SOUL SURMISE

THE LAUNCH AND READINGS FROM UNITY PILGRIM: THE LIFE OF FR GERRY REYNOLDS CSsR

 

BOOK LAUNCH 

of

UNITY PILGRIM - THE LIFE OF FR GERRY REYNOLDS CSsR

by GLADYS GANIEL

WEDNESDAY MAY 22nd, 2019 @ 7.15pm

CLONARD MONASTERY, BELFAST

rsvp ccarmichael@redcoms.org

 

FR GERRY REYNOLDS, KEN NEWELL & FITZROY

Readings by GLADYS GANIEL

from her book

UNITY PILGRIM - THE LIFE OF FR GERRY REYNOLDS CSsR

SUNDAY JUNE 2nd 2019 @ 7pm

FITZROY WELCOME AREA, 77 University Street

 

Fr Gerry Reynolds, whom we lost in 2016, impacted every one he met from hardened paramilitaries to pious Protestants. His ministry for Christ knew no bounds. He stepped across every human constructed boundary, every time he left Clonard Monastery to compassionately shares passion for Jesus. 

Gladys Ganiel, whose day job is in The Senator George J Mitchell Insitute For Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queens University Belfast is the perfect biographer. Gladys's academic field includes peacemaking, ecumenism and Catholicism in Ireland and she knew Fr Gerry and Clonard just as well.. I am excited to be plugging the book and these evenings.

 

STOCKI'S EASTER PLAYLIST 2019

 

Some songs to soundtrack and draw spiritual reflection from in the day around Easter...

 

Rick Elias - Man Of No Reputation

Bruce Springsteen - Rocky Ground

Patti Smith - Until The End Of The World

Sarah Masen - Let’s Kill Him

Duke Special - The Hours

Blind Boys Of Alabama - The Cross

The Choir - Beautiful Scandalous Night

Martyn Joseph - Sunday’s Coming

McIntosh Ross - Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon The Tree

Doug Gay - Saturday Train

U2 - Window In The Skies

Nick Cave - There Is A Kingdom

Ben Kyle - Mercy

IT IS FINISHED... THE NEW LIFE STARTS HERE... EASTER WEEKEND 2019 IN FITZROY

IT IS FINISHED

Good (Discomfortable) Friday

in Fitzroy

April 19th @ 7.30pm

Paul Bowman and Steve Stockman (that's me!) will lead us in some reflections on Holy Week in songs, poems and readings... leading us to the cross. There will be communal worship. some of Steve's poetry and Paul will perform Steve Hindalong's Beautiful Scandalous Night and Dustin Kensrue's It Is Finished. It will take place in the Fitzroy Welcome Area and we will gather around the cafe tables for an intimate communion.

 

THE NEW LIFE STARTS HERE

Resurrection Sunday

in Fitzroy

April 21st@ 11am

Fitzroy women will declare that He Is Risen and we will head on out to investigate the new life that starts with that stone being rolled away. We will be asking what we make of this declaration andI will share how Thomas's doubts burst through my doubts when as a 17 year old atheist resurrection brought me a new life! 

 

TIGER WOODS: NOT AS GOOD AS HE WAS BUT BETTER THAN HE WAS!

Tiger Woods wins another Major! For years I was pretty sure we would never hear those words again. I was happy with that. I was never a fan. 

There were two reasons for my dislike. They were linked. First was his utter brilliance. He was literally, when at the top of his game, almost impossible to beat. It is actually difficult to believe how he only one 14 Majors in those glory years between 1997 and 2008. When many believe, and statistics probably prove, that he was the best thing ever to happen to golf, I disagreed. I preferred the days when there were multiple superstars - Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Watson, Miller et al.

My other pet hate of, all things, Tiger was his robotic nature. I believed them to have been linked. I am probably wrong but I sensed that from a very young age Tiger was trained to be a Majors winning golfer, at the cost of the development of personality and emotion. For me, Tiger was a little cold. 

His 15th Major at the 2019 US Masters was a whole lot different. Tiger Woods is not as good as he used to be which makes him better than he used to be. Well I am Irish but bear with me!

Those listening carefully to Tiger’s post Masters interviews heard him speak in ways he never had to, back in his glory days. He spoke of being patient, plotting his way around the course, and watching how the  leaderboard was changing until he found himself at the top of it. 

