Virtual Methodist

Last night I had the joy of being at the QUB Chaplains' Carol Service where not only did the President of the MCI, Sahr Yambasu preach with his usual verve about what God being Immanuel might look like today, but also the music by groups from the Presbyterian and Catholic chaplaincies was beautiful. One piece in particular I had never heard before, apparently an Italian composition from the early 20th century (translated into English) which put the chorus of "Adeste Fideles"/"O Come all ye faithful" into a radically different setting, breathing new life into already powerful, but often overly familiar words. This chimed with an earworm that has been with me for the past few days since Sally and I started our now customary "one album at a time" erection and decoration of our Christmas tree. The first album is invariably Phil Cunningham's peerless Christmas Songbook  and the first track on it is a rendering of Chely Wright and Mindy Smith's senti...

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas day. The rhythm of ours was slightly different with it being the first year in a new church. At long last, however, I did summon up the courage to perform this song which I wrote about 4 or 5 years ago, with Owain playing guitar. This was a special joy given how little he has been able to play over these past 2 years. It seems to have been well received and a couple of people asked me for the words. I  have posted it a couple of times previously. But  here it is again. The tune is "Raglan Road..." Down Bethl’em road from Nazareth, Came Joseph and his wife Within her womb God’s promise bloomed His Word, the Light of Life. He came to take on flesh and blood To show us all the way And through the night a star so bright Hailed the dawning of His day. And on the hills round Bethlehem, Some shepherds heard the song, The angels sing of a new born King Awaited for so long. They find him midst the filth and grime In a bed of stra...

One of the blogs I've been following through advent is Patrick Comerford's "Art for Advent" , and a particular favourite post was the one on the ‘The Census at Bethlehem’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, first because I like Bruegel in general, and second because this picture captures the political import of the census noted by Luke. ..  Bruegel translates things to his own time and country, the Netherlands, at that time ruled, with a certain level of ruthlessness, by Spain. Snow has fallen (snow on snow), but that does not deter the census-takers.  We often miss the fact that Augustus' census, like any census, is not about keeping some sort of record for posterity, but is an instrument of policy... and for both the Romans and the Spanish whom Bruegel lived and worked under, it was tied to taxation and social control. Augustine's census was a marker being laid down that the Roman Empire was in charge (even if Herod the so-called Great was still ostensibly t...

I haven't had a good old fashioned rant in a while, so here goes... "Selfies" and "onesies..."  Have there ever been two words and concepts that sum up a civilisation in serious trouble as powerfully as those two? "Onesie" has been an acceptable word in the eyes of the OED at least since 2007 when it appeared in the Shorter OED, but it will never be acceptable to me, either as a word or a garment... As both word and garment it represents, to me, the infantilisation of the English language and western society... Adult baby-grows described in baby talk... So family members may take back any humorous Christmas "onesie" intended for me, as one would be Queen Victoria-like in one's lack of amusement if presented with one... But I loathe "onesies" much less than the concept and word "selfie". Others have been ranting about this " OED word of the year " since it was declared such last month. I have onl...

Yesterday a friend posted on facebook a link to the following excerpt from a 1988 recording of BBC TV's "That's Life", honouring Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker and former banker, who, before World War II, almost single-handedly organised an operation known as the Czech Kindertransport. This involved the evacuation of about 669 children, most of whom were Jewish, to Britain from German occupied Czechoslovakia. 250 further children were due to leave Prague in autumn 1939, but the invasion of Poland and subsequent declaration of war stopped that. Winton kept quiet about his humanitarian exploits for many years, until his wife Grete found a scrapbook in their attic in 1988 listing the children, their parents' names (most of whom perished in Auschwitz), and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. This then prompted the telling of his story on "That's Life" where Winton finds himself surrounded by some of those whom he had saved... (...

Further thoughts from Oscar Romero (and probably not the last this advent), this time explicitly on advent and the  theme of  last Sunday's " Hope and History - Into the Neighbourhood"  candle liturgy -  "The Coming Kingdom of Justice."  Advent should admonish us to discover in each brother or sister that we greet, in each friend whose hand we shake, in each beggar who asks for bread, in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union, in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves, the face of Christ. Then it would not be possible to rob them, to cheat them, to deny them their rights. They are Christ, and whatever is done to them Christ will take as done to himself. This is what Advent is: Christ living among us. Archbishop Oscar Romero Shalom

A brief reflection in the light of some happenings at the first day of the 2013 Conference of the Methodist Church in Ireland... Too many words, drowning out the incarnate Word That enters the world in silence In stillness A background hubbub of business that just won't wait; The buzz of silenced mobiles demanding attention Be still Be still and know Be still and know that I am Be still and know that I am God Shhh Don't speak - listen Don't do - be Selah

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...

