SOUL SURMISE

MUSIC AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2020

Every year I get excited by the music that features across the programming of our 4 Corners Festival.

This year there is a plethora of musical gifting on the bill and also the undercard.

Obviously Gary Lightbody (In Conversation) and Ken Haddock (Belfast Songbook) are the big musical events. Both are sold out with a waiting list.

Do not miss though all the other performances.

The world renowned folk singer Tommy Sands will be singing twice at the Festival. He will be a major contributor to Grace Beneath The Cranes where he will be the singer between two poets Linda Molloy and Beano Niblock.

Tommy will also be part of the Stephen Travers: Life In Songs event. Stephen will tell his story of being in Ireland burgeoning Show Band scene to fighting for his life after the Miami Showband massacre and then up to date.

We are thrilled to have Brian Houston performing one of his new Celtic worship songs at our BBC Radio Ulster Sunday service. Brian’s new songs seek to have authentic cultural worship for the Irish. An exclusive!

Beki Hemingway, our American Songwriter with the awesome voice living in Dundalk, has closed the last two Festivals. This year she sings at Grace Moments in St Anthony’s where Bishop Alan Abernethy and Brendan McAllister will be the speakers.

We are thrilled to have Anthony Toner back at 4 Corners too. Anthony’s recent record Our Lady Of The Wind and Rain was one my favourite records of 2019 and Anthony will be showing us the power of words in a poetry and song mix up with Damian Gorman who will be in conversation with Jude Hill.

Dave Thompson who has brought his songwriting to the Festival a few times is back as part of our Considering Grace event. This is an evening when we will read Presbyterian responses to the Troubles in St John’s Parish on the Falls Road with Seamus Mallon responding.

Finally we are delighted to add Jamie Neish to the bill for our closing evening when Peter McVerry and Ruth Koch will be telling us how we can be instruments of grace across the world and literally on our doorsteps.

This is a lot of music and as with all things 4 Corners Festival… all of the very best quality.

Sign up now on our website: - https://4cornersfestival.com

ROBBIE ROBERTSON - SINEMATIC

It is hard to believe that a record by a legend of rock music for over 55 years, guitarist when Bob Dylan went electric and main writer in the iconic The Band could shank out unnoticed but I wasn’t the only fan to miss the release of Robbie Robertson’s new album Sinematic. Thank you Gar Saeger for having it in your 2019 Records of the Year and tipping me off!

It is a shame to have been such a secret. It is a work of deep quality. Not that we would expect anything else from Robbie Robertson but I have to say that this for me is the most satisfying Robertson solo record since his eponymous debut in 1987. 

With the Oscars coming up in February it is cutting edge that the lead off track is I Hear You Paint Houses, a line from the film that Robertson did the soundtrack for. Morrison as a De Niro type character works for me!

Morrison is not the only Irishman helping out on Sinematic. Glen Hansard features on the political comment song Let Love Reign, my personal favourite. Best featured vocalist of all is Felicity Williams Particularly on Walk In Beauty Way. 

Robbie Robertson’s memoir Testimony rates, in my opinion as one of the best ever rock biographies and it is hard to imagine that it didn’t impact Sinematic. Dead End Kid and has particular autobiographical detail. I love that it mentions the Scarborough Bluffs a beautiful area of one of my favourite cities Toronto where Robertson grew up.

Robertson has rarely been so introspective or so keen on political opinion: - 

 

As world leaders take us

On a guided tour of Hell 

Let love reign!

 

The spiritual dabs in and out too. Morrison sings 

 

Hope my father up above

Will forgive me for my sins 

 

That is not the end of the spiritual. Some of us, Robertson says are Hardwired to God:

 

People falling to their knees

Tryin' to keep the faith

There's a man upstairs lookin' down

With pity on the human race

 

Most of all Let Love Reign takes a lead from the teaching of Jesus:

 

Oh, let love reign

On your enemy

Let love reign down

Over you and me

 

And has a prayer time too:

 

In my time, we’ve bowed our heads

In sorrow of mankind

Raisin' hope that tomorrow

There may peace of mind

 

Right across Sinematic there is that smooth gentle blues atmosphere that only Robertson can conjure. What lifts Sinematic above his other five records is the subject matter and songwriting. Writing a biography and working on soundtracks with Martin Scorsese has led Robertson into the seam of a rich zone. 

