Week ending 25th October 2011
Nobody likes a funeral. We would all avoid them if we could. Priests see more of them than most, but we never become immune to the grief of those who are bereaved. Over the past couple of weeks I have officiated at the funerals of a couple of single men in their early fifties. They were not as sad or as devastating as the funerals of accident or suicide victims or those of young parents or children, but they were still somebody’s son, brother or uncle. They will be sorely missed by their nearest and dearest, their friends and neighbours, and will be remembered with affection during November, the upcoming ‘month of the dead.’
The ‘Day Of The Dead’ sounds ominous and scary, but that is what the second of November is called in many languages, including Irish – ’Lá na Mairbh.’. All Souls Day is a bit milder, but whatever we call the day, the meaning is much the same for Christians. Living and dead are still part of the same family. Love does not end with death. Living and dead can help each other out, can pray for each other, wish each other well. We can reach across the divide by imaginative prayer. We can bring our loved ones who are gone to life in our minds and imaginations, sit them down, and ask God to care for them.
Some people think any talk of death is morbid, but it above all a recognition of one of the more obvious and important facts of life. Death has had a hundred per cent success rate down through the centuries, and there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.. We can postpone it but we can’t avoid it. Money, fame, religious belief or the lack of it, are no protections against death. It has to be faced at some stage or other. We don’t need to get obsessive about it or hung up on it, just be prepared to face up to it. Most of us would like to postpone death for another while, but the older we get, the surer we are that we have to face it sooner rather than later.
One of the advantages of Halloween is that it gives us a chance to look at death in a slightly different way as darkness descends and nights grow longer. For the next few days and weeks people will have the chance to poke fun at the greatest darkness of them all, to say that we are not scared. Well, not too scared. We are prepared to deal with it when it comes our way. Children enjoying the festival of course don’t know or don’t need to know the centuries of history behind Halloween. Basically it seems to be a recognition that death is a natural part of life. Just as the leaves fall, so will we, but growth and renewal will come again.
The one exception Christians see to death’s hundred percent success rate is the man hung out to die on a Friday cross about two thousand years ago, whom we claim to have defied and defeated death. We make the outrageous claim that Jesus turned death on iis head, and made eternal life possible. We don’t know the details of that new life, but we have such trust in Jesus that we take his word for it. It is an exciting prospect, a life so different from this one that we don’t have the imagination to begin to grasp what it’s all about. Our present life continues to surprise those who have experienced it for any length of time, especially its technological achievements which most of us could not have imagined twenty or thirty years ago. If those changes surprise us, how can we expect to imagine the eternal life of God?
The ‘Day Of The Dead’ sounds ominous and scary, but that is what the second of November is called in many languages, including Irish – ’Lá na Mairbh.’. All Souls Day is a bit milder, but whatever we call the day, the meaning is much the same for Christians. Living and dead are still part of the same family. Love does not end with death. Living and dead can help each other out, can pray for each other, wish each other well. We can reach across the divide by imaginative prayer. We can bring our loved ones who are gone to life in our minds and imaginations, sit them down, and ask God to care for them.
Some people think any talk of death is morbid, but it above all a recognition of one of the more obvious and important facts of life. Death has had a hundred per cent success rate down through the centuries, and there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.. We can postpone it but we can’t avoid it. Money, fame, religious belief or the lack of it, are no protections against death. It has to be faced at some stage or other. We don’t need to get obsessive about it or hung up on it, just be prepared to face up to it. Most of us would like to postpone death for another while, but the older we get, the surer we are that we have to face it sooner rather than later.
One of the advantages of Halloween is that it gives us a chance to look at death in a slightly different way as darkness descends and nights grow longer. For the next few days and weeks people will have the chance to poke fun at the greatest darkness of them all, to say that we are not scared. Well, not too scared. We are prepared to deal with it when it comes our way. Children enjoying the festival of course don’t know or don’t need to know the centuries of history behind Halloween. Basically it seems to be a recognition that death is a natural part of life. Just as the leaves fall, so will we, but growth and renewal will come again.
The one exception Christians see to death’s hundred percent success rate is the man hung out to die on a Friday cross about two thousand years ago, whom we claim to have defied and defeated death. We make the outrageous claim that Jesus turned death on iis head, and made eternal life possible. We don’t know the details of that new life, but we have such trust in Jesus that we take his word for it. It is an exciting prospect, a life so different from this one that we don’t have the imagination to begin to grasp what it’s all about. Our present life continues to surprise those who have experienced it for any length of time, especially its technological achievements which most of us could not have imagined twenty or thirty years ago. If those changes surprise us, how can we expect to imagine the eternal life of God?
