Hush: an evening of song and storytelling

OK, it already happened, but here was Hush…

In the aftermath of Christmas and the New Year celebrations, join us by an open fire for a quiet evening of song and storytelling delving into the themes of darkness and light in the pursuit of love, meaning and human connection.

Featuring fairytales and music from Pete Rollins, Ursula Burns, Padraig O Tuama, Shirley McMillan, Peter Wilson, Stephen Caswell, Rachel Austin, and more…

Brought to you by the ikon collective.

Culture Night video footage

Thanks to Ben for this!

Culture Night Belfast 2011 – The Evangelism Project

Ikon took to the streets to be evangelised as part of Culture Night Belfast on 23rd September. The Evangelism Project has previously brought us to various religious groups for enriching encounters (for example, to a Free Presbyterian church for a conversation with Ian Paisley, a local Hindu temple, and a new Scientology group in the city). But we have always intended to hear what the not-so-general public had to say. Thanks to everyone who took part – it was great! (At some point we may use the postcards etc as part of an exhibition.)

Your tweeted stories of god

In the run-up to Greenbelt, we asked our twitter followers to write their ‘story of god’ in one tweet (140 characters). We showed them all on screen at the start of our event, and gave out printed versions as gifts as people left. Several people have asked that we reproduce them, so here they are! Thanks to everyone who contributed. They were a beautiful gift to ikon as well as to all those who attended our event. (Sorry if we’ve missed any!) If you want to write your own, please do (and tag us with @ikonbelfast)

@bdk1521

That breathtaking glimpse of beauty when you don’t have your camera – the hawk, the thunderstorm, the leaping orca – that’s God. #ikonstory

@erikchrist1973

B4 time, Gd creatd all & clld it gd. When sin & sffring enterd the wrld, Gd sided w/ the poor, sick & despised, brngng life 4all #ikonstory

@Sarcasticluther

Flesh seems a strange choice of garment for God yet flesh taken and torn then raised and taken again, blessed, broken and given. #ikonstory

@bdk1521

I can’t show you God. I can only point out God’s handiwork after the fact, on those rare occasions when I can discern it myself. #ikonstory

@ellenloudon

in an upside down world God taught me how to stand on my hands. #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

I used to hold on tight to belief, but I dropped it when I realised my hands were too full to help #ikonstory

@_bindert_

how did you find me here?? #ikonstory

@tomalprice

my story of you is one of you unsettling my story of you #ikonstory

@willowwistful

“the God in whom the 19th and 20th centuries came to disbelieve was only invented in the seventeenth century” Alasdair Macintyre #ikonstory

@bdk1521

The inspired act of kindness that transforms hostile strangers into human beings in conversation – that’s God. #smallcupcake #ikonstory

@PaulMTilley

#ikonstory life from death

@Reggie_C_King

#ikonstory I don’t believe in G-d, but I believe that this was his decision and that he can reverse it at any time.

@Kenny_WJ

No matter how hard, I hide, Still I’m found, Wanting. #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

Me with God, then me without God, then all of us as divine #ikonstory

@carmzmurphy

knowing god used to be about what i knew and how i made that known. these days it’s more about learning how to love and be loved #ikonstory

@rachelaustinNI

gave my all, left with nothing. now i embrace the void… and it embraces me. #ikonstory

@Beddard731

In forsaking heaven to embrace earth we found that the kingdom had been here all along #ikonstory

@manofthemoors

“i am”, despite me, he’s been forming me into me, so the me i am is the me the world needs & the me i will be is the me he sees. #ikonstory

@duanalla

In 1991,in a circus tent,I opened a door to let the knocking Jesus in.I said ‘You’ll make me uncool.’ ‘Alright then, come in’.#ikonstory

@emjric

My faith took me to uni to study theology. I got sick. So I came home. And that’s when I really had to become a theologian. #ikonstory

@shenning

Unreal, yet strangely alive. Absent, but delightfully so. Disturbingly compassionate and annoyingly grace-filled #ikonstory

@dubh_music

Evangelical zeal~ wilderness wonderings~ knowing I’m probably wrong~ but I’m still here, and so it seems, is god. #ikonstory

@mistertumnus

‘There’s a science fiction in the space between you and me/A fabrication of a grand scheme where I am the scary monster’ #ikonstory

@p2son

My story of God — ^^::^^ —————————¿———-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~___________ ¡ -___= #ikonstory

@johnny_parks

I said: “maybe” then “yes” then “maybe” then “no” Thank god I said “no”. Relieved. #ikonstory

@lardball

Just came on to twitter to check out #ikonstory. Decided I don’t have one. I hope this doesn’t count.

