Virtual Methodist

Another brand new piece (hence its not in the new book), this time flowing from both the liturgical, season, the place we find ourselves in globally and the particular season that Sally and I find ourselves in at present. Wilderness is a repeated Biblical theme, ranging from the experience of the people of Israel in their Exodus from Egypt, through to Jesus' period of preparatory testing, and other individuals in between. It is portrayed as both a place of escape and of trial. It prompts some to look back longingly to slavery, others to wish for death, whilst the Psalmist seems to pine for it and the reliance on God it required. Physically I love wilderness spaces, but thats because I know I am only a visitor. But ending up there emotionally with no assurance of an imminent entry into a "Promised Land" is not my favourite experience.  Ironically Bono and I have both drawn on the same source for our inspiration, namely Richard Rohr's "The Tears of Things." Ho...

We are nearly at the end of Lent. Out second locked down Lent. The discipline of waiting and the waiting of discipleship in this season is nearly at an end.  We are unsure how close we are to the end of a year of lockdowns. Methodist Churches in Northern Ireland are allowed to resume in person worship from tomorrow, although on my circuit we have symbolically deferred it to Easter Day, offering a series of "Holy Week at Home" services online, but our sisters and brothers in the Republic of Ireland have a further, as yet undetermined time to wait... and France has now just gone into a 3rd lockdown, perhaps auguring more to come for us. We are weary. And tonight's poem speaks into that weariness. It is human. It is part of the story of Christ's passion, and how his followers let him down because of that weariness. And we still do. Selah

So it's Palm Sunday - and whilst here in Northern Ireland there are still hopes of churches re-opening for (socially distanced) celebrations on Easter morning, this is our second locked down Palm Sunday, and with that in mind I wanted to record this piece that Father Rob Esdaile, parish priest in Thames Ditton, and a published poet wrote last year.... Shalom

A substantially shorter poem for this the 5th Sunday in Lent...  We've been let off the Lenten leash slightly for Mothering Sunday (or if we're going to get Latin about it "Laetare/Rejoicing Sunday from the instruction "Rejoice, O Jerusalem" (Isaiah 66:10) in the introduction to the Latin Mass for the day), and especially in the Irish influenced world, for the Feast of St Patrick... Thankfully wisdom seems to have largely prevailed around here and people don't seem to have relaxed the lockdown discipline too much over the past week, so we can look forward to some longer lasting and more significant relaxation over Easter weekend and beyond.  But this Sunday we are back into the rigors of Lockdown Lent disciplines, and so I offer this short piece by Christina Georgina Rosetti, reminding us exactly what Lent is actually about.  Shalom

All over the world on this day or the Sunday nearest to it you would normally, pandemic permitting, hear sung the hymn known as “St. Patrick’s breastplate” versified by Irish hymnwriter Cecil Francis Alexander in the 19th century. But her version is only one of many going back to fragments from the 9th century. The word “breastplate” is a translation of the Latin “lorica” which was the word for the body armour worn by legionaries, which didn’t just cover the front of the body like a breastplate , but encompassed it. Legend tells us that St. Patrick allegedly, composed this hymn to protect him and his monks against deadly enemies that lay in wait for them. As such it is an all-encompassing corslet of faith for the protection of body and soul against the devil, earthly enemies and temptations. It is also known as the Deer’s Cry’ from its title "Faeth Fiada" in the 11th-century Liber Hymnorum that first records the fuller version of the text. The legend here is that when Patrick...

In today's video I refer to my repeated pedantic refrain in sermons every 4th Sunday in Lent that today isn't Mothers' Day but Mothering Sunday, and I have repeated that tendency on this blog in various forms, including mention of the origins of both Mothering Sunday and Mothers' Day .  But today, in the wake of some of the events this week all such pedantry should be abandoned and the place of  mothers and women in general within society and especially the church needs to be loudly affirmed.  Mind you, given the state of my hair and collar in this video, I'm not sure that my Mum would have affirmed me much in the wake of it. I can hear her voice even now. As I say in it, in preparation for any public speaking I had to do as a child, she always put me over it in advance, and gave me some clear directions that I follow to this day. Among them was the instruction to check yourself in the mirror beforehand, to make sure you look presentable... Oops... Sorry mum... ps....