Young Tiger never needed to be patient or plot or glance at leaderboards. He just hit it. Harder and better than anyone else. Indeed, the most astounding fact about his 5th Masters was that it was the first time he has EVER won a Major when he was not in the lead after 54 holes! 

As the dust settles on Woods’ 5th Green Jacket, I think it will become clearer and clearer that this is the greatest sporting comeback ever. Less than eighteen months ago, Woods had no idea if he would ever play again, never mind win a Major. It is quite something 22 years after your first Major and 11 years after your last one, to win again.

It is even more remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, because Woods is no longer so far ahead of the field that it is not worth watching. There are more world class peers than he had in the decade when he was king. If he wins now it is because he has taken on others and won! He is using golfing skills he never needed and maybe never had. I say it again, he is better now than when he was the very best!

Secondly, and most important of all, is that to win, amongst the strength of such a field and after eleven years when his mental, physical and emotional lives all hit rock bottom, Woods’ comeback was not just sporting but as a human being. His emotional response to his 15th Major was more emotional and I would say human than any of his other victories. This is a man who had to rebuild his entire life. He is a better man for it and for me a more worthy winner. He deserves the hugs and high fives with his children, mother, girlfriend and team.

If he holds his psychological life together I believe that Tiger Woods will most likely pass Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 Majors, in the next few years. I am not sure I want him to but I do believe he is more worthy of it now than when he was a golfing robot, back in the day. 

"TRIUMPHANT" ARRIVAL, ON A DONKEY!

After the journey from Galilee

We were tired

But elated

We were on an adrenaline rush

We knew that something was about to give

The incident acquiring the donkey sparked our excitement

When he got on its back 

And the crowds started singing

And waving palm branches

The expectation was tangible

This was it

The King was on his way

He had had his eyes fixed on Jerusalem for some time

And here it was

Be afraid

Be very afraid

Because the days of the Romans were coming to an end

The ways of the Pharisees and Sadducees were over

The soldiers watched from the fringes

The religious leaders were running every which way

We had our eyes on that Temple

We were ready to usher in the new Kingdom.

 

But

That wasn’t how it would go

I guess the donkey was the clue

It was a bit humble

I started to think back over everything I had heard him say

“Do good to those who persecute you”

“Blessed are the meek”

“Turn the other cheek”

“Go the extra mile”

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”

These aren’t exactly the soundbites of a conquering King

He wasn’t about the power, the way the world knows power

He wasn’t about fighting

Or winning.

Here he was living out all those words he had preached

In the flesh

In Jerusalem

At the Passover

“Behold the Lamb Of God who takes away the sin of the world”

  

He was a Loser

Losing

For losers like us

This was the First 

Becoming last

So that we who were last

Could become First

Heirs of God

Joint heirs with him.

 

He was strong… in humility

He was powerful… in grace

He was dangerous… in love

It is so counter intuitive

So upside down

Inside out

So spiritually subversive

Culturally perverse

Socially mad.

 

It was all a head melt

We were thrown every which way

We were mumbling

Grumbling

Tumbling

Stumbling

After him

Trying to stay up close

Trying to draw way to the back.

 

“Follow me”

They were the first words I heard him say

And they are the last

They are the only words

“Follow me…”

COME, HOWEVER YOU ARE - THE DAMIEN RICE COMMUNION

 

My mate Doug pointed it out. I had Damien Rice’s album My Favourite Fantasy but the album had made such little impression that I had missed track 7, Trusty and True. 

Doug showed me this Youtube link with the choir Dekoor Close Harmony. How deeply spiritual, it sounds. Almost liturgical. 

I searched for a Damien Rice explanation. Was he thinking in any way of religious imagery? The only story I got was rather rude, yet there was wisdom in the lewdness. From the rude it turned on a seismic pin head to new starts and forgiveness. It’s almost for a Confessional.

