(August reflections are all short pieces from Travelling Light) To be truly present, however, requires persistent awareness, attention, focus, the ability to stay with, to wonder at, to be lost in, to wake up to the holiness of the present moment. That is the reason for the prayer of quiet, for contemplation, for meditation for the mystical path. That is the reason for celebrating the sacraments, with all those natural elements that remind us of […]
(August reflections are all short pieces from Travelling Light) At this point in my scribbling, I pause to look around me. I stretch and breathe. My body is a little cramped but it feels good. I’m having a pint and a snack here in downtown Albuquerque. The Budweiser tastes sweet; the Cajun style chicken is spicy and tasty. It is stiflingly hot outside; the air conditioning inside is a heaven. A small child’s face is […]
(August reflections are all short pieces from Travelling Light) In his celebrated Jubilee letter, Pope John Paul engaged with a theology of creation. As well as telling the mythical tale of humanity’s fall from grace and a subsequent salvation, this rich understanding of revelation holds that creation and incarnation can also be read as the greatest love story, revealing all of us as being a delight to God, carefully fashioned in God’s image. With or […]
Even if we wished we would be hard put to avoid the experience of God. The experience of God is practically inescapable. We cannot help coming into the embrace of divine compassion whenever we experience anything. Michael Skelley writes, ‘We do not sometimes have experiences of love, fear, ourselves, or anything else and then also have experiences of God. The basic, original experience of God, on the contrary, is the ultimate depth and radical essence […]
Love is all that we spend our lives seeking, but we forget along the way that love is present the moment we surrender to it. And the moment we surrender, we are no longer afraid of dying, or whether or not there is eternal life, because we have already found it, in love. Just one glimpse of true love, within and around us, shows us heaven. Love is eternal life. Because love sings forever, and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘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, […]
‘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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
(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 […]