SOUL SURMISE

STOCKI ON THE RADIO FOR WEEKS AND WEEKS

 

I am always shyly pleased when someone asks if I am still on the radio or asks when I am next on Thought For The Day. When I am sitting in front of the microphone, for Pause for Thought all on my very own, or in these Covid days in my own front room I wonder if anyone is actually listening at all. So, when people ask, it is nice.

So, for those who ask, I am delighted to let you know that I will be on the radio almost once a week the whole way through to March!

The first batch is on BBC Radio Ulster. I will be doing Thought For The Day around 7.20am every Thursday morning in January - 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th.

Then after a week off I will start a series of four Wednesdays Pause For Thoughts on BBC Radio 2 at 5.45am - 9th, 16th, 23rd and March 2nd.

Thought For The Day and Pause For Thought have different approaches. Radio 2 give us a theme. The theme lasts all week and each contributor brings their own slant. Radio Ulster is a free for all. Choose your own theme.

The truth is that when I am doing Thought For The Day I so wish I had a theme to work within, to spark an idea. Then when I am on Pause For Thought I am thinking how difficult this theme is and how I wish it was free for all! Go figure?! Maybe there is a Thought For The Day in that.

Anyway, we start in the morning. A Bob Geldof thought on commitment and providence and how I have seen it work itself out in 4 Corners Festival.

If you are up early...

MARTIN & STEVE'S BIG 60TH BIRTHDAY FUND RAISE - THE TOTAL IS IN... and THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Fr Martin Magill and I are absolutely thrilled with todays big announcement in the Belfast Telegraph of the total donated to our BIG 60TH BIRTHDAY FUND RAISE FOR EMBRACE NI... drum roll... not £1000 or £3000, not even £5000 or £7000 BUT £9,050!!!!

We are over the moon and a little overwhelmed. I'll be honest. Although in our first press releases we spoke about reaching £1000 I would have been disappointed with anything less than £3,500 BUT to reach £9000 is way beyond our wildest dreams. 

When I think of life's achievements, as you do when you reach 60, this has to be way up there with some of the best of mine. To be able to use our birthdays to raise money for the emergency fund of Embrace NI at a time when we will be expecting Afghanistan Refugees to arrive with us here in Northern Ireland. I cannot imagine doing anything more constructive with a birthday or the rest of my life for that matter!

Can I first thank Martin for the idea. He suggested it to me in a phone call in late July and in August we had a long walk around Ballycastle Forest pondering how and who to? We did a lot of research and talked to a lot of people before we arrived at Embrace NI. 

We wanted what we thought would be our small contribution to make a difference. We wanted to fund raise for an organisation not getting lots of funding from elsewhere. We wanted it to have a Jesus centred ethos that we live by. We wanted it to be cross denominational. We wanted it to be making a real difference in our world, but locally. 

We thank Embrace for coming on board and their admin Tracey for giving us our weekly total as kept on rising.

We thank the local press. All the papers wrote articles. BBC Radio Ulster had us in. Claire McNeilly at the Belfast Telegraph gave us a lot of space and so we made sure that it was her who first declared the total in today's paper.

Most of all we want to thank everybody who contributed. As a result of the way the money was donated we cannot get access to your names. So it will have to be one big general thank you. So whoever you are and why ever you gave to a Catholic Priest and Presbyterian minister for our BIG 60th BIRTHDAY FUND RAISE... THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. 

Don't leave it there. Check out Embrace NI and watch how the money raised will be used to help refugees in these next days, months and years.

 

READ ABOUT EMBRACE NI DONATIONS

WHY FR MARTIN AND I CHOSE GUARD YOUR HEART ON BOOK WEEK

Fr Martin Magill and I were so excited to be asked to share a book that we both liked on BBC NI's Book Week series Read All About It.

We chose Sue Divin's book Guard Your Heart. 

I need to be honest and say that the real plugger of this book is my friend, and fellow PCI minister, Tony Davidson. I believe that Sue grew up in First Armagh where Tony is the minister. They did an event with Sue at the launch of the book and Tony was very keen to get me to read it.

