Week ending 28th October
Coming up to Halloween the thoughts of many people in various cultures around the world turn to what is known as the month of the dead. Many great South American novels are based around the theme. Among the things that have impressed me in more than a couple of score years in the priesthood is the respect people have for their dead. November brings out the best in people in this regard. Despite the early nightfall, the comfort of the fire and the range of choices on television, people still come out night after night to remember their loved ones, to honour them and pray for them. The church concept of ‘communion of saints’ means that people consider 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 cock a snoot at death as darkness descends and nights grow longer. In the next few days people will have had 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.
Moving from parish to parish down through the years, I see differences in the way in which death is dealt with. Conamara has never taken to covering over the grave until the mourners have gone, and filling it in later. Everyone waits for the harsh reality of watching the grave being closed. The fact that most graves are in deep sand and people are not listening to stones rattle on the coffin probably makes this a little easier. There are those who say that the grieving process is helped by watching the tough reality of seeing the grave being filled, but every community to its own way.
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. This 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 developments continue to pleasantly surprise us, how can we expect to imagine the eternal life of God?
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 cock a snoot at death as darkness descends and nights grow longer. In the next few days people will have had 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.
Moving from parish to parish down through the years, I see differences in the way in which death is dealt with. Conamara has never taken to covering over the grave until the mourners have gone, and filling it in later. Everyone waits for the harsh reality of watching the grave being closed. The fact that most graves are in deep sand and people are not listening to stones rattle on the coffin probably makes this a little easier. There are those who say that the grieving process is helped by watching the tough reality of seeing the grave being filled, but every community to its own way.
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. This 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 developments continue to pleasantly surprise us, how can we expect to imagine the eternal life of God?
Week ending 21st October
Coastal communities seem to have their own unspoken network. A drowning tragedy in one is felt in all the others. Not just coastal communities but all who live by lake or river in which drownings have occurred. There is a deep sense of loss, a reliving of similar happenings in ones own community, a great desire that bodies will be recovered so that families can have closure. The fact that those from faraway communities who die are not known personally makes little difference. Each drowning touches the hearts of those who have had similar experiences. It is less than a year since a man from this parish was drowned while fishing on the west coast. Another man was lost fishing from a currach a year and a half earlier A tragedy in which four men from Carna and the Aran Islands drowned in the sinking of the St. Oliver ten years ago has recently been commemorated with a Mass and the unveiling of a plaque in their memory in the Carna And The Island’s lifeboat station.
As all of my priestly life has been spent close to sea or lakeshore. Unfortunately I have experience of many such tragedies. The fact that one man from Inis Meáin I knew drowned while fishing in Alaska made no more difference than if he had drowned in Galway Bay. It was a tragedy for his family wherever it happened. I have been asked to say Mass in November for the crew of a Spanish trawler called the Olarosa which was lost with its crew in waters off Southwest Conamara. The people organising the memorial Mass never met or got to know the crew of that boat, but they have such sympathy and fellow feeling for those complete strangers that they want to pray for them and pay their respects long after the tragedy. The coastal network I mentioned at the beginning of this article is not just national but international.
One of the things that impressed me most in my time in the Aran Islands was the extent to which people are prepared to risk their lives for others. This is particularly true of lifeboat crews, but I saw it too on an occasion in which a small plane crashed into the sea to the North of the island of Inis Meáin. The one-seater aircraft had been flown from the USA for delivery to a client in Ireland and it had come that close to its destination when it ran out of fuel. Currachs were launched in inclement weather, foolishly in my estimation, but that took nothing away from the bravery of those who put to sea to try and save the life of a complete stranger.
This type of courage and commitment to human life can be overlooked in a busy world. It is easy to forget the goodness out there that comes to the fore at the time of every tragedy, domestic or international. It is not just at times of tragedy that the goodness of people is evident. I am constantly astounded by the sacrifices parents make for their children. Jesus’ observation that there is no greater love than laying down your life for your friends is not about dying for them but living for them. For friends, substitute family in many cases. We don’t complement the real do-gooders of this world half often enough.
As all of my priestly life has been spent close to sea or lakeshore. Unfortunately I have experience of many such tragedies. The fact that one man from Inis Meáin I knew drowned while fishing in Alaska made no more difference than if he had drowned in Galway Bay. It was a tragedy for his family wherever it happened. I have been asked to say Mass in November for the crew of a Spanish trawler called the Olarosa which was lost with its crew in waters off Southwest Conamara. The people organising the memorial Mass never met or got to know the crew of that boat, but they have such sympathy and fellow feeling for those complete strangers that they want to pray for them and pay their respects long after the tragedy. The coastal network I mentioned at the beginning of this article is not just national but international.
