This was taken around  teatime 1 year ago today by Ade. I’m not quite with it as you can see. It was taken on my phone in the ward and I’m about 4 or 5 hours post-op, and awake. Sort of. I’m still amazed sometimes, when I see the scar I carry, that only hours the procedure all there was down the centre of my chest was that narrow strip of a plaster, which was pulled off a few days later.

It’s been a good year, and I’m thankful for good health and the slow returning of some measure of fitness. Grateful too for the skill of surgeons and doctors and the wonderful care I received while in the Mater.

I’ve never really looked at this picture until preparing this post, so the cross in the background is a surprise. I’ll take it as a sign of God’s good presence through this whole journey.

Nice piece on the graveyard excavation on the BBC Newsline site, herePhoto from bbc.

Our introduction to water in the Bible is tumultuous. It is a surging, enveloping, grasping entity, tireless in its efforts to overwhelm the good order of creation. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament this contest is tossed and turned.

And in a world as contingent and dangerous as that of the writer of Psalm 29 it takes great faith to believe in God in the presence of the surging danger of the sea or the tragic absence of rain.

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.

4 The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.

5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.

6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild ox.

7 The voice of the LORD strikes
with flashes of lightning.

8 The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;
the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

9 The voice of the LORD twists the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever.

11 The LORD gives strength to his people;
the LORD blesses his people with peace.

The God who sits enthroned over the flood, and who from there blesses his people with peace, is also the God of Job who can stir up the stirrer by disturbing the sea

10 marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
for a boundary between light and darkness.

11 The pillars of the heavens quake,
aghast at his rebuke.

12 By his power he churned up the sea;
by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.

13 By his breath the skies became fair;
his hand pierced the gliding serpent.

14 And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”

And he is also the God of Psalm 46, a Psalm with a chequered history in Northern Ireland

1 our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.

2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

POEM

A Hilltop Field, Jane Tyson Clement

“Faith is the energy the Master gives you which enables you to take hold of His promises and to participate in His life.” Phillipe Vernier

Faith has no abode, no tree-hid haven,
no rock-encircled harbour where the tide
will never swirl nor threaten; nor has faith
the quiet breast of broad sweet-flowing river.

Faith has a hill-top field alive and growing,
faith has its nets staked out in the open sea,
faith is a rocky river, swift and harnessed
to fill the valley with its energy.

Water I
Water II
WaterIII

It’s been a long time in gestation but I can finally announce that a new wesbite for Skainos went live over the weekend. There is still a small part of it that is in development – i.e. I haven’t managed to write material for it yet – but we needed to hit the button on it because there is so much happening.

Comments appreciated, and thanks to the creativity of Phil Harrison and the guys at Manifesto Design. In this amazing world of ours, the work was done between Belfast and various places in South Africa.

PS I’m reliably informed that, contrary to previous reports, tonight’s BBC NI Newsline programme will feature a piece on our archaeological dig

My earliest connections with faith involve water.

I’m told that my baptism as an unknowing baby was marked by controversy. The priest initially refused because the name my parents wanted to give me recalled neither a saint nor a family member. But the deed was done, at the insistance of my strong-willed Irish mother, and the water that washed me and marked me was poured over my infant head.

The other water memory is of the stone vessel which held the holy water. Its rims were worm smooth by countless generations of the faithful who only gained entry to worship by dipping a forefinger in the cool water and tracing the sign of the cross over head and torso. Sometimes if I remember hard enough, I can still recall the cooling feel of the water touched to my forehead.

I remember too watching at close quarters the priest as he prepared the elements for consecration. Only bread and wine, ignorant of the transformation that awaited them. As too were the parishioners who walked for us. They came up the middle aisle bearing gifts that would soon feed a multitude while we sat in our pews and watched.

The wine was measured into the chalise, and with the smallest ladle imaginable, a mere spot of water was taken from the cruet, and dropped into the cup. The rich red liquid is adulterated by this tiny fullstop of water. What was it? Was it our sins absorbed in his blood? Was it his humanity mixed irretrievably with his divinity.
Who knows? But when the cup was drained and the bread consumed it became for us blood and body.

POEM
Water by Philip Larkin
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Water I
Water II

What, you might ask, brings these three  together?

Gritty urban realism perhaps?

I’ve just started reading The Corner, from the creators of The Wire, which I’ve just started watching. Both are gritty and urban and real. The kind of real that places some of our stuff here in Northern Ireland into context.

