SOUL SURMISE

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY IN FITZROY - 11.11.18

Poppy Art and photo: Gillian Fitch

Tomorrow morning in Fitzroy (11am) we will be remembering the Fitzroy youth who lost their adulthood as a result of the First World War. Exactly 100 years after Armistice Day we will stop to remember. This particular year we are privileged to have members of HMS Duncan at our service. A Fitzroy member, Rev Brent Van Der Linde, is Chaplain of that ship and we are thrilled to have some of his colleagues with us. As a result of their presence we will be including the National Anthem in our act of Remembrance, which we do not usually do.  Gillian Fitch has created a beautiful piece of poppy art around one of our Memorial stones.

In the rest of our morning we will be worshipping God as we do every week. How do you worship God during a World War? How do you worship Good when tough times knock you off your feet? The Lectionary this week is 146. In one commentary I read "Praise of God is sometimes an act of discipline. Under the circumstances of war and destruction, praise is not the result of external happiness, but stubborn belief in the face of evidence to the contrary." We will be looking at how worship puts God in his place in our Creation and therefore we can find our place, no matter what the circumstances. Expect maybe a little Springsteen! 

Rev Brent Van Der Lende will lead us in Communion.

In the evening (7pm) we continue are brilliant and well attended series on Bible Literacy where we will be looking at the content and reason for the writing of the book of Exodus. We are delighted to welcome James McKeown who teaches Old Testament Historical Books and Advanced Hebrew at Union Theological College and supervises postgraduate students. If you are keen to know how to read the Bible then this series is for you.

 

LEONARD COHEN LYRIC FOR REMEMBRANCE DAY

“I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”

          From Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

These words for some reason some up my own personal thoughts on Remembrance Day. The flags that fly, the fuss that is made never seem a celebration to me. Celebrations of battle victories should never be used as an opportunity to wave flags in the faces of the vanquish. It is not a time to gloat but a time to poignantly remember those who died, usually young, because humanity stooped to such depths of inhumanity to one another. It is a time to remember so that we might learn to never do again.

Cohen’s Hallelujah creates this emotion and belief beautifully. This is Cohen’s downbeat reputation with a glimpse of light always lurking. This is praise in the midst of brokenness. This is meekness and mourning on a day when we could show the worst of human traits. We have performed this song in Fitzroy on Remembrance Services and I quote it an awful lot!

FILLING THE TUNNEL BETWEEN WAR AND SHALOM - MINISTER'S ROLE ON REMEMBRANCE DAY

 

 

A few years ago, standing at the door of McCracken Memorial, having led and preached at their Remembrance Day Service someone thanked me and said that it had been the first time they had left a Remembrance Day service uplifted. Someone later, over coffee, spoke in similar terms. 

I had not set out to create such a response. Indeed I am always a little uneasy about Remembrance Day. I believe we should remember but the remembering is a very sensitive thing. We live in 2018 and remembering wars from 70 and 100 years ago is tricky today. That morning I had an Italian and German connection in the congregation. We remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms and continue to do so. They should be remembered. 

Yet, in the Bible we read that the aim of God’s redemption for the world has nothing to do with war. The Bible is about shalom, the lion and the lamb lying down side by side and a day that’s coming when we shall be free from war. I always like to quote Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah to set a tone for our remembering; “I see your flags on the marble arch/But love is not a victory march/it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”  

That morning in McCracken, as often happens in a Church service, the hymns chosen by the worship team and the thoughts of the preacher blend to bring out something that neither could have envisaged. The service began with the act of Remembrance which was done with dignity and poignancy. The choir had chosen appropriate hymns and picked an anthem that directed the plot. Creation Will Be At Peace took us to the end of the tunnel from the act of Remembrance. 

From the broken world of war that God never intended to the Creation at peace that God ultimately intends I was left to fill the time in between.

Luke 6: 27-36 is as challenging a passage of Scripture as a Northern Ireland follower of Jesus could try to deal with. 

 

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ²⁹ If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. ³⁰ Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹ Do to others as you would have them do to you.” 

 

Loving enemies – insane. Doing good to those who hate you – come on! 