It was one of my first holiday reads and I immediately felt that Fr Martin should read it. The main reason for that was the focus on the post Good Friday Agreement generation. Martin and I often consider the 18-25 age group and wonder if they are getting to make a contribution in their own future? Have we ignored them and how will that play out?

Sue Divin's book is about that... and a whole lot more besides. 

So, with both of us loving it, when the BBC invited us to contribute to Book Week, it was a no brainer which one we wanted to plug. We hope that it will raise the profile and sell a few books. Delighted that social media suggests that we already are. Then perhaps we can provoke a conversation about when the Aidans and Ionas can decide their own futures instead of us killing their future they way we did our past.

Also... Martin's last line... "it would make a great movie". Oh it would.

WATCH MARTIN AND I DISCUSS GUARD YOUR HEART HERE

 

 

MY 60th BIRTHDAY - WONDERFUL DAY

Much as I loved the surprise parties thrown for my 40th and 50th birthdays I had my family under strict orders that I didn't want big party for my 60th. 

It wasn't that I wanted to hide the fact that I was 60. Fr Martin Magill and I have heralded our landmark birthdays for a month, trying to raise money for Embrace NI. 

No, I have become more and more introverted through my 50s. I am not sure what to do with crowds pointing at me. Fitzroy singing “Happy Birthday’ before the service was lovely but my heart and brain go mush and I cannot fully appreciate the sentiment! 

I am happier at a good meal with a smaller number rather than short greetings with a couple of hundred.

So it was Holohans Pantry my very favourite restaurant, owned and run by good friends. We even had Eli and Bella as waiter and waitress. The food was amazing. I am a Seafood Boxty fanatic so joined by our good friends David and Rachel Quinney Mee I was in my happy place. I am always so relaxed in the Pantry.

Not that I got away without a surprise. Oh no! Dandering out at the end of the Fitzroy service someone mentioned an Ice Cream Van and I realised that they have done me again. Surprise!

Yet, a surprise that included the entire congregation, at least the 60% back after Covid, was a perfect way to celebrate. To see the children and young people enjoy a big 99 or a double one with lime sauce was a birthday thrill. Even a more mature member admitted to racing to get in line before the kids.

It was a real carnival and of course with an ice cream van and children it was not about me. I loved it. 

The whole day had started on BBC Radio Ulster. Fr Martin and I were rather honoured to have our landmark birthday recognised on Sunday Sequence and the lovely Audrey Carville reflecting on our lives.

It was good to give testimony to what has been a 10:10 ‘life in all its fulness’ and confessing no regrets but that at times I had hurt others. It was good to declare that we weren’t switching off and were getting excited about the future, particularly the 10th Anniversary of The 4 Corners Festival next February.

It was good to give a last plug to our Big 60th Birthday Fundraiser. To realise that we will have raised over £7000 for Embrace NI and the work that they do with refugees and migrants is the best present ever. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed so generously! 

An hour after that interview I was standing in Fitzroy. It is my piece of pitch. As Kevin De Bruyne has that midfield space where he can play his genius, passing a football into the path of a team mate, so I have my lectern at the front of Fitzroy.

For twelve years that has been my space. In grief, in illness and in joy that little piece of real estate has been the place where I have found my deepest gladness, my reason to be on this planet.

To be there on 10:10. on the day of my 60th birthday, was a marvellous lining up of the calendar. To share the first communion in 18 months with my congregation was going to be special anyway but even more on this particular day. 

“You know who you are with bread and wine in your hand. You are a somebody.” A twist on TV’s Tales of the Unexpected. Who we are. And then… to close… Singing…

 

And all my life You have been faithful (oh)

And all my life You have been so, so good 

With every breath that I am able

Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God (yeah)

 

As we sang I felt a perfect moment. Me and God… aligned. I am thankful, so thankful for reaching 60. For having Janice beside me, throwing surprises. For daughters ploughing their deepest gladness. For an amazingly gifted and generous congregation that allows me to be me. For a wider society that invites me to share with it whether on radio, in newspaper or occasionally TV (Martin and I will be talking about a favourite book in BBC’s Book Week… coming up soon!).