TOMORROW IN FITZROY - 12.1.2020

Tomorrow morning (11am) in Fitzroy we are still thinking of the new year and the new decade. It is not only Stormont that has a NEW DECADE and a new opportunity for A NEW APPROACH. So with the Lectionary Reading looking at Jesus baptism this is a perfect text to offer ourselves as instruments of God's peace, justice and mission. A new Stormont is not the only change in our landscape. January 31st will be a seismic shift as the UK leaves the EU. What a time to reassess our Kingdom of God contribution. We will pray for all our MLAs and particularly all of new Local Assembly ministers. Pierce Pettis's new song Instrument will help us through the sermon and communion with maybe a wee bit of Sarah Masen too. 

In the evening (7pm) we continue our fabulous series GLOBAL CHALLENGES with Prof Stephen Williams speaking about Bioethics. If you are interested in applying your Christian mind to contemporary issues then this is a series you would love. 

ALL WELCOME!

COULD GRAHAM MAULE'S FUNERAL PREACH INTO STORMONT'S RESURRECTION

I cannot get away from the powerful coincidence. Could a burial in Scotland have a prophetic message for a resurrection in Northern Ireland.

On the day that the Northern Ireland’s Local Assembly got back together after three years, Graham Maule was being buried in Craufordland Woods, near Glasgow. 

Graham was an architect, sculptor, art tutor and best known to many of us as a hymn writer. Along with John Bell, his fellow Iona Community member, Graham wrote hundreds of hymns and arranged many more. If you have ever sung Marching In the Light Of God, then Graham Maule touched your life.

I did not have enough time in Graham’s company but those moments that I did whether in Glasgow or at Greenbelt I found him a real gentleman. He had a relational warmth. He oozed grace. He embodied a holiness defused of any self righteousness. He enjoyed whiskey and curry and justice and compassion and liturgy. I have grieved since his passing on December 29th and prayed for my friends who who will miss him most.

His funeral though was a revelation, particularly in the juxtaposition of it with a restoration of the Stormont Assembly.

Graham’s Burial Liturgy which was lengthy included three languages. 

The New Testament reading from 1 Corinthians 15 was taken from William Lorimer’s Bible translation in Scots. The “I am tae mind ye o the Gospel at I preached tae ye” would be well appreciated in Ulster Scots corners of Northern Ireland. 

Later in the service Mhairi Lawson sang in Gaelic, Taladh Criosta - The Christ Child Lullaby. Those promoting Irish would be delighted with that.

This was not a contrived peace service where the planning committee sought to compromise and make sure that everybody was represented.

This was an amalgam of one man’s life, representing his loves that happened to be, for a visual artist who also made a mark with words, the three languages that naturally blended across his worship and vocation. 

Our politicians at Stormont, how I wish you could have experienced that natural blend. All of us on this island are influenced in our language and culture by our close neighbours in Scotland. Whether it is our sense of Celtic-ness or our sense of being Ulster Scots, we know that Scotland is deep in our DNA.

It begs the question. Why could languages so beautifully weaved together in the celebration of one man’s life have been used to tear us apart?

When I hear my friend Mervyn Gibson speak about the politicising of the Irish Language, I can see what he means. I would have to suggest that Ulster Scots has been abused in similar ways.

BUT… both Irish and Ulster Scots are a fundamental part of ALL of us. I am sure that Nationalists in the Glens speak Ulster Scots daily and I am sure that there are Protestants who say that they live in Ballyhackamore (warning: DO NOT give them a literal translation).

I come from Galgorm, near Ballymena. It is from the Irish - Geal ghorm - that means sky/clear blue. Ballymena United wearing that colour might be linked. My Grandparents were the most fluent Ulster Scots speakers I knew. Right there in that village we find the same natural blend of languages that we find in Graham’s life.

So, I want to challenge Sinn Fein. Do not make exclusive something that belongs to all of us. Mervyn Gibson, please do not just casually, without any sort of struggle, throw away part of the identity of us all. You speak a lot about respecting identity but seem to dismiss this vital part of it way too easily.

On January 10th 2020 Northern Ireland got a new start. As the Local Assembly meets there will be many battles ahead. Language rights will continue to be contentious and will need to be solved. Could one way forward be to see the lessons shining like beacon from the funeral service of Graham Maule. Three languages blurred into a gifted wordsmith’s obituary. Can we not find a similar beauty in the identity of our wonderful and wounded place?

STORMONT IS BACK - MY PERSONAL RESPONSE

My phone pinged.

Then it rang.

Before I answered it I knew.

“So do we have a local government”?

“We do!”

“Yeah”

I punched the air

Like a goal

Oh not like that Agueroooo goal by any means

But a goal 

That seemed for us

Not against us.

My spirit lightened.

 

So politicians, I thank you.

 

Oh there will be those who will be cynical

Who will sneer at you

Who will be glass half empty 

Or even throwing it all over the table.

