I’ve written previously on this blog about the Belfast City Marathon, and some other matters around spirituality and sport. For me, running has always been a way to attain good health and mental alertness, relieve stress, stay fit, and on occasion achieve that quiet state that I believe is akin to meditative prayer.

I’m delighted to be a running ambassador for the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice, which cares for more than 250 Children and young people with life-limiting and life threatening conditions. Their services are available 24 hours a day, every day of the year and there is no charge.

The Hospice needs to raise £5 million every year to stay in operation. It literally could not function without donations from the public.

I can’t think of a better reason to get out on the roads – even now in the coldest part of our winter – to train in support this cause.

Marty and I would really appreciate any donations you can make, using our dedicated website (please click here).

On our site, we’ll keep you updated about our running plans. That includes my next marathon – on January 15, 2012 in Houston – and our plans for participation in the Belfast City Marathon on May 7, 2012.

You might also consider signing up to run the Belfast City Marathon yourself, in aid of the Hospice! There’s more information about running the distance for the Hospice here.

Concerned citizens of Belfast and beyond can choose from the following:

A Screening of ‘Unheard Voices’

This event will start at 7 pm in Belfast City Hall. It’s organised by the WAVE Trauma Centre and Belfast City Council’s Good Relations Unit. The publicity for the event describes it this way:

Working in collaboration with victims and survivors from the WAVE Trauma Centre and the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster, this film records the stories of six individuals affected in different ways by our recent conflict.  This short film has recorded powerful collections of the move out of violence, as the themes of loss, recovery, strength and remembering are reflected through trauma, grief and hope.  The screening will be followed by a Q&A with some of the films contributors, chaired by Peter McBride, advisory member of the Commission for Victim and Survivors Pilot Forum and director of Niamh; the Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health. 

People are asked to RSVP their attendance, including any mobility requirements you may have on Telephone: (028) 7126 6655 or E-mail:admin@wavederry.co.uk

An Evening with the Benedictine Monks of Holy Cross Monastery at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Monkstown

The Monkstown community has organised a week-long programme of ecumenical events celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. Thursday at 7 pm the Benedictine Monks from Holy Cross Monastery in Rostrevor, Co. Down, will visit for a ‘Celtic Praise Evening with supper.’ It will include a time of chanting and contemplative silence, as well as Irish dancers and a harpist.

In Joyful Hope – A New Venture in Eucharistic Fellowship in Gilnahirk

The next celebration in the ‘In Joyful Hope’ initiative, which is designed to promote Eucharistic fellowship among various Christian denominations, will be on Thursday at 8 pm in St. Dorothea’s Church of Ireland, Gilnahirk. Previous celebrations have been in Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Church of Ireland churches in and around Belfast.

A private reading of PHILIP ORR’S PLAY “1912-100 years on”

This event starts at 7.30 at the Centre for Contemporary Christianity, Third Floor, 21Ormeau Avenue, Belfast. It’s described as a ‘private reading’ of a new play written by Philip Orr and Alan McGuckian, which the Centre will be offering to different venues across Northern Ireland in Spring 2012.

When “1912-One Hundred years on” goes on tour it will be part of an evening with the play and then a facilitated discussion after a short interval with refreshments.

I received an invitation to this event, which I don’t think has been publicized too widely because the play will be touring in the coming months. But any readers particularly interested in this topic could try emailing info@contemporarychristianity.net if they would like to attend or learn more about the work of the Centre.

So what am I going to?

None of the above! I’m a member of the Board of Athletics Northern Ireland, and on Thursday we’re hosting Charles Van Commenee, Head Coach of UK Athletics and the British Olympic squad – which is also free and open to the public. That’s where I’ll be.

But I do wish I could be in five places at once!

The Alan in Belfast blog has a constructive and thought-provoking new post on this topic.

Now that this year’s marathon is over, there is a movement afoot to switch the race from Monday to Sunday. This would save significantly on the costs of policing the event, and limit traffic disruption in the city on the increasingly busy Bank Holiday Monday.

Athletics Northern Ireland and Sport Northern Ireland, co-sponsors of the marathon, are willing to support the marathon on whatever day of the week it falls. But Belfast City Council has not committed to a Sunday date, in part due to concerns that this would impact negatively on Christians’ participation in the event.

I took part in the Belfast City Marathon, running a leg of the relay for Abbey Athletics Club. The Sunday before, I had run the London Marathon. The fact that I took part in the London Marathon on a Sunday already ‘outs’ me as a non-Sabbatarian Christian.

Dr Stafford Carson, moderator of the Presbyterian Church, has written to the Lord Mayor Naomi Long outlining his concerns. Carson praises the positive aspects of the marathon but points out that ‘40 churches lie close to or on the actual 26-mile route’ and that the marathon will disrupt travel to and from those places of worship.

That’s a practical concern, one that could be remedied by changing the course (which has happened before in the history of the Belfast City Marathon). But Carson’s second reason is principled, and this is,

… many Christians from all across Northern Ireland and beyond, who have participated in the charity aspect of the marathon don’t wish to take part in sporting events on a Sunday. This will therefore diminish one of the very positive benefits that the Belfast City Marathon has brought to our community life and will exclude those who are committed to their local church on a Sunday.

