SOUL SURMISE

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 BLACK OUT OF BREXIT - A U2 SONG TO HELP ME SURMISE

The Blackout as the opening song on U2’s SOE Tour was not accidental. This was an album and tour birthed in a world falling apart. The Songs of Experience album was delayed by a near death experience of Bono’s and the election of Donald Trump in America along with the Brexit vote in the UK.

Surely The Blackout was one of the songs written and most affected by those events. It is a menacing doom laden sound. Heavy in every kid of way. It was a perfect song to prologue an evening in a local government-less Belfast that would interrogate Trump and Syria and throw European Union flags all over the backdrop.

Two years after The Black Out’s release and a year after that gig in Belfast, a live version from Belfast has just been released to U2.com subscribers. As I listen afresh I find it expressing perfectly the suspect fragility of twenty first century democracy:

 

Statues fall, democracy is flat on its back, Jack

We had it all, and what we had is not coming back, Zach

A big mouth says the people, they don't wanna be free for free

The blackout, is this an extinction event we see

 

There might be an over drama in words like extinction. It’s a little western decadent to feel the world is ending when a vote doesn’t our way or we get a bad leader or when economics deals seem shaken. A viewing of some recent videos of Syria at U2 concerts would suggest that other human beings are in real end-of-the-world scenarios and we have a nerve to be alarmed at our situation - decadent apocalypse!

Yet, there is no denying that we in Northern Ireland are in unknown territory. Democracy has got questions to answer. The future is precarious, for some people in my community that is a worse prospect than it is for me. 

As always with U2 there is more than gloom in the song. The chorus might be a good statement of intent for how we might respond to whatever happens with Brexit.

 

When the lights go out and you throw yourself about

In the darkness where we learn to see

When the lights go out, don't you ever doubt

The light that we can really be

 

Songs Of Experience have to live with the harsh realities that maturity brings. Yet, U2 are pointing to a strength of experience where we don’t succumb to the darkness in The Blackout but learn in the vortex. When the lights of our democratic leadership go out, we need to find other lights, within ourselves to deal with The Blackout.

I have no idea how much the Bible inspired Bono in these lyrics. It certainly influences most of what he does. The Bible calls God’s people to find “the light that we can really be”. The Bible is written by and for people in worse scenarios than Brexit. Slaves in Egypt, exiles in Babylon, a new faith community under oppression from the Roman Empire. 

The people of God have always learned how to respond and have been called to shine a light. Across the hundreds of years of Biblical history one lesson is that Empires rise and fall and that all political alliances are fragile and time limited. What we do when the lights go out, as we are guaranteed they will in a broken world, is the test of belief. 

Love and faith when the lights go out is the call of following Jesus.

I HAVE STOPPED KILLING SPIDERS...

(my Pause For Thought on the Vanessa Show on BBC Radio 2... the theme was The Wonders Of Nature...)

I have stopped killing spiders. Even if they are one step away. Why? Well, I was given a new perspective on all insects. I have a friend called Neville who loves creepy crawlies. And knows all about them. If you are with him and see a spider he will pick it up and no matter how small will tell you the kind of spider and the gender.

So, this summer in Africa he was in his element. He gave a couple of hours palliative care to a dying Citrus Swallowtail Butterfly and spent a lunch in Murchison Falls Safari Park with a Praying Mantis on his head! It was like having the Richard Attenborough of creepy crawlies on tour with you. I learned a lot! 

What Neville’s relationship with bugs does is that it changes mine. I lost my irrational fear and became utterly fascinated. Insects became a wonder of nature and I began to understand their place in the cosmos that, as a believer, I believe God designed. 

I thought of all of this while I watched in horror as English footballers were exposed to shocking racist abuse in Bulgaria. A commentator suggested that the Bulgarian fans needed educating. I then thought of Neville’s work with me.

