Peter Costelloby Rónán Johnston
(Goodnewsbooks.net/What’s Your Story, price not supplied)
Rónán Johnston is a songwriter and musician whose work was a feature of that remarkable TV success, Moone Boy. But that is only one aspect of his talents.
Since his teens, he has been involved in worship leadership and has also composed many albums on religious themes. This book, which has a foreword by David Payne, the director of Catholic Evangelisation Services, provides an account of the approach to worship which he wishes to promote.
To those who prefer a more traditional liturgical approach, his notions may seem strange, perhaps owing more to the American evangelical movement than they do to European traditions.
Others with different inclinations may be surprised that there seems to be little room, certainly not a central place in what he proposes, for the Mass; I hope I have not misunderstood him here. We are, though, reminded elsewhere that God was not in the fire or the great wind, but in the still small voice that came after. It is that voice the religiously minded strive to hear.
It might be unkind to see what he proposes as ‘the rushing wind’, but silence and contemplation and social interaction of a personal kind are in themselves forms of real worship too. To see not a reflection of ourselves, but to encounter God face to face, to know fully even as we are known.
An interesting book, but definitely not for everyone.