Late evening, with a wee glass, Janice and a TV thriller. In the quiet, looking back. A most wonderful birthday.

60 years. What a 10:10 life. As Van once said, “It’s too late to stop now…” I am kind of glad it is over. The rest of my life starts here! Let’s go!

MARTIN & STEVE'S BIG 60TH BIRTHDAY FUNDRAISER - UPDATE!

photo: Bernie Brown

 

So, a wee recap. Fr Martin Magill was 60 on September 13th. I have no idea what it must be like to be his age but on October 10th I will. 

We decided to exploit the currency of big birthdays to raise some currency for Embrace NI. We set a target of £1000 which we had reached almost before Martin had finished his cake.

We doubled our target to £2000 and last week had to double it again. We are still 12 days from my birthday and we are delighted to say that we have broken through £4000. 

We need to thank everybody who has donated for your generosity. We are thrilled that our birthday's could do such good. 

We have chosen Embrace NI because it is interdenominational and helps us fulfil a clear Biblical mandate to take care of the refugee. Watching the news footage from Afghanistan reminds us that all over the world people are fleeing terrible wars, oppression and poverty to find a better, safer life for their family. We are of course aware that Jesus was a refugee too. 

We see the work Embrace does, not only in its emergency response to refugees but also their role of educating and resourcing the church as being so crucial. 

We set our target again to £5000 and encourage you, if you know Martin or myself, if you have benefitted in any way from our individual ministries or our work together to help us reach that target.

DONATE TO EMBRACE NI FOR MARTIN AND STEVE'S 60th 

READ ABOUT EMBRACE NI FUNDING HERE

MARTIN & STEVE'S BIG 60TH BIRTHDAY FUNDRAISER FOR EMBRACE NI

photo: Bernie Brown

 

"Old friends

Sat on a park bench like bookends..." (Paul Simon)

 

My good friend Fr Martin Magill was 60 back on September 13th. I honestly have no idea what it must be like to be his age! In less than three weeks I will. 

We have often found it so interesting, that though not meeting until we were almost 50, our birthdays are so close together. "1961 was a great year", Martin often says.

With such BIG birthdays coming up we thought that it would be a great idea to try and use such landmarks to raise money and profile for a small local NGO.

We chose Embrace NI for its work with refugees and asylum seekers.

We set a target of £1000. We met the target by the time Fr Martin had eaten all of his cake. We doubled our target last week and have passed it again. So today we are doubling it again and announcing a new target of £4000.

So forget sending us tokens and presents. Donate to Embrace NI and check out what they can do for you, your Church and your community.

We have had an amazing decade working together. We have helped create  Belfast’s 4 Corners Festival which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in February 2020. 

We pleaded for Jesus concept of grace to be used in peacemaking at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. Both of us can be heard regularly on the radio, we have written together for various publications and we shared a Saturday column, for the first year of Coronavirus, in the Belfast Telegraph.

In 2016 we were overwhelmed when we were presented with the Community Relations Council’s Civic Leadership Award.

Martin is involved all kinds of amazing causes, particularly Stop Attacks and we all still remember his prophetic speech at Lyra McKee’s funeral, when I was fist pumping as I watched on TV.

We both feel that God has really blessed us in our friendship, our lives and vocations. We also feel that they are blessed enough with things and so the idea the BIG 60th Birthday Fundraise

We have chosen Embrace NI because it is interdenominational and helps us fulfil a clear Biblical mandate to take care of the refugee. Watching the news footage from Afghanistan reminds us that all over the world people are fleeing terrible wars, oppression and poverty to find a better, safer life for their family. We are of course aware that Jesus was a refugee too. 

We see the work Embrace does, not only in its emergency response to refugees but also their role of educating and resourcing the church as being so crucial. 