It begins with our aim to be true that somehow never holds:

 

We've wanted to be trusty and true

But feathers fell from our wings

And we've wanted to be worthy of you

But weather rained on our dreams

 

It is almost what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7 - For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 

 

Rice goes on:

 

'Cause we never wanted to be lusty or lewd

Nor tethered to prudish strings

And we never wanted to be jealously tuned

Nor withered into ugly things

 

For the flawed human there is nothing for it but confession, forgiveness and a new beginning. That’s where Rice goes. Though we never know who we are coming to, we are invited to come…. and to come as we are: -

 

And if all that you are

Is not all you desire,

 

Then, come

Come, let yourself be wrong

Come, it's already begun

Come, come alone

Come with fear, come with love

Come however you are

Just come, come alone

Come with friends, come with foes

Come however you are

 

Just come, come alone

Come with me, then let go

Come however you are

Just come, come alone

Come so carefully closed

Come however you are

Just come

 

It is beautiful. Utterly beautiful. Welcoming. Forgiving. Grace filled.

Doug suggested using it as a communion piece. Fitzroy are always up for the challenge. Eventually we used it. Dave Thompson with some help from Chris Blake and George Sproule. We might add a choir soon. It was sung as the congregation came forward and gathered the cross to receive the bread and wine. It worked a treat!

BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR in Conversation with PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA

Corrymeela Presents

HOLY ENVY: FINDING GOD IN THE FAITH OF OTHER

BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

in conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama

Sunday 26th May @ 7pm

Fitzroy Church. 

 FREE... donation accepted; books also available.

Barbara Brown Taylor left parish ministry to teach world religion at a college in rural Georgia. To her surprise, what she learnt from decades of living with the truth claims of the world’s great faiths is not – contrary to popular opinion – that all religions are alike, but something subtler, more mysterious and more life–giving: a ‘holy envy’ of the riches of other traditions, and the chance to be born afresh and more deeply within her own tradition.

In this very special evening, Barbara, in conversation with Pádraig Ó Tuama, will share some of the gifts, questions and paradoxes that she found along the way. If there is only one God, why are there so many religions? Can our faith be improved by the faith of others, even those we fundamentally disagree with? And is the Holy Spirit at work in all this?

The Revd Barbara Brown Taylor is an American Episcopal priest, theologian, Professor of Religion, and New York Times best–selling author. In 2014 TIME magazine named her as one of its 100 most influential people in the world. Her best–selling guides to the spiritual life include An Altar on the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark. Her new book is Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (Canterbury Press 2019).

TOMORROW IN FITZROY - 14.4.19

Tomorrow morning (11am) in Fitzroy we will be taking ALL of the family through Holy Week. With puppets we will follow Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey and hear a Rich Mullins' song, performed by Paul Boeman, as commentary. Then we will go further into the week and with a "liturgical" song written by Damien Rice, performed by Dave Thompson, we will gather round a huge wooden cross and share family communion. The clear message will be as Christ invites us and Rice sings it:

And if all that you are
Is not all you desire,

 

Then, come

Come, let yourself be wrong
Come, it's already begun

Come, come alone
Come with fear, come with love
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come with friends, come with foes
Come however you are...

(Damien Rice - Trusty and True)

 

There is a lunch to follow and all are welcome...

 

In the evening (7pm) we gather again fro some modern worship and a reflection from Paul Bowman under the title The Passion. 

VAN MORRISON - THE HEALING GAME (Deluxe Edition)

Oh what a Van-fast! In this 3 Cd digipack CD box there is a treasure-trove of goodies.

It is the kind of thing that I would be up to with my Playlist series. On the back of the original The Healing Game, which has not been remastered, we get the B-sides of singles from the time. Then we have CD 2 which is a collage of songs from The Healing Game project and various other projects from the era.

So, if unlike me you haven’t already, you don’t need to hoke out - CD singles, Sult, Good Rocking Tonight and The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, John Lee Hooker’s Don’t Look Back and Lonnie Donegan’s Muleskinner Blues - because the Van tracks from them are here. 

On CD two there are three collaborations that bring some fantastic tunes. I’ve been particularly loving the rocking rhythm and blues of his five songs with Carl Perkins. Four of these have been previously unreleased and one of those My Angel is a co-write. This second disc has ten previously unissued songs including a Morrison original Didn’t He Ramble and A Kiss To Build A Dream On made famous by Louis Armstrong in 1951.

There is more! The third disc is an absolutely pumping live show from Montreux in July 1997. Just a few months after the release of The Healing Game the set list has seven songs from the record. This is the Morrison’s few years with Brian Kennedy bringing backing vocals. Kennedy’s singing added grace notes indeed. That high end voice gets close to angelic and when he and Morrison play off each other like a call and response, it is climactic and electric. 