Hatred is compromised by friendship. It is difficult to racially assault people you know. My prejudices in the sectarian atmosphere of Northern Ireland disappeared when I got closer to those on the other side of that divide. It took away my irrational fears and ignorance.

If insects are fascinating, then humans are even more so. As a Christian I believe that God made all the wonders of nature but he left a special imprint on human beings. We are made in his image the Bible suggests. 

If I take that idea into my day then I see all of my fellow human beings with a whole new perspective. In spite of prejudices that I work to eradicate I will not step on other people’s differences but will marvel at them, cherish them and pray that they will find the fulness of their humanity in the image of God.

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.

WHEN MYSTERY SHIMMIES

I am aware inside and outside of Fitzroy of a lot of people who are struggling with loved ones in ill health. I send this out not as an easy fix but as a blues poem of catharsis...

 

When a loved one’s tossed in turbulence

You watch them smashed whichever way

And God never seems to bring the calm

No matter how hard you pray

May unseen threads of mercy

Weave in, the unravelling doubt

May God grab you by the finger

Before life’s hurting drags you out

 

Knowledge loves the questions

Cos it has a seamless answer

But mystery shimmies all around

She’s an awkward little dancer

And when she dances out of sight

Leaving the soul that lonely ache

May God send a holy comforter

Before you crack up in the heart break

 

Lord, we flew on wings like eagles

Then landed with reality’s thud

We ran but soon were walking

Now crawl through this tear soaked mud

We mature in a world that’s broken

Confessing what our part is

We sing these songs to temper grief

And hope in their catharsis.

THE ORPHAN BRIGADE LIVE IN THE BLACK BOX, BELFAST

photo: Gerry McNally

 

Watching The Orphan Brigade live was the strangest experience for me. When they played the title track of their new record, To The Edge Of The World, I was immediately looking out from Kinbane Castle towards Fairhead. I could feel the breeze, and see the wind blowing off the surface of the Seas of Moyle. 

This is where the song was written and so I went there in August to listen. The sounds and visions are now indelibly blended, even if I am listening in the windowless room of Belfast’s Black Box.

The between songs chatter tonight was a fascinating drive up the Antrim Coast. Ben Glover talked about scaring the life out of band mates Neilson Hubbard and Joshua Britt in a dark midnight writing session in Glenarm Forest - “it was the trees!”. Hubbard spoke of being out in Glenarm Bay in a boat. A thorn tree half way up the mountain was far enough to draw on St. Patrick On Slemish Mountain. As Glover introduces Mad Man’s Window, I was imagining looking through the rock formation. I could see the sea, still in this windowless room! 

Indeed, I couldn’t help but think that if these guys were Bruce Springsteen, there would be films projected behind them of all of the East Antrim locations featured in tonight’s show. Oh for the bigger recording budgets of the good old days!

I couldn’t also help but think that if this was the early 70s these guys would be a super group. Something like Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. If songwriting was held in the same esteem as back then, then Glover, Hubbard and Britt would be stars for sure. Another advantage of this gig was picking up the solo CDs. All three of The Orphan Brigade’s solo records are carefully honed collections of the highest quality of song-smithery.

Together on stage it is the harmonies that light up the room. This is Crosby, Still and Nash stuff. Voices perfectly blending and bringing lament, wonder and mystery to songs of myth and history. Lots of people die in an Orphan Brigade record but it doesn’t make it miserable. 

Far from it. There is a vibrancy to this collaboration. Tonight we benefit from having Colm McClean and Conor McCreanor in behind the Orphans. McClean’s slide guitar deserves special mention.

Occasionally Hubbard moves to the drums and sprinkles some percussive magic into a few songs particularly Marching On Christmas Day off their debut Soundtrack To A Ghost Story. 

Centre to the whole musical thing is Joshua Britt’s mandolin. I never thought I’d want to be a mandolin hero. Like this trio’s Stephen Stills, Britt plays with a flourish, adding drive, sparkle and a little intensity to the muse.

