Something to SHOUT! about

Yesterday was a day for discoveries.

Three new things to discover and they are all interlinked (well, kind of...)

Firstly, I discovered a new beach I didn’t know existed - Praia da Adraga.

Tucked underneath the lighthouse of Cabo da Roca, and the westernmost beach of continental Europe, it’s a jewel of a pirate cove with deep blue waters, shelving sands, caves and sharp rocky outcrops. With a few hours to kill on a June afternoon while Anna attended a board meeting in Rio do Mouro in nearby Sintra, I found my way down there and was immediately captivated. Well worth the effort to get there.

Secondly, I discovered that Primark exists in Portugal . in a brand new shopping centre in the northern suburban sprawl of the city.

This we had in fact discovered a few weeks ago, much to Anna’s delight – Irish styles and Irish prices. So today (and here’s the albeit tenuous link) in order to appear presentable at a concert that we were to attend that evening in the Centro Cultural de Belem, and having just crawled out of the surf at Praia da Adraga and without sufficient time to make it home to change and back again, a visit to Primark (shirt €7, trousers €5, comb €1) was considered appropriate.

Thirdly, I discovered a new kind of sound. a Portuguese version of Gospel music.

The concert we were to attend was be a group named SHOUT! And we were there on the invitation of our good friend Maria, whose colleague at work was one of the 9 girls and 4 guys who made up the choir. Sung from the heart, amazing harmonies, very well presented and with a central focus on the name of Jesus, this was a real blessing to experience It is unusual to find in today’s Portugal any form of Christian music achieving such prominence. Usually, in the popular mindset it is relegated to the ranks either of either dull hymns droning in dusty cathedrals, or off-the-wall Pentecostal ravings from Brazil. But this was professional, measured, rich and above all enjoyable. Openly enjoyable to the performers who were having a great time, and infectiously enjoyable to us also, the audience.

My only observation, is that they have adopted a musical genre that is still distinctly foreign, belonging as it does traditionally to black American culture. I’m sure that it could and should be developed with time into an authentic Portuguese sound that could become a dynamically creative musical expression of personal faith and hope in Christ for this generation. Portugal certainly needs it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q59FIQ19Gp0&feature=related

Portuguese summer

We have come to the conclusion that the Portuguese do summers well. During the grey days of winter, everyone seems to keep their heads down, and get on with life and work in a kind of semi hibernation mode. But summers are different. People even dress better. And by June in Lisbon with the Festa de Santo Antonio lasting up to three days it becomes one long party, full of sardines, sangria and sunshine.

Yesterday being officially the first day of summer, and the current heatwave set to continue a few more days, and not having church till the evening, Anna and I thought we would be smart and beat the traffic and the midday heat by heading out to the coast first thing. By “first thing” I mean 08:30 when conventional wisdom says most people are still in their beds on a June Sunday morning. Wrong! How come ten thousand other Lisboetas in their cars had exactly the same thought. Beat the traffic. Beat the heat. Find a good parking spot by the beach. And all converge on the narrow strip of Avenida Marginal to crawl along beside crystal waters with one hand on the gear stick and the other on the horn. I guess we must be starting to "think Portuguese" which can only be a good thing.

Anyway down on the narrow strip of sand it was good to watch the boats in the bay, to see the sunlight glistening on the clear water and to know that

“God has made everything beautiful for its own time, and planted eternity in the human heart, even though people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 4:11).

Bloomsday

Yesterday, June 16th, apparently was “Bloomsday”, which probably would have passed you by unless you were of a literary inclination. It would most certainly have passed me by, had it not been for an advertisement for a free show with a cocktail reception after that come into my email inbox the other day.

Anyway Anna and I trooped along to the Teatro Sao Luiz, in downtown Lisbon, to see what it was all about. Bloomsday celebrates the fictitious day in 1904, described by James Joyce in his classic book “Ulysses” and the Irish Association here in Lisbon had put on this one man show called “Jimmy Joyced!” in which the actor Donal O’Kelly delivered in the space of an hour and twenty minutes what amounted to a one-man dramatised year in the life of the writer James Joyce

Anna thought it might be a drag, one actor and a bare stage, but I had a hunch we were in for a treat. The Irish have a knack for storytelling in a way that keeps you enthralled to the end, even when it’s Norman McCracken up in the pulpit of 1st Presbyterian Coleraine telling one of his "shaggy dog" stories. As it happened, we were enthralled and enjoyed the evening immensely. The theatre was filled with what I guess would have been a mixture of the expat community and the Portuguese literati. The Irish may not have colonised the world like the British the Spanish or the Portuguese yet they have created a form of cultural colonisation with the likes of James Joyce and U2, so that wherever you go in the world there’s a warm and positive welcome if your Irish.

Contrast that with today’s news from the gentle emerald isle of racial tension and Romanian families in South Belfast being rehoused for their safety from thugs and vandals. That’s the eternal enigma of the Irish. Yes, the welcome’s there in the parlour, we’re warm, expansive generous and hospitable, but at the very same time, we can be narrow, bitter, intolerant and hard. And in Christian terms we have one of the highest concentrations of churches and evangelical communities in Western Europe, but we still find it tough to express the love of Christ in a way that wins over the man in the street.

http://www.donalokellyproductions.com/?p=136