Week ending 25th July 2010 www.tourmakeady.com
The eagle has landed. I use the word ‘eagle’ in the context of The Skibereen Eagle newspaper, which more than a century ago claimed to keep an eye on the Czar of Russia. I am not as far from Mayo as the ‘Eagle’ was from Moscow, but I will be keeping an eye on happenings in my home county from across the Twelve Pins. I am delighted to be able to continue to write a weekly column for The Connaught Telegraph. I still have some technical adjusting to do in order to send my article by e-mail, but things should fall into place in the near future as I deal with that as well as mountains of unpacking.
When someone asks me these days have I this or that, my reply is that I definitely have it somewhere, and that it could be anywhere in one of twenty or so boxes and bags. Despite labelling, things tend to get mixed up, but at a couple of boxes each day, everything will eventually get sorted out. It would be fine if I could devote all my time to bags and baggage, but other jobs have to be done too. The trip to Saint Macdara’s island I mentioned last week had to be called off due to inclement weather, The Mass took place instead on the pier at Más (Mace) from which we were supposed to depart, and it was followed by a weekend of sports and festivities.
I was pleased to see that nobody was prepared to take any chances with the sea. Ten or twenty years ago people might have taken a chance, but there have been too many tragedies, too many drownings. Lessons have been learned, and safety is paramount. I remember from my early days crossing between islands in a currach that the idea of a man wearing a lifejacket would have been deemed laughable. No he-man would be seen in such a garment. Those macho days have largely gone now and people take a much more sensible approach.
I am still overwhelmed by the generosity of people as I prepared to leave Tourmakeady, and I will always have fond memories of the place and its people. Many hands have reached out with the words: “Fáilte go Cárna” (Welcome to Carna) since I arrived here, and that is certainly helping me to adjust. I know that I am just one of the many priests in the Archdiocese of Tuam and further afield who have had such send-offs and arrivals in different parishes in recent weeks. People have shown a great ability to distinguish between the failures of the church in its handling of child sex-abuse issues for instance, and the priests in their parishes who are there for them when they need them.
I was asked recently in an interview with the new Irish language paper ‘Gaelscéal’ where I would like to go next. My answer was ‘Heaven.’ There is so much hard work involved in uprooting yourself, and almost setting off like a selimide (snail) with your house on your back that I would hate to have to go through it again. This is particularly true for those of us who are in or around the mid-sixties. It is not just the moving as such but getting to know a couple of thousand new people at this stage in life. If ever we needed the hand of God and the prayers of people to guide us, it is now.
When someone asks me these days have I this or that, my reply is that I definitely have it somewhere, and that it could be anywhere in one of twenty or so boxes and bags. Despite labelling, things tend to get mixed up, but at a couple of boxes each day, everything will eventually get sorted out. It would be fine if I could devote all my time to bags and baggage, but other jobs have to be done too. The trip to Saint Macdara’s island I mentioned last week had to be called off due to inclement weather, The Mass took place instead on the pier at Más (Mace) from which we were supposed to depart, and it was followed by a weekend of sports and festivities.
I was pleased to see that nobody was prepared to take any chances with the sea. Ten or twenty years ago people might have taken a chance, but there have been too many tragedies, too many drownings. Lessons have been learned, and safety is paramount. I remember from my early days crossing between islands in a currach that the idea of a man wearing a lifejacket would have been deemed laughable. No he-man would be seen in such a garment. Those macho days have largely gone now and people take a much more sensible approach.
I am still overwhelmed by the generosity of people as I prepared to leave Tourmakeady, and I will always have fond memories of the place and its people. Many hands have reached out with the words: “Fáilte go Cárna” (Welcome to Carna) since I arrived here, and that is certainly helping me to adjust. I know that I am just one of the many priests in the Archdiocese of Tuam and further afield who have had such send-offs and arrivals in different parishes in recent weeks. People have shown a great ability to distinguish between the failures of the church in its handling of child sex-abuse issues for instance, and the priests in their parishes who are there for them when they need them.
I was asked recently in an interview with the new Irish language paper ‘Gaelscéal’ where I would like to go next. My answer was ‘Heaven.’ There is so much hard work involved in uprooting yourself, and almost setting off like a selimide (snail) with your house on your back that I would hate to have to go through it again. This is particularly true for those of us who are in or around the mid-sixties. It is not just the moving as such but getting to know a couple of thousand new people at this stage in life. If ever we needed the hand of God and the prayers of people to guide us, it is now.
