Virtual Methodist

I haven't yet seen "Agreement" at the Lyric (I'm going tonight), and I couldn't manage to carve out enough time in Holy Week to get up to see Damian Gorman and Brian O’Doherty's "Beyond Belief" - the musical drama about the life and work of John Hume in Derry's Guildhall... both of which have received critical acclaim. But I did get to see Barney Rowan's "25 Pieces" at the Lyric on Good Friday after our circuit's Passion Prayer Pilgrimage through sourh Belfast, and Andrew Irvine and I dashed up to Derry to see the superb "Walled City Passion" on Holy Saturday. On top of that Sally and I just finished binge-watching Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson's gut-wrenching "Bue Lights" last night (thankfully it was no "Bloodlands") and I'm currently reading Jan Carson's "The Fire Starters." All of these, in very different ways, offer dramatic commentary on the momentous events of Good Frid...

Hero or villain. Saint or sinner. No. I’m not talking about Luis Suarez, but I’m a Liverpool fan, so you might guess my opinion there. How we define people often depends on our personal perspective and the truth is usually more complicated than such a simple definition. We in this province know that well, particularly in the messy business of making peace after a period of prolonged and profound conflict. (You just have to check out the responses to the presence of Martin McGuinness at the state banquet in Windsor Castle last week for evidence of that.) This is Holy week, the run-up to Good Friday, where we reflect on the price Jesus paid to make peace between us and God, followed by the resurrection joy of Easter Day. Personally I’m fascinated by the characters we’ve traditionally portrayed as villains in the Holy Week story. Judas Iscariot - wondering what his motivation was for betraying his teacher. Was it all just a matter of money or something else? Pilate, the ultimate po...

The last in this series of live Thought for the Days (as usual you can pick it up here for one week only at 25 and 85 minutes into the programme... I have one more to produce next Monday but it will be pre-recorded as I will be elsewhere next week). This picks up on one of the themes of yesterday's studio service for Palm Sunday , and, in many ways, a repeated frustration with the direction of travel in this province. So we’ve just had a weekend where the province ground to a halt because of the unseasonable weather… Including the bizarre experience of an international football match between Russia and Northern Ireland being called off because of snow here … I wonder what the Russians made of that given the much worse weather they have to play through every winter? As I listened to Sunday Sequence yesterday morning it was also interesting to hear a lengthening list of Palm Sunday services being called off because of the snow… It’s not unusual to have services cancelled aro...

It's been a while since I did a round up of interesting things wot I found on t'interweb but was spurred on to do one this week on the back of two strands that have come out of the current "flags" issue in Belfast. Both are by people who previously worked with the two Methodist missions in Belfast: former East Belfast Mission Youth Worker, Harriet Long, and former club culture outreach worker with Belfast Central Mission Dave Magee. After a couple of posts on her own feelings about the protests and how they were impacting on East Belfast, Harriet then started a short series giving voice to some women in that area coming at the issue from diverse perspectives, concluding with this one from a girl in the Catholic Short Strand area . Dave has, for many years now, been working on peace-building and non-violent responses to problems in loyalist communities, particularly in North Down, and the flags protest prompted him at long last to start blogging from his experien...