We are now at the beginning of October. I have always celebrated this week when we honour those special saints Thérèse and Francis of Assisi. They specialised in living the way of unconditional love. They knew spiritual things, as St Paul put it, ‘in a spiritual way’. With Teilhard de Chardin, they regarded love as the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious personal and cosmic force. Teilhard’s wish was that humanity would […]
Much of all this is challenging and confusing, but only because it is different from what we were often (very erroneously) told. It is the heart of our faith but in a new language and imagery. It is worth all the energy and passion we can muster to understand it more profoundly. This theology tries to tell the Christian Story in terms of a deep and endless love: always flowing from within, the work of […]
Occasionally in the middle of my restlessness and worry I will reach for a pen and a page to take my mind off the situation I want to deny. I find a blessed relief in mulling over the love-story of Incarnation, ruminating on the forgotten theological and spiritual teachings, and their implications for our lives and that of our precious world. And so, in the lovely light of these thoughts in many of these pages, […]
Lent is here. It stirs something in us – a strange, unsolicited desire. There are intimations of a journey to be made, a river to be crossed, a hill to be climbed. Beyond ‘giving something up for Lent’ a deeper echo reminds us of a waiting desert. And something tells us that this is a dangerous place to go. We resist the call into our own mystery, our own depths. We fear further hurting by […]
Awareness is always about presence. But how often are we present to ourselves and to our environment in a distracted world where electronic multi-tasking rules, even while we’re having a meal with a friend? From both within and without, that inner sacred place is continually invaded. Without this grace of space there will be no stillness for catching the cadences of the unfinished symphony beneath the surface of what happens. One Celtic evening, the mythical […]
It is often said that people are searching for meaning in their lives. But could it be rather that they are looking for evidence that they are really and truly alive? A boy sat on the steps of a building with a battered hat by his feet. A cardboard sign read: “I’m blind. Please help.” The hat held a few small coins. A man was walking by. He dropped a euro in the hat, picked […]
“I swear to you by the stars above, And below, if such there be, As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes, That’s how you’re loved by me.” Valentine greetings such as Ogden Nash’s verse will criss-cross our planet this week-end as lovers compete for new expressions of their love. Little did the third century Saint realise what he was starting when he signed himself off with ‘from your Valentine’ in a note to a girl […]
If we are to hear the silent music beneath the noisy traffic of our thinking, we need to learn how to leave the mind and focus on the senses. The distractions of modern life prevent us picking up the rhythm of grace. At a Metro station in Washington DC a man started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that rush hour […]
While January’s Janus, the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways, is always depicted as unrelentingly and ambiguously staring at the past and into the future, our God of Epiphany is embraced as forever creating new possibilities from within the womb of the present. I like to think of January, my own birth month, as the month of courageous beginnings. There is something of the child-beginner about January. In the natural liturgy of the seasons, […]
In the first month of the new year, millions are ready to overcome their natural fears of the unknown and throw off the habit of the familiar to embrace a journey that requires patience, determination and boldness to change not only the way of looking at life but life itself. It is very early on the first day of the year. Intent and attentive, I’m sitting here at the window of my new home. The […]
The Christmas hype is well and truly over but the meaning of Incarnation has no ending. In January, the month of courageous beginnings, Christians will try to live out in their lives the Feast of Love and Mercy they have just celebrated. In a weeping world they will put love where there was no love and thus continue the human Incarnation of divine love. Life itself, all that it brings, all that we experience, every […]
January is a month for courageous beginnings. Yet so many of us are starting the new year with less conviction than usual. This is an extraordinary moment in our history where fragmentation and confusion are casting heavy shadows over our day-to-day lives. Widespread populist power is a growing phenomenon in a radically changing world – a fragile world so wounded by the nightmares of terrorism, political upheaval and global warming. The challenges that face us […]
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, […]
English poet Christina Rossetti was looking through the lens of Incarnation when she prayed: Lord, purge our eyes to see, Within the seed a tree, Within the glowing egg a bird, Within the shroud a butterfly. God is now fleshed. To perceive the world in Christmas light is to discern the hidden depths of everything, the astonishing possibilities in all that happens, the extraordinary mystery abiding within the ordinary. This Christian revelation of an incarnate […]
It happened in Rathmore, my home village in the south of Ireland. It is one of my first memories. It was Christmas Eve and I was four. The snow had started to fall. I was standing near the small door between our small shop and our small kitchen. I was beside myself with anticipation, hyped to the gills with Santa Claus. Christy Cremin had just bought his weekly ration of Woodbines. “Where is he now […]
Some things you don’t easily forget. I still remember a special moment from around this time last year. Their small faces ablaze with innocence, Kaitlin and Matilda lit the first purple candle in our Advent wreath. Something about the way they shyly smiled at each other was already providing us with a glimpse into the mystery for which we were preparing. What I was feeling was a kind of aching and longing. The focus shifted […]
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, […]
‘Excitement and joy flow out from Tom and Rhianna whenever they talk about the pregnancy. Their delight is infectious but more striking is their sense of privilege – to be having this baby is wondrous gift. Together they’ve opened up a heightened awareness of the miracle, hope, promise of this one new life, a recognition of the holiness, fragility and wonder of this baby, their baby. There is a new stillness in them, as if […]
Some kinds of vulnerability – the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual suffering that accompanies vulnerability – can make us angry, bitter, resentful, depressed, over-anxious, determined to protect ourselves as much as possible, and thus we can close down our defences, hide behind walls, narrow our vision, see things in a black and white way – and so reduce our learning – we can hold the world at a distance, we see it or other people […]
There are many faces to loss and loneliness. One face is about the precariousness of our human condition. The heart still twists in me, for instance, when, visiting residential homes, I see the dull glaze in the lonely eyes that once shone with delight – a delight that fills the happy, faded, family photographs hanging on the wall behind them. One such person admitted to finding the sound of overheard laughter unbearably poignant. There is […]
There is a powerful pathos in the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Autumn is heavy with such imagery and recollections. Falling October leaves preach poignant panegyrics as they go. November makes us vulnerable to the ache of a lasting […]
It is often said that people are searching for meaning in their lives. But could it be rather that they are looking for evidence that they are really and truly alive? A boy sat on the steps of a building with a battered hat by his feet. A cardboard sign read: “I’m blind. Please help.” The hat held a few small coins. A man was walking by. He dropped a euro in the hat, picked […]
One Celtic evening, the mythical Fionn Mac Chumhail and his warriors were having a discussion about the finest sound in the world. His son Oisin extolled the ring of spear on shield in the din of battle. Another went on about the fearful cries of the stags and the baying of the hounds in the rising blood lust just before the kill. Yet another spoke of the song of his beloved as she played the […]
If we are to hear the silent music beneath the noisy traffic of our thinking, we need to learn how to leave the mind and focus on the senses. The distractions of modern life prevent us picking up the rhythm of grace. At a Metro station in Washington DC a man started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that rush hour […]
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 […]
Matthew Arnold (19th Century) wrote: ‘More and more humanity will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.’ ‘The poet or the novelist who can find the words and images that speak to our human condition – to our loneliness and pain, […]