Week ending 18th July 2010 www.tourmakeady.com
A few years ago a Clareman I met in Galway told me: “I was at your wake in Inis Oirr in 1975.” I told him I didn’t even know that I had died, but I was well aware that he meant my last night as a priest in my first sojourn in the Aran Islands. The comparison between leaving a parish with being at your own wake or funeral has been ever present in my mind since the priestly changes were announced. The only good thing about it is that I am not in the box – maybe that is what people mean by ‘thinking outside the box.’ I’m alive so far.
The other aspects of a wake are there, people saying nice things, most of which I do not deserve, but I’m not complaining. They could say worse, but don’t. The generosity of the people of Tourmakeady as I prepared to leave touched me very much. As in many of the big soccer transfers, I am not disclosing the transfer fee. Sufficient to say that Barcelona or Real Madrid did not stand a chance. The unusual aspect is that it is the place I have left that is paying for the transfer. Seriously, I am very grateful. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
The strangest aspect of a priestly change is that while it was difficult to leave, the focus now is on the challenge ahead. There is no sense in wallowing in loneliness or self-pity. The future is now. The thought of getting to know a couple of thousand new people in a person’s mid-sixties is daunting, but what is the rush? Things tend to fall into place over time. I don’t like having to ask people who have already introduced themselves, or been introduced, their names, a second or third time. It is not that you have not been interested so much as too much information for an older mind to absorb in a short time.
Over the years I have been amazed at people’s patience and understanding. I found this most of all in my earlier priestly days when struggling with the Irish language. Very few would fault the pidgin efforts of the learner. They would put the correct version back in your ear and mouth in their answer. To pick up one phrase each day correctly may not seem like a difficult task, but in many ways it was sufficient for the day. Everything clicked into place after a couple of months as the ear became attuned. It is the same method that I intend to use when trying to get to know my new congregation – a few people at a time. There are three hundred and sixty five days in the year. Eventually I will get there. Le cunamh Dé (With God’s help)
I could forget about God in all the fuss, but when it comes down to it I would be wasting my time without God’s help. If I am supposed to be doing God’s work I am hardly going to be left to do it on my own. I am just the vessel, the conduit, one of the human connections. I find that nothing takes the weight off the mind as well as handing over the reins to the Lord and saying: “Take it from here. I’ve done my bit.” There is no point in arriving at the heavenly gates and saying that I have had to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, only to be asked “Why? Wasn’t I there to help if you were not too stubborn to ask.” A bit like the story of the storm on the lake of Gallilee when he asked: “Why are you fearful? Am I not with you?”
The other aspects of a wake are there, people saying nice things, most of which I do not deserve, but I’m not complaining. They could say worse, but don’t. The generosity of the people of Tourmakeady as I prepared to leave touched me very much. As in many of the big soccer transfers, I am not disclosing the transfer fee. Sufficient to say that Barcelona or Real Madrid did not stand a chance. The unusual aspect is that it is the place I have left that is paying for the transfer. Seriously, I am very grateful. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
The strangest aspect of a priestly change is that while it was difficult to leave, the focus now is on the challenge ahead. There is no sense in wallowing in loneliness or self-pity. The future is now. The thought of getting to know a couple of thousand new people in a person’s mid-sixties is daunting, but what is the rush? Things tend to fall into place over time. I don’t like having to ask people who have already introduced themselves, or been introduced, their names, a second or third time. It is not that you have not been interested so much as too much information for an older mind to absorb in a short time.
Over the years I have been amazed at people’s patience and understanding. I found this most of all in my earlier priestly days when struggling with the Irish language. Very few would fault the pidgin efforts of the learner. They would put the correct version back in your ear and mouth in their answer. To pick up one phrase each day correctly may not seem like a difficult task, but in many ways it was sufficient for the day. Everything clicked into place after a couple of months as the ear became attuned. It is the same method that I intend to use when trying to get to know my new congregation – a few people at a time. There are three hundred and sixty five days in the year. Eventually I will get there. Le cunamh Dé (With God’s help)
I could forget about God in all the fuss, but when it comes down to it I would be wasting my time without God’s help. If I am supposed to be doing God’s work I am hardly going to be left to do it on my own. I am just the vessel, the conduit, one of the human connections. I find that nothing takes the weight off the mind as well as handing over the reins to the Lord and saying: “Take it from here. I’ve done my bit.” There is no point in arriving at the heavenly gates and saying that I have had to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, only to be asked “Why? Wasn’t I there to help if you were not too stubborn to ask.” A bit like the story of the storm on the lake of Gallilee when he asked: “Why are you fearful? Am I not with you?”
