drizzle. I am in a quiet place BUT I am tempted to self destruct. 

I read a book about theology and I am thinking winter sermons. I plan to cut that out. I find myself putting photos of me on some beach with a brilliant view behind me up in social media. As I do I see all the news from home and I am spinning again. Stop! I have to be determined. I take out a notebook and write down an idea for Pause for Thought. No!

So my plan is to allow God to lead me by those quiet waters and try my darndest not to stir them up. 

MY LONGEST DAY

(This is my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on June 25th 2024... The them for the week was My Longest Day)

 

I was asking the bus driver, “How long til we get there” like I did when I was little kid. Where I was brought up in Northern Ireland the furthest you had to drive was about 30 minutes. 30 minutes to the beach. 30 minutes to the big city. On this my longest day we’d been going 10 hours and still not there.

It wouldn’t have been so bad had the two days before not been my second and third longest days. Bus to Dublin airport and then flying to Kampala via Amsterdam and Kigali took a day. 

The next day the white know-it-all Irishman (that’d be me) refused to waken the team early which meant our bus left for Gulu during rush hour and therefore added two hours to a 10 hour bus journey near the end of which the bus driver said to me, “I think they have moved Gulu. The last time I drove here I was there by now.” 

Now, here we go yet again. Third day, my longest day, still driving. We are heading to Arua right up by the north west of Uganda. Our church had funded a school building and we were going to see it. We were excited but in this my longest day I was getting weary. It was made worse by my thought that my mate’s church built a school too. Just one hour’s drive from Kampala.

So a couple of hours into this third long day I texted the CEO of the organisation we were with - “WHY SO FAR?”

Ten hours later and I wept as we entered Arua. Relief. Tiredness. BUT also that we were here where we had been dreaming and praying about for years.

The next morning we arrived at the school and 350 pupils came out to meet us. Someone said ‘the children were so excited that they could carry the bus’. The smiles. The laughter. The joy. Within hours we falling in love with children like Jacqueline and Rachel and Jonathan and Timo. 

That evening I texted the CEO back and thanked him for sending us here. These children deserved an education as much as those just one hour from Kampala did. In a world where ability is evenly distributed but opportunities are not I was honoured and thrilled to have this partnership with these children. My Longest Day led to a hopeful end and I have travelled that road so many times since!

U2... FOLLOWING THE ORIGINAL MANIFESTO

(I am repeating some old Thoughts For The Day and Pause For Thoughts for the blog... This one was on BBC Radio 2 and the week's theme was "Debut Albums")

 

Like most of you I waken up every morning to Radio 2... the daze gradually lifting, half dreaming, half hearing, sometimes the two blurring between fact and fiction. A few years ago, around coffee time, I suddenly asked my staff if they had heard anything about U2 winning 5 Grammies?

I wasn’t sure if it was the fact or the fiction of early morning radio! No one knew but less than 30 minutes later the phone went and it was a major news network asking me if I had heard that U2 had won 5 Grammies the night before! Fact! Honest!

I said I had and the next thing I knew I was in a studio in Belfast going out live on the 6 O’clock news. I sat with headphones on waiting for the anchor to ask me something on U2. When my headphones went live the guy starts with, “So Reverend Steve Stockman, sex and drugs and rock n roll how have U2 kept going for so long?” No time to think... so I answered “Well, I think it is the fact that they weren’t much interested in the sex and drugs so they were able to concentrate on the rock n roll” I was quite pleased with that answer. And I believe it.

U2  are still making records 45 years after Boy was released and I don't think they have lost any of their desire and passion. The key as to why, I believe, is on the first track of that debut record. Boy kicked off with the youthful post punk energy of  I Will Follow. It was about much more than artistic energy being fuelled by the naive innocent Christian faith of their late teens.

On an album of adolescent questioning and searching they nailed their manifesto with a song of belief and on every record since 1979 they have continued the follow that path they committed to. U2’s records have almost been a diary of a development of faith. Jesus never said “Believe this creed.” Or “read this liturgy.”

He said “Follow me...” It is like those two roads diverging in the middle of a life. Take the one less travelled by and it makes all the difference. It has made all the difference to U2 whose art and Grammy awards have been fuelled with the desire to keep following something more than sex and drugs and rock n roll... Few bands have followed the manifesto of their debut so diligently...

 

WATCHING SELF SACRIFICE ON A STAGE

(This is my script from my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on March 15, 2024... The theme for the week was Self Sacrifice)

 

One evening I actually found myself watching self sacrifice on a concert stage.