One of the things that impressed me most in my time in the Aran Islands was the extent to which people are prepared to risk their lives for others. This is particularly true of lifeboat crews, but I saw it too on an occasion in which a small plane crashed into the sea to the North of the island of Inis Meáin. The one-seater aircraft had been flown from the USA for delivery to a client in Ireland and it had come that close to its destination when it ran out of fuel. Currachs were launched in inclement weather, foolishly in my estimation, but that took nothing away from the bravery of those who put to sea to try and save the life of a complete stranger.
This type of courage and commitment to human life can be overlooked in a busy world. It is easy to forget the goodness out there that comes to the fore at the time of every tragedy, domestic or international. It is not just at times of tragedy that the goodness of people is evident. I am constantly astounded by the sacrifices parents make for their children. Jesus’ observation that there is no greater love than laying down your life for your friends is not about dying for them but living for them. For friends, substitute family in many cases. We don’t complement the real do-gooders of this world half often enough.
Week ending 14th October
This is a time of year I will forever associate with digging and picking potatoes. Footing turf and gathering potatoes were two of the activities at which a youngster of nine or ten could be as useful as an adult. We played our part at haymaking too, but not quite to the same extent as we were not tall enough to finish off a cock of hay. Making sheafs of oats or barley was another common task, but tying a sheaf was certainly a bit beyond me at that stage, as they inevitebly opened while being put together in a stook. It is hard to believe that words like stook and sheaf were as much part of our vocabulary then as technical terms associated with computers are to the youth of today. Nothing wrong with that. Each to their own time. Potato picking was an activity I do not just associate with growing up in Mayo, as it was part of both secondary school and college life in St. Jarlath’s College in Tuam and St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. It was an activity that gave us a break from the humdrum of daily life, a break from the studies, with a good meal as reward. When I see a film of prisoners from an American jail working in the fields I am reminded of those days out. It is not that I am comparing the colleges I mentioned with the Shawkshank Redemption, or older films with chained inmates. It is just the sense of freedom, of being out in the fresh air and getting a break from the routine of every day. The site on which most of Maynooth University is now built, across the road from the original college will always be for me a vast potato field. This is the time of year I associate too with the first sputnik, as I have a vague memory of watching out to see could we catch its light in the evening sky as the day’s potatoes were being pitted for the winter. It was the first sattelite (we know of) in a sky now littered with sattelites, many of which have gone beyond use from our point of view, but are still circling out there. I have often recounted the title of the essay given to us by Clogher National School Principal, Mr Joe Mitchell, at the time: “I am a flea on the back of Loika, the Soviet dog sent into space” in what I think was the second sputnik. For me it was one of those eureka moments, the discovery that the world can be looked at even from the point of view of a flea. I have not spopped writing since. The flea, for that matter, might still be spinning out there, and thinking of haunting us for Halloween.
Potato picking time is a time I associate too with the death of a Pope, the Pope (Pius XII) who had been there since I was born and whom I expected to last for my lifetime – I just hadn’t given it any thought. His replacement was a big fat jovial grandfather of a man recently canonised along with Pope John Paul11. Pope John had much the same kind of impact then that Pope Francis has been having in recent years. He saw the church needed reform and he proclaimed the Second Vatican Council in an effort to bring that about Fifty years and more later there is a debate as to whether that reform worked. As in any human activity, I suppose some of it did, and some of it did not, but at least he tried, and that effort inspired many who were young and idealistic at the time...
Potato picking time is a time I associate too with the death of a Pope, the Pope (Pius XII) who had been there since I was born and whom I expected to last for my lifetime – I just hadn’t given it any thought. His replacement was a big fat jovial grandfather of a man recently canonised along with Pope John Paul11. Pope John had much the same kind of impact then that Pope Francis has been having in recent years. He saw the church needed reform and he proclaimed the Second Vatican Council in an effort to bring that about Fifty years and more later there is a debate as to whether that reform worked. As in any human activity, I suppose some of it did, and some of it did not, but at least he tried, and that effort inspired many who were young and idealistic at the time...