We therefore encourage you, if you know Martin, if you have benefitted in any way from our individual ministries or our work together to make a contribution to Embrace NI at the link below.

DONATE TO EMBRACE NI FOR MARTIN AND STEVE'S 60th 

READ ABOUT EMBRACE NI FUNDING HERE

 

photo: Bernie Brown

 

"Old friends

Sat on a park bench like bookends..." (Paul Simon)

 

My good friend Fr Martin Magill was 60 back on September 13th. I honestly have no idea what it must be like to be his age! In less than three weeks I will. 

We have often found it so interesting, that though not meeting until we were almost 50, our birthdays are so close together. "1961 was a great year", Martin often says.

With such BIG birthdays coming up we thought that it would be a great idea to try and use such landmarks to raise money and profile for a small local NGO.

We chose Embrace NI for its work with refugees and asylum seekers.

We set a target of £1000. We met the target by the time Fr Martin had eaten all of his cake. We doubled our target last week and have passed it again. So today we are doubling it again and announcing a new target of £4000.

So forget sending us tokens and presents. Donate to Embrace NI and check out what they can do for you, your Church and your community.

We have had an amazing decade working together. We have helped create  Belfast’s 4 Corners Festival which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in February 2020. 

We pleaded for Jesus concept of grace to be used in peacemaking at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. Both of us can be heard regularly on the radio, we have written together for various publications and we shared a Saturday column, for the first year of Coronavirus, in the Belfast Telegraph.

In 2016 we were overwhelmed when we were presented with the Community Relations Council’s Civic Leadership Award.

Martin is involved all kinds of amazing causes, particularly Stop Attacks and we all still remember his prophetic speech at Lyra McKee’s funeral, when I was fist pumping as I watched on TV.

We both feel that God has really blessed us in our friendship, our lives and vocations. We also feel that they are blessed enough with things and so the idea the BIG 60th Birthday Fundraise

We have chosen Embrace NI because it is interdenominational and helps us fulfil a clear Biblical mandate to take care of the refugee. Watching the news footage from Afghanistan reminds us that all over the world people are fleeing terrible wars, oppression and poverty to find a better, safer life for their family. We are of course aware that Jesus was a refugee too. 

We see the work Embrace does, not only in its emergency response to refugees but also their role of educating and resourcing the church as being so crucial. 

We therefore encourage you, if you know Martin, if you have benefitted in any way from our individual ministries or our work together to make a contribution to Embrace NI at the link below.

DONATE TO EMBRACE NI FOR MARTIN AND STEVE'S 60th 

READ ABOUT EMBRACE NI FUNDING HERE

STEVE AND FATHER MARTIN'S 60th BIRTHDAY FUND RAISE FOR EMBRACE NI

photo: Bernie Brown

 

In a week’s time (September 13th) my dear friend and partner in reconciliation, Fr Martin Magill, will turn 60. For the next month, as many times as I can I will say “I have no idea what it must be like to be your age.” I have a mere 27 days until I will!

We have often found it so interesting, that though not meeting until we were almost 50, our birthdays are so close together. "1961 was a great year", Martin often says.

We have had an amazing decade working together. We have helped create  Belfast’s 4 Corners Festival which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in February 2020. 

We pleaded for Jesus concept of grace to be used in peacemaking at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. Both of us can be heard regularly on the radio, we have written together for various publications and we shared a Saturday column, for the first year of Coronavirus, in the Belfast Telegraph.

In 2016 we were overwhelmed when we were presented with the Community Relations Council’s Civic Leadership Award.

Martin is involved all kinds of amazing causes, particularly Stop Attacks and we all still remember his prophetic speech at Lyra McKee’s funeral, when I was fist pumping as I watched on TV.

We both feel that God has really blessed us in our friendship, our lives and vocations. We also feel that they are blessed enough with things. So, instead of gifts to celebrate our 60th birthdays we would love it if people would give a donation to Embrace NI.