The live setting suits The Orphan Brigade. Whether in a haunted house in Kentucky or caves in Italy or, as in most of tonight’s set, in East Antrim, these create in organic ways. So for me To The Edge Of The World sounded even more alive, live. The voices more powerful. Everything more imperfectly perfect.

Oh yeh, I would have taken some additional Uilleann pipes from Barry Kerr and the song Black Nun but hey! Most poignant and beautiful of all tonight was To The Edge Of The World’s near benediction Mind The Road; Glover's first dabbling at singing about the Irish Troubles:

 

“Slow river cuts through the land

The dead are talking to the dark

Tribal, twisted, stained

The lingering shadow of a gunman

 

Mind the road you go

Mind the road you came”

DAVID PARK - AMSTERDAM

Amsterdam is my kind of novel. It begins at George Best's funeral and before long one of the main characters is trying to get his son to join him at a Bob Dylan concert in Amsterdam. These are my kind of events. Park is a Northern Irish writer and his Baptist upbringing brings a spiritual dimension to his observations of people and relationships.

In Amsterdam Park follows the paths of three people with differing relational fractures; one has made a sexual slip, messed up his marriage and needs some parental time with a withdrawn teenage son; another is a one parent mother whose involvement in her daughter's stag weekend leads to a major rift; one feels her marriage is in such a state that she comes up with a bizarre scenario for her husband during their weekend break.

The time that all three of these characters spend in Amsterdam becomes like a spiritual wrestling where they all find themselves whether they are trying to her not. There is a lovely scene where two of them meet and go into an old church. There is a holy beauty in this place that in some ways is where Parks is dreaming for all his "flock." Don't get me wrong, there is no Christian theology or preaching in the book at all but Park sees something in the world that needs a transcendence.

Park is a wonderful writer. His development of characters is deep and always intriguing and insightful, almost in a pastoral way. There are moments when you feel that he writes like a painter, sitting in the middle of places and instead of sketching or using oils, writing what he sees in meticulous details.

Amsterdam comes alive with this detail and his record of George Best's funeral and his review of a Bob Dylan gig are great. He is without doubt another addition to the long line of great writers from our wee country. As Bono said, a "We don't design bridges or send people to the moon, we write." David Park is more proof of that and Amsterdam is yet another example.

LISTEN TO STOCKMAN SERMON PODCASTS

I have been encouraged in this last few weeks to find out that people are listening to my Sermon podcasts. My current preaching series on BEING WITH seems to have resonated. I started the series back on September 8th. The BEING WITH series is as follows:

Sept 8th 2019 - RIPPING EMMANUEL OUT OF CHRISTMAS

Sept 15th - ALL BECAUSE OF YOU, I AM - BEING WITH EACH OTHER

Sept 29th - JUST TURN UP - BEING WITH ONIALEKU (MISSION)

Oct 6th - BEING WITH THE OTHER

Oct 13th - BEING WITH JESUS

Apologies that BEING WITH THE CITY was not recorded. 

You can listen to these as iTunes Podcasts. You can subscribe and have the weekly Podcasts downloaded automatically. Go to the Podcast section of the iTunes Store and the search In the iTunes store, go to the Podcast section and then search for 'Fitzroy Presbyterian Church'.

Alternatively, you can listen on the Fitzroy website - LISTEN HERE

 

 

 

 

 

If you missed the sermons(s) or media and want to listen to them again click on the file you want below (or you can subscribe for free to our sermon podcast in iTunes and have the sermons downloaded automatically.  In the iTunes store, go to the Podcast section and then search for 'Fitzroy Presbyterian Church')

BEING WITH JESUS - THE SNOW PATROL COMMUNION

In Fitzroy, just now, we are in a series called BEING WITH. We are seeing the greatest problem at the heart of our humanity as being isolation. The following was posted on social media by Fitzer, John Trinder. It seems that Winnie The Pooh was into our BEING WITH SERIES

 

"Today was a Difficult Day," said Pooh.