I have a certain reputation among some for grumpiness and a tendency towards negativity, and at times I play into that. But those who know me better know that isn't the whole story, although neither is the hearty laugh or the times when I am happy to play the fool. No-one is entirely the image they project. All of them disguise something deeper. R.S. Thomas the Welsh Anglican priest-poet has a reputation for being a curmudgeonly, anti-social, anti-modernist ascetic and because of both his and my reputation it will be no surprise that I really like his poetry, both his earlier earthy poems and his later more overtly religious ones. But one of the things I like is his complexity, both in terms of form and ideas. And in this poem he touches on the ultimately unknowable complexity of a God, that outwith the incarnation and spiritual ecstasy, can often manifest himself in a profound sense of absence. Selah

As I say in the video below my choice of this poem is influenced by the fact that during our first "locked-down Lent" last year I revisited some of talks I had given at Holden Village on the book of Jonah and repackaged them as our first online Bible study for members of my congregation and others, and prior to that I recorded the associated monologues, that had been kicking around for almost 20 years to kick off this YouTube channel. Jonah, and particularly the episode in the "big fish" is ideal for a lent/lockdown meditation For a bit of nostalgia I thought I would record this poem outside in our back garden as I had done with the videos of the monologues, but I decided to wear slightly warmer clothes and was glad that I wasn't doused in water, because it is still somewhat colder this year. But I am also glad of having a back garden at all, and the ability to get out in it and the surrounding leafy avenues and parks to get some fresh air even in the midst of...

This is the promised post for the first Sunday of Lent 2021… Those sharing with me in our livestreamed communion service this evening will hear a version of what I have to say here twice, but this is a more permanent record and one accessible for those who don't wish to join in that fleeting experience. I recorded this immediately on my return from a walk out to and around Islandhill on Strangford Lough, just within the recommended 10 mile limit of travel for exercise. Actually we are inordinately blessed to have so many beautiful places to walk within easy reach, and I reel for those who cannot access them or places like them for whatever reason. I find getting out into the outdoors in some shape or form invaluable during lockdown. And even where I haven't been able to venture beyond the garden, as was the case right at the start of the first lockdown when Sally and I were subject to standard isolation due to potential exposure to a covid-case, we at least have a lovely garden...

I've gone a bit quiet as I usually do after the 4 Corners Festival... And that was exacerbated by the tsunami of emails on return from my self-imposed computer purdah during my week's leave... This means that my plan to post a video of poems for Lent on Ash Wednesday and then on subsequent Sundays didn't quite get off the ground. I had already scaled back from my daily video posts of poems during the weekdays of Advent, but Ash Wednesday zoomed up out of nowhere... and my planned post of Jan Richardson's "Blessing the Dust" came to naught... maybe next year... But in my readings in preparation for Lent this week I came across this poem by Ann Weems , the American Presbyterian poet who died in 2016 and I thought it might make a good introduction to the series, which continues tomorrow...  Given that there are others posting poems and other reflections morning and evening during Lent (including my friend Father Martin Magill who is posting poems on facebook) I ...

Today's #LentArt post is "The washing of the disciples' feet" by Ghislaine Howard, another piece from the wonderful Methodist Modern Art Collection. It has clearly struck a chord with a number of people, and I am delighted that tonight's guest blog is by my friend and fellow 4 Corners Director, Father Martin Magill, who, he will be embarrassed to have me say, is for me the epitome of a servant leader. Indeed it was interesting to have a friend and artist respond to my earlier post saying that this time last year she remembers having her feet washed by Martin... How much has changed in a year: This painting (completed in 2004) was inspired by these words from the gospel of John in today's lectionary:  Jesus knew that the Father had delivered all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was returning to God. So He got up from the supper, laid aside His outer garments, and wrapped a towel around His waist. After that, He poured water ...

When I was a child and got bored in church (not that I would ever bore anyone, young or old) there wasn’t much by way of art to distract me. There was one stained glass window of Jesus at the front and another of the story of the Good Samaritan… so I frequently resorted to counting bricks in the front wall of the church… No sermon was ever long enough to allow me to complete the count…  The early 12th-century church of St Martin in Zillis in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden doesn’t have much on the walls or windows for bored members of the congregation either… But if anyone in the congregation were to raise their eyes to heaven in despair at the long sermon they would find something that would really make them think…  153 painted square wooden panels of around 90 cm each placed in 17 rows of 9 panels installed around 1110 and which is one of only 3 similar examples left in the world. The 48 paintings framing the ceiling are mostly painted with mythical figures largely ...

