SOUL SURMISE

HERE COMES THE SUN - THE BEATLES

On our one permissible escape from the house today, we went as usual to walk Jed around Barnett's Demense. It wasn't us usual though. The sky was blue and even more intriguing was that the sun felt warm! There is one particular 30 metre hill that is worth a 3 mile walk in fitness and at the top I was feeling my body sweat... and I wasn't wearing a coat for the first time since about October.

The strong hint of spring brought a smile to my face and immediately George Harrison’s voice was in my ear... “Here Comes The Sun... little darling...” It is for me the ultimate celebration of sunshine. Harrison's guitar seems vibrant with goodness.

Harrison wrote it at a time in rock history when things were far from sunny. Just two years after they sang ‘All You Need Is Love’, the Beatles were breaking up. It was while Harrison was escaping the managerial backbiting that he found himself in Eric Clapton’s garden, and with the sun shining he found some hopefulness. “It’s been a long cold lonely winter but here comes the sun”.

Winter is about discontent and we living through a metaphorical winter right now. Summer is where we would rather be. We all need songs of hope. We all need hope. It is easy to be gloomy in these Coronavirus days. Listening to the news and rising death tolls across the world it can be difficult to look ahead with any sense of sunny-ness.

My faith gives me an alternative. I look back to a long heritage and find myself part of God's story full of liberation, redemption and purpose. And the Jesus of the story speaks into the here and now with another way to navigate this rocky terrain, looking ahead with the hope of a better future.

Faith in Jesus is not just some ‘pie in the sky when we die’ hope, but a belief in a divine presence that brings strength, grace and wisdom to change what is into what could be. As American activist Jim Wallis describes it, hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and watching the evidence change. That might be exactly how George Harrison felt when he wrote Here Comes The Sun!

 

On our one permissible escape from the house today, we went as usual to walk Jed around Barnett's Demense. It wasn't us usual though. The sky was blue and even more intriguing was that the sun felt warm! There is one particular 30 metre hill that is worth a 3 mile walk in fitness and at the top I was feeling my body sweat... and I wasn't wearing a coat for the first time since about October.

The strong hint of spring brought a smile to my face and immediately George Harrison’s voice was in my ear... “Here Comes The Sun... little darling...” It is for me the ultimate celebration of sunshine. Harrison's guitar seems vibrant with goodness.

Harrison wrote it at a time in rock history when things were far from sunny. Just two years after they sang ‘All You Need Is Love’, the Beatles were breaking up. It was while Harrison was escaping the managerial backbiting that he found himself in Eric Clapton’s garden, and with the sun shining he found some hopefulness. “It’s been a long cold lonely winter but here comes the sun”.

Winter is about discontent and we living through a metaphorical winter right now. Summer is where we would rather be. We all need songs of hope. We all need hope. It is easy to be gloomy in these Coronavirus days. Listening to the news and rising death tolls across the world it can be difficult to look ahead with any sense of sunny-ness.

My faith gives me an alternative. I look back to a long heritage and find myself part of God's story full of liberation, redemption and purpose. And the Jesus of the story speaks into the here and now with another way to navigate this rocky terrain, looking ahead with the hope of a better future.

Faith in Jesus is not just some ‘pie in the sky when we die’ hope, but a belief in a divine presence that brings strength, grace and wisdom to change what is into what could be. As American activist Jim Wallis describes it, hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and watching the evidence change. That might be exactly how George Harrison felt when he wrote Here Comes The Sun!