There will be those who will be negative

Who will concentrate on the last three years

Or drag up the negatives in the years before that.

 

I am refusing to look back

Yes, let us learn from it

But let us push forward

 

I am going to vote

Not by way of old nurtured intuitive colour codes 

Or in a reactionary opposite of that

No, I commit to deal with my sectarianism

And be alert to the danger of inverted sectarianism 

To vote for the best politician

The one who will work for the common good of all.

 

I will pray for you all

I will be here to help in any way I can

I will be on call to listen if you need me

I will be there to provoke even when you don’t want me

I will be bringing before you

A book that I believe in

A book that I believe to be the word of God

A book that even if you don’t believe it is the word of God

I believe can help us all

It has wisdom on new beginnings

It is strong in envisioning the future

It dreams of turning saracens into surgical equipment

It encourages the love of enemies

It is angry at injustice

It is compassionate towards the hungry, homeless and prisoner

It is good on humility

Self critique

And redemption.

 

So, thank you for this new dawn

We beg you to make sure that it not a false one

Do not take us back to the night

Lead us forward into a brighter day for all.

 

I commit myself 

To pray 

And live 

And contribute

To put my shoulder to the task

Of building a country of grace.

IF ALL I WAS, WAS PROD... A REFLECTION ON OUR CARICATURES

Context is a powerful thing in how we see and hear art. I remember watching the fabulous BBC TV documentary 14 Days about that awful time in our recent Northern Irish history, March 1988, and Fr Alec Reid’s efforts at peace. I thought that if we watched that in a Church it could become a powerful sermon. So we did and it did!

It was the context of Mavis Staples singing her song If All I Was Was Black, on Jools Holland’s BBC Hootenanny on New Year’s Eve 2018 that opened up its potency for us here in Northern Ireland. In that hour that straddles the old year and the new one. My soul was in a place of hopeful imagining. I was praying that those bells would wring out the tears and fears of the past year and bring in hopeful imagining for the year to come.

Mavis Staples is the Queen of Gospel and the Blues. She is 80 years old and with her father Pops and siblings The Staple Singers she has been peacefully fighting against racism in her songs for 60 years.

If All I Was Was Black is the title track from Mavis's record on which Jeff Tweedy the front man in Wilco, wrote or co-wrote all eleven songs. This one is a co-write with Mavis and speaks powerfully own into the race crisis going on in America.

In my New Year sensitive soul space, the song picked me up and sent me hurtling into the prejudices and hatred that continues to plague us here at home. Mavis's racism is our sectarianism; if the cap fits we need to wear it. Mavis is asking to be humanised rather than that one dimensional caricatures we hurt each other with.

 

“If all I was was black

Don't you wanna know me more than that

 

All the love I give (Got love to give)

I've got natural gifts (Got natural gifts)

Got a perspective (Got a perspective)

Might make your shift (The way you look at it)”

 

So If All I Was Was Prod… or All I Was Was Catholic. It wouldn’t be as poetic but you get my point. Can our new year resolution in 2020 be to see past the surface of our sectarianism. The fellow citizens who we nearly demonise because they are “the other”. Let us find each others gifts, perspectives and make a shift.

The 4 Corners Festival that starts on January 31st and runs through to February 9th will help us in the task. The Festival will help us get out of our apartheid corners and see each other in another light… more than Protestant… more than Catholic. Re-humanised in all our unique wonder.

Mavis takes us out of the song with a call to that which rises above our dehumanising. Love: -

"And it's time for more to love, ooh
Oh, it's time, it's time, for more love"

Love? Yes, on peace and love I am with another singer Nick Lowe when he asks, "What's so funny about peace and love and understanding?" It is always baffled me! Sing it Mavis! Preach it sister!

CONSIDERING CONSIDERING GRACE - PRESBYTERIANS AND THE TROUBLES

I have been critical of my denominations contribution to reconciliation both during the Troubles and in the years since the Good Friday Agreement. So, it surprised me that the first thing that I experienced reading Considering Grace was an utter respect for fellow Presbyterian ministers. 

This book is based on over 120 interviews conducted by Gladys Ganiel and Jamie Yohanis. The vast majority are with Presbyterians though they do cover also some who have left the Presbyterian Church and some critical friends.  

They are careful with their categories for interview - ministers, victims, security forces, emergency responders and politicians just some of them. A missing category is the post Good Friday Agreement generation. We need to hear what they think of the legacy we left them to grow up in.