This morning’s #LentArt post was another painting by James Tissot from the Brooklyn Museum collection, like the one I posted on Palm Sunday, this one “The Gentiles Ask to See Jesus.” In this picture Jesus is his way up the steps of the Temple, towards its imposing pillared entrance. And standing at the head of the steeps like the proverbial gatekeepers of the House of the Lord are some of the representatives of the Jewish establishment. But Jesus is stopped on the steps by a request from some foreigners to meet him…  Unlike previous posts this wasn’t chosen by me but by my guest blogger this evening, Julian Hamilton, someone who blogs as sporadically as I usually do over at https://www.joolshamilton.com/blog/ and is the Methodist Chaplain to another pillared establishment:  These are fraught times. Unexpected and unwelcome trauma is visiting thousands of homes around this island, and around the world. There seems little respite. I am a chaplain to Trinity College D...

Earlier today I posted a the 41st in my series of #LentArt images based on the Daily Lectionary which I said was Frank Wesley's "Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Jesus". I was expecting some pushback.  Actually I got one comment on Facebook saying that this wasn’t how the person expected Mary Magdalene to look, and that’s probably true of most of us. Historically people have tended to imagine and portray Biblical characters through the lens of their own experience and for most of us that means primarily from a western European perspective. But in recent years we are perhaps more culturally aware and picture such characters with more classically eastern Mediterranean/middle eastern features. But the person in this picture is definitely not from that back ground either.  The artist Frank Wesley was actually a Christian from India. He was born in Azamgarh, in December 1923 into a fifth generation Methodist family, unsurprising given the surname.  He began h...

Today’s #LentArt post is James Tissot’s “The Procession in the Streets of Jerusalem” or strictly speaking “Le cortège dans les rues de Jérusalem”, from the Brooklyn Museum. It’s a relatively straightforward rendering of story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem on what has become known as “Palm Sunday” because of the Palm leaves that we are told the crowd were waving and which we see in the hands of those following Jesus through the archway into the streets of Jerusalem in the picture. However, palm leaves don’t actually get a mention in the account from Matthew’s Gospel which is the reading in the lectionary for today:  As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” This took plac...

Perhaps it is a feature of my personality and my struggle with depression, but for a long time I have believed and said to anyone willing to listen (including those who have been long term readers of this blog) that Christianity has done its adherents a disservice in ignoring that deep well of spirituality within Judaism described as “lament”. The upbeat rhythms of Christian worship, not just the modern product but going back to Moody and Sankey and before, has overwhelmingly sold the idea of “victorious Christian living” and to advocate anything else has often been decried as betraying a lack of faith (there are exceptions such as the Rend Collective’s “Weep with me” from a couple of years ago, but they are few and far between). Yet that is to ignore much of the Psalms and indeed the entire book of “Lamentations…” But recently an interview and article by N.T Wright has been widely shared and lauded on social media saying much the same as I (and other much more important but less po...

Tonight we are once again turning back to the Psalms and specifically Psalm 31:9-16  Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;  my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. Because of all my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbours and an object of dread to my closest friends - those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. For I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!” They conspire against me and plot to take my life.  But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.  Psalm 31:9-16 (NIV)  Although the Psalmist’s problem here seems to be a...

Another of the guest #LentArt posts this week, today from my friend, fellow 4 Corners conspirator, dog devotee (no-one is perfect), broadcaster, Parish Development Co-ordinator and Training and Facilitation Officer for the Down and Connor Diocese, author of "Finding God in the Mess" and "Deeper into the Mess" newbie blogger over at http:// gymforthesoul.life . How grand St Paul looks. He appears as a giant confidently stepping off his boat, back-lit in gold and ready for the mission. The city on the hill looks small in comparison. An open curtain in the nearest building signals a welcome for the great man. Today’s #LentArt piece is part of a 32 square metre mosaic adorning the wall of the Church of St Nicholas in Kavala, Greece. It is the claimed site of St Paul’s arrival into Macedonia as part of his second set of missionary journeys. Kavala is (rightly) proud of its calm to fame and perhaps this pride led to the grand size of St Paul in the mosaic.  ...