Week ending 18th October 2011
More than fifty years ago a cousin from a midland town saw a hen lay an egg on a Mayo farm. She declared to her mother: “We will only eat eggs we buy in the shop anymore, Mammy.” For some reason the sight of potatoes coming soiled from the ground brought that observation to mind. Picking potatoes has come to mean picking up a packet of washed tubers in a plastic cover from shop or supermarket shelves. It was once a backbreaking and tiring chore, but a pleasant enough one for anyone old enough to stand on two feet and wander around in a field. Like footing turf or saving hay it was one of those jobs that people of all ages were roped in to do.
This is a time of year many of associate as much with digging and gathering a year’s crop of potatoes as much as anything else. Hallow’een would not seem real if the potatoes had not been dug, picked and pitted. It would seem now as I look through Autumn tinted glasses that we always had suitable weather for the occasion, dry days with a winter sun barely strong enough to warm you, frosty nights, but best of all no rain for about a fortnight. I wonder now, with my less than impeccable logic, if we could recreate that weather by setting the amount of potatoes that every small holding or town garden had at that time.
It would be the opposite to a raindance, a sundance, or at least a frosty nights and low wintry sun-dance. The real reward would not just be the better weather but the crops of potatoes. Has any rugby correspondent alluded to the real reason that the Irish team’s heroic efforts in New Zealand ultimately ended in failure against the Welsh? Not enough spuds. As six of the seven candidates for the Irish Presidency pore over the entrails of their campaigns in a couple of week’s time, will they consider: “I should have eaten more spuds?” Meanwhile the newly elected will be eying up a purple patch on the Aras green with a view to setting next year’s roosters.
It would be lovely to get a spell the good dry weather traditional in many people’s minds to this time of year. We feel that we deserve it after a year in which we had barely two consecutive days of sunshine since Easter. Hopes for the long hot July and August that some ‘experts’ predicted petered out in he mist. Hopes for an Indian summer turned into a cowboy autumn and were blown away on the coatails of tropical storms. Still we live in hope, and when we see the weather excesses in other places, from storm or tsunami desruction to the devastation of drought, we realise that we have reason to be thankful.
Speaking of drought, people in the Archdiocese of Tuam have reason to be justifiably proud of their contribution to the Trócaire East Africa appeal. We were circulated a copy of a letter from the Deputy Director of that organisation, Éamonn Meehan to Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Mchael Neary in which he thanks the people of the Archdiocese for an extremely generous contribution of e281,270. At a time that is particularly difficult for so many families due to recession and cutbacks, this is particularly commendable. I joked earlier in this article about potatoes, but our folk memory of the potato famine is still there, and people always do their utmost to help those starving in other parts of the world.
This is a time of year many of associate as much with digging and gathering a year’s crop of potatoes as much as anything else. Hallow’een would not seem real if the potatoes had not been dug, picked and pitted. It would seem now as I look through Autumn tinted glasses that we always had suitable weather for the occasion, dry days with a winter sun barely strong enough to warm you, frosty nights, but best of all no rain for about a fortnight. I wonder now, with my less than impeccable logic, if we could recreate that weather by setting the amount of potatoes that every small holding or town garden had at that time.
It would be the opposite to a raindance, a sundance, or at least a frosty nights and low wintry sun-dance. The real reward would not just be the better weather but the crops of potatoes. Has any rugby correspondent alluded to the real reason that the Irish team’s heroic efforts in New Zealand ultimately ended in failure against the Welsh? Not enough spuds. As six of the seven candidates for the Irish Presidency pore over the entrails of their campaigns in a couple of week’s time, will they consider: “I should have eaten more spuds?” Meanwhile the newly elected will be eying up a purple patch on the Aras green with a view to setting next year’s roosters.
It would be lovely to get a spell the good dry weather traditional in many people’s minds to this time of year. We feel that we deserve it after a year in which we had barely two consecutive days of sunshine since Easter. Hopes for the long hot July and August that some ‘experts’ predicted petered out in he mist. Hopes for an Indian summer turned into a cowboy autumn and were blown away on the coatails of tropical storms. Still we live in hope, and when we see the weather excesses in other places, from storm or tsunami desruction to the devastation of drought, we realise that we have reason to be thankful.