This is radical stuff and tough to live out. Yet it is what we are called to do in the tunnel between the brokenness and the healing. It is simply following Jesus who did exactly what he said by seeking out those who were alienated from him and reaching out in grace to them by being incarnated, living, dying and being raised to life for them.

From here I used an illustration of Jim Wallis from his book On God’s Side about a pastor in Memphis who welcomed the local Muslim community into his area, got the story on CNN and then had phone calls from a group of Muslims in Kashmir, Pakistan saying how they had watched the CNN report and were now going to care for the little Christian community in their community. 

Surprising your enemies in the way Jesus taught us to in Luke 6 works! From there I called us to break the cycle of hatred and finished with my poem from 9/11, Stop The Spinning Wheel –

 

“And in vengeances vicious circle

In the perpetual cycle of hate

Someone has to stop the spinning wheel

Or everything is going to be too late

Jesus said do unto others

As you would have them do to you

That grace can blow holes in our waging of war

So that peace can squeeze through.”

 

The call on Remembrance Day is to remember and then learn from our remembering to begin to bring that peace to all creation that is the intention of our God.

THE POPPY - HAVE WE BECOME TOO DICTATORIAL?

I remember my Granny Kernohan making the poppies. She was a great women for the British Legion and I remember many Saturday night while she was child minding me, putting the paper poppy onto the green plastic stem and then getting the black button that finished a simple job. It fascinated an eight year old me! I made my contribution!

That poppy is in the news again. Every November we have the James McClean Won’t Wear A Poppy headline. The Derry born footballer has controversially refused to wear a poppy on his shirt, in recent years while playing for West Bromwich Albion and this season with Stoke City.  Many resent McClean’s actions. It is a talking point for sure but news it isn’t.

McClean’s argument has always been that the poppy is no longer about just the two World Wars but about all of the other conflicts that the British Army have been involved in since. He would feel that his community were at the wrong end of British army actions. 

On the Poppy-0n-the-Football-Shirt debate there actually is news this year. Manchester United midfielder Nemanja Matić has taken a similar stance to McClean. In a statement Matic has said:

 “…for me it is only a reminder of an attack that I felt personally as a young, frightened 12-year old boy living in Vrelo, as my country was devastated by the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Whilst I have done so previously, on reflection I now don't feel it is right for me to wear the poppy on my shirt.I do not want to undermine the poppy as a symbol of pride within Britain or offend anyone, however, we are all a product of our own upbringing and this is a personal choice for the reasons outlined.

Living here in Belfast, the McClean issue is filled with tensions. Like flags, sports shirts and Irish language we still live in a sectarian divide that can raise emotions to dangerous temperatures. The Matic decision though might give us an opportunity to rethink the poppy issue with a little bit of a more rational distance.

Forgive me then for using Matic as an example but it has had me surmising the almost dictatorial nature we now seem to have for the wearing of the poppy. I might be wrong but I think it was my beloved Manchester City who introduced the poppy on the shirt about 10 years ago. I thought it was a brilliant idea as the shirts were then sold for charity. However, when we get into a situation where people’s freedoms to wear them or not is taken from them, have we gone too far?

On Sunday morning, I will wear my poppy in Fitzroy and in that moment of silence remember members of our congregation who lost their lives in the two World Wars. My belief is that those young men, mainly teenagers, lost their lives fighting for our freedoms. Should we therefore not be standing up for people’s freedoms? Should the poppy not be something that we have the right to choose to wear… or not wear, depending on our experiences and the experiences of the communities that we come from? It always seemed that way when i was making them with my Granny.

 

PAUL WELLER - TRUE MEANINGS

There was a time round 1982 when Paul Weller was my main musical man. The punk stuff was a little contrived in places but The Jam fired my new wave imagination. I loved In The City from the get go. By the time of The Gift they had matured in lyric and sound. For me, they were a psyched up Beatles in all kinds of ways. Weller had a political and social critique that opened my late teen mind.

Not far into the Style Council I lost my Weller obsession. Though Weller’s solo career has had me dip in and out True Meanings has me rekindling my fandom. Thinking back on my love for all things Weller in my late teens I couldn’t quite believe that I had never blogged about him.