Week ending 11th July 2010
I will be thrown into the deep end on my first day in my new parish of Cárna. Not literally, I hope, as I will be sailing to an uninhabited offshore island, Oileán Mhic Dara (St Mac Dara’s island) with a thousand or more people who will celebrate the feast of their patron, Saint Mac Dara with a Mass, followed by music, dancing, currach and Galway hooker races. For those who may be getting worried about finding the words ‘mass’ and ‘hooker’ in the same sentence, the Galway hooker is a traditional Galway and Connemara sailboat used in days gone by for fishing and transporting turf to the Aran Islands, as well as the Kinvara and Ballyvaughan areas of Counties Galway and Clare.
One of the traditions associated with Saint Mac Dara’s island is that sailors had and still have such reverence for the saint that they dip their sails in salute as they go past. There was a similar tradition when passing Leaba Chaomhán (Saint Kevan’s bed) on the Aran Island of Inis Oirr, one of the most unusual antiquarian sites in Ireland, a little church in the middle of a hill of sand, on top of which is the local cemetery. The sand used to be dug from the chapel for Mass on the pattern day during my time there (1971 –’75) but conservation work by the Office of Public Works has meant that sand encroaches less frequently now.
Writing about Saint Mac Dara’s island for the Royal Society of Antiquarian’s of Ireland in 1895, R.A.S Macalister says that “the island comprises about sixty acres, mostly bare, the rock a reddish granite, with a coast strewn with huge blocks, there is a little grass land in the centre affording food for a few sheep. There are no inhabitants on the island, and very few of the people of the district visit it unless on the Saint’s two festivals, while strangers never do so. The church is situated on the edge of the east shore of the island, in a gentle hollow sloping to the south, and close to a natural landing place.”
The little church was in ruins in Mr. Macalister’s time but it was restored in the 1970’s and appeared on a postage stamp. Many people probably remember the stamp with the beautifully proportioned little church that has a stone roof with a strangely shaped stone on top of the gable. Writing about that stone one hundred and fifteen years ago, Macalister says: “This stone was found in two pieces lying face downwards, a little south of the church, by Charles Elcock on his visit in 1884. At the time of the discovery by him, perhaps one hundred people were there collecting seaweed, and on his picking up the stone and showing it, they raised the cry, in Irish and English: ‘He’s found the Saint, he’s found the Saint hisself, whereupon everyone rushed to see the Saint’s head.”(carved on the stone)
I am indebted to the Internet for this information. No doubt I will learn much more about Saint Mac Dara in the month’s and years ahead from the people who hold him in such high esteem. While I am finding it difficult to leave Tourmakeady after fifteen years, I know that I am going to an area that is not just scenic but steeped in Irish culture and heritage. Sean-nós singing and dancing are alive and well in Cárna, as is traditional music and a deep folklore tradition. I’m getting ready to be thrown into ‘the deep end,’ but not the deep end of the Atlantic.
One of the traditions associated with Saint Mac Dara’s island is that sailors had and still have such reverence for the saint that they dip their sails in salute as they go past. There was a similar tradition when passing Leaba Chaomhán (Saint Kevan’s bed) on the Aran Island of Inis Oirr, one of the most unusual antiquarian sites in Ireland, a little church in the middle of a hill of sand, on top of which is the local cemetery. The sand used to be dug from the chapel for Mass on the pattern day during my time there (1971 –’75) but conservation work by the Office of Public Works has meant that sand encroaches less frequently now.
Writing about Saint Mac Dara’s island for the Royal Society of Antiquarian’s of Ireland in 1895, R.A.S Macalister says that “the island comprises about sixty acres, mostly bare, the rock a reddish granite, with a coast strewn with huge blocks, there is a little grass land in the centre affording food for a few sheep. There are no inhabitants on the island, and very few of the people of the district visit it unless on the Saint’s two festivals, while strangers never do so. The church is situated on the edge of the east shore of the island, in a gentle hollow sloping to the south, and close to a natural landing place.”
The little church was in ruins in Mr. Macalister’s time but it was restored in the 1970’s and appeared on a postage stamp. Many people probably remember the stamp with the beautifully proportioned little church that has a stone roof with a strangely shaped stone on top of the gable. Writing about that stone one hundred and fifteen years ago, Macalister says: “This stone was found in two pieces lying face downwards, a little south of the church, by Charles Elcock on his visit in 1884. At the time of the discovery by him, perhaps one hundred people were there collecting seaweed, and on his picking up the stone and showing it, they raised the cry, in Irish and English: ‘He’s found the Saint, he’s found the Saint hisself, whereupon everyone rushed to see the Saint’s head.”(carved on the stone)
I am indebted to the Internet for this information. No doubt I will learn much more about Saint Mac Dara in the month’s and years ahead from the people who hold him in such high esteem. While I am finding it difficult to leave Tourmakeady after fifteen years, I know that I am going to an area that is not just scenic but steeped in Irish culture and heritage. Sean-nós singing and dancing are alive and well in Cárna, as is traditional music and a deep folklore tradition. I’m getting ready to be thrown into ‘the deep end,’ but not the deep end of the Atlantic.
