Virtual Methodist

One of the week-long events at this year's 4 Corner's Festival is "Never in my Wildest Dreams", a photo exhibition  at the Artcetera Centre in Rosemary Street. It is an exploration of  homelessness in our city and beyond by  Westcourt Centre's Camera Club. A few weeks ago, someone, who sees 4 Corners as primarily a peace and reconciliation festival, asked, "What has homelessness got to do with reconciliation?"  On one level the answer is that homelessness is something that affects people from all corners, and indeed sectors of our city, and whilst its most obvious form is most evident in the increasing numbers of rough sleepers of the city centre, "hidden homelessness" is a feature across every postcode. But it is more than that. If we are to talk about a city really at peace with itself, then it should be real peace... Biblical shalom, which as Martin Luther King Jnr. repeatedly stated, is not just absence of violence (and those who are homel...

A brief thought for this weekend where many in the USA and elsewhere are remembering Martin Luther King Jr. Some remember his legacy and seek to build on it, others bewail the lack of prophetic leadership that seeks to bring people together for the sake of justice and peace, in the face of those who chose to peddle fear and foster division. But just today I was reading a passage in Ruth Patterson's book  “Looking Back to Tomorrow” (Veritas 2009) where she quotes from Coretta Scott King’s “My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." (Hodder & Stoughton 1970) and the record there of Martin Luther King's funeral. At the funeral Benjamin E. Mays, President Emeritus of Morehouse College, where King had been a student, said: “No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call of God in his lifetime and not in somebody else's time — Abraham leaving his country in obedience to God's call; Moses leading a rebell...

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...

As I write this up, the news is dominated by the vote on Syria and the death of Seamus Heaney, but neither have produced much by way of blog comment yet... Watch this space next week... Instead this week's trawl through the internet is dominated by one event... REMEMBERING AND REALISING THE DREAM This week saw the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have a Dream" speech, spawning a range of columns, blogs and events the world over. Most interesting for me was this piece by Gary Younge , arguing that the remembrance of King's speech and overall message is very selective... He railed against 3 major evils in contemporary American society: Racism, economic inequality/poverty and war... Has the dream been achieved? The removal of formal segregation may have gone some way to address the first of those 3 issues, but have the other 2 disappeared off the radar? They are certainly live issues here... And I wonder what MLK would have made of the whole fi...

Well, I'm back in harness this week after a short period of aestivation, both in the real and virtual realms. This morning saw me start the day at BBC Radio Ulster doing Thought for the Day (if you didn't catch it you can find it approximately 26 and 86 minutes into Good Morning Ulster on the iPlayer for the next week) and this is that thought, more or less in written form... I’m not very athletic… I can’t play a musical instrument… I’m useless at arts and crafts… and I’m never going to be offered a modelling contract… But I am supposed to be moderately intelligent, if IQ tests and exam results are to be believed… So I was interested to read a report last week suggesting that religious people, tend to be less intelligent than self-professed atheists . This led to some crowing by atheists on social networks, although the study emphasised that it probably wasn’t a simple case of cause and effect. Rather, as well as asking more searching questions than those who are less in...