SOUL SURMISE

DEEP NOVEMBER BLUE (Missing You)

I struggle through November. I resign every year. It's as dark as December without the hope of Christmas. Add to that - Coronavirus times. This began when my daughter Jasmine couldn't get home for a weekend due to a lockdown. It turned into a simple little pop song lyric. Big selling pop stars, knock yourselves out…

 

November blue, your longer nights

Even mild days feel much colder

Every year I want to resign

Like my body feels years older 

 

Yeh I’m missing you

Should be kissing you

But its deep dark November blue 

But I’m missing you

Should be kissing you

But it’s deep dark November blue

 

 

November blue, your cloudless dark

Stars like frostlets in the skies

I can see my breathing out again

And hear the echo of my sighs

 

Yeh I’m missing you

Should be kissing you

But its deep dark November blue 

But I’m missing you

Should be kissing you

But it’s deep dark November blue

 

I hear your voice

But you’re not here

I see your face

But you’re not near

In deep dark November blue

Sweetest girl I’m missing you

FRIDAY THE 13th...

Photo: Gordon Ashbridge: my installation in Fitzroy, Friday the 13th of November 2009

 

Today is Friday the 13th. Some are superstitious. When I started visiting in the Ballycraigy estate in Antrim during my assistantship in First Antrim I kept missing houses and then realised that the entire estate had no number 13s! 

The following poem was originally written on a Mission Team where we felt that God had blown away any superstitions! 

I then preached for Fitzroy on Sunday 13th of September 2009 and was installed on Friday 13th of November. I updated the poem. It was a Friday the 13th blessing...

 

Friday the 13th

Superstition lies dying

Overthrown and vanquished

Hear it, feebly crying

The unbelievable made believable

What can never be has been

Our spirits dance in wonder

At the phenomena we've seen

Exploring galaxies of grammar

In a quest to pierce through

To define the indefinable

The transcendence of you

In a shiveree of silence

On this earth's thinnest place

Friday the 13th's blessing

An interuption of grace.

WAR IS OVER (DID WE WIN)

 

It has been a bit of a tradition that my good friend Martyn Joseph always played Belfast in the first week in November. It was the juxtaposition of one of those gigs and Remembrance Sunday that led to me writing the lyrics to this.

If I remember it right Martyn mentioned a new world beginning. In Martyn's catalogue of songs that is not hard to imagine. He is a songwriter who kicks at the darkness until it bleeds daylight, to paraphrase another such singer, Bruce Cockburn. Martyn never shies away from the despair of our world but somehow hope and love and peace always win by the time he walks off stage. 

So, Martyn's words started to blend in my mind with Remembrance Day and our Sunday morning act of Remembrance in Fitzroy.

I am struck every Remembrance Sunday that I am remembering those in their late teens who sat in the same building and pews that we are today, then went off to war and never came back.

I always see the late teens who sit in those pews now, think of the pastor's love I have for them, and imagine if I had to pray them off to war, or hear the news they had died at the Somme or had to pray at some funeral service for them. I actually am doing just that for those Fitzroy teens who went to war back then.

So, all this in my head and heart and soul I wrote this and had the idea that one of our teens might make it a song and sing it on Sunday... to give voice to his Fitzroy equivalent in 1914... queue the talented Jonny Fitch. 

 

YOUR LAST RESORT (for Janice)

I remembered this poem this past week. 

I wrote it for Janice when we were just good friends! As I remember it, quite a while before we started going out. 

The back story is that Janice and I were good friends for years before we started looking at each other in a romantic way.

Now, I always thought she was beautiful... and good looking too... but it took a long time to see us as an us. 

This was written as a commitment to friendship, nothing more... I know... even I wonder if there was more going on in it than I knew at the time.

I share it now because I believe that we all need last resorts just now. Commitments to friendship. I am so glad that I got to be Janice's last resort, quite literally!

 

If everyone betrays you

They hurt you and deceive you

If every one is called away

And friends all seem to leave you

If there's no one there to talk to

And no one to escort 

If there's no one left to love you

I'll be your last resort.

 

PRAYER FOR AMERICA ON ELECTION DAY

I was captured by James K.A. Smith's idea that we are not so much what we believe as what we love. The heart not the mind is a key for all spiritual and social behaviour. Christians have put a great emphasis on the mind (not wrongly) but if the heart is the real driver and is captured by different things then the mind may be well thought through to no avail! 

