Virtual Methodist

I wrote this over the weekend, but I think its appropriate for Martin Luther King Day. I wrote it in the wake of the arson attack at the Belfast Multi-Cultural Association in Donegall Road near our patch in south Belfast, and the encouraging response of the public to a crowdfunding appeal for them. In the upcoming 4CornersFestival we will also be arguing that we need to build breathing room for diversity , looking at the challenges that those from other cultures and races face here, in the wake of global Black Lives Matter protests, prompted by George Floyd's dying words "I can't breathe." There’s no them, There’s just us, We’re all one, In this community, We’re with one another, Not agin, Even when we differ, Whether we are white, (Is anybody white?) Or black (same question), or iridescent purple, Red, white and blue, Or green, white and orange, Male, female, cis or trans, Gay or glum, Straight or wobbly, Young or old or in between, Tall or short or wide, Left hande...

Harmony requires that people sing slightly different tunes. Not discordant ones, but different.   In the Methodist Church we pride ourselves on our singing. "Methodism was born in song" we claim... but these days most of the the singing that goes on is in unison... Slowly the four part harmonies that used to characterise some classic Wesleyan hymns are being forgotten even more rapidly than the wider corpus of Wesley's hymns... And what is true musically is at times true theologically. There is a desire for us all not just to sing from the same hymnbook, but to sing the same parts in a very small range of songs. People singing different tunes or introducing different songs can be made to feel very unwelcome in certain parts of the church... and I am not specifically talking about the Methodist Church, but we are as guilty as any... However, there is a limit... I was in a church recently where when it came to the chorus, which in our church involves myself and maybe one...

Have you ever heard of Ruth and Verena Cady? I hadn't until I read a reference to them in a Max Lucado book , and then followed up with some judicious Googling ... For those who haven't read about them previously, they were twins, born in 1984… and like many sisters and particularly twins, they shared everything… they shared the same womb before they were born and the same room afterwards… they even shared the same bed every night… they shared the same toys… even sharing one trike between them… But it went further than with most sisters or even twins, because Ruthie and Verena’s bodies were fused together from their sternum to the waist… Though they had different brains and nervous systems and distinctive personalities they were sustained by a single, three-chambered heart and the food that came from a single intestine… They were literally inseparable because one could not survive without the other… and if truth be told when they were born the doctors didn’t think they would su...