STOCKI'S ST. PATRICK'S DAY PLAYLIST 2020

(St. Patrick's Day 2020... never been anything like it... Coronavirus has quietened the world... so here's what I have been listening to as I celebrate my Irishness... be it that you will notice that it leans towards ny Northern Irishness)

 

I THINK OF HOME - SNOW PATROL

(from Reworked)

 

NORTHLAND - BOBBY SPEERS

(from Northland)

 

LAST TRAIN TO LIMERICK - JULES MAXWELL

(from Songs From The Cultural Backwater)

 

SHIPYARDS FROM BELFAST - ULAID & DUKE SPECIAL

(from A Note Let Go)

 

YOU I KNOW - RUNABAY

(from Between the Lines)

 

IN A HEARTBEAT - RYAN MCMULLAN

(single)

 

I’M STILL ALIVE (live) - DAVID C CLEMENTS

(from The Sound Of The Forest Choir (live))

 

TALK (single edit) - TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

(single)

 

KNOCK ME OFF MY FEET - SOAK

(from Grim Town)

 

DOWN DAYS - ROE

(single)

 

SUGAR ISLAND - THE 4 Of US

(from Sugar Island)

 

I’LL BE ALRIGHT - MALOJIAN

(from this Is Nowhere)

 

TELL THEM ALL - CIARAN LAVERY

(from Let Bad In)

 

MY ISLAND (feat. Stephen James Smith) - RYAN VEIL & ELMA ORKESTRA

(from Borders)

 

ST. PATRICK ON SLEMISH MOUNTAIN - THE ORPHAN BRIGADE

(from To The Edge Of The World)

 

MY LAGAN LOVE - THE CHIEFTAINS & LISA HANNIGAN)

(from Voice Of Ages)

 

CARRICKFERGUS - BRIAN HOUSTON

(from Songs Of My Father0

 

GREEN GLENS OF ANTRIM - BEN GLOVER

(from The Emigrant)

 

FROZEN NORTHERN SHORES - IAIN ARCHER

(from Frozen Northern Shores)

 

GOING DOWN TO BANGOR - VAN MORRISON

(from Keep Me Singing)

 

BANGOR TOWN - FOY VANCE

(from Wild Swans)

 

BELFAST - JOBY FOX

(single0

 

BELFAST (PLACE OF MY SOUL) - BURNING CODES

(single)

 

BELFAST TOWN - KAZ HAWKINS

(from Feelin’ Good)

 

SHAKE THE DUST - KATHLEEN TURNER

(from Like A Lion)

 

HUMAN - KITT PHILIPPA

(from Human)

 

SHANDY BASS - ROMANTICA

(from Shadowlands)

 

ONE FOR THE BLACK BOX - ANTHONY TONER

(from Our Lady of The Wind And Rain)

 

HOMEWARD BOUND - STREET LIGHTS

(single)

 

COME, COME AWAY - STEVENSON AND SAMUEL

(from Gracenotes)

MASQUERADE (SAM HILL JR) - FOR JANICE'S BIRTHDAY

A song for Janice's birthday. It is written and performed by Sam Hill Jr but from a lyric of mine. Sam and I went on to make an entire album - Grace Notes under the name Stevenson and Samuel.

My original lyric 73a Penwith Road is a love song for Janice when we going out together. She was living in London and the lyrics are based on pictures on the walls of Janice's flat and what I watched her do in love and hospitality.

Sam sang it with the help of Iain Archer, Miriam Kaufmann, Helen Killick and a Derryvolgie Student Choir as Janice came up the aisle at our wedding.

Here's the original poem. Happy birthday wonderful woman!

 

73A PENWITH ROAD

 

Where there's mist upon the lake

And painted African faces

Romantics in a field of poppies

And badgers on a thousand places

Smell the sweetness of her laughter

Of flowers on the window sill

Homemade cooking in the kitchen

Always much more than your fill

In the midst of all these changes

Memories time cannot erode

My heart discovered love right here

73A Penwith Road.

 

Where the arms of love are open

Hearts wider than the sky

Touching those who need a touch

Without ever asking why

Here the dance of her laughter

See the radiant sunshine smile

If you're pounded by the weary world

Sit down and rest a while

Feel the strength of gentleness

Come take your heavy load

I fly with freedom in my soul

73A Penrith Road.

