Mind-Space or Soul-Space?
A reflection on the spirituality of mindfulness The balance of our minds is a fragile thing. The daily diet of bad news has profound effects on our moods and our thinking. The terrible tragedies and mindless acts of cruelty that are relentlessly reported eventually disturb the delicate equilibrium of many souls. The resulting insecurity is constantly spreading and is too often expressed in break-down, despair or thoughts of suicide. A serious, silent tipping point is […]
Taking your Life for a Walk
Wet and weary we entered the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. The 100 km Camino walk was over and our bones ached during Mass. As we got up to leave, a huge thurible (the botafumiero) was let down on a thick rope on to the sanctuary floor. A tangible frisson of anticipation stirred throughout the packed pews. The censer weighed 80 kilos and stood 1.60 metres tall. The Camino de Santiago, the Way of St […]
Increasing the Pure Energy of Love
The most useful way we can contribute to the divine will for the unfolding of an evolving humanity and universe is to increase the pure energy of love at every moment of our lives. We put love where there was no love before. The next big breakthrough in the story of our evolving world, is the creation of more love, to spread it, to become it. It is the main implication of the Incarnation. And […]
The Unfinished Symphony
In a weird way all my life I’ve been very aware of the incompleteness of everything. Nothing was enough. I always wanted more. (Spare me giving embarrassing examples!) Then I came across this gem of a paragraph by the beloved spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest. With time ticking away for me now, a precious time when a vague awareness can assume fine edges and a sharp focus, it seemed to bring its own […]
The Two Selves
We have often mentioned the True Self and the False Self in these pages. This kind of distinction is very helpful in our pursuit of spiritual maturing, of the complexities of befriending our authentic, complicated selves. Nobody writes of the faces and peculiarities of these twins within the womb of every soul with the authority and sure-footedness of Richard Rohr who has walked with us through the pages of this book. While experiencing many glimpses […]
The Grace of Now
Like a bird on a wire: The beloved Leonard Cohen has sung about the freedom he had sought for all his life. ‘Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried, in my way, to be free’. So have we all, I suppose – from the baby trying to establish its individuality, separateness and personhood by saying no, to the old woman or man in the nursing home, […]
Chasing the Wild Dream
I reached one of the big ‘Os’ on my recent birthday. For some reason there was a striking similarity in the themes of the cards I received. Most of them were urging me into a new phase of rather desperate self-expression and risky escapades. There were pictures of breathtaking bungee-jumping, parachuting out of airplanes, and death-defying goats leaping perilously across yawning chasms. I unwrapped a T-shirt recalling Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ in bright red […]
A time to Imagine (imaginary letter to Pope Francis)
Caro Papa Francisco, After reading your encyclical Laudato Si’ I had a dream. Before I tell you about it may I thank you on behalf of millions who are finding new hope in your redeeming leadership. You are parting the veils for us, allowing us glimpses into the meaning of mystery, liberating us by the beauty of your vision. Like Plato and St Thomas Aquinas before you, your word for this way of seeing and […]
Another Chance for a Reluctant Church
What have Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin in common? All three scientists suffered some bruising encounters with the Church authorities of their time. Each of them experienced extreme difficulties in having their scientific discoveries accepted. In 1988, conscious of this past ‘failure in dialogue’, Pope St John Paul II asked the participants of a conference in Rome this question: ‘Does an evolutionary perspective bring any light to bear upon theology, the meaning of the human person […]
Hints of Heaven
‘It was dark and I was taking the washing off my line. The lights streamed into the darkness from the kitchen, where my three girls were sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, chatting about their day. I watched the interaction between them, saw their animated discussion and knew that there, right in the heart of my home, God was too. A beautiful presence that set the place into radiance’. Paula, a friend, […]
The New Idolatry
‘Please turn back’ my passenger said after we had travelled six or seven miles, ’I’ve forgotten my mobile.’ There was panic in her voice. Even though there was no emergency in her life just then, and we would be back in a few hours, the thought of being phoneless was very distressing for her. Full-blown FOMO – the fear of missing out – is one of the most insidious social anxieties of our age. The […]
April Kitchen God
My brother Joseph had Down’s Syndrome. Every so often, in my dreams, he still comes storming back to deeply disturb my life. My mother adored him. And during those most difficult times, especially when Joseph’s severe diabetes demanded unrelenting attention, she was sustained by the certainty that in caring for Joseph she was entertaining angels unaware. If I had my mother back now I would tell her that it was even more that that. It […]
A Mothering Landscape
Anois teacht an Earraig sang the blind Irish pilgrim-poet Raftery. ‘On the brink of Spring, with the “stretch” in the days, I will raise my sail, and launch out anew.’ This is the time of year when nature beckons to us, the high roads call to us, something stirs in our soul. Shades of Druidic customs awaken within Celtic hearts. On St Patrick’s day a few years ago, I said Mass on top of the […]