I was in Gallop, Arizona staying nearby with my friend Rich. Rich was a bit of a superstar in the world of Contemporary Christian Music. Rather than live in Nashville with all the other wealthy pop stars, Rich had decided to move to Windowrock, a Navaho reservation. He wanted to teach music to Navaho school kids.

My mates and I had had an amazing day. We drove up to Monument Valley where all the old Western movies were filmed and we made it back for a gig that Rich was doing at the end of the Navaho High School Annual Concert.

As we entered the hall we noticed Rich sitting on the left hand side and we slipped in bedside him. As we did the Navaho Boys choir got up and started to sing Rich’s biggest hit “Our God is an Awesome God”. Now I have heard some ropey church choirs but these guys were awful. I mean truly awful. I could see why Rich wanted to teach them some music.

As they were singing I leaned in and shared with Rich how terrible they were. “Not good,” he sad, shaking his head, and then added, “And later I am going to be singing with them.” 

NO! I almost shouted. You can’t do that. You have CDs out the back and you do not want to sound that bad. Bang will go your CD sales.

Thirty minutes later Rich was up there, singing with that choir. He had an amazing voice but he didn’t make that choir sound one bit better. It was grim.

BUT… for Rich it was more important that the boys in the choir got to sing with someone they so looked up to than that he sounded good and looked like a star. 

For me, that is self sacrifice right there on a stage. This was Jesus ideas of humble service and seeing others as more important than we see ourselves. Values that are not at all rare in our society but rarely as stand out and inspirational as the pop star singing with the out of tune choir.

JESUS EMPOWERS MARY... INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

(this is the script of my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on March 8th, 2024... International Women's Day, the theme was Empowering Women.) 

 

In the early 80s I was a student at Queen’s University in Belfast and like most Queens’ students I went home every weekend, to get a decent meal and my clothes washed. Northern Irish mummies have a lot to answer for. 

Speaking of which - this is what would have been my mummies birthday. On International Women’s day. She’d have liked that.

Anyway, back to student days and every Friday when I took the train from Belfast to Ballymena we went right past what would become a Holywood icon.

The Delorean car that was the star of the Back To The Future films was made in a factory at Dunmurray, on the outskirts of Belfast. A time travel machine right there every week.

I often think of what date I would put in a Delorean to go back in time to. There’s one I think about every Easter Sunday.

The Easter story can be as dramatic as Doc Brown trying to get Marty McFly back to 1985

On Friday Jesus the main man is dead and on Sunday morning one of his close friends called Mary comes with some other women to his tomb. The tomb is empty. Has someone stole the body. Mary then speaks to someone that in the morning light she thinks is a gardener. 

When the gardener speaks Mary realises that it is Jesus, risen from the dead. Friday he was dead and here he is chatting to her. To be truthful I don’t want to just be there, I want to actually be Mary as she experiences that moment. Wow. Can you imagine!

Mary is then empowered by Jesus to tell the world of the news of his resurrection also to tell Jesus other followers to go to Galilee and wait for him. Mary becomes the empowerer of Jesus disciples who will become the Church. 

On International Women’s Day can I ask why there seem to be more women around the stories of Jesus birth, death and resurrection than there are in our pulpits.. 

When I get back into my Delorean and bring it back from that first Easter and park it outside my church on Easter Sunday I make sure that it is always a woman who declares “Jesus is Risen”. It is a powerful once a year reminder that women empower us all… all the time. 

FEEL THE LOVE

(This is my script for Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2, Owain Wyn Evans' show, on February 15, 2024. The theme for the week was Feel The Love)

 

Many a card was sent. Many a flower was shipped. Many a meal was booked in the romantic little corners of restaurants. Many a champagne bottle popped. And all for extortionate prices. 

But you know, I wouldn’t fall for all the sentimental gush easily. I will bet you after all of the commercial Valentine shenanigans those who received the stuff might still not have felt the love.

Springsteen tipped me off on this. He sang, “I don't understand how you can hold me so tight and love me so darn loose…” Dylan kept the question alive, though you might have heard it via Adele - 

 

“When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case

I could offer you a warm embrace

To make you feel my love

 

I used to work and actually live with 88 University students. We got to hear about romances, break ups, changes of courses, favourite bands, new jobs, spiritual conundrums. We were involved in all of those young lives.

A student came to me once and told me that he didn’t feel that God loved him. Now I knew the student. I knew his family. They would have told him that God loved him. I knew the Church he went to. They would have told him God loved him. I knew that he actually taught Sunday School and told people that God loved them. So why did he not feel God loved him?

