Thanksgiving for the Gift of Sport; Bellringers make history; Author Nick Page to visit Belfast; Circle of Wisdom Celebrated in TCD; Jail and Cathedral among film festival venues; Belfast City Council row another dent in city’s prestige
Thanksgiving for the Gift of Sport
The annual ecumenical service of thanksgiving for the gift of sport, organised by the Association of School’s Unions, will be held in St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, on Sunday April 14 at 7.00 pm. The speaker will be Liam Harbison, CEO of Paralympics Ireland.
Bellringers make history
For the first time ever, the Cherry Cup has been won by the bell-ringers from St Mary’s Church, Doneraile.
The Cherry Cup Competition is organised annually by the Southern District of the Irish Association of Change Ringers.
According to the rules of the competition, the ‘R R Cherry Cup shall be awarded to the Society producing the best striking in the opinion of the Judges.’
In the Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross the art of change-ringing – a team of people ringing a set of tuned bells in a series of mathematical patterns called ‘changes’ – is practiced in a number of churches in the Diocese: Doneraile, St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork; St Peter’s Church, Bandon; St Fachtna’s Cathedral, Rosscarbery; and Abbeystrewry Parish Church, Skibbereen.
Author Nick Page to visit Belfast
The Good Book Shop is bringing to Belfast, well–known author, Nick Page, to speak exclusively in St Molua’s Parish on 4 June at 8.00 pm.
He is coming to Belfast to promote his new book ‘Kingdom of Fools – The Unlikely Rise of the Early Church’, which is due to be released in paperback next month.
This is Nick’s first visit to Belfast in nearly 20 years, and one of a series of events that The Good Book Shop is running to mark its 10th anniversary.
Nick who is an historian, information designer and creative consultant is also the author of over seventy books for adults and children including The Wrong Messiah, God’s Dangerous Book, The One–Stop Bible Guide, The Big Story, and a series called The Furry Freedom Fighters – a comic book series for kids about super–powered pets!
About the book, ‘Kingdom of Fools – The Unlikely Rise of the Early Church’
To the rest of the world they were fools. Rebels. Ignorant peasants. People who shunned wealth and power and welcomed the poor and uneducated. These first followers of Jesus were persecuted and their leaders killed, yet this ragged collection of lowly tradesmen, women, and slaves created a movement that changed the world. How did this happen? How did the kingdom of fools conquer the mighty empire that was Rome?
In this fascinating biography of the early church, Nick Page sets the biblical accounts alongside the latest historical and archaeological research, exploring how the early Christians lived and worshipped – and just why the Romans found this new branch of the Jewish faith so difficult to comprehend. Kingdom of Fools is a fresh, challenging, accessible portrait of a movement so radical, so dangerous, so thrillingly different that it outlasted the empire that tried to destroy it and went on to become the driving force of our cultural development – and claims more followers today than ever before in history.
Circle of Wisdom Celebrated in TCD
“The circle of wisdom is ever widening, remaking itself in new times and other places,” Professor Geraldine Smyth, OP, Associate Professor and Head of the Irish School of Ecumenics said in her Trinity Monday sermon in Trinity College Chapel on April 8.
The annual service of commemoration and thanksgiving follows the announcement of the new scholars and fellows of Trinity College Dublin at the beginning of Trinity Week.
Drawing on the first lesson, Ecclesiasticus 44: 1–15, which was read by the Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, Dr Smyth said: “This text orients today’s Commemoration and Thanksgiving for those companions who have walked with us and opened up new paths of learning. But it stands not as stolid reminder of the rock from which we were hewn, but sustains a dynamic tradition, an ethos that keeps wisdom alive in succeeding generations. Our sober, sage, Ben Sirach was as Scribe, and more a disciplinarian than an “Alleluia” person, but today we are come to rejoice in wisdom … We come into this house of prayer, also, rejoicing in wisdom’s promise, embodied in the new scholars, fellows and indeed, in those whose commencements will be celebrated later in the week. Thus, the university community bears witness to a collective hope in a still more abundant harvest of research and learning that will be reaped beyond the halls of this college in Ireland and in distant lands”.
Highlighting the work of Ben Sirach and of Nelson Mandela, she said that scholarship was not an end in itself but opened up onto another threshold. “The circle of wisdom is ever widening, remaking itself in new times and other places,” she said. Therefore she pointed out that after his presidency, Nelson Mandela had sought new ways to empower and sustain nations and people still imprisoned in poverty and violence.
Dr Smyth said Mandela founded and organisation of Global Elders in 2007 comprising 10 people of wisdom who could fulfil the Millennium Goals using their personal influence to lead and inspire others in striving for a more peaceful and fair world. Among them is Mary Robinson, graduate and Chancellor of this university, and now leader of its Institute for Climate Justice, who has just set out as Special Envoy of the Secretary General of the UN for the Great Lakes, that war–torn, ecologically devastated region of sub–Saharan Africa.
In her sermon Dr Smyth also observed that the service also marked the 40th anniversary of the chapel being opened for wider Christian use. In the Autumn of 1973, the chapel was decommissioned as a place of worship solely for the Anglican community allowing for a more ecumenical use for the space. Putting this event in context she spoke of three other outstanding moments of 1973 – the Sunningdale Agreement, peace breaking out in the midst of world wide wars and the churches’ awakening to the global ecumenical movement.
She wondered how the opening up of the chapel doors was received. “Was the mood, I wonder, one of ecumenical excitement and high hopes for shared worship and ecumenical hospitality barely believable even a decade before? Maybe at the time, approval was more ambivalent than total, and the event also occasioned some division of opinion, or a felt sense of collective loss. Some here today may actually recall the experience either in its predominant jubilation or with the lingering doubt and fear of a dilution of truth, identity and the beauty of worship,” Dr Smyth mused and said that today the fact that the chapel is an ecumenical meeting place is a cause of thanksgiving.
Jail and Cathedral among film festival venues
From horror in the park to a prison classic behind bars, movie lovers are being offered the chance to watch big screen favourites at some unlikely venues during this year’s Belfast Film Festival.
The famous Crumlin Road Gaol will host a screening of Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke while Ormeau Park will provide an eerie setting to show Evil Dead 2 as part of what is a packed programme over the coming 11 days.
Across town, St Anne’s Cathedral will become a temporary cinema for a presentation of Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Verdi’s La Traviata. The evening will also feature a live performance by members of Northern Ireland Opera’s Young Artists’ Programme.
Running until Sunday April 21, the festival aims to shine a spotlight on both local and global talent.
The programme includes more than 110 screenings in a range of venues across Belfast.
For further information about the programme of showings visit www.belfastfilmfestival.org.
Belfast City Council row another dent in city’s prestige
Belfast City councillors have been given a stark warning that their political showboating is damaging our global image.
Leading academic and former chief executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, Dr Duncan Morrow, said politicians cannot try to move forward and build a better Belfast without showing better leadership.
The call came after relations sunk to another low at Belfast City Council this week.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/belfast-city-council-row-another-dent-in-citys-prestige-29175772.html