 

 

Check out more Sam Hill Jr work here - https://samhilljr.co.uk

 

 

 

PARTICLES OF LIGHT...

photo: Philip McCrea

 

LISTEN to Bruce Cockburn's Hills Of Morning 

There are phrase that the preacher uses that stick, that are repeated, that can become imbedded in lives and communities. Just a few words that can carry a sermon or a theological idea or a mission statement into people’s minds before hopefully seeping into their hearts and souls and then out into their lives and actions. “Particles of light across the city” has become one of many such phrases in Fitzroy.

I stole it as I often do from a song. My very favourite Bruce Cockburn record is Dancing In The Dragon’s Jaw. It is a spiritually potent album, vivid in literary images, influenced by the Charles Williams books that Cockburn was reading at the time. For years I had the chorus of one of that album’s songs, Hills Of Morning, on a photograph of the Giants Causeway up on my study wall.

“Let me be a little of your breath
Moving over the face of the deep
I want to be a particle of your light
Flowing over the hills of morning”

These words conjure the mystery of how us humans somehow get the privilege of merging with God in God’s tangible presence in the world. It is a prayer to be involved in God’s breath, in God’s light, in God’s mission to make the world better than the world is. 

Of course we know Jesus is the light of the world but Matthew 5 turns the direction back to us:

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Back in September 2010 I titled a sermon on Matthew 5 “Particles Of Light…” and it has stuck. As well as attempting to be missional where we are located, on University Street in Belfast, we are aware that as a community we are vocationally scattered across the entire city and indeed beyond. Our members work in very influential places, effecting social change and caring for many people who are not finding themselves cared for elsewhere.

A friend of mine who now works for a Christian development organisation told me once that when he was a probation officer no one asked him how he was bringing the Kingdom but that now that he is working for a “Christian” organisation lots of people ask him. 

I don’t believe you have to be working for a Christian organisation to bring the Kingdom. We can, and indeed must, be “particles of light” scattered across the city, bringing the thinking, voice, touch, attitude and ultimately love of God wherever we are and whoever we are with. Those particles of light are somehow partners with God making up the bigger light. I guess that is why Jesus called himself the Light of the world and then at another time told the disciples that they were the Light of the world. 

Cockburn’s lyric is powerful prayer seeking God that we might be part of the force that transforms the world.

“Let me be a little of your breath
Moving over the face of the deep
I want to be a particle of your light
Flowing over the hills of morning”

THE ISLAND - 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL, 2 VERSIONS, 2 SIDES OF BELFAST - SONG OF PEACE

Not once but twice at this year’s 4 Corners Festival we were called to reflect on Paul Brady’s powerful peace anthem, The Island. 

Firstly, Jim Deeds placed a raw unrehearsed version when Tommy Sands had got the date wrong and was on his way to Sydenham Methodist during the actual gig. In the shadow of the Cranes the line “Whitewashing slogans on the shipyard walls” was never so perfectly placed. Jim opened a window on the soul.

Exactly a week later Ken Haddock was at it again. In Fitzroy not too far from the Belfast Markets area this time it was “They’re raising banners over by the markets” that fitted the space. Ken is one of our very best interpreter of songs and in an event entitled Belfast Song Book he brought a more deliberate take. He eked out the sadness, the love and the hopeful poignancy.

Both versions were great contributions to a Festival trying to bring Belfast together. Jim Deeds if from The Falls Road and understands Ken Haddock’s admission, in Fitzroy, that growing up on the Shankill Road he didn’t know anyone from “the other side” until his late teens.

That two singers brought up in two different sides of the city should choose to sing this same song should not be lost on us. Brady was living in Dublin but had been born in Strabane. He was a central figure in the Irish folk scene for almost a decade first with Planxty then with Andy Irvine before turning his hand to mainstream songwriting in 1981. His Irishness was part of his songwriting DNA particularly on the poignant Nothing But The Same Old Story.