Sabbatarianism is a principle deeply embedded in the traditions associated with Reformed Protestantism in Northern Ireland. Strict Sabbatarians, drawing on the commandment to ‘remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,’ see attending or participating in sporting events on Sunday as a violation of the commandment.

I think that the Biblical principle of having at least one day of rest from all your labours is a sound and sensible one – a gift from God, really.

But for me, sport isn’t work or labour – it’s an intensely pleasurable activity. Rigorous exercise is worlds away from the work I do as a lecturer (and the work most of us do in the West), which involves sitting behind a desk typing. Indeed, for some of us, rigorous exercise could be considered a ‘Sabbath respite’ from the labours of our sedentary, desk-bound lifestyles!

For me, most of the time it’s possible to attend a Sunday service and take part in my sport. If a Christian attends a church that has only one Sunday service, the choice may be more difficult.

But I think the issue of sport on Sunday obscures bigger issues about the way we have organised our society, in which we have no full rest from economic activity. We have no break from the demands of capitalism, with shops open seven days a week.

The Sunday afternoon traffic of the people of Northern Ireland as they clog the doors of shopping centres to consume more products seems to me far greater than the traffic of people going through the doors of our churches on Sunday mornings.

Is this healthy for the people working on the weekends?

Is this healthy for the people who go to the shops out of boredom not necessity?

Is this healthy for the world’s environment, which is groaning as it strains to keep pace with the West’s endless demands for goods and services?

As a society, I think we could be asking ourselves bigger questions about our values rather than whether it is okay to hold the Belfast City Marathon on a Sunday – just one Sunday in the whole year.

If the Belfast City Marathon happens on a Sunday in the future, I hope that Christians feel they can participate with the full support of their congregations, and with the thought that they are doing something charitable – even pleasing to a God that created us to enjoy sport.

(Photo sourced from Athletics Northern Ireland website)

The title of the book, Presence is the Only Thing, is the first signal that it won’t simply be about training, matches and winning. In the book, ‘presence’ operates on a number of levels, from Harte being present for his players, to Harte’s memory of the presence of Paul McGirr and Cormac McAnallen – Tyrone footballers who perished in tragic circumstances, to Harte’s awareness of the presence of God.

We are not talking here about coaches and athletes ‘using’ God to boost their performance, or claiming that God has helped their team at the expense of others. British triple jumper Jonathan Edwards, who has become an atheist since his retirement from competitive athletics, notoriously said that he now believes the God of his athletics career was false, something he drew on like a souped-up brand of sports psychology.

In contrast, what Harte conveys in his book is a sense that the world he inhabits is imbued with a profound mystical meaning. This is less about winning or losing than it is about finding significant lessons for living in the tragedies, defeats and victories that have come Tyrone’s way.

Harte’s approach has been moulded by his involvement in charismatic Christianity, which in Ireland has been one of the few religious movements to cross boundaries between Catholics and Protestants. He also describes how he meditates while driving, and the rosary beads and relics he keeps in his car. He tells us that the Presbyterian who services his car takes great care to make sure these relics stay safe, and that this same Presbyterian prays for the Tyrone footballers in his own church.

If Harte seems to possess a surprisingly ecumenical personal spirituality, his descriptions of the everyday mixing of the GAA and Catholic religious practices betray a lack of awareness of the quiet sectarianism of the GAA. Harte even mentions that he wrote a master’s thesis demonstrating that the GAA is not sectarian, a conclusion he drew based on the finding that players were motivated to play football for the love of the game – not for specifically sectarian reasons.

But Harte also describes Catholic masses before matches, and priests visiting the team. It is difficult to imagine any Protestant – rare as such a creature is within the GAA – completely comfortable in this sort of team setting. The Church of Ireland’s Hard Gospel project tried to raise awareness about the quiet sectarianism within the GAA, while cases such as that of Fermanagh’s Darren Graham, a Protestant who quit the GAA in 2007 due to sectarian taunts from rival players, have demonstrated that sectarianism is not always so quiet.

That said, the existence of quiet sectarianism is not something that Harte can be expected to account for. Rather, the spirituality Harte conveys in this book is impressive for its awareness of how Tyrone’s sporting adventures connect with people from all walks of life. He realises that successful local sports teams can raise the spirits of an entire community. He also explains how, because of his trials dealing with the gut-wrenching deaths of McGirr and McAnallen, he is now regularly asked to speak to the grieving families and friends of other young men who have died unexpectedly. Most have perished through that scourge of rural Ireland, road traffic accidents. This spiritually is best summed up in Harte’s own words (page 17):

Sharing time with the people I have met because of the experiences I endured through Paul and Cormac has changed my life. It opened my mind to a whole new avenue of thought and reflection that impacted on my spiritual life and my life in football. As you think, so shall you be. Don’t let the future be defined by circumstances or fear. That simple sentiment brings us all hope and illuminates a whole new set of possibilities for us.