The Gate

I'd love you to just circle back quickly to the part where you talked about celebration because I feel like that is so important and there is something the last episode I was on with Alan Emerson and we talked about the importance of lament and I do think there's a place for that I think we need to Learn how to healthily bring our sorrow at how we've got some things wrong and find good process to be able to own it and name it and then move past it and move through it.

And maybe allow God to transform it and redeem it.

But on the other end of that is the part that we don't often talk about.

And I feel like culturally, we're not great at celebration.

And it really makes me laugh.

One of the things that my husband Colin and I love is we love traditional Irish music.

And so we love to go.

There's this little like pub in Derry that's really like it's the place you go to for really good music.

session and so we've if we've ever got guests staying with us we'll always try to schedule in taking them to an evening there and they just love it but you know we we've also been worship leaders for like our entire marriage together and we've often been like oh what is it with people like they just can't quite loosen up and celebrate and is it like are we just incapable of it but then you go to a pub and like a song like a chin comes on you know like an Irish chin comes on and it's like people have this involuntary reaction Fully grown men are crying with their arms stretched out in a pub and you realize, no, it's in there.

We have access to it, but we're just so afraid to express that.

And one of the places that sometimes, unfortunately, we are afraid to express it is church.

And I wonder, like, what do we do to fix that? I mean, the million dollar

question.

Yeah.

I think we need to ask questions about how we ended up where we are.

Because I actually, while I agree that we're not very good at this on this island, I think we've a rich heritage of celebration.

Yeah.

That's who we are at our core.

Like, we are wild dancers.

Yes.

You know, we know how to jig on this island.

And we have to ask where that got lost.

And the thing about Jubilee is everything's getting restored.

so

that means our dance will be restored too but I wonder what are the things that have brought us into a place where we have lost that sound I have some reflections I don't know if I'll agree with myself by the time I finish talking but here's what happened You know when you say something then you're like, I'm not so sure.