Keeping The Beatles’ comparison, True Meanings might be seen as his McCartney record. Weller has covered much Lennon - Don’t Let Me Down, And Your Bird Can Sing, Instant Karma, Come Together with the Mojo Filters and even Sexy Sadie. 

The first time I heard Gravity I thought Yesterday. With its quite tone, pop melodies and lush strings McCartney comes to mind. To be truthful though the sound is reminiscent of any acoustic song The Beatles released from 64-66.

True Meanings is a shift in musical focus after the onslaught and experimentation of Saturn Patterns and The Kind Revolution. The opening The Soul Searchers is a good sign of the rest of the piece; pastoral and spiritually reflective.

For this album Weller has extended his collaborative welcome. Dublin’s Conor O’Brien of The Villagers brought the lyrics for The Soul Searchers, as Erland Cooper of The Magnetic North and Erland & The Carnival for Bowie, Wishing Well and White Horses. A more cheerful look at the credits will reveal Rod Argent, Danny Thompson and Noel Gallagher. Northern Irish pride for the amazing job Hannah Peel does with the strings.

The collection is riven through with good songs. The Soul Searcher, Gravity, Aspects, Books, Moving On and my personal favourite May Love Travel With You.

May Love Travel With You is prayerful in a May You Never and Forever Young kind of way. It is Psalmlike;

 

“Have grace to see the virtues

Give thanks to them sometimes

And love travel with you

Forever and all time”

 

If there is theology to unpack in those lines - “grace” and “forever” then check out the “grand design” and “divine” in the these:

 

“To a time

There's no pitchers or batters

Only fine lines

All the geometry

And the grand design

While inside the wonders

Of a science so divine

What is there to change?”

 

Weller is not coming across with any creeds or professions. Yet he is always looking for something to make sense of all of this. He thanks “The Universe” in his liner notes. 

Books is an obvious preach against the hypocrisy of evil things done by those who believe they have spiritually revelational books. However, a careful listen reveals that he does not sing “There is no God” but actually, “There is no God/In these mens hearts.”

Oh The Soul Searchers is exactly what is happening in an attempt to find true meanings. The title comes from lines in aspects;

 

“To find true meanings

And patterns in things

Symbols in making

These moments exist”

 

True Meanings is an album about how something transcendent might impact the everyday here and now. The ruminations of Weller, O’Brien and Cooper makes for Weller’s best record since…  actually it threatens Sound Affects as maybe his most satisfying ever! 

TOMORROW IN FITZROY 4.11.18

Tomorrow morning (11am) we will be having a Family Service in Fitzroy. It will double as a Harvest Service, giving thanks for God's goodness to us but also as one of our One World Lunches where we have a simple bread and soup lunch to stand in solidarity with large parts of our world who do not have all the good things that we so easily take for granted. The service will be filled with youthful energy in the worship band and by contributors. I will be drawing it all together by asking what the balance is between need and greed. celebration and contemplation is one very full but not long morning!

In the evening (7pm) we have the first in a two part series looking at the lessons in reconciliation that we in Northern Ireland might learn from Rwanda. We are delighted to have Clonard/Fitzroy Fellowship partnering with Thrive Ireland to bring us this series. Derek Poole and Diane Holt will be our facilitators. Together we will explore, in the context of Northern Ireland, four essential themes: Forgiveness, Justice, Reconciliation and Repentance. The workshop format will include opportunity for study, reflection and interactive learning.

THE ANGEL'S SHARE

(I took this photo recently and it reminded me of this poem.

I wrote it as a kind of Psalm of praise to God for Ballycastle, where we spend so much of our leisure time.  

The first verse is standing where the river meets the sea in Ballycastle. The second verse was written as I showed a few American friends around Dunluce castle. I was looking out the gap of an old window and
one of the stones of the castle ruins was the same shape as the Giant’s Causeway,
sitting round the coast in the direction that I was looking.

