DARE
On the pages of DARE you will meet a new friend of mine kindly introduced to me by Sam Bell, the designer of the book. The man in question is Jeremiah Kite who is indeed a man who DARES. He is an incarnation of what the general theme of the book is. Risk, passion, life in all it's vibrant potential. As CS Lewis, who is indeed qouted in the book's preface, and Mike Scott of the Waterboys would say, it's about going further up and further in, rather than sitting timidly at the gate of the kingdom. DARE to move on...
IN THE GROWING
Like a lot of the poems in this collection this one is a meditation on the birth of my daughter Caitlin. It is actually from a much bigger poem about rural Ulster and the set int heir ways mentalities. In spiritual terms we concentrate so much on the born again that we forget that we need to growe up again. I had a n image of Caitlin living her whole life in a maternity ward. How absurd. So what of the born again?
FROM WHERE IN YOUR IMAGINATION
I love this poem. My finest moment? It all began one evening in Ballycastle. I think I’d gone out to buy the Ireland Saturday night, a sports newspaper as is my liturgical tradition. On the way home I took the long way across towards the beach and up by the river. It was a crystal clear night and I saw the moon and the gulls. Like on so many such occasions, I kind of wished Bruce Cockburn was there to capture it. He wasn’t so I made my own feeble attempt.
Verse two is at Dunluce Castle looking out a window of the ruins across towards the Giants Causeway. I was there with some American friends (Stephanie, April and Tiffany) and I noticed that the stones of the Castle walls had the same wondrous shape as the stone of the Causeway.
The angel share is the aroma off the kegs of whiskey at the nearby Bushmills Distillery. I thought it needed a poem. The last verse came much later as I pondered God’s pre creation imagination. It was probably influenced by Rich Mullins’ Colour Green.
I am honoured that the poem appears in Edwin James Aiken’s disortation...
BENEATH IT ALL
This began as a throwaway line to one of my students Wendy Young. We were talking about God’s existence and she was saying how she’d been working in Portstewart, listening to me playing Carolyn Arends on my radio show and looking at the mountains. I said that before mountains our ideas of God were paper thin. The rest were just driving in my poetry studio to various journeys to preaching places. Verse one looking across towards Lough Neagh from the M2 and the second coming down into Belfast over the mountain and gazing way down to the Mournes.
THE BEYOND IN THE MIDST
A phrase that I’ve used for some 15 years since I read it in college. Ralph Martin I think. I wrote this for the meditation part of a student event where we were looking though Isaiah who seems to me by his vision of God in the temple gets as close as language can get of describing the grandeur of God (Isaih 40) and the incarnation of God (Isaiah 53.) All hinges on Isaiah 58...
CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHISPER
Another one that I’m quite proud of. This is my fascination. God as a baby in straw. It seems to me that all the secrets for modern day evangelism goes back to that stable. The Word must become flesh. God didn’t think words or prophets or hymns or books were enough. He became flesh.
THROUGH CPONGESTED TRAFFIC
Another one about my Christmas obsession. I just think that we hide the powerful insights of Christmas with commerce outside the Church and drying cloth nativities inside it. Once a year we get right there and stare the great truth in the eye. And miss it!
THE INNOCENT LOST
One of the babies Herod kills speaks back. It is also to kind of demythologise the lovely little family season Christmas is. There’s blood and pain and death throughout this salvation storey. Let us not sanitise it. Dave McNair sang this at a Jesus Project event.
WHO ON EARTH ARE YOU
This one dates back to 1992 and a coffee Bar mission in Bangor West. It’s just a rappish type thing to grab attention. Nothing good or profound but I dragged it back out for the Jesus Project and felt that maybe it could be used in Youth Groups.
GRACE FILLED EYES
From a Philip Yancey phrase 'grace healed eyes' and written again for the Jesus project just trying to get my head around the Jesus stories. Probably Norman Mailer’s book The Gospel According To Jesus let my imagination go off like this. People walked out when we did it at University of Ulster at Jordanstown but I do not think there is any heresy here!
WOE TO YOU RELIGIOUS
Again a Jesus project poem leading into Halcyon Days Please Don’t. I actually read lines from the song at it’s end which was a cue for the lads to kick in with their guitars.