Week ending 7th October
There is a certain type of Autumn day that people of my age and ilk would think of as potato picking weather. Clear skies, a touch of frost in the morning and at nightfall, crisp air, a low sun, a red-gold harvest moon carrying the day slightly into the night, the satisfaction of a good day’s work done, of potatoes pitted to carry us through the winter and provide seed in spring. Such thoughts and memories tend to belong more to the middle of the last century than to fourteen years into this one, though I have noted far more potato stalks in fields and gardens this year than for many years previously.
This is a welcome development, a combination perhaps of recessionary times and ecological awareness, not to speak of the satisfaction that is derived from eating what you have grown yourself. In this time of age and grandparent awareness, the idea of passing on the skills of the past to children of the present is a very useful one. People who may have considered that they had few skills in fact have many of the skills of living that may well be needed much more in the future than they have been for the past fifty years. It is no weight on any child to learn to plant a seed and reap a harvest. In fact it is probably one of the most basic of life-skills..
It is good to see schools getting in on this concept too, of planting a small garden in or near the school grounds and watching things grow, whether flower or food, or both. The old socialist idea of ‘bread and roses’ is a good one. People might manage to live on bread alone, but the idea of having both bread and beauty adds much more to life. I see roses still grow around doors of the ruins of old cottages, a reminder that those who came before us, who literally did not have two pennies to rub together, still had time for beauty by their thresholds.
Some of these harvest thoughts were sparked by the taste of a good turnip. As often happens when preparing a meal, I had half of it chewed before the rest of it made its way into the saucepan. The difference in taste of a turnip smashed open from one that is sliced has amazed me since schooldays smashing of a turnip or two on the road. No turnip ever tasted better than the forbidden fruit (or veg) taken from Bodkin’s field in Fortlawn on the way home from Clogher school. I wouldn’t really have considered it stealing, as there were so many turnips in the field anyway.
I certainly have no memory of telling in confession that I was involved in stealing turnips, as then Belcarra curate, Fr. Tommy Gibbons would probably have delivered himself of a memorable reply. He was a man I greatly admired, so different from the picture of the fifties’ priest portrayed in media and much of literature. I quoted him recently when Carna church was full of the voices of little children, some crying, some laughing, some shouting. As parents became restless that their little ones were upsetting the rest of the congregation I made the point that this did not affect me at all. Children and their parents were most welcome in the house of God no matter how much noise they made. I was the one with the microphone, so I could shout the loudest. I told of the comment made by the priest in the church in which I first went to Mass (Belcarra) He said that the cry or the shout or the laugh of a child was the best prayer said there that day. How right he was.
This is a welcome development, a combination perhaps of recessionary times and ecological awareness, not to speak of the satisfaction that is derived from eating what you have grown yourself. In this time of age and grandparent awareness, the idea of passing on the skills of the past to children of the present is a very useful one. People who may have considered that they had few skills in fact have many of the skills of living that may well be needed much more in the future than they have been for the past fifty years. It is no weight on any child to learn to plant a seed and reap a harvest. In fact it is probably one of the most basic of life-skills..
It is good to see schools getting in on this concept too, of planting a small garden in or near the school grounds and watching things grow, whether flower or food, or both. The old socialist idea of ‘bread and roses’ is a good one. People might manage to live on bread alone, but the idea of having both bread and beauty adds much more to life. I see roses still grow around doors of the ruins of old cottages, a reminder that those who came before us, who literally did not have two pennies to rub together, still had time for beauty by their thresholds.
Some of these harvest thoughts were sparked by the taste of a good turnip. As often happens when preparing a meal, I had half of it chewed before the rest of it made its way into the saucepan. The difference in taste of a turnip smashed open from one that is sliced has amazed me since schooldays smashing of a turnip or two on the road. No turnip ever tasted better than the forbidden fruit (or veg) taken from Bodkin’s field in Fortlawn on the way home from Clogher school. I wouldn’t really have considered it stealing, as there were so many turnips in the field anyway.
I certainly have no memory of telling in confession that I was involved in stealing turnips, as then Belcarra curate, Fr. Tommy Gibbons would probably have delivered himself of a memorable reply. He was a man I greatly admired, so different from the picture of the fifties’ priest portrayed in media and much of literature. I quoted him recently when Carna church was full of the voices of little children, some crying, some laughing, some shouting. As parents became restless that their little ones were upsetting the rest of the congregation I made the point that this did not affect me at all. Children and their parents were most welcome in the house of God no matter how much noise they made. I was the one with the microphone, so I could shout the loudest. I told of the comment made by the priest in the church in which I first went to Mass (Belcarra) He said that the cry or the shout or the laugh of a child was the best prayer said there that day. How right he was.