The Angel’s Share is the aroma that wafts off the vats at the Bushmills’ whiskey distillery. I
named my last night chat show at Greenbelt that for a few years. Rich Mullins’
song Colour Green was the idea for the last verse…)

 

The moon is walking on the water

From her home above Fair Head

Like a light bulb lit up in heaven

Much more beautiful without a lamp shade

Like a ballerina she shimmers across

Just gently skimming off the dance floor

Gliding on the waves in her yellow dress

Before waltzing up along the seashore

And two gulls shooting the evening breeze

How they spent there day and where

And alone I stand in epiphany

Breathing in the angel’s share.

 

I’m gazing out the eastern window

To these ancient walls rich seam

Born in a clash of volcano and sea

Erupting from the sculptor of heaven’s dreams

And west, I see a painting hangs

Of eternal colour and deepest mystery

Six short days to set up the canvas

Then sketching on by the numbers of history

And friends are taking photographs

Faded imitations of what is there

And alone I stand in epiphany

Breathing in the angel’s share.

 

From where in your imagination came waves caressing

Where in eternity did you think blue sea

From where the depth and breadth of ocean

And where did you come up with me

From where in your imagination came the sun descending

Where in eternity did you think red sky

From where did you conjure the dream of love

And the idea that you’d have to die

The idea that you’d have to die

The idea that God would have to die.

COULD FOOTBALL'S UNITY IN TRAGEDY CHANGE THE VITRIOL AT MATCHES

Football is working through a very sad week. News of Glenn Hoddle’s heart attack caused a reaction across the sport. He was a hero. Gifted as a player. Creative as a coach. As a pundit, I enjoyed his tactical insight. He is loved. Our prayers are with him and his family.

Then, not many hours later, the Leicester City Chairman’s helicopter goes down in the streets beside the stadium. There is shock and grief at the loss of life.

A lot of us probably didn’t know the Chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s, name but we knew his face and that amazing achievement of winning the Premiership for little Leicester City. Even as a City fan, who should have been winning it that season, I loved that Leicester did instead! 

What has struck me over the days since, has been the camaraderie of the football community. Everybody wants Glenn Hoddle well again. Every club sent their condolences to Leicester City. There was a wonderful sense of unity. Our humanity overcomes rivalry. 

Of course that is how it should be. My own prayers go out to Vichai’s wife and family and those Leicester players, and members of staff, who genuinely loved the man, not just his investment. Kasper Schmeichel running towards the crash said so much. As did Riyad Mahrez’s tribute after scoring for Manchester City last night.

However, it is not how football mostly is. I watch every weekend at the abuse that fans give the opposition’s players and fellow fans. It is angry vicious vitriol mostly enhanced by hand and finger gestures. I have been to matches and heard the abuse that referees, the opposition and even the team that fans are supporting receive. There are tirades of raw visceral hatred. I often wonder if there is something in the modern adult male that needs this place to vent something of the sadness and melancholy of a British life. 

It all seems dangerously uncivil to me. Of course there should be banter and a competitive spirit. Surely that can be healthy and humorous and actually add to the sporting atmosphere. I have enjoyed some good Rugby banter with fans of other teams and countries, standing side by side at matches. Less police needed there to separate supporters. 

What I am saying, on the very saddest of footballing weeks is that that same love and camaraderie in these moments of tragedy should be held and treasured. This feeling of one big soccer family should be nurtured that it might flourish, every single week in the stadiums of the beautiful game. 

I never want to contradict the great Bill Shankly but let me. This week he was proved wrong. It is not a matter of life an death. It is NOT more important than that.

U2: SOE: LIVE AT THE SSE, BELFAST - 27.10.18

I am the minister of a congregation who know and love their arts. However, like in many heady christian gatherings of people in their 50s and 60s I find that they might not get the rock thing. Too low brow. I remember speaking about U2 at Regent College, Vancouver and telling them that there has been fresh art since CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers. Indeed the day Lewis died, The Beatles were number 1 in America. More recently, the greatest of all sneakers past the dragons at the door are U2!

During the first night of the Songs of Experience Belfast gig, I wished for a moment that my high brow arts friends in Fitzroy could just get through the low brow guitar riffed loudness. They would love it. I had perfect seats, able to take in the main stage at one end of the venue, the small stage at the other and be face on to the Barricage that doubles as a stage and cinema screen, sometimes both at once.

