Virtual Methodist

About six weeks ago, reflecting on the 30 th anniversary of the IRA ceasefire I wrote a poem that embodied my feelings at the time and over the following three decades, and I subsequently read it at a service in Clonard Monastery organised to mark both the IRA and later Loyalist ceasefires… On this day which marks the 30 th anniversary of the statement by the Combined Loyalist Military Command, my reflections are somewhat longer and more prosaic. At the time Gusty Spence read the ceasefire statement my first emotion was a reinforcement of the profound sense of relief that had hit me 6 weeks earlier. The fact of the ceasefire didn’t surprise me as much as the previous one. Various sources, publicly and privately had assured me that it was coming. But the wording was interesting. The suggestion that the “permanence” of the Loyalist ceasefire   was “completely dependant upon the continued cessation of all nationalist/republican violence” maintained the myth that loyalist viol...

The first thing I heard as I woke up this morning was that the playwright Sam Thompson was being honoured by naming the new bridge from Victoria Park over to Airport Road after him. This bridge allows access by foot and bike to the Harbour Estate and Titanic Quarter, the erstwhile Shipyard where his most famous play "Over the Bridge" was set...  There is a certain appropriateness to this, but also some irony given that many of the issues that Sam Thompson raised in that play apply directly to the malaise affecting the loyalist community that lies in the shadow of the gantries of the remaining 2 shipyard cranes. To that end I offer this slightly revised reblog of one I produced in the wake of Martin Lynch's revival/revision of the play 3 years ago, looking at why I believe it is a crucially important play : The Physical Context - The Shipyard In a moment of unguarded honesty a few years ago, when Harland and Wolff was teetering on the brink of total closure...

HUGE backlog... so much so that when I went back to my list of links I couldn't think why for the life of me I would have wanted to pass some of them on... Ah well, such is the ephemeral nature of the interweb... But there is still a huge collection here... So I will keep my comments to a minimum and just throw them out there under a few broad headings... Some are, as the signpost says, useful, others merely funny, and just because I've put them up here doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything in them... but they are worth thinking about or will at least give some of you a giggle... OBITS I said the last time that there would probably be lots of pieces on Seamus Heaney in my next Saturday Supplement following his sad demise. Sorry to disappoint. I only offer this one by Roy Foster in the O bserver, as well as another one from the Guardian the next day by Mark Lawson on David Frost who has gone to the great eternal interview...  SYRIA One of the areas ...

What is wrong with this picture? A shorter answer might be elicited by the question what is right with this picture? No-one in their right minds would combine a picture of an armed Klansman and a quote from Martin Luther King Junior. Yet in my home area of East Belfast the following mural has been painted over a recently commissioned mural of footballer George Best... At least they didn't have the gall to put Dr. King's name to the quote. Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle's comment that it is "Perverse beyond belief" probably sums up my feeling on it... Although the people that painted it probably couldn't care less what people like Chris or myself think... They clearly don't care what anyone else thinks. They are the faceless men with guns who answer to no-one. Neither democratically elected representatives, including the PUP who have historic links with the UVF, or the people who elected them. It is they who op...

Last night  my wife and I went to the f*****g Lyric Theatre, and it wasn't to see Pride and Prejudice the f*****g Musical on the main stage, but something much more f*****g earthy in the Naughton Studio space: Re-Energize by Gary f*****g Mitchell, directed by my mate Conall f*****g Morrison with music by John and Damian O'Neill from the f*****g Undertones. It picks up the story of the members of a f*****g wannabe punk band 30 years after Mitchell's earlier play "Energy" was set. I didn't see that production back in 1999 in the Playhouse in Derry, where this production also originated. But the previous year I first came across Gary Mitchell's work in another collaboration with Conall Morrison when I took a night out from Methodist Conference to take a ministerial colleague to see their play "As the Beast Sleeps" in the bowels of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin... The play was still in a fluid state at that time and one of the discussions betwe...

