SOUL SURMISE

NO ONE OUT OF REACH (as read in Hydebank College and Women's Prison)

I came across Jesus

Hanging on a cross

Carved in sand on a Spanish beach

His sparkling eyes

Cut through the dross

Like there was no one out of his reach.

COME, COME AWAY MY LOVE

I wrote this back around 1999. We had just bought a house in Ballycastle. I could not have imagined then how much these words would become truer and truer as the years went on. This last week we have lived this poem, word perfect. More of it, I say! 

It was included on an album I made with Sam Hill, called Grace Notes under the moniker Stevenson and Samuel. 

 

Come, come away my love

We'll find a cottage by the sea 

We'll hide from loving everyone

To seek to love you and me

Yes, let us head up north again

Slip off the beaten track

Find a place to rest our souls

And never look back.

 

And we'll gaze on the Mull of Kintyre

From the pillow of our mid morning bed

While the world is scanning TV stations

We'll walk the seas of Moyle instead

Stare in our daughters' mischievous eyes

And then lavish them with love

Watching them getting to know too much

And never getting to know enough

And we'll open other people's stories

Allow them to delve inside our souls

Reflect on the days of all that's gone

And re-focus on tomorrow's goals

Yes, we'll find a place for us to stop

To look, to listen and to learn

Allow our candle just a little flicker

Instead of that pressurised burn.

 

Come, come away my love

And let our love have its way

For love is full of satisfied

When it lies full of empty days.

I'M THINKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS (50 Words For Waiting) (for Mary and Lucia)

photo: Fiona McNeill

 

I’m thinking about Christmas

Too much for such a young girl

A big ask that God is asking

In this shuddering of our worlds

I’m thinking about Christmas

Eyes fixed on a brand new birth

I’m stumbling with the shepherds

To find that peace on earth.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit

Waiting

For Hope and peace and joy and love

We keep praying for it

 

I’m thinking about Christmas

That strange medical ward

The danger and vulnerability

Has me whisper “oh my Lord”

I’m thinking about Christmas

And the twinkle of a light cast

A courageous cry in the dawning

As the past at last is past.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit

Waiting

For Hope and peace and joy and love

We are praying for it

 

There should be 50 words for waiting

Waiting before and then until

Every time a waiting is over

There is another waiting hill

There should be 50 words for waiting

Wait, here’s another one

For the courage to wait along with

Until all the waiting is done.

 

Waiting

For hope and peace and joy and love

All the candles are lit.

 

Our dear friend Lucia is on an Air Ambulance tonight to Kings Hospital, London where a liver is  waiting for her. If all goes well she will have a transplant in the next number of hours. It will be Lucia's fourth. She is 20 years of age. She is an amazing young woman. Two years ago we celebrated with her as she received a British Empire Medal in the Queen's New Year Honour's List for her contribution to organ donation awareness. Lucia is an inspiration.

I have been preaching and blogging a lot about Mary this Advent and I began thinking of Lucia through Mary's experience. Lucia's father David always talks about the need for 50 words for waiting, just like it is said that the Inuit and Yupik people have 50 words for snow (and Kate Bush too!). Advent is about waiting. If you are the praying kind...

 

Photo: Jasmine Stockman

 

 

I REMEMBER LONDON

wrote this after the last attack on a London bridge... sadly it needs prayed again tonight...

 

I caught her face at Westminster Bridge

My heart lit up, my soul shone

I reached for her hand, our laugh burst

We built the rest of our blessed lives on

London, you’re where I fell in love

Now you’ve fallen and lie bleeding

In the devil’s miracle of our fallenness

May you find what we all our needing.

 

Today, I remember London

And I offer up a prayer

For grace's interruption

God’s comforting repair

Let’s stop all this hatred

For this hate I’ve had enough

London, be still and know 

The indiscriminate power of love.

TOXICITY FILLS THE AIR

God, toxicity fills the air of my city

Sectarian vitriol

On social media

Banners

Gable walls

Hatred is spewed

Dehumanising

Those who do not live with us

Think like us

Vote like us

And God when we smear your indelible image in others

We do not only hurt others

We break the heart of you

Creator who made us all, very good

And revealed the preciousness of all

By sacrificing your son for the world

God forgive.