Speaking of drought, people in the Archdiocese of Tuam have reason to be justifiably proud of their contribution to the Trócaire East Africa appeal. We were circulated a copy of a letter from the Deputy Director of that organisation, Éamonn Meehan to Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. Mchael Neary in which he thanks the people of the Archdiocese for an extremely generous contribution of e281,270. At a time that is particularly difficult for so many families due to recession and cutbacks, this is particularly commendable. I joked earlier in this article about potatoes, but our folk memory of the potato famine is still there, and people always do their utmost to help those starving in other parts of the world.
Week ending 11th October2011
I have had dealings with two different telephone companies in recent times, as I left one to join another for financial reasons as well as in the hope of getting a better broadband connection. The companies, or service providers as they are probably more properly called shall remain nameless for the moment. What amazes me most about both of them is that neither has a contact number on which to make a query or question a decision. Many of their e-mails are of the type to which it is a waste of time to reply, so communication with the customer is virtually one way traffic, with all the cards stacked in favour of the supplier.
My main problem was with the fact that the company representative or salesman made a mistake with the contract addresses to which all correspondance was to be sent, something which affected direct debits, phone bills etc. He was a very nice young man and I was happy to do business with him, but there was no obvious way to contact him or the company he represented before added complications could arise because of the address mix-up. I have written to the company head office but that is hardly satisfactory for them or for me, as the problem could easily be solved by a quick phonecall if I had a contact number. I await a reply.
I am very surprised that the Consumer Association or the Department of Communications have not some rules in place directing communications companies to make it easier to communicate both ways with their clients. Much of this is probably no problem to young people with computer skills, but I feel that there is an element of ageism present when people in their mid-sixties like me are left hanging in so far as companies which charge plenty for their services are concerned. Many others have difficulties with Banks insisting on on-line banking or making it as difficult as possible for people to do what used to be a simple transaction across a counter.
I wrote earlier this year about a complaint I had made to the Office of The Ombudsman about Arts Council insistence that all applications for bursaries be made on-line. I am not completely computer illiterate so I followed all the directions but then the application faled to cross the final hurdle because of a technical fault here in Conamara. I may not have earned a bursary anyway, but I sure had no chance when the application would not go through in time. I was later informed that the Ombudsman’s Office has no authority to question the Arts Council, just as it has no authority to question why the heavily subsidised Abbey Theatre does not read many of the plays submitted there. Am I the only one thinking we need an Arts Tribunal?
I will be keeping a close eye on my new telephone services supplier to see will broadband services improve in the near future. I was quite willing to pay extra monthly for a better service, but there is no evidence of that so far. Will they repay that extra if the service fails to improve because of some technical difficulty? Don’t worry. Like the Skibereen Eagle keeping an eye on the Tsar of Russia I will be monitoring their every move, and letting them know – if I can manage to get in touch with their non-communicating inner circle.
My main problem was with the fact that the company representative or salesman made a mistake with the contract addresses to which all correspondance was to be sent, something which affected direct debits, phone bills etc. He was a very nice young man and I was happy to do business with him, but there was no obvious way to contact him or the company he represented before added complications could arise because of the address mix-up. I have written to the company head office but that is hardly satisfactory for them or for me, as the problem could easily be solved by a quick phonecall if I had a contact number. I await a reply.
I am very surprised that the Consumer Association or the Department of Communications have not some rules in place directing communications companies to make it easier to communicate both ways with their clients. Much of this is probably no problem to young people with computer skills, but I feel that there is an element of ageism present when people in their mid-sixties like me are left hanging in so far as companies which charge plenty for their services are concerned. Many others have difficulties with Banks insisting on on-line banking or making it as difficult as possible for people to do what used to be a simple transaction across a counter.
I wrote earlier this year about a complaint I had made to the Office of The Ombudsman about Arts Council insistence that all applications for bursaries be made on-line. I am not completely computer illiterate so I followed all the directions but then the application faled to cross the final hurdle because of a technical fault here in Conamara. I may not have earned a bursary anyway, but I sure had no chance when the application would not go through in time. I was later informed that the Ombudsman’s Office has no authority to question the Arts Council, just as it has no authority to question why the heavily subsidised Abbey Theatre does not read many of the plays submitted there. Am I the only one thinking we need an Arts Tribunal?
I will be keeping a close eye on my new telephone services supplier to see will broadband services improve in the near future. I was quite willing to pay extra monthly for a better service, but there is no evidence of that so far. Will they repay that extra if the service fails to improve because of some technical difficulty? Don’t worry. Like the Skibereen Eagle keeping an eye on the Tsar of Russia I will be monitoring their every move, and letting them know – if I can manage to get in touch with their non-communicating inner circle.