The first chapter is ministers and they impacted me most. I suddenly realised that there were indeed three Irelands during the Troubles; the north, the south and the border. In those border areas ministers were burying members of their congregations murdered by the IRA on a regular basis. They were often first on the scene. They were often those who told loved ones the horrible news. Sometimes two or three from the one family were killed. Respect.

Moving from there to the stories of the victims and this is not at all an easy bedtime read. The victims reminded me how brutally awful our conflict was. Victims also give a range of opinions on forgiveness. I believe Jesus is clear on forgiveness but sensitivity to the deep hurt with which some have to practice it needs a careful and sensitive listening.

Right across the interviews the Church certainly made some positive contributions to a society being torn apart by bombs and bullets. The pastoral care of victims, security forces, first responders and health care workers was remarkable. 

However, the cataloguing of such a wide range of people also drags out much to critique. Again, respect to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) to be prepared to open itself such criticism and hopefully listen to it.

A recurring theme, it seemed page after page, was the bullying influences of Rev Dr Ian Paisley on the denomination, making ministers frightened of reaching out to Catholic neighbours or be involved in peace making at all. Some involved in community work complained that they never met the local Presbyterian minister and others point out that there was a lot of sermonising about a lot of things apart from what was actually going on. 

Some clearly stated that there was “no theology of peace” and that any peace projects that PCI did do didn’t get enough time or funding. For any Church attempting to apply God’s word to their context this is an unbelievable neglect and blight.

Yet, as someone very involved in reconciliation I had to listen too. Some victims charged us with being “more interested in the ones who pulled the trigger than the ones who got the bullet”, that PCI “buried an awful lot of victims and its almost as if there’s a bit of amnesia about that”.

The book is an important document in a country where we are wrestling to deal with the legacy of the past that we very much live in today. Some in the book fear that there is a Republican re-writing of history. This has given a voice to a Presbyterian reading.

As someone who engages in discussion with Republicans as part of my reconciliation work, going as far as speaking at a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, with my friend Fr Martin Magill, I would actually like to read a response and review of the book in Sinn Fein’s publication An Phoblacht. Republicans need to read and reflect on these stories.

I found it discouraging that so few books were printed for a denomination of 250,000. Thankfully we are into a second print. I would love to have had a copy through the letterbox of every Presbyterian in Ireland. It is vital we all read it and engage, learn from the best and worst of our denomination’s engagement, pastoral and prophetic, in the Troubles for the urgent work of reconciliation now.

This book cannot be just a process gone through. It cannot  be a feel good project that now sits on the shelf. That is what I fear happened to our Vision For Society Statement that is the end appendix of the book. This is a Biblically powerful statement of intent in our discipleship in a divided community. May its words become flesh and not just remain nice words. The devil would settle for that! 

 

WE, MEMBERS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN IRELAND, 

saved by grace
and called by God to grace-filled relationships, 

in the power of the Holy Spirit
as ambassadors of Christ’s Kingdom
in a broken and divided world;

BELIEVE that the Good News of Jesus Christ challenges and equips us
 to develop radically new attitudes and relationships with our neighbours throughout the whole of Ireland.

WE CONFESS our failure
 to live as Biblically faithful Christian peacebuilders and to promote the counter culture of Jesus
in a society where cultures clash.

ACCORDINGLY, WE AFFIRM Christian peacebuilding to be part of Christian discipleship
and reassert the Church’s calling
 to pursue a peaceful and just society in our day

WE SEEK a more reconciled community at peace with each other,
where friend and foe,
 working together for the common good, can experience healing and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Considering Grace in Story And Song at this year's 4 Corners Festival will have readings from the book, as well as a response from Seamus Mallon (a critical friend in the book) and songs from Dave Thompson. 

Feb 6th at 7.30pm, St John’s Parish Church, 444 Falls Road, Belfast, BT12 6EW

book on the website https://4cornersfestival.com

ALLISON MOORER: BLOOD - A MEMOIR

You are 14 years of age. You hear gunshots in your front garden and know in your heart that your dad has shot your mum and himself. That is quite a story to carry with you. 

Now in her late 40s Allison Moorer has at last told that story and in doing so tried to come to terms with it.

I have been a Moorer fan since the late 90s. I knew she was Shelby Lynne’s sister and was aware of their album together Not Dark Yet. I had no idea about her parents. 

The news had me wanting to listen to all of Moorer’s music from a different perspective but before I do here is a book and an album that specifically deal with the tragedy.

This is not an autobiography. It doesn’t tell you how Moorer got a record deal, anything about her career or her music, marriages to Steve Earle, a while back, and currently Hayes Carll. The latter appears only as H and the former as father to Moorer’s son John Henry.

