crookedshore

We're moving. Want to come?

We're checking out of typepad and moving over to wordpress. As of today, there'll be no more updates at this address, but all the crookedshore-goodness is now over at www.crookedshore.com which will point to www.crookedshore.wordpress.com

I'm also moving 'frontforkfairytales', the photo-news blog of last summer's epic bike ride and 'where's me breakfast?' - reflections from a saturday morning breakfast table. Neither of these has been updated in a while, but they might be resurrected sometime.

Go on, take a moment and update your news feed.

The Skainos Blog

I'm delighted to say that a new blog on the Skainos Project has just gone live.   I don't expect you to know a great deal about Skainos, but it is how I pay the bills.

It's an urban regeneration project in East Belfast which I've been working on it for 8 years now and we're getting close to seeing it fly. The blog will  add some interactivity to the website, and allow us to tell the story and the theology of  Skainos.

Check it out, leave a comment, put it in your feedreader.

Nebraska Revisited

Last night was the opening of the Belfast/Nashville Songwriters Festival and there were several gigs happening around the city.

We went to the Nebraska Revisited one - 10 local singer songwriters each covering a track in sequence from Springsteen's classic 1982 album called, funnily enough...Nebraska and each one introduced by Stuart Bailie. A dark and sombre collection of songs about murder, unemployment, terrifying nightmares, the burden of poverty and living just this side of the law.

Highlights included Ben Glover's intense version of Atlantic City, Matt McGinn's outrageously good version of Open All Night with the virtuoso guitar playing of Colm McClean, Boathouse played State Trooper a la Arcade Fire and Brian Houston ripped into Reason to Believe.

Gives me confidence that Belfast is bursting with musical talent at the minute.

The other thing was how small the city is. We met at the John Hewitt...6 of us, and I spotted some guys from East Belfast there. We dandered round to the OhyeahCentre and then found out that Rachel Austin, a colleague at EBM was on the bill. She did a beautifully fragile version of Highway Patrolman. There to support her were two other former colleagues from EBM. We waited for Mark Houston to join his brother Brian on stage but his flight was late. There were probably enough EBM people about anyway!

Outside afterwards were two guys who are community workers in East Belfast, but we couldn't persuade them to return to the Hewitt. And back there we bumped into DP, a denizen of the John Hewitt in the company of a local poet and screen print artist. The poet later did a bizarre turn on the open mike when the Half-Stoned Cowboys took a break.

It was that kind of a night. And it's why Belfast is a great place.

Cold and Bright on the Crookedshore

It was an icy morning on the crookedshore, the sun cut sharply and painfully through a blue sky, but the sea remained unruffled. I was there with my son and Tobey, my dog. The only rule; the nine year old was in charge.

Here are some of the things I noticed as we followed his whims and interests..

-the plop of small stones piercing the thin ice and the panic of the white bubbles of air trapped beneath the surface
-perfect spheres of water, frozen, and stuck to the delicate green leaves of grass.
-the dog tag which had lost its owner…meg
-the triangle of stone we took home, that lifted away without regret from the rock.
-the momentary surprise on Tobey’s face when the surface of ice gave way and plunged him into the water.
-the tiny crystals of ice scattered liberally among the grains of sand in the palm of my hand.
-the sound of Tobey’s claws gripping the loose stones on the path as he (almost) rushed blindly past our hiding place.

My son searched out the frozen pools of water, eager to find stones to smash the ice. I preferred the effort of balancing the stones on the ice, to see how much weight one thin layer of frozen water could take before succumbing to the inevitable. I wondered about this. Was I less inclined to break the ice because I knew that such fragility is rare and not often repeated? It must be held on to. Whereas he, emboldened by the impetuosity of youth, believed unshakeably that such things are actually the stuff of life.

The Post-Birthday World - Lionel Shriver

The basic outline of 'The Post-Birthday World' here is not unusual. Woman (Irina McGovern) in settled relationship is tempted to kiss an attractive, charismatic snooker player (Ramsey Acton). The novel unfolds in alternate chapters detailing the direction her life takes if, on the one hand, she resists the temptation, and on the other, she succumbs.

The author, Lionel Shriver also wrote the shocking novel and runaway literary success ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ which I read a few years ago, and it was on the strength of it that I purchased this one.

It’s a massive, 600 page tome, much too long, but its central idea is stated early on, in the story line where Irina resisted the temptation, it is said,

‘She had only been alerted to her own happiness by a narrow brush against an alternative future in which it is annihilated’ (pg 82).

By it’s end, in the opposite storyline we are told,

‘She has learned the hard way that there is no safety. That there never was any safety. So it is the illusion of safety that she misses, nothing more.’ (pg 589)

And this to me was the problem with this novel. I found it deeply cynical and cold, exampled for me in the fact that there was no lovemaking, only sex. Actually it was really only f**king according to the text. And I’m not sure I want to buy into an idea that you can only appreciate what goodness you enjoy in relationship by toying with its possible annihilation.

We are offered the scenario where Irina faces an inevitable choice between the steady and safe Lawrence and the exciting but dangerous Acton. The one leads to illusory security, predictability but professional frustration, the other to insecurity but great sex and professional success. Choose your poison, but you’ll always be haunted by what might have been.

When Shriver takes residence in the head of Irina, she writes confidently and often memorably. But boy, when she switches to dialogue she crashes and burns. There were times I was in the middle of what I imagine a Mills and Boon novel would be like. There is just no way people talk like this even in the midst of the thrill of new or illicit loves.

It’s an interesting read, certainly thought-provoking, but I’ll not be rushing back.