DILUTED FLAVOUR
I was at a Christian concert one night and a friend was leaving to go to the pub. He mentioned that there was not much happening in the pub that was not happening at the Christain gig and I thought about how we think we are safe when the outward things like smoking, drinking and alcohol are dealt with. The devil maybe uses it to distart us from the real issues. Jesus called it staraining at gnats and swallowing camels
RAGAMUFFIN DOLL
This is about how our evangelism is often about grace and love but that those concepts seem top go AWOL when people come to faith and join a Church. Legalism takes over and guilt is what we try to heap upon one another. The Ragamuffin is of course stolen from Brennan Manning and Rich Mullins. It’s just the best symbol to describe the sick who are in more need of a doctor than the well.
TORN
Similar theme actually. We are always so down on ourselves. We concentrate on our fallen nature rather than the fact we are made in the image of God.I finished it on Elvis's birthday which gave it a spooky slant.
A NATION OF LEVITES AND PRIESTS
This is a strange collage of ideas and thoughts with a general finish on the whole idea that we are impatient, greedy and selfish. A good companion piece would be Richard Shindell’s song about a nun who has a flat tire on her way to the Sate Penitentiary. It’s on his Somewhere Near Paterson album and it’s called Transit. By the way the lines about diamonds and rubies is nicked from David Wilcox.
WHISKEYTOWN RYAN
I am a massive alternative country fan and one of my favourite albums is Whiskeytown’s Stranger Almanac. This is a meditation on that album and the thoughts that it raised. It’s about salvation being a journey rather than this high and mighty place that you are static upon with all the answers to everything.
BIG MOMENTS
This is my tribute to Rich Mullins that I wrote very soon after his tragic death in September 1997. I had the privilege of reading part of it on his tribute video, Homeless Man.
INSTEAD
More thoughts on Rich and the lessons I learned from the example of his life. Inspired I guess by the Homeless Man video.
HERE YOU ARE (Wedding Kiss)
Written on the morning of the wedding of Cary Gibson and Michael Blythman who met the same night that I first discovered that Iain Archer could sing. I read this as the beginning of my sermon at the wedding and it was heavily influenced by listening to Vigilantes Of Love’s album Audible Sigh. Not that you’d notice. I guess I was seeing marriage as some kind of symbol of God’s unconditional love. It’s as close as we human get.
SPRINKLE
This was written during Janice’s labour with Caitlin. We went into hospital at 10pm on a Sunday evening and Caitlin was born at 2.17pm the next afternoon. This was written on paper towels at about 7am. It is as it was then – no overdubs!!!!!!!!
DARE
The title track written the afternoon after Caitlin was born. I read this at the study group in Derryvolgie the night after the birth. See the preface in the book for a full commentary.
BAPTISM PRAYER
Written and read at Caitlin’s baptism. Frank Ferguson sang Bob Dylan’s Lord Protect My Child.
IN BALLYCASTLE DOWN BY THE HARBOUR
When asked by Rolling Stone what’s the toughest thing about being a father he replied, 'You’re afraid to love someone so much, you’re afraid to be that in love. Because a world of fear leaps upon you, particularly in the world that we live in. But then you realise: Oh I see to love something so much, as much as I love Patti and my kids, you’ve got to be able to accept and live with that world of fear, that world of doubt, of the future. And you’ve got to give it all today and not hold back'. This is me dealing with those fears and trying to take that advice.
YOU GAVE ME A SOUL
A child changes everything. Everything that ideas and words can never change. It’s not being told about love. It’s experiencing love and that experience having flesh and blood. Your own blood. Every child I see I see my own child. Tragedy and joy become and incarnate thing.
GONE
About a few people who passed away over a period of time. The sadness, the questions, the decision to live in the light of the inevitable.
YOU’RE FREE
About the death of Janice’s Gran. As Janice’s aunt left the mourning home to fly back to England Janice got the first contraction of labour. Caitlin was born the next day. Her dad stooped being a son and became a Grandad in just a few short days.
WINTER TREES
Another of my favourites from this collection. We were out on the headland above Murlough Bay, just a few miles from our home in Ballycastle. The winter trees all bony, naked and bent in the direction the wind blows. Intrigue. I also thought of how long they had been shaped. A tornado would blow them out of the soil but a breeze on a regular basis shapes them so wonderfully. It’s how I think the Holy Spirit works. Am I evidence of his work. Why are there more words in this introduction than in the poem?