He said that Church talked about God’s love but he always felt judged by what he wore, where he went, who his friends were.

I realised that love is not about words or gestures or romantic things or Bible verses. We want and need to feel love. To be loved. As we are. As a husband, as a father, as a friend, I need to not love with gifts or words loosely. I need to love in committed and compassionate ways where all those around me FEEL my love. Love needs to be experienced. May we all feel it and indeed give it today.

 

 

 

"I SEE MYSELF..." SAID BABY CAITLIN, LOOKING RIGHT AT ME

This is the script of my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 with Owain Wyn Evans on February 8, 2024. The theme was What Kids Can Teach Us)

 

It was a Saturday morning. Many of you will resonate with me when I say that we were a couple of knackered parents seeking every minute of shut eye we could squeeze out of the weekend. 

We only had one daughter at the time. Caitlin, our eldest, was lying between us. Then as we dozed off and on I could hear her chattering. I came to and she was staring directly into my face saying “I see myself, I see myself…” 

It took me a moment but then I worked it out. I was wearing my glasses and she could see her reflection in the glass… “ I see myself…” Ah. Very good Caitlin. Very good. Out of the mouths of babes…

After Janice and I laughed at the naïve profundity of it, I started to ponder. Truth is I have been pondering the phrase ever since. What did she see? What of me has Caitlin inherited? What will she have to overcome or live with, bless her. Quite scary.

An example. Our nose runs in our family. My Granny, my dad, me, now Caitlin all hooked to a hanky and nasal inhalers. Caitlin sadly sees herself in that one. 

Caitlin’s phrase “I see myself” actually sent me off on a deep critique of my parents DNA. An old history teacher always said that the great people in history were the ones who knew their weaknesses. As someone who attempts every day to live the life and all its fulness that Jesus offered, I am always keen to seek out my weaknesses. So what did I pick up from my mum and dad.

It’s always easy to see all the bad habits we get from our parents. So often I hear Janice repeat the words I remember my mother say in my childhood. You are in the wrong lane. The last thing I say before leaving the house is exactly the same as my mum said, “Where are my keys”. 

I am sure there are good things I have inherited as well and I am praying hard that both my daughters get more good than bad.  “I see myself…”

PRAYERS FOR STORMONT ROUND TABLE TALKS

(as NI politicians gather for Round Table Talks to restore our government, I pray...)

 

Lord God,

As our politicians gather for round table talks

We ask that you plant inside of them

 

Grace

Compassion

Listening

Sensitivity

Courage

Self critique

Forgiveness

Discernment

Hope

And devoted commitment

To the best interests of ALL our people.

 

Lord we have had enough of the same old, same old

Do something new among us.

In the name of the baby Jesus, in the manger,

Amen

LIGHT IN THE DARK

(My Pause For Thought script on the Owain Wyn Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 on December 6th... the theme was Light In The Dark...)

 

Back in the summer on a bright night we went to see The Killers playing a concert about half a mile from our house. We thought it would sound better at the concert than in our garden.

During the gig Killers frontman Brandon Flowers quoted Helen Keller: - “The world is full of suffering but the world is also filled with the over coming of suffering”. Wow, I thought. That is great. And I typed it into my smartphone…

In a speech recently Pope Francis spoke into such a world. He said,

“Remember that being happy is not having a sky without storms, a road without accidents, a job without effort, relationships without disappointments.”

He carried on,  “Use your mistakes with the serenity of the sculptor. Use pain to tune into pleasure. Use obstacles to open the windows of intelligence. Never give up on happiness, because life is an amazing show.

“Life is an amazing show”. I liked that.

Jesus was described as the light of the world and that the darkness has not over come it. 

Imagine I waken up in a strange bedroom in the middle of a winter’s night. Nature has called. Where am I? Where is the bathroom? Where did I leave that suitcase. 

If I reach out to switch on the light to help me find my way and the light doesn’t go on I don’t start screaming at the dark for being there. I expect the dark to be dark. 

No I shout at the light, a bulb or a fuse or the electricity board. It’s the light’s fault that I am in the dark.

My only hope in a world that often seems pitch black is that the light will shine. Therefore I am going to try my best to be a particle of light. Impacting the dark. Overcoming the suffering. 

No, I am not gonna howl at the moon about the dark. I am going to blame myself for not shining. I am going to ask more of myself so that I might see life as an amazing show as Pope Francis describes it about. It is there beneath the dark.