 

And God,

Before we point fingers

In self righteous arrogance

Send your Spirit to search us

To see the toxic vitriol 

And ungodly divisions

Within your Church

Between Churches

Blasphemous schism

God forgive our intolerance

The impoverishment of our love

The absence of relationship building

That Jesus’ Gospel models

God forgive us.

 

God, start with me

Interrogate my soul

My skewed intentions

Towards those who are not like me

Investigate the Northern Irish DNA in my soul

Thran

Holier than thou infallibility

Devil’s speed to judge, exclude and damn

God, if words could kill

I would need a licence

For the bombastic belligerent sentences 

That I swear out

Cutting

Breaking

Injuring

God forgive.

 

God, be faithful and just to forgive

And then purify from all unrighteousness

Give empathy and compassion

Wisdom to deny self 

Courage to carry cross

To love our enemies, 

Do good to those who hate us,

Bless those who curse us

Pray for those who ill treat us

As Jesus asked

God, this is rebirth

This is repentance

This is the grace of God

That dilutes the toxic

In our society

In our Church

In our souls

God open our hearts

To bring it on. 

A RAINBOW OVER THE SKERRIES - REMEMBERING HEATHER BAXTER & A PRAYER FOR MARTIN AND THEIR GIRLS

Last night our friend Heather Baxter came into my mind. Heather has been ill for some time, battling cancer for even longer. For some reason I was acutely aware of her and deeply concerned. This morning I woke up and the first email to arrive was from Heather's husband Martin telling me that Heather had said her goodbyes and left us for the next life. 

The Stockies are heartbroken. Back in 2005 Martin and Heather were like our "dorm parents" when we did a sabbatical at Regent College, Vancouver. Oh they were so much younger but wiser to the Canadian ways and so caring of all of us. Caitlin and Jasmine were young and they loved the Baxters. Heather was a gem. Beautiful inside and out. She was a gentle light of Jesus. She helped give our family the best three months of our lives! We are ever grateful...

... and therefore, this morning, heartbroken. Heather is too young to have left Martin and her two young daughters. The fallen world can be horribly cruel. Even our wonderful hope of Heather "falling into the loving arms of our Lord and Saviour", as Martin described her passing, doesn't erase the sense of sadness for us and empty void for Martin and his girls.

I do my wrestling in rhyme. I had begun this poem a few weeks ago when I saw a rainbow over Harryville, where I grew up. I was reading Marie Monville's book One Light Still Shines at the time. It is about how faith saw her through, after her husband became the Amish School House Shooter in 2006. The title of her book and something one of her children said about God making the bad a little less bad gets a line too.

So, I finished it, or at least this draft of it, today fondly remembering Heather and thinking of Martin and the girls. This goes out as a tough prayer for you all. 

 

There’s a rainbow over The Skerries

Like a promise from long ago

Clouds of black and gray a-swirl

Like the sky just doesn’t know

The weather moves unpredictable

How dangerously the wind blows

There’s a rainbow over The Skerries

Like a promise from long ago

 

When the pillar of familiar

Gives way beneath your lean

You are paying the heart-robbed cost

Of everything that love means

Your heart’s been lacerated

By the exploding force of sad

Believe one light still shines

To make the bad a little less bad

 

There’s a rainbow over The Skerries

Like a whisper from on high

Comfort comfort my people

When you hear them cry

Bereft of the final goodnight kiss

The empty side of the bed sighs

There’s a rainbow over The Skerries

Like a whisper from on high.

