My faith, My life
Silence
When moved singing begins,
“Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so little ones to him belong they are weak but he is strong,
Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me the bible tells me so.”
I sang that song because it is probably the first song I learned by heart that had spiritual significance.
I believe I was a 3 or 4-year-old child.
I would have learned it at St Columba’s, Church of Ireland Sunday school that met in my local community centre and at my primary school, The Hart Memorial.
It is very powerful, the words and the tune to help a child remember.
This person Jesus loved me.
I probably was not so concerned with who Jesus was but more so that someone was loving me.
For whatever reason and for another time to explore, love was not something I easily recognised as a child and it seemed the only person who was stating it loudly was someone called Jesus.
I can’t tell you, well maybe that is what I am here to do, the powerful effect knowing that I was loved had on me and continues to have.
It may surprise some that some of us have struggled to know love and perhaps more particularly unconditional love so to a child on the Corcrain estate, in a town called Portadown in the county of Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1974 this person Jesus loving that child, me, meant the world.
So as I have pondered this request to speak on, ‘My Faith, My life’ I kept hearing ‘Three things’. You may know the verse in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 13 which say these things remain, faith, hope and charity (three things)
I have decided on 3 things. These 3 things or events come to me as the most powerful personal experiences of my life. I thought about saying spiritual experiences but I don’t believe there is a separation between spiritual and personal.
1982 – Baptism in the Spirit - Whitesides Hill, Portadown, County Armagh N Ireland
I was about 12 years old. I was sitting in the back of the Boys’ Brigade (BB) leader’s car. There were two friends with me; Tony & Stephen, and we were getting dropped home.
Now the BB played a big part of my childhood. It was at the local Methodist Church. I started at four with my first friend in life Mark and remained in it until about 13.
Anyway back to ‘getting dropped off’, his name was John, the BB leader he started to tell a story about how what we read about in the gospels can happen today. I remember thinking, “What really the dead can be raised and the miracles that Jesus performed can happen today?”
He began sharing with us some verses from the gospels which seemed to confirm what he was saying. Then he said something like to receive these gifts you need to be baptised in the Holy Spirit. The three of us seemed to be up for this so it was agreed that the next day we would meet and be prayed for to receive the Holy Spirit.
It so happened that one of us three, Stephen, had a dream that night and in the dream we were prayed for in an old disused mission hall. Northern Ireland is littered with mission halls. So the next day we climbed over fences to this old mission hall. We found a spot on which we could stand for most of the floorboards had gone and then John and another man Albert prayed for us individually.
I was last to go by which time I was full of expectation. They laid hands on me and prayed that the Holy Spirit would come upon me like it had on the Day of Pentecost. I can’t tell you exactly what happened but I found myself speaking in a language that I hadn’t learned.
I also remember looking at the wooden floor on which I stood and seeing it drenched with my tears. One aspect to this experience was that you would receive ‘a word from God’ and so one of them or perhaps both began to tell me what God thought of me. I can’t remember the words but I remember that I felt loved and in feeling loved came a release of tears.
Now make of that experience what you will but from that day on I felt God’s love, I felt, experienced love.
Previously I heard it, 'Jesus loved me’ now this love moved on me and in me. Now if God loved me, if love itself loved me, what could stand in my way?
Well unfortunately not everyone agreed with what happened which resulted in the BB being closed and in effect my community. I became confused and began to wander.
Not having a community led me to seek one though unfortunately the one that was accessible was the politics of the streets.
It was now 1983 and the troubles had become part of life. I was a Protestant, ethnically, so my side was already chosen. I hadn’t lived in a vacuum although Church activities had distracted me from the violence in the streets and I was aware that Jesus’ message was one of peace.
The difficulty was there was no buffer between me and what I was seeing going on. Without have a protective community I was free to walk into one defined by political belief and at times demonstrated itself in civil disorder.
For three years that was my community until after a number of disillusionments I found myself without a community. I was now almost 17.
You may well guess that there are many stories within stories but our time is limited.