Others from that scene tended to lean towards supporting the Republican struggle. Most notably Christy Moore who made a whole record about the H Block Hunger Strikes. Moore at the time ridiculed Brady’s song but later toned down his rhetoric.

Brady saw the criticism coming and dealt with it:

 

“Now I know us plain folks don't see all the story.
And I know this peace and love's just copping out.
And I guess these young boys dying in the ditches.
Is just what being free is all about.
And how this twisted wreckage down on main street.
Will bring us all together in the end.
And we'll go marching down the road to freedom....
Freedom...”

 

When Brady released The Island brought this song out during the 80s Northern Ireland was right up to its bloody neck in violence. Murders were common place and hope for peace was a long way off. 

The Island is a sad song. A lament, if you like. He does it by doing what Damian Gorman taught us about poetry at another 4 Corners Festival event. Brady takes The Troubles in one hand and a love song in the other and blends them together.

It is as good a song of peace that has ever been written. 

5 SONGS ABOUT KINDNESS - AS PROTESTS TO THE CRUELTY SUFFERED BY CAROLINE FLACK

A Be Kind hashtag posted by Caroline Flack just weeks before her tragic suicide has become the protest statement against the cruel world of the media and social media that is destroying the soul of our society and individuals within it.

It would be a good hashtag to promote. Two years ago my music playlists was bombard by the word and the idea.

It all started in Glenarm. Well, a singer from Glenarm anyway. The Antrim east coast’s most successful singer Ben Glover has a song on his brilliant new record Shorebound called Kindness:

“May you know kindness 

May kindness know you”

It is beautiful, like a prayer. 

Then I turned south, down the coast. Frank Turner’s Be More Kind album features 4 co-writes with Bangor’s Grammy nominated Iain Archer. Though Iain was not involved in the title track, that song is called Be More Kind! 

 

“In a world that has decided

That it's going to lose its mind

Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind”

 

Staying with Iain Archer, an actual co-write of his, released the same week, by the band Peace, Kindness is The New Rock N Roll. With a rock strut they sing: 

 

“Kindness is new rock and roll

Kindness is the climax of the soul

It's all full of love bursting from the seams

So lets make kindness the new rock and roll”

 

That was not all. I blogged these lyrics and someone pointed out that I missed another quotation from an album I had just reviewed at the time. The title track of Courtney Marie Andrew’s superb record suggested kindness more powerful than wealth:

 

Fortune might buy you diamonds, all shiny and new

But it can't buy you happiness, or love that is true

And if your money runs out, and your good looks fade

May your kindness remain

 

Finally, Ray Lamontagne’s title track Part of the Light sees kindness as a light in the world:

 

When kindness is the greatest gift that one can share

Why choose hate to subjugate your fellow man

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know

 

I want to be a part of the light

Please let me be a part of the light

I want to be a part of the light

 

Oh that these songs suggest that kindness is “the start of the latest style” to quote Joni Mitchell. 

I would suggest that there is a Biblical argument for kindness being part of the light as Lamontagne sings. There it is in the fruit of the Holy Spirit as the apostle Paul lists them in Galatians 5… “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” 

How does kindness stand out in that list? Well, a quote by a Bible scholar caught my eye, “It is the grace which pervades the whole nature, mellowing all which would be harsh and austere.” More of that. 

Caroline Flack’s Be Kind hashtag is a posture in our inner souls that changes all our relationships towards love. Like God, sending Jesus to save the world. Out of the posture of his deep rooted kindness, God loved us enough to act towards us in a way that would heal our brokenness. 

Back to Lamontagne for the altar call -

 

“When kindness is the greatest gift that one can share

Why choose hate to subjugate your fellow man?”