@SarahRosemary

I first looked for god on Sunday mornings, evenings, and Wednesday nights. Finally I’m learning to look in people. #ikonstory

@AideenJ

Thought I was too cool for “that Christian rock shite”. Apparently not. #ikonstory

@Gefail

I thought god was dead but she would not lie down #ikonstory

@yvesraven

doubt; divine, but human; discipline, but love; challenge, but grace; outside time & space, but right here right now #ikonstory

@Andrew_Parle

#ikonstory saved from being, doing, attending! Now I just love following; listening, talking, learning & living!

@soulandculture

after a long battle with legalism and certainty, grace found me #ikonstory

@LowlyKnights

Love is impossible. Hope is impossible. Miracle! Miracle! #ikonstory #lyrics

@AdamTurks

I’m not sure if I would’ve made it to 21 if I hadn’t believed in you… but I am sure I would’ve had loads more sex and drugs #ikonstory

@mistertumnus

The best thing is that truth and love can coexist. Never let the facts get in the way of a God story. #ikonstory

@keiferi

he was lord -a bit scary- then he disappeared but returned as dad -accepted- if he didn’t move it must have been me #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

I dedicated my life to god until he told me the best dedication was to leave him and be with others. And there he was. #ikonstory

@jkubbeaver

saved from being “saved”. Grew up southern baptist and then grew up. #ikonstory

@_bindert_

is it you again? #ikonstory

@Beddard731

grew up in a belief system. encountered God. thought he was destroying it. later learned he was transforming it to beautiful #ikonstory

@PeterRollins

17in the Garden:Lost everything4God 27at the Cross:Lost everything including God 37at the tomb:Find God in another #ikonstory

@ellenloudon

i try everyday to tell the story of your love for me – my broken heart is slowly mending and I hope for peace #ikonstory

@__elder__

“We are trees in a story about a forest. But the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.” #ikonstory

@brycmay

As a teen, I had to cleanse my sin. 2 Baptisms, 35 yrs later, Mens Retreat 07: Step into who you are my son, I’ve been waiting. #ikonstory

@this1littlebird

At 8, laying among daffodils staring at sky I answered Yes. Not much I’ve thought in 30yrs since has made for better theology. #ikonstory

@James__Lock

Was shown God who suffered who offers us resurrection, hope of brighter day even in the darkest and want to help his kingdom come #ikonstory

@Persecuted23

#ikonstory in the midst of absence of experience, experienced the absence. From neo-atheist to believer, because the absence had to be God

@perrodin

ever present image. image destroyed. {re}drawn in paradox & mystery. left a haunted spectre drawing me towards I know not what. #ikonstory

@swancommarachel

I met Him in a closet, hiding from demons & boogiemen. He whispered “you will be ok. I love you.” I said “you sound like a girl.” #ikonstory

@_bindert_

always bigger than i think #ikonstory

@JonnyFraz

I’m sure I saw Jesus standing outside church last week with a sign picketing….he uses such foul language! #ikonstory

@danieljfbrown

I asked god to take his things and leave, but from time to time I hear rustling from the
under the stairs. Hope it’s him #ikonstory

@__elder__

Sold it as a child, bought it with my pocket money. Worked fine til I needed it. Then I realised, God bleeds with us #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

God was born in me & grew inside.I loved him til I realised we were feeding off each other.Took meds,killed him.Both finally free #ikonstory

@jenn_durrett

Book in hand, seed planted – lead, asked, burned, wondered, left, stumbled, tumbled – landed a dazed and confused heap in the fog.#ikonstory

@GraceERead

immense fear/immense peace, immense fear/immense peace, ultimate safety, divine hope #ikonstory

@Volsicle

Examining, questioning, fighting, disavowing and disowning, emptying of self has brought me understanding. #ikonstory

@jb00m

Pushed to uncertainty, the way has been cleared; the answer/the question: What do I love when I love my God? #ikonstory

@LisaIngram52

Bible-beaten til 17 then Wiccan til now,looking for my God I know hes there but of love not hate.I have to find him #ikonstory

@jenn_durrett

I asked, I answered, God didn’t contradict me. I forgot how to listen and now bitterness obscures my location. #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

Somehow I knew we were lost, and we would always be off by several degrees. “Goodbye, Belief, but Love will show me the way now” #ikonstory

@joncollins

ignored / denied / accepted // imminent (but running late) / absent (and missed) // god is nowhere but here / right here #ikonstory

@MoltenMed

Malcontented misdirected mislaid and mistaken, what is lost may be found, what is unknowable may not matter, i’m alive, live #ikonstory