There was theatre, expensive theatre. There was cinema, extravagant cinema. There was performance art; scary performance art. There was poetry; deep and clever rhymes. There was Church; uplifting worshipful Church. There was more in the social commentary, political critique and the spiritual deep soul delving. This is one extravagant show. Jeff Lynne’s ELO had rocked this same house the night before. It was wonderful but compared to this… ELO were Everton to U2’s Manchester City (the money, the imagination and the delivery).

The first four songs blew me away. I was looking forward to the show but to be truthful had not taken as much interest in this tour. A few seconds into The Blackout and I my heart pumped. What a scene setter for Bono’s near death experience and the state of Trump’s America and Brexit Europe. Add our local Stormont impasse and extinction looks probable.

Then Lights Of Home. Please note immediately that the opening two songs are off their brand new record. ELO had only one song from the past 25 years! This is fresh. In Lights of Home we are still near death. Bono walks up the barricage, his steps lined by stars. It is the stairway to heaven and he kneels at the very gate. This is emotional spiritual stuff from the get go.

Then… heading to the big stage he introduces the band from the north side of Dublin, formerly known as The Hype and boom, I Will Follow. It is exhilarating and those of us there from the start are stoked. It still sounds fresh and contemporary. Immediately into Gloria and to my utter surprise, from nowhere, tears are running down my face. The power. The spiritual power. The first U2 song that I dropped the needle on to. It was like a revival in my soul. My teenage exuberance of faith was ablaze.

If I said it was worth the price of the ticket for those four songs, would I be suggesting that there was something amiss with the rest of the show?! Not at all. When I was in the Boys Brigade drama group, back in the day, I was taught to use the entire stage. U2 use the entire arena! Moving from stage to stage, and Edge and Adam even appearing as if by witchcraft on pop up stages, this band achieve their ambition of making big venues intimate.

Taking Joshua Tree songs out of the mix was a risk. They had of course toured that entire album last year. Can you, however, leave De Bruyne, Silva and Aguero on the bench and still win the Premiership. You can when you have Jesus, Bernardo and Mahrez on the bench. Tonight, in a set list sense, was about Achtung Baby. Five songs from that album took the centre of the concert.

Speaking to my friend Tim later I couldn't have agreed with him more when he suggested that these songs were written when the band were having relational struggles and spiritual fall out. They're using these songs to help us unpack what we are politically and socially struggling through in 2018. Acrobat never performed before this tour taking us into a section of personal soul searching.

Bono’s chat tonight seemed less staged, more actual conversational. We had a story about driving round Belfast in a tiny car with Squeeze, Adam in the boot and British soldiers outside it! We had shout outs to various place names. I was delighted to hear Fitzroy though it was in context of the streets in Van Morrison’s Madame George.

Into Acrobat and down on the smaller stage Bono, all in make up and top hat, started conversing about the temptations of fame. Enter McPhisto with some rather grotesque camera tricks and CS Lewis’s Screwtape Letters were alive and well again as on the Zooropa tour, twenty five years ago. Bono asked about addictions and after alcohol and chemicals he finished with “The Holy Spirit - I hope so!” 

The devil’s buddy claimed cash for ash and the impasse at Stormont, telling our politicians, “Remember when you don’t believe in me… that is when I do my best work.” McPhisto wasn’t missing tonight!

Bringing it home, we had Pride dedicated to John Hume for his peace making. I often wonder has Bono heard of Fr Alec Reid who opened it up for Hume. There was a statement about north and south being “smart and strategic” whatever the border ends up. There was a huge European flag. Women took centre stage of our hope in Ivor Cutler’s song Women of the World.

At the outset Bono had explained the Songs Of Experience album and tour following the Songs of Innocence version. He gave a direction for the evening, “that in the far end of experience you can again recover that innocence. This is the tale we are trying to tell.” Did they? I think so. They took us through their career. We started with spiritual innocence maybe naivety, we lingered over the temptations and the blackout of a fallen world. 

