Virtual Methodist

Today is the International Day of Peace 2020. This year the theme is "Shaping Peace Together" and we are encouraged to mark it by spreading compassion, kindness and hope in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, standing together against attempts to use the virus to promote discrimination or hatred. It chimes well with a number of initiatives I have been involved with over the years, not least the 4 Corners Festival, and a number of my colleagues involved in that will be blogging and taking part in various events today. This being Monday it is my "day off" but in the shaping of peace together I suppose there should be no "days off". In thinking about today my mind was filled not only withe this year's theme, but also 4 Corners Festival themes past and future and especially the words of Oscar Romero that I have quoted previously: "Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of vio...

Here, as promised, is my "Thought for Yesterday". If you prefer to hear it, here it is ... they even went to the trouble of producing it as a stand-alone clip this week... That's my last TFTD for a while, and given my frequency of blogging recently it might be my last blog for a similar period...   My role as a Methodist minister means that I often end up moving from one event to another, hastily changing the hat that I am wearing, and sometimes other items of attire… The juxtaposition is sometimes stark. Moving from celebration to consolation to confrontation, from business meetings to baptisms to hospital bedside, from infrequent weddings to sadly more frequent funerals, from BBC studio to board table to the occasional windswept building site. Yesterday evening put two very different events side by side in my diary… First, I was “networking” with business and other civic leaders on the observation deck of the new Belfast Grand Central Hotel in Bedford street… Then ...