TAKE ME TO THE THEATRE
I was speaking at a Youth Conference and before I read the Scriptures I spoke of the operating theatre of God’s word. I could feel a poem coming on. A good one to read in Church before the lesson is read. Royalties to...
I’M GOING TO LEARN TO LOVE YOU
About my students at Derryvolgie though I reckon that though it is the aim for every year it ends up a confession of my failure. Inspired by words in Hebrews chapter 12 'see to it that no one misses the grace of God.'
DECLARATION
I wrote this for my first radio show of 1998. It was throw away for the moment but Gordon Ashbridge said he like it and I reckon it says something.
ADDICTED TO KISS HER
Ah. After 20 years he is trying to be oblique!!!!!!!! She is Belfast and and Ireland and the summer is Drumcree. I may have to at some point but I don’t reckon there is anywhere better to live in the world. Even with rain and all the childish behaviour with grown up toys.
AS USUAL
Another Drumcree reaction poem. I do declare I need to credit David Dark for 'the Jesus the Pharisees wanted.' He may well want to credit someone else but then maybe not.
LOOKING HARD FOR HEROES
Written in Ballycastle at the time of Billy Wright’s murder. This is heavily based on an interview that journalist David McKittrick did with Wright. The bits about regrets and eternity telling are his.
NEW YEARS DAY
Rebirth. New chances. New Years. Imagination is the most vital resource to change.
THOMAS I CAN HEAR YOU
For those who voted against the agreement and said it was unchristian to vote for it.
WE’VE GOT TO THROW THE WORLD A CURVE
I wrote this looking home from North America. I was enjoying the Blue Jays every night in Toronto. I was then asked to speak in Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville. I thought the American illustration might work. It’s about Ireland but could be about anywhere or anyone.
SCRATCHING MY SOUL
I guess this one is another of those that began with me new fear of what could happen to Caitlin. In the summer of her birth A bomb went off in Omagh killing 29 people. The worst bomb of an awful thirsty years in our land. Our family were also dealing with a child who was very ill in hospital. This is about all of that and probably a whole lot more.
MAY YOU KNOW
For dear friends going through hell on earth. I feel useless and then I think that if ever I have to face what they are going through they will be able to help me because they’ve been there. I haven’t yet.
I AM THERE
Archer. I’m in for the long haul even when I’m not there in person for long stretches of time. I still believe. I’m still committed. Just call!
IMPROVISE
Trying to give advice to some of my students who were moving on. We were walking across Ballycastle strand and I muttered some of these things. For Stephen and Trevor and all my Volgie kids.
DANCE FLOOR? ROCKING CHAIR?
The first bit of this was the 'blow your mind or turn your head' lines. I threw them out to Rosie Cregan one of our students, one time, and it escalated into a long string of advice for my students. As if I had it sussed!!!!!!!
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL
This is about having to do what your gifted at no matter what the consequences because it is what you are made for. It began at a time when I had to talk Julie Turner into singing because she wasn’t sure she wanted any kind of adoration. I told her she had to deal with what her talents threw up and that running from her gifts was like putting a bucket over the light. Julie had said after Skeletons she wanted someone to write a poem about her. Here it is. One of them anyway. Though I wrote it for Julie it is now speaking to me. Bizarre.
MAYBE HEAVEN
Another of the Julie poems. Peter Case came out with the first line when he stayed with us at the end of ’97. But it’s for Julie.
GOD IS IN HIS COUNTING HOUSE
About my students and sometimes their lack of artistic appreciation. Julie’s in there again though.
BURNED IT DOWN
From 1991. I wrote this is as a poem/song thing with Alison Chestnutt when I was minister in First Antrim. It got resurrected when our students went green.
THE BAR OF THE LAST CHANCE HOTEL
Peter Case inspired. Companion piece for Burned It Down.
SOMETIMES THE EAR CAN’T HEAR
Love song for Janice started over Canada in ’92 and finished more recently.
BEST FRIEND
She is. Pray I could be.
SHRILL
Wrote this one on the way home from another speaking engagement. The dilemma between loving others and loving family has been a real wrestling in these last two years. This was written in the car at the point of wanting to retire. See The Most Beautiful Girl intro though. But I have to love Janice and Caitlin or all the talk about love is just empty. A clanging of symbols.
COME, COME AWAY
Ballycastle has become a haven for us in the pressure of giving ourselves to others. There we give ourselves to ourselves. I wanted to end with this because now that the whole things over let us pack up the car Janice and get out of here.
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