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Not a Christmas Carol

The 4 Corners Festival 2023 started in earnest yesterday with its theme of "Dreams: Visions for Belfast" with a nod both to Martin Luther King Jnr's "I have a dream" speech 60 uears ago this year and the hopes and dreams wrapped up on the Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago, as well as the many Biblical dreamers alluded to by Julieann Moran in Skainos last night.

But throughout the festival this year we are also staging a photographic exhibition at Artcetera Studios in Rosemary Street, looking at the issue of homelessness. As exhibition coordinator Cormac McArt says "No-one dreams of being homeless" and yet it is a problem that affects people from all backgrounds and all 4 corners of our city and beyond, both in terms of the insidious hidden homelessness that is increasingly affecting families and children, and the more obvious street sleeping, with people literally dying on our streets at a rate akin to those dying due to our "Troubles."

Over the Christmas period as I was thinking about the festival and this event, the words of a particular Christmas Carol stuck in my throat, particularly as I sang it at one point in "Homelessness Week", the annual nod to this issue that is too easily overlooked in the headlong rush to the big day and the other charitable appeals demanding our attention and cash. But it didn't just stick in my throat, it stuck in my head too, and this word collage derived from it is my contribution to the start of this exhibition and the festival. 
For further details about the festival and to book your free tickets please see https://4cornersfestival.com/2023-programme-overview/


O troubled child of Belfast
How still we see thee lie
While we silently go by.
You’ve walked the dark streets
While other mortals slumber,
But the morning stars have gone
And you descend into deep,
Drink-assisted daytime sleep.
Is it dreamless,
Or filled with hopes and fears?
Dread of this darkness being everlasting,
Or prayers for heaven's blessing?
But who is watching over you,
What ear is hearing you?
How silently, how silently,
We accept this world of sin,
Where meek souls feel cast out
With no place to abide.
But we join the Christmas angels
Singing praises to God the King
and peace to some on earth,
Telling great glad tidings,
That Christ is born of Mary
Lord God with us (not you),
The homeless Immanuel!

Selah 
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