There was a pause.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Piglet.

"No," said Pooh after a bit. "No, I don't think I do."

"That's okay," said Piglet, and he came and sat beside his friend.

"What are you doing?" asked Pooh.

"Nothing, really," said Piglet. "Only, I know what Difficult Days are like. I quite often don't feel like talking about it on my Difficult Days either.

"But goodness," continued Piglet, "Difficult Days are so much easier when you know you've got someone there for you. And I'll always be here for you, Pooh."

And as Pooh sat there, working through in his head his Difficult Day, while the solid, reliable Piglet sat next to him quietly, swinging his little legs...he thought that his best friend had never been more right."

 

As well as Pooh, Snow Patrol seem in on BEING WITH too. In this morning’s communion we are going to listen to their song What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get. Gary Lightbody was not thinking Jesus when he wrote these words but listen to them as if Jesus was speaking from the Lord’s Table.  

 

“What if it hurts like hell

Then it'll hurt like hell

Come on over, come on over here

I'm in the ruins too

I know the wreckage so well

Come on over, come on over here”

 

Gary Lightbody says of this song:

 

"That song is less about love as it is about friendship. A lot of my friends in L.A. and back home in Northern Ireland were actually going through break-ups and divorces around the time that I wrote the song. And I wanted to let them know that I’d been there, you know? And to just come over and sit together. Don’t have to talk, don’t have to say anything. Just know that I’ve been there too. I’ve been in the ruins too. You don’t have to talk immediately. You do have to talk […] but you can both sit together and just know that you’re there for each other."

 

BEING WITH…

And then Jesus

In Matthew 26 (26-28) we read:

 

“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

 

One of my favourite writers James K A Smith writes in his book Embracing The Kingdom:

 

“The tangible display and performance of the gospel in the Lord's Supper is a deeply affective practice. Its sights and smells, its rhythms and movements, are the sort of thing that seep into our imaginations and become second nature.

Marshalling the mundane and universal human practice of eating, and thus also taking up the common connection between food and fellowship, the table of the Lord is a catalyst for reconciliation...In a broken, fragmented world, the church is called to be the first fruits of a new creation by embodying a reconciled community; and the way we begin to learn that is at the communion table.”

 

The Lord’s Table is not an add on to the worship service. It is not just a liturgical ritual. This is a table where Jesus, in radical grace, invites us to sit down with him. To BE WITH him. To find him in bread and wine. 

BEING WITH people people transmits their values and traits to you. BEING WITH a spouse for 25 years will change who you are. You will pick up many things, good and sadly bad! 

BEING WITH Jesus is the only way to find his radical life and different rhythms becoming a part of you. 

Sitting at his table and you can soak in the welcoming nature of Jesus, his Emmanuel - God with us -companionship and his forgiving spirit. Be alert also to the humility of his cross, his sacrificial character and that servant heart for the isolated, the alienated, the lost. Look closer and see vibrant imagination, a fresh vision of how it can be and the passion for reconciliation. BEING WITH JESUS, soaking up his presence, should transform us. 

We can know about Jesus. We can hear sermons, or go to lectures, listen to pod casts or read books. Knowledge about someone is not the same as BEING WITH and knowing in that sense. We need to saturate ourselves in the presence of Jesus. Worship helps but best of all is this little piece of bread and sip of wine. Here in this intimate space we can sit in the wreckage and ruins of a broken world and find companionship in Jesus. Now… “what if this is all the love you ever get?”

U2 OCTOBER - HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE

Thirty eight years ago this week I turned 20. I had just started University a few weeks before. With birthday present Record Tokens (my very favourite present still!!!!) I made one of the most meaningful LP purchases of my entire life; U2’s October album.

There was quite a buzz about U2 in Ireland at that time. They had played my new Queen’s University’s McMordie Hall (now known as the Mandela Hall) at the start of that year and I had caught a little of the footage when shown on BBC TV, though I was far more interested in Stiff Little Fingers who were shown in the same series. There were also rumours that they were Christians which seemed pretty cool to me, a recent convert myself!