Week ending 4th October 2011
Regular readers of mine are well aware of my obsession with blackberries at this time of the year. Few enough foods are free in this day and age, but blackberries are, apart from the bother of gathering them. I have to admit to having fewer jars of jam in the fridge than other years, but that is mainly due to the weather. I am not partial to little snails or worms in my berries. The year is moving on and the pooka will be coming around to pee on the berries at Samhain or Halloween. That leaves less than a month to stash a few more jars of blackberry jelly.
I had found a good clean line of briers close to the back of Carna church, from which I had previously picked the makings of five pots of jam. Along came a FÁS team which thought they were doing me a favour by chopping the briars, so, like a good follower of the gospel I have to go out ‘into the highways and byways’ next time in order to get my stock of blackberries. Still it is worth it for the sake of the taste as well as the free and healthy food.
Picking berries in itself can be a fairly therapeutic exercise if a person is not in too much of a hurry. That can lead to scraped hands and the frustration of having to target each ripe berry by itself when most of us prefer instant satisfaction. Having to take time allows us to listen to the sounds around us. I have to admit to sudden interest in one particular birdcall in that I had read recently that the bird in question is said to be virtually extinct in Ireland. I am no expert in the sound of seabirds, but as far as I was concerned this could only be a curlew.
I have had somewhat of a fascination with curlews since I arrived home from school almost sixty years ago and announced that I had heard a bird calling my name. I had felt that the curled call of the curlew was saying: ‘Pad-raig, Pad-raig.’ Stories of Saint Patrick being told to ‘come back and live once more among us’ came to mind until it became clear that this was just a case of mistaken identity. Still in so far as birds went I was particularly taken by the curlew and am devastated to hear that it is now seemingly as rare as the corncrake.
Writing in The Irish Times recently, Michael Viney, who lives near Louisburg, quoted Birdwatch Ireland ‘finding only four breding pairs in Mayo last spring and another four in Co. Donegal – this at sixty locations which had previously held curlews.’ This compared with: ‘As late as the 1970s the native population was still put at 12,000 pairs.’ Perhaps the plaintive calls I heard while gathering blackberries in Carna were not those of the curlew at all, but they still seemed to recognise me and call my name.
Curlew and corncrake were so much part of the sounds of rural Mayo when I was growing up that their loss is akin to the loss of friends as we grow older. The hope is that they make a comeback as the rabbits did after mass poisoning in the fifties. I still remember the swollen heads of the sad and sick little animals in their death-throes. Let’s get out and gathe more blackberries while we still have them.
I had found a good clean line of briers close to the back of Carna church, from which I had previously picked the makings of five pots of jam. Along came a FÁS team which thought they were doing me a favour by chopping the briars, so, like a good follower of the gospel I have to go out ‘into the highways and byways’ next time in order to get my stock of blackberries. Still it is worth it for the sake of the taste as well as the free and healthy food.
Picking berries in itself can be a fairly therapeutic exercise if a person is not in too much of a hurry. That can lead to scraped hands and the frustration of having to target each ripe berry by itself when most of us prefer instant satisfaction. Having to take time allows us to listen to the sounds around us. I have to admit to sudden interest in one particular birdcall in that I had read recently that the bird in question is said to be virtually extinct in Ireland. I am no expert in the sound of seabirds, but as far as I was concerned this could only be a curlew.
I have had somewhat of a fascination with curlews since I arrived home from school almost sixty years ago and announced that I had heard a bird calling my name. I had felt that the curled call of the curlew was saying: ‘Pad-raig, Pad-raig.’ Stories of Saint Patrick being told to ‘come back and live once more among us’ came to mind until it became clear that this was just a case of mistaken identity. Still in so far as birds went I was particularly taken by the curlew and am devastated to hear that it is now seemingly as rare as the corncrake.
Writing in The Irish Times recently, Michael Viney, who lives near Louisburg, quoted Birdwatch Ireland ‘finding only four breding pairs in Mayo last spring and another four in Co. Donegal – this at sixty locations which had previously held curlews.’ This compared with: ‘As late as the 1970s the native population was still put at 12,000 pairs.’ Perhaps the plaintive calls I heard while gathering blackberries in Carna were not those of the curlew at all, but they still seemed to recognise me and call my name.
Curlew and corncrake were so much part of the sounds of rural Mayo when I was growing up that their loss is akin to the loss of friends as we grow older. The hope is that they make a comeback as the rabbits did after mass poisoning in the fifties. I still remember the swollen heads of the sad and sick little animals in their death-throes. Let’s get out and gathe more blackberries while we still have them.
