SOUL SURMISE

MOTHERHOOD AT ITS BEST

(this was my Pause For Thought on Owain Wyn Evans, BBC Radio 2, on March 26th 2025... The theme for the week was Mothering Sunday)

 

It was our Church weekend away this past weekend and as with such gatherings, you get more time in conversation with some people that you might only catch once a week on Sunday.

Somehow one conversation got around to the fact that one evening in my wife’s family home, before we started going out together, there were 3 of my ex girlfriends and future wife in the house! 

Now, if this has set about some imaginings going in radio land that I must be some tall dark handsome hunk never mind a little over flirtatious, well at least the first bit of that could not be further from the truth. With looks like mine, the radio is a perfect platform!

Anyway, the reason for such a meeting of late teenagers and early twenties was the way that my future mother-in-law Anne had created an open house for us all.

The 60’s band The Byrds made a bit of the book of Ecclesiastes popular… “There is a season turn turn turn… A season for every purpose under heaven,” they sang.  

The Bible also speaks about gifts that God gives to human beings. One of them, far too often underrated is hospitality. Hospitality. Welcoming people in. Giving people time. Listening, I have heard it said, is as close to being loved as you can get. 

Janice’s mum made hospitality to young people her purpose for a season, when Janice was in her teens until going off to University. Janice’s friends were always in an out of her house. 

Indeed when I knew I was going to Janice’s for a 9 o’clock supper I didn’t eat anything after lunch. It was always an amazing spread. Sandwiches, Voulevants, Sausage Rolls, Cheesecake, Pavlova. A hospitality that I never experienced before or since. 

Anne’s funeral was full of people of our age. As they shared their condolences, with Janice and I, there were so many who told us that Janice’s mother and those open house evenings and Sunday afternoons shaped their lives. Some were ministers like me, some had committed their lives to work overseas, others were living lives honed by a welcoming lounge in Holywood, County Down. 

I doubt if Anne had planned all of this. I am not sure that she had any idea how profound her hospitality was. BUT as I look back, it was motherhood at its very best.

 

WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY?

(my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on March 19, 2025... the theme was What Makes You Happy?)

 

What makes me happy. Well a few days away with my wife Janice. Even better with my daughters too. Very happy. 

Music makes me happy.

And sport makes me happy. I am not a Newcastle United fan but I was so happy on Sunday when they won the League Cup, 70 years after their last domestic trophy. 

While on sport, let me go back to the 1924 Olympics where I know that, had I been alive, Eric Liddell winning his gold medal would have had me in tears. He was a 100m runner but because he didn’t want to run on a Sunday he was shifted and won against the odds in the 400m.

There’s a moment in the film about his life, Chariots Of Fire, where his sister suggests he shouldn’t be wasting his time running and should go back to China, where he was born, and be a missionary like his parents. He explains to her that when he runs he feels the delight of God.

This reminds me of a quotation from the writer Frederick Buchner, “Vocation is when our deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest need.”

I believe when humans do to the full what God has created us to do, both God and us are at our very happiest.

Now I remember in Primary School when the teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, I didn’t put my hand up and say “I want to be good at performing weddings and funerals”.  BUT it turns out that that is indeed what I seem to be best at. 

Making those important romantic and grieving moments of life personal, trying to reach into people’s hearts and souls in prayers and reflections. 

When people thank me for such moments and what it meant to them I feel God’s delight. It is strange to say that funerals make me happy. I think of some young people I have buried in deepest tragedy and trauma. Vocationally content is perhaps a better description. 

Weddings are easier to be happy with. Once I even used a quotation from a song in my sermon that I thought the bride and groom my resonate with. When they laughed and said that that song was their first wedding dance I might as well have scored in a Wembley Cup Final. I live for such vocational moments. I was so happy. 

WALKING IN SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOES

(My Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 with Jason Mohammed on March 12, 2025... The theme was Walking In Someone Else's Shoes...) 

 

Walking in someone else’s shoes Jason, I’d love to have walked in Kevin De Bruyne’s football boots.

But let me tell you about the boys who played their football with no boots or shoes at all.

I spent an afternoon with Levixone and Trinity on the Kosovo township in Kampala.

The boys showed me where they grew up. They pointed out the pool table that they slept under as ten year olds. The locals feared them as little drug urchins.

Then one day a football match at the local primary school just across the road from the pool table. The Kosovo school kids were playing a visiting group. The head master knew that Levixone could play so he brought him into the team. The head master told me that he had no clothes, just a towel over his middle and certainly no shoes or boots.

He was good though. Someone spotted him and asked what class he was in. He didn’t go to school so this person said he would find the funds. Both Levixone and his friend Trinity started school.

Today, Levixone is the almost perpetual annual winner of the East African Gospel Singer of the Year, holding crowds of 20,000 in the palm of his hand.

The first time that they put Trinity on a computer they realised he was a genius. He now has a large business creating websites for big companies across the entire world. A couple years ago, Forbes magazine recognised him as one of the top young entrepreneur in the world.

Both could have moved out to the Kampala suburbs but both still live in Kosova, though not under a pool table. Their following of Jesus has told them to give back to the kids without shoes that they once were. Trinity employs hundreds of people in the township.

Trinity said at an event I heard him speak at, “Brilliance is equally distributed. Opportunity is not.” 

When we imagine walking in other people’s shoes we often think we know who they are, what we will find and learn. After I had spent time with these two young men who once were barefoot but were more able than those who wear the most expensive shoes, I learned to get rid of my caricatures, stereotypes and prejudices… and to help create opportunities.

MY DESERT ISLAND BOOK

(My Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 with Jason Mohammed on March 4th 2025... the theme for the week was My Desert Island Book)

 

A book for a Desert Island? The Bible obviously but too easy for a Pause for Thought. I need to think. What will I need? Is it scenic, miles of golden sand with trees dropping coconuts and bananas and exotic fruits. You see it might not be.

Anyway, there’s a scene among many great scenes in my favourite movie Shawshank Redemption. Our hero Andy has been down in the hole in solitary confinement. He arrives back in the canteen and says its the easiest time he’s ever had because of Mozart. He explains that the music is in his head and his heart. They can’t take that from you. It got him through solitary.

Mozart leads Andy to hope. When his friend Red is adamant that hope is a dangerous thing, Andy says, “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.

But I’m not taking Stephen King’s book of that movie to my island. No. I’m having Bono’s memoir, Surrender; 40 Songs, One Life”

You see on a Desert Island looking out at the yonder blue horizon, awaiting a ship to go by, just like Andy in solitary I’ll need music in my head and heart to lead me to hope!

Across their 45 year old catalogue U2 sing endlessly about hope, resilience and faith in a God who is bigger and stronger and can see us through solitary confinement, a world full of the most frightening news headlines and me here on my imaginary Desert Island. 

So, throw me Bono’s memoir. It’s a good read. Gripping. He covers family, music and Jesus in depth and honesty. That’ll help me on my Island but most of all it’ll remind me of the songs. 

Songs in my head and my heart. Songs that come with me wherever. Songs that lead to hope. And as Andy in Shawshank says, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

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.