At this time of year the newspapers usually come up with a story about some cleric who has disabused children of the existence of Santa and his place in the Christmas story... "Spoil Sport Vicar Equates Santa with Satan!" and that sort of thing... It goes hand in hand with the "Keep Christ in Christmas" stuff that also starts circulating from late November on... This year, not only did a couple of blogs kick back against the "Keep Christ in Christmas" thing, with  "Keep Chi in Xmas" , which I posted on facebook this time last month, but there was also at least one post offering a partial rehabilitation of old St. Nick... But thanks to my friend Lynda Gould, I also came across, on facebook, the following "Anti-Santy Rant" by Glen Scrivener which offers a reflection on our attitude to God and Jesus in the light of our attitude to Santa Claus... You can see a version with Glen Scrivener delivering it to camera, here ... But this is t...

Yesterday morning I and about a thousand or so other people were summoned to prayer, not by bells (or by a muezzin in a minaret) but by guys in fluorescent waistcoats blowing whistles... I was taking part in the 5 minute prayer vigil around Belfast City Hall, and as I said yesterday on facebook I was going to write a longer piece on it, but Stocki said it much better than I would in his Surmise . He even used a line I was gearing up to, the Iona Community's John Bell's oft repeated assertion that God's favourite colour is tartan... I suppose that line has stuck with me because I have a Scottish wife... But it certainly applied to yesterday, as I saw people from all sorts of denominational affiliations, social classes, theological bents and political affectations linking arms around city hall and looking out towards the 4 corners of this divided city as they prayed silently (for the most part) for it... But that is, in many ways, only the beginning... When we pray, th...

I'm a fixer. So this song has resonated with me since I first heard it... But I post it as a slight counterbalance to the piece of doggerel I have written below. It is a bit ironic in the light of my previous post where I referred to hope in the here and now rather than hope deferred, but thinking about the actual shape of that hope in the light of experiences in the last couple of weeks and having Karine Polwart's new album "Traces" on in the background (beautiful but poignant - my review will follow in due course but here's one to go on with ) have produced this -  When the fixer cannot fix it When the coper cannot cope When the purveyor of hope Has nothing left for himself When every day brings more heartache When each night brings more despair When the world seems so unfair And darkness is triumphant When the storm sends you spiralling When the earth quakes beneath your feet When enemies plot your defeat And others sigh at ...

A few weeks ago I went to see the new movie “Thor” based on Marvel Comics’ take on the old Norse myths… I went with my ten year old son, who is, like me at his age a complete nut about Marvel Superheroes and ancient myths and we were both keen to see this latest big screen interpretation… Here's the trailer for those of you who missed it... Just incase you couldn't make head nor tail of this, and here I flag up a slight spoiler alert, the key element of the plot is that Thor, son of the King of the Norse god’s Odin, is banished from Asgard to earth as a form of punishment by his father and has to prove himself worthy in order to restore himself to his father’s favour… You can guess for yourself how it all works out… I won't give a detailed critique of the film, as I'll post my thoughts on that front elsewhere, although, to be truthful, while I enjoyed it, it probably doesn't really stand up under close scrutiny. However, I did find myself thinking that the story por...

Dublin has a reputation as a venue for short city-breaks, but that usually involves couples getting away for a weekend… or groups of people going there for a stag or hen party… But this past week has seen two of the most prestigious flying visits to Dublin in a long, long time… First the momentous visit of the Queen last week, not only seeking to acknowledge a painful past but also endeavouring to point to a more positive partnership in the future… And then yesterday the President of the United States of America jetted in on Airforce One… And unlike the Queen or Prince Philip, when offered a pint of the black stuff he knocked it back (doubtless causing ecstacy among the advertising boys at St. James' Gate). During the run up to his election the above song doing the rounds affirming that there’s no-one as Irish as Barack O’Bama, and I heard it yet again over the past few days. But I don’t think many people realised at the time that he does have significant roots in Moneygall, County...

Currently we're doing a Bible study on Paul's Letter to the Philippians and we've got as far as the hymn to Christ in Philippians chapter 2. It is pregnant with meaning (and controversy) probably due to its likely origins as a hymn/poem rather than as a piece of systematic theology. The context into which Paul drops it (whether Paul or another originally wrote it is almost irrelevant) is a passage where he is encouraging the Philippians to work together. What follows is my (prosaic) take on this wonderful piece: Think of yourselves the way that Jesus, the Anointed One, thought of himself: He was God, through and through, but did not cling on to his equality with God, didn’t grasp at things for his own selfish ends, rather he poured himself out into the shape of a slave, taking on the physical life of a human being. Having become a human being he humbled himself yet further, obeying God to the death, ironically to a death that was reserved for rebellious slaves, death by cru...