@Pjh149

Born again at 13,Charismatic at 15, backslider at 17,,house grp ldr, emergent chrch ldr in 30′s Agnostic at 41.my god is dead? #ikonstory

@RWileECoyote

making me into the best me that i can be #ikonstory

@willowwistful

I used to think the cross bought us life, but now I think the incarnation is the melody & we, you, I sing life.#ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

“I’m holding you back” says he.“But I won’t leave you behind!” says me. He insisted and I left God for dead at the side of the road #ikonstory

@alphabetacazi

I found beautiful architect plans that seemed to fit the world. But I had to make some changes when it drew a line between u & me #ikonstory

@HamHamParty

I found the church and lost myself. I found myself and lost the church. Now I’m finding God, in whom everything is lost and found.#ikonstory

@duanalla

Your people taught me that that pride was a sin, but then, when I learnt to listen, I learnt that pride is a way of survival. #ikonstory

Photos from Greenbelt ’11

The photos from Greenbelt. Many thanks to Ben for taking these. Click on the image to enlarge. Special kudos to Jayne for the amazing costumes which we are hoping to exhibit at some stage in Belfast.

God is the fracture….

Pádraig’s poem from the Ikon event at Greenbelt:

I used to need to know
the end of every story
but these days I only
need the start to get me going.

God is the crack
where the story begins
We are the crack
where the story gets interesting

We are the choice of
where to begin
the person going out?
the stranger coming in?

God is the fracture
and the craic in your voice
God is the story
flavoured with choice

God is the pillar of salt
full of pity
accusing God
for the sulphorous city.

God is the woman who bleeds
and who touches
We are the story
of courage or blushes.

God is the story
of whatever works
God is the twist at the end
and the quirks

We are the start
and we are the centre
we’re the characters
narrators, inventors.

God is the bit
that we can’t explain
maybe the healing
maybe the pain.

We are the bit
that God can’t explain
maybe the harmony
maybe the strain.

God is the plot
and we are the writers
the story of winners
and the story of fighters

the story of love
and the story of rupture
the story of stories
the story without structure.

Ritual

This is the ritual that everyone followed at our event at Greenbelt this year:

 

Our ritual will be conducted mostly in silence.
Let us share some silence.
Let us stand up, in silence.
In silence, turn to look at somebody you don’t know. This is not a joke. Hold their gaze.
Like in a library of stories, be silent.
Hold the person’s gaze  look at them. Take a silent step toward then.   Imagine their name. Hold their gaze.
Hold their gaze. Imagine their story. Hold their gaze. In silence take another step.
In silence, reach out and take their hand. Hold their gaze. Imagine their name. Imagine their story.
Hold their hand. Hold their gaze. Hold the tension.
Quietly, lean forward and whisper your name to them.
Now let us all, together, whisper our own names. Keep whispering. Keep whispering. Whisper your name, which is part of your story. Let us fill the space with whispering. Over and over.
Shhhhh.

Liturgy

Here is the liturgy that was written by Sarah for the Ikon event at Greenbelt.

 

THE OLD OLD STORY

Stories make us; they breathe life into our bones, moulding and stretching us with their lingering footnotes and bright new chapters

May we be truth-tellers and myth-spellers and story-tellers

And telling old, old stories, may we all live well ever after…

 

REMEMBERING WELL

Stories take us, narratives which are centuries old shape our daily lives, tales of cities and towers and mega-powers

May we rethink our stories, faith and life with care, remembering that there is always more than one side to every story.

There is history & there is her story

 

MAKING THE PAST INTO HISTORY

Stories forsake us; sometimes memories can become a cover story

May we unfurl our grip on our dead end stories which repeat like a record trapped in a groove.

Making the past into history is a profound and delicate art

 

MAKING THE WORD FLESH

Stories became flesh. God is the plot and we are the writers; God is the writer and we are the plot.

May we embrace our INCARNATION in capital letters. For our chief end, perhaps, is to storify God and enjoy each other forever.

God is a story that loves to be told. Once upon a time…

The Story That Loves To Be Told

Shirley’s piece at the Greenbelt event was in three parts:

1.

We hear it said sometimes that God created people because he loved stories.

But once upon a time, God was a story who loved to tell himself. How can I tell myself forever? he thought. So God told a man and a woman in his image and he told them that man’s chief end was to storify god and enjoy him forever. After God had created the man and the woman he said ‘It is good. The story is complete. Let it be fruitful and as it multiplies God will be retold for as long as there are people on the earth’.

2.

God was almost right to think that he could be told in the story of human nature. He was close, so close. But the people he created in his image looked at him, as in a mirror, and failed to see themselves. And so the things they did unto the story of god failed.

