Virtual Methodist

Starting 2020 in similar vein to where I left off in 2019,  thinking about how we deal with the past and with fear of the future. In this I pick up on the legend concerning the location of the Omphalos (navel) at the centre of the world by Zeus. He supposedly set off twin eagles from either end of the Earth and they met over Delphi, which was the site of the mysterious oracle of Apollo. In later Christian tradition the "omphalos" was said to be in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a place which again has not been devoid of conflict. The place where two eagles meet Past and future fighting on the wing While down below The profound present Remains to be explored. Selah

This piece was initially prompted by my current parallel reading of Gladys Ganiel's "Considering Grace", dealing with how the Presbyterian Church handled the Troubles, Robert Harris's "The Second Sleep", which turns on the relationship between the past, future, presnt and faith, a book produced by my son Ciaran's archaeology department, and Avivah Zornberg's psychoanalytic, midrashic comentary "The Murmuring Deep" from which I posted the following quote by Osip Mandelstam on Sunday.  "poetry is the plough tearing open and turning over time so that the deep layers of it, its rich black undersoil, ends up on the surface.... Mankind ... craves, like a ploughman, for the virgin soil of time."  I took the liberty of stealing a particularly evocative line, but then I freely acknowledge that artistically and intellectually, I am little more than one of those birds that swoop in after the plough or the seed drill to snatch some...

Well, did you SPRING forward yesterday? Or did the loss of an hour’s sleep make yesterday morning more of a challenge than it normally would be? There’s a debate about whether there is much point in changing the clocks in spring and autumn any more, or whether we should simply have summer time all year round… If that guaranteed us actual summer time all year round I would be one of its greatest supporters, although in any normal year here that isn’t a great boon… where summer usually just means that we get slightly warmer rain… But the lack of sunshine in summer is not the only distinctive about this province. Every time the clocks change I am reminded of the old joke about the passenger plane landing at Aldergrove and the pilot announcing over the PA system, “We have now landed at Belfast International Airport, please set your watches back 300 years.” We do sadly, have a reputation for being more focused on our past than other places… Whether that past is hundreds of y...

I do not like to focus on fear... the tabloids (both the paper and TV varieties) do enough of that... be it fear of Muslim extremists, Roma-child-abductors, flesh-eating microbes, rampaging poisonous spiders... You name it, they will try to turn it into a phobia -with the word phobia being used in its sense of irrational fear... Dig deep into most of these stories and you will find little of substance. I also am not into those who build their ministries on a "gospel" of fear... Yes fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom , but it is only a beginning... There are those for whom fear (either at a specific point or a more general fear) was a major feature in their spiritual journey, including Martin Luther, John Newton and John Wesley. Indeed last night I was at a meeting where a Catholic priest spoke of the fear that he had as a child growing up in a mixed area of north Belfast of his home being attacked and he or his family being killed, and how that was a powerful fact...

My last Thought for the Day for a while, broadcast live today on Good Morning Ulster (as usual approximately 25 & 85 minutes into the programme), influenced not only by my anniversary today but also the Haass talks and the Hope and History campaign ... Don't forget to sign up and help shape a more hopeful future for this province. A few years ago I pre-recorded a thought for the day that was due to go out on my wedding anniversary and I used that as the introduction to my talk, but then forgot that I had doe so AND forgot to tell my wife Sally that I had mentioned it… This then caused her great puzzlement when lots of people wished her happy anniversary throughout the day…  Well, it is once again our anniversary… I won’t tell you how many years except to say that for some unknown reason the recommended gift for this year is a musical instrument… So I hope Sally enjoys the kazoo I’ve bought her!  I’ve many happy memories of our wedding day, when people from all the di...

There has been a lot of fuss (and a fair amount of humour) at the news that many cheap burgers in various supermarket chains have a large percentage of horse in them. Not only would many Europeans be surprised at the furore concerning this, I was flabbergasted a couple of nights ago, when a vox-pop of some shoppers had them saying that they were really appalled because it made them wonder "what were they really feeding to their children." Given that they were already feeding them the lowest-priced meat products available this is perhaps a question they should have been asking earlier. A friend of mine is behind the current health campaign in Northern Ireland pushing for weight loss and a healthier diet. I fear he may be on a beaten docket with me and many others in this province. However, recent weeks and particularly the edifying experience that the Nolan Show on BBCNI was on Wednesday night, made me think that actually there is another dietary problem here in Northern ...

Well today the Beijing Olympics came to an end… And while the closing ceremony was not quite so over the top as the opening ceremony, it was still astounding, especially in terms of the lack of expense spared and the sheer numbers involved moving with split-second sychronicity. The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius." "Swifter, Higher, Stronger." And that has been fulfilled in these games… This has been an Olympics of superlatives. The performances of Usain Bolt on land and Michael Phelps in water… And the British athletes exceeding all expectations with their best performance in a century, the best performance by any cycling or sailing teams ever, and a medal haul which, in proportion to the size of population is 12 times as successful as China’s and over twice as successful as the Americans. The only problem is… How can Britain top that when the show comes to London? We cannot hope to match the scale of the opening ceremony. We will be very fortunate to mat...

During the conversation on Theology and Practice of Reconciliation last week the lead participant from the activist side was Dr. Duncan Morrow, the Chief Executive of the Community Relations Council, while his correspondent from the theological perspective was Professor Drew Gibson, a specialist in practical theology from Union Theological College in Belfast. Drew argued vociferously for a Christian ethos based upon a theology of the last times, or eschatology to use the technical term... Just as he was standing up to make his response to Duncan's initial paper, someone who was clearly as desperate for caffeine as I was said "I can hear a trolley coming..." What we hear, or want to hear coming, can sometimes drown out what people are saying now... Causing us to miss the opportunities of grace that God has for us here. Yes, there is an extent to which our theology should be future-focused, but it should never make us so heavenly minded that... well, you know the rest... In...

Recently I was at an event where the Rev Leslie Griffiths (or Lord Griffiths of Burry Port if I were to be official about it, and name-drop with an enormous "clang") told those present that he lived and worked surrounded by a significant graveyard around Wesley's Chapel in London. This, he affirmed, served to remind him not only of the past, but of the future... the future for all of us. His comment reminded me of the fact that in my first station, a rural one, I was the only minister in the local clergy fraternal who didn't have a graveyard around my church buildings, a fact for which I was perennially thankful, not because of any squeamishness but because my colleagues lives seemed to be dominated by the petty politics involved in administrating grave plots. Yesterday I was back in the same room as the discussion with Leslie Griffith, but this time the speaker was Duncan Morrow (many more postings will probably stem from what he said, here and elsewhere...). During...