When we all vote, and it is America's turn today then I fear that our beliefs give way to what our own selfish desires, comforts and securities. I pray that belief and love would line up today...

 

Like the lady in the harbour

Vote for her torch of light

For that brave New Colossus

All the huddled masses in flight

For all the tired and weary

In the darkest part of night

For all that Jesus called blessed

I pray that you do what's right.

 

Don’t vote for what you love

But for what you say you believe

Don’t vote for you yourself alone

But for every soul longing to breathe.

HEALING IN AUTUMN WONDER

photo: Janice Gordon-Stockman

 

The air is heavy in the atmosphere of Covid-19. 

One of the disciplines I have found helpful as I seek some resilience to help me make it through the challenge is to take time to take in the wonder of the world. A walk with Janice and Jed. Looking harder for goodness and blessing. 

Chestnuts. No great usefulness. Not even in the playground anymore. Yet, their beauty. The colour. The shine. You cannot leave them on the ground…

 

Sunny October Sunday

Underneath Manchester City skies

If Lucy walked among these trees

She’d sing of all the gold drip dyes

My mind falls through to old Grange Road

Scrunching home in crunching leaves

Churning up our childhood innocence 

In stories while a dear friend grieves

I take a breath of God fresh air

In an atmosphere fret and fateful

A little healing in autumn wonder

Gathering chestnuts of my grateful.

BE GENTLE MY HEART (NOTE TO SELF IN COVID TIMES)

Be gentle my heart

Be tender

It’s mental my heart

Remember

There has never been days

Like these

So, please

Be gentle my heart, be tender.

 

Be defiant my soul

Be open

Be reliant my soul

Ever hopin’

That everybody is heading

To a place

Of grace

So be defiant my soul, be open.

 

Don’t lie

Or deny

It’s tough

Fix your eye

And rely

On love. 

TETHER’S END

We are at Tether’s End

Question upon question

Distanced too far apart

Too much isolation

We are at Tether’s End

Months of dismal headlines

People dying every day

Friends risking on the frontlines

 

We are at Tether’s End

Dizzy and out of control

Hurled against our will

Weary and fractured souls

 

At Tether’s End

We need tolerance and grace

Tenderness and compassion

A comforting embrace

At Tether’s End

We need a radical humility

Others always above ourselves

The Spirit of like minded unity.

 

We are at Tether’s End

Where do we get tested

Rules changing all the time

After all that we invested

We are at Tether’s End

When can we visit grandma

Is the baby counted in the bubble

And what’s wrong with the cinema

 

We are at Tether’s End

Exhausted from the fall

Fractious and pontificating

Like we know it all

 

At Tether’s End

We need tolerance and grace

Tenderness and compassion

A comforting embrace

At Tether’s End

We need a radical humility

Others always above ourselves

The Spirit of like minded unity.

JACQUELINE (THAT SMILE)

 

Sometimes I close my eyes

Reach across red dusty miles

See you wave on the Congo Road

Brightening the day by your smile

That smile that lights my heart

That lifts my soul above

All the injustices between us

And your forgiving love.

 

I often let my mind drift

To find you in the playground

The school behind you shining

That vibrant break time sound

There you are in your pink mac

Against the equatorial rains 

You see me ‘neath the mango tree

Both of us are  smiling again

 

Jacqueline I have a dream

Oh my how you have grown

Not tied to that half acre

You’re making it on your own

The nation is transforming

By the blessing you are bringing

Fired by hope inside your heart

And what your voice is singing.

THE MYSTERY OF BADNESS AND THE MYSTERY OF GOODNESS

 

“And I know you bore our sorrows

And I know you feel our pain

And I know it would not hurt any less

Even if it could be explained"

             - Rich Mullins

 

Mysteries

Intrigue in the novel and film

But in reality

Their crashing in on our lives

Smashes our hearts to pieces

The shards blowing out across communities

Cutting deep.

 

Today you grieve in the mystery

The mystery of badness

The mystery of randomness

The mystery of why you

The mystery of never being explained

Yet having to learn to live in it.

 

I believe in another mystery

The mystery of goodness

The mystery of love

The mystery of comfort

Jesus called the Holy Spirit a comforter

So, I pray for you

That in the mystery of why

In the mystery of what

You will know the mystery of how

Comfort can

Against the odds

Reach into the depths of your broken heart

And mysteriously give you resilience

As you walk into the grief

Of the days and years to come.