For around 8 months I observed not really knowing what role I had, who I was and how did I fit into this world.
It was during this time that a school acquaintance, Judith, asked me would I go to a Christian youth event. I did and at that event I decided it was time to return to love.
A few months later I found myself in Birmingham at a World conference of Pentecostal / Charismatic Christians.
It was here that I had a dream and in that dream I saw the words, ‘Christ Unites Ireland’
I have spoken about this in ministry around the 30th anniversary of that event.
If I were to die today that would remain one the most powerful experiences of my life even though it was 30 years ago.
Why? Because God spoke to me in a most powerful way and was prepared to use me to do something if I was prepared to believe. I mean this was my ‘Moses and the burning bush experience.’
More importantly God was taking what I believed was the despised and rejected of this world to do his work. How glorious is that?
I acted on what I heard and within 3 months we were marching from Belfast to Dublin over 4 days with a huge banner proclaiming Christ Unites Ireland.
I can only tell you what an incredible thing it was to see what I saw in a dream happen. I knew from this if I was open to the spirit my life could be directed in a predetermined path.
There were a number of spin off stories from this but again we are limited for time.
So just to recap the
First thing was knowing love and the power thereof
Second thing was I knew that my life could work in harmony with God
So the third thing….
In 2003 I had come through a number of things,
I had moved to England in 1993,
I had completed a degree in social work by 1996
I was working with those who found themselves before the courts,
I got married in 1996
I became a father in 2000
I was now 33 the age Jesus was crucified.
Again there are stories but again we are limited for time.
I had been through major personal challenges one of the results was I desired unmediated access to God. By which I mean and I didn’t understand it at the time, no music, no hype, no hierarchy and not even the bible.
I began to find myself alone and in quiet places and more bizarrely I found myself enriched by the experience.
I was reading a book as you do which kind of tells you that you are experiencing a deeper level of life. At the end of the book there was a suggestion to contact an organisation that could create a community of support for those in this place. It is as if we are in a journey, a story, where we find ourselves in interior places and then we find others who too have found themselves here.
That organisation was Christian Life Community (CLC) it turns out it is a Roman Catholic lay order based on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Now I was faced with what has faced me and no doubt you throughout life, a choice to remain where I was or be open to the spirit leading.
I tend to do a bargain with God and say one step at a time and if I don’t like it I’m stopping. So I took tentative steps towards CLC by first writing to them and then visiting a local group. I can tell you I have been visiting that local group for 16 years now.
It was the 15 minutes silences that we hold that led me to wanting more and to a Quaker meeting.
Anyway about 12 years ago we undertook as a group what is called a Retreat in Daily Life. For me this consisted of daily prayer of 30 minutes on occasions twice a day and reading a scripture. Now the gift of Ignatian spirituality is that your prayer is fuelled by the use of your imagination as you place yourself in the gospel scene.
So we followed over nine months the life of Jesus, his birth, his baptism, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
It was towards the end of it and I was in St Albans library. I was contemplating the love of God for the world when I began to experience God’s love for the world.
Now as this happened emotionally, a shift happened mentally. I can only describe what I experienced in that moment; all dogma disappeared, all separation disappeared.
It was as if the love of God was a ball of fire in which no theology existed, no separation existed, all people, all things were one, everything was of God and in God there was no separation.
This blew my mind, my emotions and everything I believed.
I can’t really explain anymore other than to say that I have been living out of that experience since then and becoming part of this community is a part of that story, finding myself in a place were the people called themselves Friends and others called them Quakers.
That is not to say that I live in that state for if I did I would not experience the anxiety and the aggression that I, on occasions, feel.
Most of you will know that I have only recently been divorced. How does that square with the story of unity with all things?
Well all things are unified but unfortunately maybe because we still live in a fallen world we live out fallen lives. I guess the aim to live in the glimpses of the divine and in so doing make the glimpses, life and the other mere glimpses of the past.
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Sunday 16th June 2019 / St Albans Friends