SHE WHO REFLECTS THE LIGHT (Love Poem To The Arts)

(I am speaking about cultural engagement in Fitzroy in the morning. Here is a poem I wrote about the arts back in 1994 on a holiday with our good friends Sam and Isobel Hill in St. Ives)

 

She's got colour on her palette

To paint the beauty here

Trying to catch the moment

The riches of Porthmeor

Sun is gliding on the water

To intimately kiss the shore

This has to be the canvas

That fifth day Eden wore

 

She walks beside the water

To where their lives had met

She looks for inspiration

In the indigo sunset

She reaches for the memory

And takes it by the hand

No one else can see her

This ballerina in the sand

 

It's she who ask the questions

She who provokes the night

She who shapes another angle

She who reflects the light

It's she who draws the meaning

She makes the world shine bright

She laments the hurting heart

She who reflects the light. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WORLD HAS MORE THAN SEVEN WONDERS (2019 Re-Write)

(I started this poem in 1993 and rewrote it a song version on Grace Notes, our Stevenson and Samuel album in 2001. A sermon in Fitzroy by Jonny Hanson inspired a 2019 version, bringing Uganda into verse 3 and Job 26 into the "chorus".)

 

I gazed across the Himalayas

Looked into the eye of God

He winked at me in the dawning

With a reassuring nod

Mountains glistened in the sunlight

The art of the Creator

Scientists only glimpse his thoughts

And even then a whole lot later

 

The world has more than seven wonders

More than seven wonders

And all this is merely a whisper of God

Only gossip of the power that thunders.

 

I stood on the rim of the Canyon

My mouth hung open wide

I was in awe just peering in

Never mind what went on inside

I sense creation screaming

And I’m listening as best I can

But eternal glory is way beyond

The grasp of this mortal man

 

The world has more than seven wonders

More than seven wonders

And all this is merely a whisper of God

Only gossip of the power that thunders.

 

I’ve looked up the Nile at Murchison Falls

Reaping unfailing love

Felt the torrent of God’s good grace

Little splashes of heaven above

Caught the image of God’s best creation

In a wide eyed child like grin

Giving me hope to carry on

On an earth beautiful and broken

 

The world has more than seven wonders

More than seven wonders

And all this is merely a whisper of God

Only gossip of the power that thunders.

LAST CHANCE HOTEL - BEING WITH CREATION... IN CRISIS TIMES

The Extinction Rebellion is all over the news this week. Greta has become a young prophet trying to catch our attention on Climate Change.

On Sunday morning in Fitzroy we are excited to have Dr. Jonny Hanson speaking at our Harvest Service on BEING WITH CREATION. Jonny is Managing Director of Jubilee a Christian creation care organisation and well respected in the academic and practical world of environmental issues.

As I was planning ahead for the service I remembered this poem. I wrote it over 20 years ago and sadly it is more relevant now, than then.

 

All of our songs are sung

And none of us have been listening

The future sound is a tuneless world

Where all the melody has gone missing

You'd think that we'd hear something

To wake us from our comatose state

We all say we love our children

But treat them with a spiteful hate

We are so about the present

That we won't do tomorrow well

And our glass is nearly empty

On the bar of the last chance hotel.

 

All our prayers are prayed

Every answer has been spurned

We've sat 'neath the pulpits of science

But nothing is what we've learned

You'd think that we'd see something

To give a kick to our selfish asses

We're so blinded by our comforts

That it's pointless wearing glasses

We've peered through the gates of heaven

Then dragged ourselves back to hell

And our glass is nearly empty

On the bar of the last chance hotel.

 

 

 

 

THE GREAT PRIDE INSIDE OF ME (For Jasmine Grace on Her Birthday)

I saw you through the window

Your face lit up my heart

What Ernest did for the atom

You came and split me apart

Opened me up to miracles

To love what never before existed

A place at the core of my very soul

Glorious joy on every visit.

 

I saw you through your birth

Weeping at the glimpse of your face

God’s goodness gifted in tiny girl

It was so right to name you Grace

I remember you a tiny bundle

Snuggled in my upper arms

No way to tell me what you needed

But convincing me with all your charms.

 

I believe that you can change the world

I know you know you should

You have all potent anger needed

It is righteous and it is good.

 

I saw you on a playground

With children all around your feet

I saw the smile inside your soul

Where your gladness and Africa meet

I knew that I could let you go

When I saw who you were going to be

Whether I tell you enough or not

You are the great pride inside of me.

 

I believe that you can change the world

I know you know you should

You have all right anger needed

It is righteous and it is good.