 

Sing it guys. Preach it. Amen! Let’s live the Caroline Flack hashtag and somehow prevent another Caroline Flack like headline. #bekind

SNOW PATROL - TAKE BACK THE CITY

“It’s a mess

It’s a start

It’s a flawed work of art

Your city, your call

Every crack, every wall”

 

At the launch of the 2016 4 Corners Festival, Hannah McPhillimy took Snow Patrol’s Take Back The City in an original way, keyboard led, reshaping chords and revealing other angles into the anthem that was. She made us feel old that it was all over the radio when she was at school!

Snow Patrol have also reworked Take Back The City since Hannah’s version back in 2016. Last year’s Reworked album brings a yearning poignancy to the song. Every time they sing “I love this city tonight/I love this city always” I realise that I do!

When Take Back The City was the lead off single on Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns it was is a bit of a departure. Up until then Gary Lightbody was writing about romance, mostly the melancholy side. In a Q magazine, at the time of the single’s release, Lightbody explained that the song is about his home city of Belfast which he has learned to fall in love with all over again. When Lightbody left for University in Dundee at the beginning of the nineties Belfast was a besieged city. 

There were a couple of years when every road into the city had police checks and people were being shot almost daily. By the time Lightbody returned, around 2005, the city had had a decade without bombs and bullets; it was a place revived with new shopping centres, city centre bars and clubs and music venues big enough for Snow Patrol’s success. Just like its returning sons, Belfast is thriving!

Though the negative side of Northern Ireland’s conflict haunts Take Back The City it is a song about loving the city, enjoying the city and reshaping the city. Lightbody sings about the broken record of entrenched political sectarianism and about the futility of picking sides in a historical fight he doesn’t understand. 

The main thrust of Lightbody’s ode to home though is about sucking the marrow out of the city, sometimes admitting to partying too much. Where I have personally been inspired is in the verse:

 

“God knows you put your life into its hands 

And it's both cradled you and crushed 

But now it's time to make your own demands.”

 

I am sure Gary Lightbody does not have the same missional intent as those of us who organised the 4 Corners Festival but this is a very interesting take on our relationship with our home cities, towns or villages. 

The city shapes us, cradles and crushes us into the adults we become but after that we are the shapers of the city. Our task as the Churches is to engage with our city as “World Formative Christians” to take a phrase from theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff.  

Since he released Take Back The City in 2016 Gary Lightbody has put his money and time where his mouth was. Whether encouraging young artists, or doing In Conversations like the one he is doing with me at 4 Corners Festival, he has contributed hugely to this mess, this start, this flawed work of art. Every time I hear it I want to get up and go and build a city of grace!

DEACON BLUE'S CITY OF LOVE, THE HOLY CITY AND BUILDING A CITY OF GRACE

On this blog, in review after review of Deacon Blue in concert I have written about the positivity in their music. Even just looking at their recent releases songs like Believers, Bethlehem Begins or Stars all have me jumping off my chair to change the world in whatever ways I can. Deacon Blue are fuel for transformation.

How utterly intrigued I was with the first single and title track of their soon to be released fourth studio record since 2012 - City Of Love.

About to embark on the 4 Corners Festival here in Belfast with the 2020 them of Building a City of Grace, you can see why. City of Love is like a soundtrack for the Festival. 

As always with Deacon Blue there is no pie and the sky optimism. The song starts with realism. Our singer is tired of carrying his burden. He is near dragging it along. It is cold outside and in and he is wondering about giving up.

 

Lost the will for keeping on

Just as the winter is dragging

What can I do with all of this?

Where can I put what I'm carrying?

 

We carry some baggage here in Belfast. We have a wonderful but wounded city. As Jenna Silverman Wilson put it in a poem at the closing night of one of our previous festivals, we don’t so much have scars as open wounds.

It would be easy to feel the drag, to almost give up. How many stutters and starts have we had in this 25 year old peace process. When we started planning this year’s Festival the planning committee had the gloom of this first verse. Then… hope kicked in. Just a glimmer. 

We took a different posture. What if we could find a steely will to keep going. No matter what the circumstances around us and no matter what the naysayers in their fundamentalist blogs said about us? What if we could make our contribution?