"Jesus" is 10 years old today... or at least the Wikipedia entry on "Jesus" is according to this piece by Chris Wilson that I picked up a couple of months ago via Biblical World . A lot of debate (not least in the internet... see for example the comments at the bottom of Chris Wilson's article) goes into the historicity of Jesus, with sceptics writing most evidence for the existence of Jesus (known as the Christ) as irredeemably biased, with amateur Christian apologists asserting in a vague, unattested way, that there is more documentary evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for the existence of near contemporary Julius Caesar. The latter piece of nonsense probably comes from the more accurate assertion that there is more near contemporaneous documentary attestation to the books of the New Testament than there is to Caesar's Gallic Wars, but that is understandable given that the New Testament was treated as sacred by the church, and many ancient ...

Partly prompted by the thoughts of Will Grady reblogged on Connexions , what follows is a brief excerpt from the New Irish Arts show "I Witness" that I wrote a few years ago... They're the words of Mary, Jesus' mother, as she thinks back on her first-born's early years... He who was there when the universe was formed, took form inside my womb… He who is the source of all good gifts suckled at my breast… He who walked in the Garden of Eden, I taught to walk as a toddler… He who carved the commandments on tablets of stone with his finger, learned them from me at the kitchen table… He who inspired the psalmists, learned their songs on my knee… It was amazing… I saw the son of God grow into a man… I know every mother thinks that their child is perfect… Particularly their first… But my son was… Shalom

Here's another possible contender for Christmas No1 if there was any justice in the world. I'm not a big Sufjan Stevens fan but I picked this up over on this side of sunday ... The melancholy touched with the hope of resurrection within it is so poignant, particularly when it is contrasted with the bright lights of the video. Such Christmas lightshows used to be the sort of things you only ever saw in America, but like everything else it has made the trans-Atlantic hop and is very popular here... especially in working class areas. I used to work in an area where the lights on many houses at Christmas were so elaborate that queues of cars used to snake slowly through the estate every night from early December to early January... It was way more impressive than the city centre lights. But I knew that behind the bright lights and the closed doors lay broken hearts, strained relationships and shattered dreams... Celebration of the incarnation is ultimately only good news of great j...

Nothing new this morning... But this little ditty that I wrote a couple of years back has been getting a few hits recently, so I thought I would reblog it. I've never had the nerve yet to ask anyone to perform it... If anyone else does, let me know... The tune is "Raglan Road..." Down Bethl’em road from Nazareth, Came Joseph and his wife Within her womb God’s promise bloomed His Word, the Light of Life. He came to take on flesh and blood To show us all the way And through the night a star so bright Hailed the dawning of His day. And on the hills round Bethlehem, Some shepherds heard the song, The angels sing of a new born King Awaited for so long. They find him midst the filth and grime In a bed of straw and hay, Ignored by the earth that he brought to birth The Lord Almighty lay. And from the east to Bethlehem Come men who saw the sign. These eastern seers travelled two long years To present their gifts so fine. Gold they did bring, fit for a king And a scent of untold w...

I suppose this poem/reflection was a product of many thoughts colliding: a reaction against the idealised views of birth, especially the birth of Jesus in less than ideal conditions, the discipline of waiting in both advent and pregnancy, as well as the Jesus' phrase about being born of "water and Spirit" (John 3: 5) to Nicodemus, a conversation which also gave us the much-misused or misunderstood statement about being "born again/from above", as well as the verse in the first Letter of John: This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. 1 John 5:6 (ANIV) Born of water and blood He’s coming Joseph He’s coming… The waters break… And the agony begins. Through the water The people were saved. Through time of trial A place of promise was reached. Wait, my love… Wait, don’t push… The time is not right, But he is coming… Why must we wait? Why not now? Let’s take what is ours It’s the way of the world H...

I enjoy word games… for years my wife, Sally, and I have played "Scrabble" on holiday or late at night, then last year two American friends introduced us to another word game called "Quiddler" that is played using cards… they were with us again at the weekend and introduced us to another one called "Bananagrams" which is like scrabble on speed without a board or points. We also play wordgames online against the clock with friends. Im generally fairly good at word games where I have time to consider how to use my letters and words strategically, but in ones where the clock is ticking, I'm utterly useless… My wife wins the majority of them, as I just can't get the letters down quick enough… I’d love to say she wins the online ones because I can’t type as fast as she can, but whilst that may be true it is not the reason she beats me nearly every time… But whilst I enjoy word games, words are not just playthings… I enjoy words and wordplay; I love to r...