We have chosen Embrace NI because it is interdenominational and helps us fulfil a clear Biblical mandate to take care of the refugee. Watching the news footage from Afghanistan reminds us that all over the world people are fleeing terrible wars, oppression and poverty to find a better, safer life for their family. We are of course aware that Jesus was a refugee too. 

We see the work Embrace does, not only in its emergency response to refugees but also their role of educating and resourcing the church as being so crucial. 

We therefore encourage you, if you know Mar, if you have benefitted in any way from our individual ministries or our work together to make a contribution to Embrace NI at the link below.

 

DONATE TO EMBRACE NI FOR MARTIN AND STEVE'S 60th 

READ ABOUT EMBRACE NI FUNDING HERE

STOCKMAN ON BBC RADIO 4 SOUL MUSIC - DAVID BOWIE: LIFE ON MARS

The question mark at the end of David Bowie Life On Mars? I saw it. Right there on that bright orange RCA label of the 7" vinyl single that I bought when I was 11 years old. It was so clear in my mind and answered the debate as to whether my friend Pat wanted Space Oddity or Life On Mars? played at his funeral. His wife Gloria said she was sure it was the one with the question mark. I knew immediately.

So, we played Life On Mars? and the question mark was the heart of my sermon. Questions of life. Questions in the Bible.

Little did I know that it would find me talking about Life On Mars? on Radio 4 this Saturday morning. It is part of the fantastic Soul Music series; a special edition for Bowie's birthday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000r33c

THE CARRY FROM THE QUIET WATERS OF VACATION TO THE WHITE WATER RUSH OF VOCATION

I can only describe it as the carry of a river. My dad used to talk about the carry. It was up the river from my Granny's thatched cottage in Galgorm village. Every Sunday in my early teens my dad walked our dog up the River Maine to the carry. That carry is now in loads of wedding photos. It is on that part of the river by the luxurious Galgorm Spa and Golf Resort. 

The carry. It is where the river speeds up as it goes down over the rocks to a lower level. It is rushing, gushing, fast moving. It is where I wouldn't like to have found myself the one winter afternoon in 1991 when I decided to take to a canoe with David Stirling, Lyle Creighton and Jason McMahon! It would churn up the smooth flow of a canoe.

It is such a shift in speed and mood that I feel when I am coming out of a sabbatical rest. Post Christmas Day I went into a religious self induced detox from all things work.

I refuse to read things that might spark my preacher's imagination. I close my notebook when I start writing anything but my Best Of the Year lists. I infuriate friend when I refuse to open emails that have anything to do with what I do! 

This has been a necessity. With all out smartphones and lap tops real vacations are very hard work. So I work hard at not working... for as long as I can.

This morning though something gave. I found the joy of music and novels and TV box sets had disappeared. I felt flat. I could have done with another good day's rest but... something was bubbling... it is how the Spirit throws me back into the fray... the carry from quiet waters of vacation to the white waters of vocation. It was time to let go. It was time to go over the edge. Start paddling like a mad thing! What does God's 10:10 life in all its fulness look like for me in the next few weeks.

So, the notebook opened. The coloured pens started scrawling. The to do list. It is quite exciting, as white water rushes should be:

• Sunday's Lectionary - Creation and Baptism. All things new!
• Schedule worship songs for January and February.
• Who do Janice and I need to phone and connect with pastorally.
• Start looking ahead at 2021 and how Fitzroy will look in the last weeks of lockdown and then in the opening up again.
• 4 Corners Festival programme. Writing the introduction.
• Starting to shape the Evening With Duke Special for 4 Corners Festival. very exciting!
• Start sketching ideas for BBC Radio 2 Pause For Thoughts.
• Get back to finishing Pope Francis new book Let Us Dream for a review I have been asked to write. 
• Write an endorsement for Gary Burnett's book, based on his Paul In ten series in Fitzroy.

Oh it is exciting. I cannot wait to get started in the morning... who am I kidding... the notebook is already opened. Bring on the rush. Let's paddle!

 

 

PERSONAL REVIEW OF 2020 - SECOND, THE BAD NEWS...

