Put your best foot forward...🪂

‘It is never too late to be what you might have been’. (George Eliot)

Postman Tom hands me the package, ‘The Power of Silence’  by Robert Cardinal Sarah’. Hearing the title, Tom exclaims, ‘You will never do that’. Tom’s quick wit and word smithery never fail to brighten my mornings.

‘Have you started using that notepad’, I ask him. ‘No’, he replies, ‘I will probably be giving it back to you at Christmas with nothing in it’. When I tell him yet again of his wonderful way with words and quick wit, perplexed he mutters ‘thanks’. ‘What a shame we weren’t told such things in school’, I say. Tom’s reply makes me sad - ‘School? We were only put down in school’. 

So many of us go through life believing what we were told in our former formative years by the powers that were at the time. Their negative prognosis made an indelible mark that oftentimes remain forever.

Micheál would never sing along in our Nursing Home Holy Rosary & song group. He told me one time that in his boyhood years a teacher informed him that he could not sing so Micheal never sang again. He is eighty years of age. I suggested he give it a go as there is no right and wrong way to sing, singing is personal and unique to each one of us. Micheál is singing along with us all today, no linnet but he is no crow either. Singing lifts his spirits, he says, particularly on his down days. My heart dances with joy. 

When Pat was a little boy he was cruelly informed before the whole class that his singing was atrocious and would he please sit down. Pat is 65 years of age, nowadays he sings when he is alone. He loves it, he tells me joyfully.

Thank God Walt Disney didn’t believe the teacher who informed him that he had no talent. Thank God Thomas Edison’s mother didn’t accept that her son was ‘too stupid’ to learn - and many more besides. 

Many of us have personally experienced the paralysing power of negative words and opinions of others. However, whether we know it or not, it is absolutely certain that we can begin again. We can, all of us, step into a brighter meadow, leaving the negative behind. Once we take the first step, there is no going back, we will get the strength from within to push forward, follow our own star and a cornucopia of good things will be ours. 

Each of us has a unique song within us - a tune no one else can play, a melody composed by God for all to enjoy. 

Let us start afresh, right here, right now. Let us live our lives in the identity of who we are, leaving our footprints on the sands of Time. Each one of us has something to do that no one else can do. Christ is alive, He wants us to be alive too. This is what our heart desires.

‘The melody that you and I are destined to produce on this earth, no one has ever heard before. We are to show forth something of the infinite beauty and radiance and Love of the God who lives within us’.       (Fr. Leo Clifford)

Kay, in her eighties, a colourful raconteur. Her turn of phrase, her power of recall, her imagery. I could sit still and listen to her life’s tales all day long. Today, in the midst of it all she says in total seriousness; ‘My sister was a great artist. Me! I was always good with a bucket and mop and that’s all I was ever good for’. Did anyone ever tell her how interesting and enjoyable she is to be around, I enquire. She laughs, throwing her head back in disbelief. She wouldn’t believe that for a gold clock.