Virtual Methodist

After a long, dry period my brain is working overtime again, some thoughts flowing from a good place, others less so. This piece is, just as it says, a product of a disturbed night's sleep, prompted by rumination over recent events and the experience of a couple of friends, both in the past and currently. But following on from some reading and writing I started during my sabbatical, I woke to read dome notes I made when reading Paula Gooder's "Journalling the Psalms", and particularly Psalms 23 and 40. There are numerous Psalms that seem to owe their origins to the times when David was unjustly on the run because of others' betrayal, either being hunted by Saul's forces, or during his son's rebellion. We don't know whether they were written by David or inspired by his story, but they have continued to speak into others' stories, including my own, right down to the present day, even though few of us (thankfully) have experienced the exis...

I haven't been writing much new material recently beyond sermons and funeral addresses given that my "free time" has been taken up by packing and unpacking boxes and assembling flat-pack furniture. I've made no secret that Sally and I were in no great hurry to move from where we were previously living, but w e all need a change of perspective from time to time and our recent re-stationing has afforded us the "opportunity" of both de-cluttering and gaining a (physically) new panoramic perspective on our home city of Belfast. This includes the smattering of wind generators on the hills on the Antrim-side of the city, which some regard as an intrusion on the rural landscape. The following piece emerged slowly over the past couple of weeks, clearly influenced by Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey". (ps. The attached photo is not of that Belfast wind farm,  but some in midwestern USA about 10 years ago. My cameraphone is too inadequate to capt...

The word that I frequently use at the conclusion of my blogs is, as most of you will already know, found repeatedly in the Psalms. Throughout my sabbatical I've been doing some reflecting on the Psalms and I am now returning, both to work, and a piece of writing, collating and revising the many responsive paraphrases of the Psalms I have done over the years, and part of that has involved thinking how to "translate" this word. Most modern translations have given up trying to translate it as its meaning is uncertain. The consensus is that it is a musical direction of some kind. Some have suggested that it is derived from a word meaning "lift up", though there is no agreement on what the reader is being encouraged to elevate! The majority opinion, however, seems to be that it is the equivalent of a musical rest, a pause for reflection, and that is the sense I have opted for, using the phrase "And breathe" (which as some 4 Corners veterans will know has a ...

Just back from a swift visit with my wife to my mother in law in Ayr. As a youngster Ayr was a frequent holiday destination, and I wasn't to know at that stage that I would end up marrying a lassie from that vicinity. On Sunday afternoon, before leaving, we took a short visit to the beach at Seafield on the southern edge of the town, which would have been a regular haunt of my wife's when growing up, but we found it much changed from previous visits... Since 2020 it has been the subject of one of the many projects around the UK seeking to re-establish sand dunes as a coastal erosion and biodiversity initiative using discarded Christmas trees as the foundational matrix for trapping the sand... A mere 6 years has made a discernible difference, and I was surprised when doing some research later that I haven't found more written about it... merely a couple of articles in local papers announcing that they were going to try this, but no "before and after" pi...

During my sabbatical I am trying to make some progress on a couple of writing projects, including a series of poems prompted by places in my home city of Belfast. Many of these focus on pieces of public art. Over the weekend, after joining the large anti-racism rally at City Hall I took a detour via one of our most recently erected, and best curated statues in a seemingly unlikely corner of the city, near the junction of Lombard Street and Rosemary Street. It portrays Frederick Douglass, the black American anti-slavery campaigner, who actually was only able to buy himself out of slavery following his speaking tour of Ireland in 1845-6. As part of that he spoke in the building now known as "First Church" in Rosemary Street, which was then a politically liberal Presbyterian Church. The sculpture was created by Alan Beattie Herriot and Hector Guest and was erected in July 2023. This piece begins with a quotation from Douglass, but whilst Saturday's anti-racism ra...

I'm in London as part of my sabbatical and found myself in a time warp last night and this morning watching the news of the riots in my home city, with a friend and colleague caught up in the midst of them, trying to make a difference. I'll leave it to others back home to comment on things on a deeper level. My prayers are with those involved in the original attack that lit the blue touch paper, and those picking up the pieces including the emergency services and those in East Belfast Mission... But this is my initial, emotional response to the whole mess with credit/apologies to Paul Brady . Four decades ago I sat in a city not my own, listening tearfully to a song that sang about the skies of Lebanon burning, with television pictures of women and children dying in the street, whilst back home we were sacrificing our own children and leaving twisted wreckage on the roads... carving tomorrow from a tombstone. Many tomorrows have come and gone, and too many tombsto...