For more years than I can recall it has been my habit to collect concert tickets, boarding passes, bus and rail journey tickets…anything that has a location memory attached. I save these and use them as bookmarks, so it’s not unusual to pull any random book of the shelf in our home and find a place marker that adds an additional memory to that of the book.

So, the other day, when it came time to pick up The Corner, this is what was waiting for me in the drawer.

I may blog about the book when I’ve finished, but this ticket brought back a million memories.

Memories of a summer spent in the US. Memories of persuading a woman I was keen on back home to queue up for me outside the music shop and who later became my wife – I like to think her willingness to do this for me helped persuade me and didn’t put her off. Of a day that began by leaving LA at 5.30am to fly to Minneapolis-St Paul and sitting on the tarmac in a sweltering aircraft beside a wailing infant. Of meeting Ade in Belfast Central, and my dad in Connolly in Dublin where he took my bags and dropped me off at the RDS. Of Bruce playing for more than 3 hours, including a stupendous version of 10th Avenue. Of coming home and sleeping for the best part of 24 hours.

And is there a better song about gritty urban realism than Lost in the Flood?

And that’s what links them all together.

A shot snatched on Saturday when O’Driscoll had taken a blow to the head and looked, for a moment, to be seriously injured. Oooooh the tension. Note, the legendary prop Johnny Mawhinney surrounded by women – there’s not many from the front row union that you could say that about.

When God saw how corrupt human beings had become, he chose to put an end to it all, everything, all animals and plants. “I am going to destroy men and women for their wickedness,” says God, “and the earth with them”. And the means he chose was a flood.

He chose this indiscriminate judgment even though the earth and its creatures were innocent of charge. There is no blame laid at their feet, and yet he says…’I am going to destroy the earth with them’.

And so, because of the evil actions of men and women God is moved to withdraw the boundary he had set for the march of the seas, the waters above and below flowed together and whole creation was engulfed.

It is an antediluvian truth we are painfully re-learning in our day that the consequences of the sin and wickednesses of human beings cannot be circumscribed to human beings alone. If we continue to live in unrestrained ways, the whole earth will suffer and be engulfed by the waters of chaos again.

It is a sombre story artfully disguised in the bright clothing of a children’s tale. The lifestyle choices of men and women have global consequences. And how appropriate that we, whom the bible professes to have been made of the dust of the earth, are drowned and dissolved in the waters of judgment.

There is hope however, in the story. Noah and his family are shut into the Ark by God himself and by this means they survive the watery chaos. The scriptures record that the human actors were shut in with the animals. They are there in their dumb obedience, chosen to represent the whole of the created order to teach human beings that there is no salvation remaining for us in the dark days which does not also include the whole of God’s world.

POEM
At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Water: Symbol, Element, Utility I

Last Thursday night at All Soul’s Church on Elmwood Avenue was a fascinating night. It was the 2nd AKT Event, hosted by Emma Cowan of Corrymeela and focused on the topic of Welcome and in partnership with Jayme Reaves we hosted a table on the theology of welcome. I remember saying to David Stevens that there wouldn’t be a more diverse group meeting in Belfast this night or any night in the near future.

One of the tables featured migrant workers telling their stories of being strangers in a strange land.

In many ways I’m glad it wasn’t this week, when the myth of the cead mile failte Ireland took another battering at the hands of racist thugs.

I agree, it’s too simplistic a thing to say that this is loyalist sectarianism transferring to fascistic racism. It was good to hear Frankie Gallagher of the UPRG speaking up and condemning it unreservedly. But I think we must also be honest and face up to an element within loyalism which is self-destructive and ugly. Face up to the fact that, as in many places the world over, the foot soldiers that supported the the erstwhile colonial power are doomed.

Sometimes I wonder whether there is anything redeemable in loyalism.

All that said, in the midst of what has been a shameful episode, I noted in the Radio Ulster news this morning two pieces which featured faith groups responding creatively to need among the most vulnerable.

One was, I’m not ashamed to say, our own East Belfast Mission. Jackie Millar and  Mark Houston spoke up eloquently on our work with those who find themselves unemployed. The other was City Church in their ready willingness to provide shelter for those who had been intimidated from their homes. They also featured on the RTE Radio Morning Ireland programme. Honourable mention also to Fitzroy Presbyterian, round the corner from City Church who were mentioned by the Lord Mayor.

Numbers 15:15

The community is to have the same rules for you and for the alien living among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the alien shall be the same before the LORD

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for more local comment check out Alan and VM as well as Slugger.

I wonder how I have lived so long without this.