It is a process that I am not sure if I have fully processed. Three months into Coronavirus lockdown and I found myself in hospital. It was sudden. A painful night between June 3rd and 4th I had put down to heart burn and a very bad choice of film in the family’s Movie A Night In Lockdown. Blame the boredom of Queen Of The Desert.

It was not funny though. What I thought was heartburn was excruciatingly painful. A night of no sleep whatever and Janice had me off to the doctor who sent me to A & E. This was an A & E with seats X-ed out. Social distant queues to get into wards. 24 hours of tests and I was now in a side ward having antibiotics pumped through and the mention of a gallbladder removal, maybe the first gallbladder operation since theatre started opening up again. That was the blessing.

It was a short sharp shock of a process. Yet so much of the year was tied up in those days.

The afternoon before my gallbladder started giving me pain we had sat through the online funeral of our dearest friend Lucia Quinney Mee. Lucia was a gifted and inspirational young woman who left us just a few days before her 21st birthday. Here and her sister Alice were soul mates with our girls. The first half of our year was praying and being touch with Lucia's family. She had had her fourth liver transplant in the last hours of 2019 and we were aware that recovery could be long. 

Janice and Jasmine had gotten in to Kings Hospital to see her at the end of February and I read her dad David’s diaries from the ICU like  daily devotions. Lucia and her family were in prime location to watch Covid-19 take hold. Being the Quinney Mees we sensed them being a vital quiet contribution to that community at a crucial time.

By mid May we sensed that all was not well and were devastated when Lucia made the brave move to not put her weary body through any more. Our grief was only more acute by the distance and not being able to be with them all and that there was no funeral in Ballycastle. Without doubt when we look back at 2020 it will be Lucia and not Coronavirus that will hold our memory. We continue to grieve.

It was Lucia’s father David that I looked to in my own early fears in A & E. His advice about befriending the doctors and nurses and letting them hunt for me was my mantra all the way through. 

There was more. In my first few hours in A & E, as I struggled to stay awake, a text came in from Fr Martin Magill to tell me that our friend Glenn Jordan had passed away. Glenn was younger than me and much fitter. This was a stunning shock. Glenn was a founding member of the 4 Corners Festival and a week before lockdown we had chatted in the street about a coffee after all this was over. Every time I hear the new Springsteen album or watch Leeds United in the Premiership…

As I sat there I realised that as I suffered through the night in pain, Glenn was dying suddenly in bed.  I thought about Glenn’s family now devastated in grief. Mine were worried at home unable to visit but they knew I was in good hands with a solution imminent.

Glenn’s death in June was followed later in the year by Jay Swartzendruber and Derek Hall’s. Both were younger still. Snuffed out suddenly. Jay was a musical loving buddy and Derek and I had worked on various TEAR Fund campaigns. We schemed to bring the Kingdom and laughed a lot as we did. Never mind Coronavirus, 2020 was a bleak year even without it. My own mortality started having conversations with me.

In those few days in hospital I feel I got a snap shot of the medical challenges of 2020. Watching the extra vigilance, commitments and compassion of the staff. Seeing long term patients struggle without the visits of loved ones. One man in my ward had to make a tough decision as to whether to go to a side ward so that he would be isolated enough to see his wife once a week or forsake seeing his wife to have the every day company of the ward.

For me there was added stress in my awareness of the virus. I knew there was an added risk to having the operation. Tougher was that isolation from family. I had a minor operation in 2019 and Janice was the rock before it and right there after the operation to see me out of it. This time it was a solo run and dependence on face time, phone calls, texts and social media. All such communications of course found a little more respect in 2020. 

I believe that the sickness and grief is where Coronavirus hit us hardest. What are always tough times in life suddenly were made even tougher. Not being able to be beside loved ones in their sickness or even as they pass away and not having support there as you grieve loved ones. That is the real hurt of this virus.

Into such I have attempted to suggest one word. Emmanuel. Praying for friends and Fitzroy that they would know in those moments when isolated kept people apart a God who is always there. Emmanuel - God with us. And with those we loved and love.