So, as I say, a treasure trove! In the end though, what the three discs did for me was highlight the strength of The Healing Game in Morrison’s phenomenal body of work. There are six varied versions of the title track here, three versions of Fire In The Belly and Sometimes We Cry. What these versions did was throw different hues across them and the entire album. It rose up my favourite Morrison records list for sure.

Then… and maybe contrived but… these dongs were recorded between the Northern Ireland ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement. So when I hear: -

 

Don't look back

To the days of yester-year

You cannot live on in the past

Don't look back

 

An' I've known so many people

They're still tryin' to live on in the past

Don't look back

(Don’t Look Back - John Lee Hooker)

 

and

 

Here I am again

Back on the corner again

Back where I belong

Where I've always been

Everything the same

It don't ever change

I'm back on the corner again

In the healing game

(The Healing Game)

 

Morrison used yet another acoustic version of The Healing Game on a fundraising album Across The Bridge Of Hope for the victims of the 1998 Omagh bomb. Morrison always said it was a song from America, doo-wop singing on street corners. Healing is a spiritual thing here and Van was intrigued by it - The Healing Has Begun and Did Ye Get Healed just two other songs on the theme! It’s hard as you listen to some of these versions to not see those corners as the streets pf East Belfast where, whatever his geographical place, Van Morrison always seems close to. 

We are still needing that Healing on his Belfast streets in 2019!

LUKE SITAL-SINGH - A GOLDEN STATE

Luke Sital-Singh’s recent EP gave a few hints to the man and his new location. His covers of Jackson Browne’s Late For The Sky, Graham Nash’s Just A Song Before I Go and Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and Big Star’s Thirteen could have been recorded in Laurel Canyon circa 1970. He shared how driving down the Californian coastline inspired the EP.

Going the full hog, young Luke has now settled in LA with his wife and A Golden State declares right on the front cover his west coast record. There is an early 70s gentleness and sparseness here. Jackson Browne is a good reference. 

It is a warm and intimate listen. There’s a drum beat or a symbol bang here and there but these perfectly crafted songs sit on top of the lightest guitar or piano touches. Silhouette is the only song that runs away with itself. 

Sital-Singh uses the highest part of his vocal range a lot of the time. He used to write with Iain Archer and it is it’s Archer’s voice, not his co-writing or production that has followed Sital-Singh to America. Both my wife and my daughters thought it was the long awaited new Iain Archer album when they heard it… and they are Sital-Singh fans! It has less drama than previous albums. It utterly beautiful throughout.

The songs. I imagine that is the point for Luke. They are about California though not in the Beach Boy’s sense. It is not so much the geography as the relocation that seeps to the top of the content’s intent. These are songs about a couple very much in love, their love is still young and blooming. Yet, they have taken themselves somewhere new and feeling the vulnerability of unfamiliar things. They need each other in that vulnerability. 

 

On Almost Gone:

 

Heavy air, glistening, deep dark listening

Falling's unavoidable to get away from where you've been

I think I have a song, there's a line in it for you to sing

Would you sing it for me?

 

On I Do:

 

I’m cynical of heaven now, but you make me believe

I love the music and the grace in which you move

I love the rhythms that you choose

And the melody of how you said, "I do"

 

We are back to Jackson Browne’s early 70s introspection. You can hear a few of these songs sitting snuggly on Late For The Sky. Particularly for me The Last Day a poetic imagining of the last day of someone’s life. It is an astonishing song for one so young. The inevitability of mortality, acknowledgement of final separation and asks all the questions we should ask in advance. Have we loved enough, lived enough and thanked people we need to thank in time? The song takes us right through the last day and ends with that need of one another again:

 

But I'd hold you close and you'd pray and pray

Whisper everything was gonna be okay

Our final kiss would bring such bliss

And feel just like our first

 

There are many lessons from the melodic exercise as the closing lines conclude:

 

On the last night of my life

Think I'd rather be surprised

Now every night when I close my eyes

I hold your hand so tight

 

These words and rhymes and ideas delivered so tender and touchingly in the purity of Luke Sital-Singh’s voice. Oh, it’s good. Then, just when I think I love it, I listen again and hear more memorable lines and compassionate ideas that I have missed before. 

Good move sir. It’s been a very good move!