Easter on the Pulse
It was when the evenings were lengthening in the first week of the new millennium that Laura’s long lashes began to move again. During those months of waiting, there was a paleness about her, like a sick baby, and her parents’ faces became etched forever with pain and fear. It had been a long Good Friday for the Connolly family. One day Bruce’s artistic passion was no longer there. The urge to paint had left […]
Easter at the Forge Cross
Like a recurring dream, it comes back to me every Easter week – a vivid memory that seems to have lodged deep within me, and only emerges on a sunny afternoon in April. I’m about 14 years old and just up after a teenage type of flu. I’m walking along the Forge Cross road near my home. A Spring sun is shining. I’m wearing a new brown suit and new brown leather shoes. To my […]
Good Friday’s Child
There is something about Good Friday that I cannot get used to. It always comes into our lives so strangely new. It is more than the quietness of our small City or of the stillness of the fields that stretch out towards the Yorkshire Dales. It is as if creation itself participates in some kind of turning of the light – a light that touches the heart of each person and even of the cosmos […]
Sabbath Time
Mr Casey was always courteous. He was the conductor on the Bus Eireann that dropped me at Lisivigeen, near Killarney, for my first ever summer holiday, eight miles from home. I was seven then. Our farmer friends were waiting at the crossroads. Mr Casey helped me down the three steps of the bus with my strapped and bulging suitcase. We waved him goodbye and set off across the fields for the farmhouse. No emperor ever […]
With my Body I Thee Worship
It seems to me that, for the most part, in God’s plan, the institution of marriage is the natural way for the developing and intensifying of human love. To move from selfishness to an awareness of the needs of others – first the loved one, then the children – must be impossible without the experience of marriage. How else can the soul’s desires be purified and intensified if not in the cauldron of learning to […]
Are You Trying too Hard to be Good?
I was ‘doing supply’ for my brother in the N Ward of a large hospital in Manchester. As ‘acting chaplain’ I was called out one night to a patient in deep distress. The reason given to me by the doctor was as follows. ‘This patient is deeply disturbed by her sins and imperfections. She is convinced that she is not in the state of grace, whatever that may mean. Short of sedation, I can do […]
The One Shining Moment
‘Rome Slams Abuses of the Mass’. Priests and parishioners are worried at these loud and recent messages about rubrical correctness around the sanctuary. Many objective commentators describe such Vatican warnings as sadly missing the point. Those who stop coming to Mass claim that they are bored by the irrelevance of our liturgies and homilies. The real issues, they say, are about what happens in their daily lives, and how the Eucharist might support and nourish […]
The Grace Gentle Touch
(notes for a Tablet article that remained unfinished – but worth sharing!) Every day I notice faces that ache to be touched. As people come with heavy hearts for a healing conversation, or with heavy sins for Confession, I think about the last time that the anxious edges of around their mouths and eyes were touched by a loving hand. Maybe never since childhood. At our workshops on hand-massage, there’s nearly always someone who will […]
Horizons of the Heart
Barrie and Tish, two of our parishioners in their early fifties, bought a boat this summer and are now sailing for Turkey. It was something they wanted to do for a long time. It will take them a couple of years to complete the adventure. Their regular ‘Postcards from the Sea’ are shared in our weekly newsletter. Last week they reported the repair, at Marseilles port, of a smashed mast, and now Combava is sailing, […]
Against an Infinite Horizon
I’m alone for a moment, on the ferry home, half-way between Calais and Dover. It is Sunday morning and the sun is shining on the green-blue sea. As spring turns to summer, millions travel to Lourdes. Our own parish pilgrimage is almost over. Our hearts are full of stories of pain and joy, of some dark moments and many bright ones, of shared secrets, and glimpses of the mystery and paradox of the human spirit. […]
Restoring the Mother-Tongue
A few years ago a shy young couple from a ‘good Catholic family’ in the parish asked to get married in Church. Because I had never seen them at Mass I did not immediately agree to their request and suggested further meetings. Maybe it was the tone of my voice, or maybe they were not very keen in the first place, but the outcome was that I never saw them again. I did hear some […]
We need to Cherish our Flaws
I received Selena into the Church twelve years ago. When Selena was a small girl she loved to wear her grandmother’s shoes. One day she fell and cut her leg. The wound needed some stitches. It healed in its own time. Selena is now 23. We met again recently. We talked about that moment in her young life. She said she still had the scar. Instead of disappearing, it grew as she grew, becoming more […]
The Half-Life will Kill You
At 84 Samuel Becket was asked about the possibility of his retirement. “What!,” he exclaimed, “Me? Retire? Never – not with the fire in me now!” Not all of us are that lucky. In my travels I meet teachers and priests for whom the original vision of their vocation has all but disappeared. There seems to be a universal kind of ennui, a deep-seated sense of pressure, that is driving people to retire as soon […]