 

If you've got the will you've got to keep on going

No matter what the world is saying

No one can stop you, not until

You reach the end and lay down your burden

 

That last line to verse 2 adds a layer to this seemingly simple Deacon Blue lyric. There is an eschatological aspect to what Ricky Ross is singing here. There is a Biblical image of laying down our burdens on the other side of death. 

At this stage of the song my mind shifts between Ricky’s city of Glasgow, my city of Belfast and the Holy City of Revelation 21. In that Holy City we will have left our burdens down, all that we were carrying will be redeemed.

All that remains is love. At the end of that beautiful poem that the apostle Paul writes about love in 1 Corinthians 13, he concludes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love. All that remains.

Deacon Blue’s City of Love is a song filled to over flowing with hope of another day, another city, another way to live. The belief in that hoped for city might just be what we need to help us not give up in the broken, wounded cities that we are currently living in. Let us find the will. Let us contribute. Let us build a city of grace!

 

All that remains is the city of love

All that remains is the city of love

The city of love.

 

Find out about 4 Corners Festival 2020 here...https://4cornersfestival.com

LET ME BE A VESSEL FOR YOUR GRACE - A PIERCE PETTIS PRAYER

I wonder if Pierce Pettis is the songwriter that I have used most in devotional worship. Particularly in Fitzroy communion services. I have been using God Believes In You and You Did That For Me for some years. On Sunday I added another.

Instrument is the closing song on Pierce’s first record in ten years - Father’s Son. It is that kind of work that we are well used to from the Alabama songwriter, guitarist and humble man of faith. These are literary songs on fascinating subjects with exquisite performances from Doug Lancio on guitar and Stuart Duncan on fiddle. 

The last three songs are perhaps the most potently spiritual. More is about mortality, co-written with one of the most respected writers in Christian music today, Andrew Peterson.

Look Over Your Shoulder is the obligatory Mark Heard cover on the new record. Heard produced Pettis’s debut and then passed away far too young. Pettis was so influenced by Heard that he committed to putting a Heard song on every album he would make. Look Over Your Shoulder is one of those subtle, deep and mysterious songs of dense theology that Mark Heard seems prolific in.

Instrument though is a special kind of song. At least for me. Music is my spiritual medium. Songs speak to me and I use them to reflect, to listen, to pray and to commit. 

Pierce has never worked in the Christian music industry but the spiritual depth of his work is second to none. 

Instrument is a grab you by the throat of your spiritual pilgrimage in the gentlest of ways. 

 

Let me be an instrument of your peace

Let me be a tool in your hand

Crooked and warped though I might be

Let me do some good here while I can

 

If I still had my radio show this song would blend beautifully into the Prayer of St. Francis, Make A Channel of Your Peace perhaps the Sinead O’Connor version or Sarah McLachlan’s. They very obviously link and Pierce dedicates the song to Denis Grady a secular member of the Order Of St Francis who has a penchant for music.

Denis Grady says of the prayer, “We say the Prayer of St. Francis daily—it’s really challenging when difficulties come up on our path. ‘Where there is hatred, let me sow love.’ I believe this is impossible for one to do alone, but with God it is possible.”

You can see where Pierce would get inspired. His song goes on:

 

Let me be a vessel for your grace

Let me the first one to forgive

Though the world may curse me to my face

Let me learn to bear it like you did

 

This is a deep study in following Jesus in five short verses. It has a wonderful altar call ending:

 

Make me faithful, make me grateful

Make me useful in this life

All this living without giving

Give me one more chance to try

 

It is potent stuff! What I love about Pierce’s songs is that the depth of his spirituality is never ethereal but always plugged into every day practice of ordinary living. 

Instrument will be a song that I will use regularly in personal devotionals and also in Fitzroy in communal worship. It is a spiritual classic both as song and as Christian teaching. A rarity in its creation. Let us pray that it doesn’t not end up rare in its use.  

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!