I'm Not Terminally Cynical

Living in a country that is both over-politicised and bloated on religion, and working in the field of faith-based community development, I sometimes come away from conversations with colleagues feeling cynical and  not a little down.

Cynical about church leaders and preachers. Cynical about politicians and their promises.

Then I found this.

And I learned that my heart hasn't shrivelled completely. I learned that I am still susceptible to to the poetry of fine rhetoric and a visionary orator. And even when a part of me which has been disappointed before (witness: the optimism of morning after the first election of Tony Blair...and look what we ended up with!), my spirit can still soar to meet someone who sets the bar of aspiration in the clouds.

I still have space for a fine preacher.

Sentimental hocum? Possibly. But I still love it.

Straight from the Sam Seaborn school of West Wing speech writing (remember the draft State of the Union speech on curing cancer within 10 years??)

Beginnings in Genesis - Ashes to Ashes

the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
                                                                                                                       genesis 2:7

There is one occasion every year when a person's Catholicism was worn on their sleeve, or more accurately on their forehead.  Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, which occurs this week. The story, (perhaps the mythology, I never knew for sure), was that the palms used the previous year on Palm Sunday were burnt and the ashes collected and then stored till Ash Wednesday the following year. At the Ash Wednesday ceremony, the priest makes the sign of the cross on everyone's forehead with the ash. As he does so he recites ‘Remember that thou art dust and into dust thou shalt return’.

I have vivid memories of Ash Wednesday in NYC recently, as people lined up to receive the sign of their mortality and to hear the promise of their coming death. Outside the church on Broadway, the rest of the world raced by doing what they do on any given Wednesday. Inside, a priest sat, for an entire day, waiting for such worshippers who might enter in order to reminded of their ashey identity. For me it served as a useful reminder in these days of the quest for perpetual youth.

Apart from this particular annual occasion, the only other time these words will be spoke over me will be at my funeral.

The origin of the sentence lies here in the detailed story of the creation of humankind.

God now literally gets his hands dirty, bends down to the earth and with lump of dead clay he fashions a human being like a potter working with clay. This is artistic, inventive work requiring great skill. God bends close enough to this clay to kiss it. And he breathes on it. Actually the word is better translated ‘he blew’ on it. It’s the kind of blowing that gets a fire started, the fire of life.

The Hebrew word for ground or earth is athamah. The Hebrew for humankind is atham, later to be the personal name of the man. Indicating the close relationship between the man and the earth. He was created from it, he is to cultivate it and eventually he will return to it.

Beginnings in Genesis - No Mere Mortals

'let us make humankind in our image' gen 1:26

Only of human beings is this said and no other creature carries the divine spark in the way we do. The Scriptures tell us that even though the angels are greater in might and power than us (2 Peter 2:11) it is not even said of them that they are in God’s image. Every human being is this invested with eternal significance.

This perhaps sheds new light on the command not to create likenesses of God. For God has placed his image all over the world and he wishes us to pay due homage to it by recognising each individual as carrying the image of God. Thus the New Testament says love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and then, love your neighbour, created in his image, as you love yourself.

Likewise does James get indignant when he says:

'With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who have been made in God's likeness.'    James 3:9

The other implication of this is that every human being is worthy of respect and being honoured from the
poorest to the mightiest. No one individual is more worthy than another.

CS Lewis wrote:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

So you! Yes you, reading this; the image of God. The person who smiled at you this morning in the queue; the image of God. The family member you’ve fallen out with this week; the image of God. That woman you envy, the guy who sold you your lunchtime snack; the image of God. All round you today; images of God. Everywhere.

The image of God.

Would it really hurt to bless the image of God with a smile?

 

Newly Familiar with the Crookedshore

I was afforded a rare privilege the other day as I walked with Tobey along the crookedshore.

I saw the familiar with first time eyes.

It was sunset as I headed towards home, and the sky was a tangle of pinks and reds and purples while all around me were the familiar sights. Belfast Lough, stained with sky colours, opening to the Irish Sea and the coast of Scotland. Cave Hill and Black Mountain brooding over Belfast. The church-spired skyline of Bangor back-lit by the declining sun. Carrickfergus stretching to Kilroot Power Station and the shore by Whitehead, where Ade and I walked and grew to know and love one another. And I perceived it all and knew it as if for the first time.

The wonder of the moment caused me to stop and to drink in the newness of this favourite scene.

Holocaust Memorial Day Today

Today is 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. The Holocaust Memorial Trust have produced a short visual piece in the UK which urges us to

remember, reflect, react

to ensure that these kinds of things never happen again. But of course they do and they have; Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechyna, Darfur and on and on. Even here, in the so-called sophisticated, West we in Northern Ireland have conducted a 40 year terror campaign against one another on the basis of ethnic, political and religious identity.

I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau a few years ago in the company of some of the perpetrators of violence in our society. Just prior to that we took a group of paramilitary leaders to visit Munich and Dachau Labour Camp. All this to help us reflect on the long term impact on a community of sectarian or ethnic or racist violence.

Remember, reflect, react we are told.

20 years ago, in 1988 I was in the early months of my first job after university, having moved north to Belfast from the Republic of Ireland. I can remember it in great detail. It is vivid and real to me because it was not so long ago.

I read a comment piece in today's Irish Times which pulled me up short. It reminded me that just 20 years before I was born, the death factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau was reaching peak production, achieving murder levels of 20,000 people a day, stockpiling the shoes, suitcases, hair brushes and artificial limbs which today form those grotesque displays in Auschwitz 1.

The writer John Fleming urges us to remember,

"Lest - despite Rwanda, the Balkans, the Congo, Chechnya and far too many other occasions of human horror - we forget that people like you and me are capable of murdering people like you and me."

Remember, Reflect, React.