Week ending 4th July 2010 www.tourmakeady.com
Some of the last petals of this year’s rhododendron float like confetti on the Glensaul river, or what remains of it because of the drought brought about by the glorious June weather. It has been one of the best summers in years so far. I’m told that turf cut in early June is almost ready to be brought home. Silage and haymaking machinery seem to be working day and night, with the early harvesting holding out the promise of another cut of grass before the season is out. While Lough Mask is in no danger of disappearing over the horizon yet, the water has lowered further than I have seen it in my fifteen years by its shores.
Older people have often told me that when the ‘lake is out’ it always comes in, and when it rises to a certain level the rain seems to stop for a while. That has certainly been true in my limited experience. The lake-waters were virtually lapping by the roadside in Churchfield before last Christmas at a time that people in East and South Galway were being flooded out of their houses. There has been little enough rain since, so we have reached the opposite extreme. The threat or promise that when the rain starts again it will be hard to stop hangs over our heads, but we are enjoying the good weather in the meantime.
Seeing fresh water tanks being brought out by boat to the Aran Islands in TV news reports reminds me once again of how blest we are to have Lough Mask on our doorstep to provide water to half or more of County Mayo. It also reminds us of the need to keep it clean and unpolluted. I have written in the past of the anomaly that people living by the lake whose clean farming methods help to avoid pollution have to pay water charges, while water consumers in neighbouring towns get the same water free. The day is fast approaching when all water will be metered. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that system, I hope that it will be fair to all.
Each year as the Churchfield cemetery Mass is being celebrated close to the shores of Lough Mask I think of how much at home Jesus would have felt here. I’m sure the grass is greener in Tourmakeady than in what we now know as the Holy Land, but the lake, the hills, the boats on the shore would be very familiar to him. It has not led me to try and walk on the water, but then I am not a show-off (in that sense.) In some ways the gospel stories seem easier to tell when you can see lake and hill, sheep and shepherd, field and flower. No doubt Jesus would be at home too in the concrete jungle of a city, but it is just that little bit harder to imagine.
During the frost and snow of last winter and early spring that set back growth by weeks, I remember thinking that it would be lovely to get a real summer, now that we had at last got a real winter. So far it seems to have come true. We could put up with a bit of cold in winter so long as we had sun in summer. It could not have come at a better time, when fewer people can afford to go away and others had their holiday plans disrupted by the ash-cloud. Global warming gets the blame for both the good and the bad weather, but for oldies like me it is just a throwback to the good old days when winter was winter and summer was summer.
Older people have often told me that when the ‘lake is out’ it always comes in, and when it rises to a certain level the rain seems to stop for a while. That has certainly been true in my limited experience. The lake-waters were virtually lapping by the roadside in Churchfield before last Christmas at a time that people in East and South Galway were being flooded out of their houses. There has been little enough rain since, so we have reached the opposite extreme. The threat or promise that when the rain starts again it will be hard to stop hangs over our heads, but we are enjoying the good weather in the meantime.
Seeing fresh water tanks being brought out by boat to the Aran Islands in TV news reports reminds me once again of how blest we are to have Lough Mask on our doorstep to provide water to half or more of County Mayo. It also reminds us of the need to keep it clean and unpolluted. I have written in the past of the anomaly that people living by the lake whose clean farming methods help to avoid pollution have to pay water charges, while water consumers in neighbouring towns get the same water free. The day is fast approaching when all water will be metered. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that system, I hope that it will be fair to all.
Each year as the Churchfield cemetery Mass is being celebrated close to the shores of Lough Mask I think of how much at home Jesus would have felt here. I’m sure the grass is greener in Tourmakeady than in what we now know as the Holy Land, but the lake, the hills, the boats on the shore would be very familiar to him. It has not led me to try and walk on the water, but then I am not a show-off (in that sense.) In some ways the gospel stories seem easier to tell when you can see lake and hill, sheep and shepherd, field and flower. No doubt Jesus would be at home too in the concrete jungle of a city, but it is just that little bit harder to imagine.
During the frost and snow of last winter and early spring that set back growth by weeks, I remember thinking that it would be lovely to get a real summer, now that we had at last got a real winter. So far it seems to have come true. We could put up with a bit of cold in winter so long as we had sun in summer. It could not have come at a better time, when fewer people can afford to go away and others had their holiday plans disrupted by the ash-cloud. Global warming gets the blame for both the good and the bad weather, but for oldies like me it is just a throwback to the good old days when winter was winter and summer was summer.