I can remember deciding to buy October in Boots on Royal Avenue. I brought it back to my room in Union Theological College, a room I would live in for six years and I actually do remember setting the needle down on side one. The sound of Gloria filled that wee room and, it has to be said, my heart, my mind and my soul. I guess my life would never be the same again.

These songs cut right into my spiritual journey, into my vocation as a communicator of Christianity, in a plethora of settings. I was plunged into a deep well of quotes, images and ideas and twenty years later I would get the privilege of writing one of the best selling and received books about the band; Walk On; The Spiritual Journey Of U2.

It all started with October. Gloria, Tomorrow, With A Shout (Jerusalem) all grabbed the attention of my soul. I arrived at Queen’s University to study theology having had my life turned around by a God encounter a couple of years before. I was twenty years old and this music opened up ways that I could communicate that faith, initially in the privacy of my college room. 

October vibrated with a faith that was committed and yet vulnerable, honest in frailties but confident in hope. Words like Rejoice and Jerusalem, ideas of worship and theology were not common in mainstream rock music. U2 were not in some Christian ghetto but as Steve Turner would say at Greenbelt some years later were involving themselves in the conversation of the rock world. Turner would go on to say that they didn’t only get involved in such a conversation but began to change the very vocabulary of the conversation; Simple Minds song Sanctify Yourself just one example of such.

In many ways, for me, this juxtaposition is where I have lived ever since and of course U2 have travelled down three decades of spiritual growth along with me. Perhaps everything of my faith is still articulated in U2 records, live shows and interviews. Perhaps Walk On is my own spiritual memoir through U2 songs!

As Bono wrote the almost half baked lyrics of October he was struggling with his faith and vocation and thus aware of his own fallibility. It is a humble way to carry the conviction of faith also present. Conviction of Creed can very easily cause an arrogance of faith that becomes Pharisaic and no friend of Jesus. Here in the full flush of belief U2 are caught in a vortex of struggle which keeps them grounded. These songs fly naively and land with a thud sometimes in the very same songs.

This is also the album most infused with the Shalom Fellowship that Bono, Larry and Edge were very involved with in their early days. There were many such fellowships in Ireland, north and south, at that time. Most of these kinds of groups are forged in a youthful idealism. Such groups broke away from traditional Churches and attempted to return to the spirit of the fledgling house churches of the New Testament.

It is no coincidence that such a phenomenon appears just a few years after the hippy sixties. The freedom of that decade caressing with the charismatic movement birthed an exuberant, communal and organic form of Christian fellowship that in most of its incarnations burned pure and bright for a short period before either falling apart as Shalom did or became a little more mainstream as many others did.

When I spoke to school friend of U2 and fellow Shalom member William MacKay, as I researched Walk On, he spoke of the spontaneity of the October recording sessions. William spoke of how the studio was filled with other members of Shalom and how the sessions would break into worship.

When Neil McCormick, another school friend, but not Shalom member, wrote the CD booklet notes for the Remastered October release in 2008, he mentioned how the rehearsals for the songs were done in their old school Mount Temple and I wonder if this is what William has memories of. Whatever, October is a document of that phase of Christian history. Nowhere else in mainstream music is there a record that best records the Charismatic House Church movement.

In the big picture of U2’s career October is the least important album. It sits between one of the best debut albums ever made, Boy, and the album that would begin U2’s conquering of the world, War.

It was an album strewn with difficulties; it was rushed, the aforementioned spiritual turmoil and the fact that Bono lost the lyrics. The songs come across almost half finished though Van Morrison’s spiritual streams of consciousness lyrics of the same era throws them some forgiveness. Whatever, it is not U2’s greatest artistic moment but in its uniqueness, exuberance and Christian context it is an essential place in U2’s story and very important in the story of many of the rest of us; me in particular!