So God thought again: How can I tell myself to the world, forever? He considered writing a book- several books- using wise people to record his thoughts and wishes and commands and his-story. It would be something that would be full of tales that would pass down through centuries and it would teach people how to live and love and how to be saved from death. It would tell them about how the story of god was being written amongst them and that if only they could recognise that the mirror they looked through was merely clouded with stories, they would see the true reflection of God in his good and perfect creation.

But the book of God’s story was also inadequate. The story of the story seemed to multiply with every reading. It became a story of a story of a story of a story of a story of a story of a story. Of the making of stories there was no end and the people became weary and confused. Each time they tried to look at God the mirror became more and more clouded by the stories they told themselves of what to expect and what they wanted to see. 

3.

God is a story that loves to be told. But he was perplexed. He felt as if all those years of trying to tell himself had only led to a greater distance, a greater un-telling. And so he thought again. This time, God thought, I will tell myself in my own flesh. People will see that there is nothing that need separate a man or woman from the story of god. And so the word became flesh, the story became flesh, hoping so hard that this time it would be clear.

Those Who Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It

Here’s Chris’s piece from our Greenbelt event this year:

‘Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ 

Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it. There is something inside each of us that is not interested in memory. It sparkles with something that we have called ‘life’. It cannot hope to make itself known – only felt. It is too much for anyone to hold. It pushes and pulses, stutters and starts. It rages and smiles, whimpers and moans, crackles and catapults, fizzes and frays. We find the edges of ourselves through hearing it speak, feeling it move, listening to it sing. It is waiting for an alphabet. Waiting for words. Waiting for stories.

Stories bind some of this intensity and allow it to make its way into the world. A good story is not interested in being remembered. It is interested in life. We don’t believe in stories. They take us somewhere. They hold us, make room for us, stretch us out, bend us inside out and outside in. They make and re-make our inside worlds and if they are good they allow more and more space for our desire to tell and to tell and to tell more stories. Stories create experiences that we can live. Live right to their limits until the experience is completely beyond use, until it has been used up, killed off by our desire and can thus make its way into history. The trace that is left by a good story is the desire to find new stories, new ways of telling the something that is inside. New ways of elaborating ourselves, telling ourselves.

But what if most of the time we are frightened? That what is inside us is too much? That it blurs us too much, that it asks too many questions that demand answers. That it makes us feel not free and alive but chaotic and diffuse.

What if at these times our memory becomes an emotional, theological, philosophical glue. What if the story called memory binds us up tightly and salves the chaos and confusion.

What if the story called memory creates more stories that comfort and control, sanitise and secure, operationalise and condition?

What if memory is just a cover story….a version of ourselves that is palatable and controllable? What if forgetting feels like an act of suicide to everything we hold dear?

Is it better to remember to forget or to forget to remember?

Isn’t it both? Isn’t it that the desiring, provisional, open self bursting with the thing called life is tempered by memory, remembering and ritual because without this we would not be able to sustain ourselves. Probably. But isn’t it just as true that memory is killing our future because we dare not disturb its fragile balance and risk falling out of our faiths into free fall?

Most of us are here tonight because of a story called ‘Belief’ which must not be forgotten. It weaves a powerful spell because it can hold inside itself without contradiction suicide bombing, misogyny, pro-life influenced murder and homophobia to name a few. It can become a form of remembering that protects us from the truth of our existence. A dead-end story that loops in on itself. Empty, dead words. Connected to nothing except itself. Story-less stories that burn those they touch and burn out those who live in them.

A story-less story cannot hold, metabolize and ultimately transform anything. Once the story is lost all one can do is comply to or reject what is now a belief. Remembering gives way to repetition. Our book of life, our book of stories now a prison of understanding.

Wilfred Bion, the great British psychoanalyst once gave the following advice to practitioners –

“discard your memory; discard the future sense of your desire. Forget both what you know and what you want in order to leave space for a new idea. A thought, an idea unclaimed, may be floating around the room searching for a home”

Don’t be afraid to forget. It is the only way to have something to remember. Do be afraid that the world might turn upside down and inside out because it might. The cracks that appear might be cracks in a cocoon.

Maybe consider doing your forgetting with other people. Maybe considering doing it with us here tonight. Read yourself between our lines, between IKON’s lines and IKON’s lies and find that place. You will know it. It is a place where your story is nothing and everything at the same time. It is a place where as you forget you are unwound and invigorated, pulled apart and together AND re-membered.

None of this is true.

It is completely true.

Look for us between the lines.

That’s where we want to be forgotten……………