A bumper bonanza issue of the supplement due to a two week backlog of stuff I'd compiled... (you can save some of it for Bank Holiday Monday if the weather's bad and you have absolutely nothing better to do!) Ongoing Fun and Games ...not a reference to the World Police and Fire Games, which seems to have been a great success, but to the fact that after the fun over the flag at Christmas and the annual riot-fest around the Twelfth... this year we had the added bonus of a right royal ruckus in Royal Avenue in response to a Republican Internment Parade... This has led (among other things) to much activity in the virtual sphere... A few of the more interesting pieces include: "What does the Outside World Think of Us" - this is a question I ask myself all the time given that I have spent a fair proportion of my ministry interpreting the Northern Ireland situation to visitors from the US and elsewhere, and my FB is usually filled with questions and concerned com...

I fully intend being as far away as I can be from a computer this morning, preferably with a nice cup of coffee and a book in my hand. But here's a quick link dump on related themes for those of you not in such halcyon surroundings: Wonga-World and Beyond Following on from my own piece earlier in the week, I came a cross a nuanced look at the regulation of pay-day loan companies by former head of Church Action on Poverty, suggesting that Credit Unions alone are an inadequate response to the banking needs of the poor. Then I came across this piece by Bishop Nick Baines responding to an editorial in The Independent written in the light of the AoC's pronouncements, ably defending the place of the church in the public square. Then there was a piece looking at the moral-murk behind ethical-consumerism - are companies getting more ethical about their production practices and effective use of slave-labour, particularly children - or are they just getting cleverer in cover...

On this Saturday when the Orange Order has proposed another parade along the contentious Crumlin Road in North Belfast... a proposal which, in my mind, as recklessly provocative and rightly restricted by the Parades Commission, most of the internet snippets that have caught my eye this week relate to last week's Twelfth Parade and it's aftermath... First was a piece by Alan in Belfast, posted on the Slugger O'Toole site last month, but which I only saw this week, critiquing the BBC coverage of the Twelfth Parades in the wake of the corporation's assessment that its coverage in  2012 had complied with its own impartiality guidelines... I have to say that I agree with Alan's analysis, not suggesting that the BBC's coverage should be reduced, but should be more imaginative and informative. However, this year's coverage was just more of the same, suggesting that the Beeb has a lot to learn... But nothing like as much to learn as the Orange Order. Again, ...

I posted the most of this yesterday on the Flixster site which posts via facebook, so apologies to those who seem to be experiencing deja vu... However, I suppose that's how I felt watching Les Miserables on Saturday night. Despite my love of theatre I have never yet seen the stage show, and the book has taken up a substantial section of shelf space for decades without being read (I now have it on my kindle as well, just incase I have a free 3 weeks on a train some time). But because various bits of the plot have been used as sermon illustrations for years, and a few of the songs have become standards on various "songs from the shows" events I have been involved in, I knew most of the plot before entering the cinema to see it...  Did I enjoy it? Well, as I said to someone yesterday morning at church, after mulling it over for a night, "enjoy" is a word that wouldn't really come into my comments about it. There have been a lot of begrudging , and funnil...

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...

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 ...

I'm tired... I'm tired of people in power laughing and joking over capping benefits for the poor, sneering at them as "shirkers" or "skivers" in contrast to "strivers"... I'm tired of the wealthy bleating about losing child benefit, and fuel tax hikes that will make their gas-guzzling 4x4's marginally more expensive to fill up... I'm tired of an economic system that is based on greed and dissatisfaction... conspicuous consumption that is destroying the planet, impoverishing more and more people (while a few get richer), and causing profound depression among those who are never content... I'm tired of a Christian sub-set of that system that has bought into it uncritically, and constantly seeks to sell me the next big spiritual breakthrough in a book/programme/speaker/event... I'm tired of all the strands of the media, music, film, TV, newspapers, internet et al that are filled to overflowing with the celebration of igno...