Moorer’s intentions in this book (and the record) are focused. That moment on August 12 1986. Why did it happen? How? How does she come to terms with it, live with it, move on from it. Can she forgive her dad?

It is an intense read and listen. No surprise there but it is never as dark as it might be. As she looks into this horrible deed she is always looking for lessons. She doesn’t paint a pretty picture of her dad or her parents marriage but she gives them humanity and always seems to have their best interests at the heart of her work.

The writing is fascinating. Yes there is a linear memoir but it is interspersed with short thoughts on photographs, a hat, a ring briefcases, recorded songs, lyrics… even her parents’ death records.

Allison Moorer draws you in. She paints scenes with words. She takes you to Alabama. You feel that you know here family circle and it is wide! 

I then found her story digging deep into my own psyche, interrogating my own legacy from my parents and wondering how I can create something in the space that Moorer suggests exists between the two DNA legacies that they deal us.

Moorer is somehow trying to look behind this moment of bloody violence and ask what went off and when in her dad’s life and parents marriage. 

As a pastor I have never been satisfied with an incident. I am always asking for reasons, for the cause. It is in that investigation that I think we can find sympathy, grace, and maybe even empathy and forgiveness. 

That is what Moorer is doing here. The birth of her son and the bloodlines running through heighten such interrogations and Moorer seems to find resolution. 

This is a vulnerable and raw but artistic and articulate read. It is not for the faint hearted and would be wasted on a reader unwilling to turn Moorer’s objective tale into a subjective study of self.

THE NEXT RIGHT THING - A LESSON FOR DARK PLACES IN FROZEN 2

I have a friend who found himself in a dark place. His daughter was very ill. During a hospital stay they got an afternoon at the movies. Frozen 2. Wasn’t my friend’s idea of a favourite film. Yet, he shared with me a profound moment that had spoken directly to him.

In the film, Anna is in very dark spot. Olaf is dying in Anna’s arms. It seems that she has now lost Olaf and her sister Elsa. She feels that she has no reason to go on. 

This is very dark for a Disney movie. Yet, we need to remember that all those old nursery rhymes were about dark places. Ring A Ring Of Roses has been associated with the Great Plague! 

Songs or films might be the way for children to come to terms with loss and life’s difficult realties. I am hearing from families of young children how many tears were shed in this particular scene of Frozen 2.

All of course is not lost in Frozen 2. The words of Pabbie the troll comes to Anna:

 

This grief has a gravity

It pulls me down

But a tiny voice whispers in my mind

"You are lost, hope is gone

But you must go on

And do the next right thing”

 

These are heavy lyrics for a Children’s movie soundtrack. They are what Leonard Cohen would call the crack by which the light gets in. Anna listens to the whisper. She realises that “the next right thing” is all that she can do.

This is a clue for us all.

A look across the Scriptures and we find people who did the next right thing in their darkness. In the Old Testament the Israelites often found themselves in political darkness or exile. In those times God called them to do do the right things as he loved them back to where they should be. 

In the New Testament some found darkness forced on them. Zechariah struck blind until he called his son John. St Paul also struck blind and fasted and prayed until Ananias visited him. In another situation Paul and Silas in chains in a prison. The next right thing of praising God changed everything around them.

For “Do the next right thing” read Jesus words, “Follow me”. Serving others. Loving neighbour and enemy. Reaching out to the least of these. It is finding God in the dark. In some ways doing the next right thing is actually throwing an arc of light across the dark.

Back to my friend who was moved by Frozen 2. He told me that the scene and song about the next right move reminded him of an incident many years before. He had had a particular heartbreaking moment. 

On the way home he came across a man whose car had broken down. In the darkness of his own life my friend did the next right thing that appeared in his vision. He helped the man start his car.  He continued home a little lighter of heart.

Whatever the dark, may we all hear those lines. Hope lies within:

 

"You are lost, hope is gone

But you must go on

And do the next right thing”.

TOMORROW IN FITZROY - 5.1.2020

Tomorrow in Fitzroy (11am) we will be looking at beginnings. Marinating in John's literary prologue to his Gospel account of the life of Jesus we will see what to base beginnings on. Then I will with a pastor's heart attempt to prepare us for another year with some passion, compassion and reality. Expect a few of the Stockman Bingo phrases to appear - BEING WITH, THE NEXT STEP, CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHISPER... and the songs in Frozen 2 will help us along!

In the evening (7pm) we will have the next in our How to Read the Bible Series. Cindy Brown from Belfast Bible College will set us in the context of First and Second Chronicles. She's a clear, articulate teacher. It will be a very helpful evening.