The last batch were about uplight. redemption, new world’s of light and one-ness. The final preacher’s punch in the rock show theatre of sermon was that Love is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way… and then…

… the perfect end. During the Songs Of Innocence Tour, a song took unexpected centre stage. In the aftermath of the Paris Bataclan massacre, another evil act in the name of religion, it would have been easy to give up on any idea of God and chant the “I don’t believe anymore” of Raised By Wolves. Bono though held tight to lines from Song For Someone.

 

"I know there's so many reasons to doubt

But there is a light 

Don't let it go out”

 

Tonight, after all the experience of Zoo Station, The Fly, Vertigo and Whose Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Bono walks back down the centre of the SSE in search of that innocence. He sings 13 There Is A Light. The visuals signal Cedarwood Road and there, again as if by magic, a house. Bono walks up and lifts off the roof before pulling out a light bulb. 

It is the same light bulb that became the image of the Songs Of Innocence Tour… “But there is a light/Don’t let it go out”. Bono throws the bulb into the Saturday night sky of experience. It swings precariously, as it did on the main stage at the very beginning of the Songs Of Innocence concert. Bono leaves… and it swings… benediction, the end… of the night… of this particular U2 era… I think so… still holding on to that light! 

photo credits: Janice Stockman, David Cleland, Karen Gilmore and Lydia Coates

JEFF LYNNE'S ELO LIVE AT THE SSE BELFAST, 26.10.18

photo: Janice Stockman

You could accuse Jeff Lynne of bragging before he takes the stage tonight at Belfast’s SSE. The pre gig playlist is made up of songs that he has produced. Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and even The Beatles for goodness sake. It sets out the pedigree. It reminds you of Lynne's his place in rock music history even before an ELO cello gets bowed.

I am no fan of nostalgia concert tours or Beatle rip off bands. Tonight, Lynne with his very own ELO, as opposed to all the other versions, might have been proven guilty of both. Yet, it was fantastic! Did I mention his place in rock history?!

There is a thin line between history and nostalgia. There was a whole lot of nostalgia in this show. Apart from When I Was A Boy from Lynne’s 2015 ELO record Alone In The Universe and Handle Me With Care, a song from his other band The Travelling Wilburys all these songs were written before 1981! The film snippets of The Wilbury’s got the obligatory cheer. I was again surprised at how moved I was with Tom Petty’s face. I haven’t got over his loss! 

The fans loved it all. They weren’t young. I imagined a range from 60 to 50, all finding Radio 1 in their teens and if they did then you can be sure that from 1973 to1979 an ELO song was pumping out. For the older ones it might have been Evil Woman or Showdown. For the younger then it would have been Last Train to London or Shine A Little Light. The younger ones might never even have heard of 10538 Overture!

My mate David was a fan before me. He had Face The Music. For me it was Livin’ Thing that finally made me a fan. Then Rockaria, still my favourite as was almost everything on A New World Record. Not that the ELO fans filling the SSE tonight were an album deep sort of crowd. Lynne, machine gun fired the hits, bang bang bang. Everyone a gem!

A New World Record was released at the end of the summer of 1976, the summer I fell madly in love with The Beatles. People were likening Telephone Line et al with The Beatles. My ears were too young to hear it. I guess when Lynne finally produced not only George Harrison and Paul McCartney but actually The Beatles I got his obsession. Tonight I could hear Lennon’s bluesy sounds, Harrisonesque guitar, the harmonies and the fulness of sound of Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour. I could even hear Paul McCartney doing a song like When I Was A Boy!

Yet, unlike the crude theft that Oasis would do of The Beatles in the 90s, Lynne took inspirations, sometimes obvious but he was also magpie picking other glittery sounds. You can hear The Moody Blues and even post Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees in there too. When Lynne finally patched those sounds together he had come up with this symphonic pop music that was lush, uplifting and utterly beautiful.

Tonight with a crack band of players and singers it sounded deep pile. The sounds washed over you and the visuals too. It was a big symphonic sound and as well as the light show it was impressive. At the end of Mr Blue Sky, before a partying version of Roll Over Beethoven, there was a sense to me that the standing ovation was not just about the last two hours but about those ten years in the 70s when Jeff Lynne with his ELO put the most amazing body of work together.