Beautiful people don’t just happen.🎆

Mary is living proof that stress and worry are the big killers and that she is alive and well is the reason I make that claim with confidence. Her life no walk in the park, by any stretch of the imagination, yet she goes on her way bearing no malice in her beautiful spirit. Mary never bemoans her own victim hood, a peaceful acceptance emanates from her. Her once crooked hard path is smooth now.

Mary is smoking cigarettes a very long time, she could never envisage life without them, they bring her happiness and joy in abundance. I would venture so far as to say that they are her raisin d’être. 

Today, I surprised her with a visit, always best to just drop in. If Mary had prior knowledge, she would be so excited, my phone would not stop ringing all day, Mary wondering where I am. I’m under no illusion, yes she enjoys my visits, but my packet of cigarettes is the real treat. We chatted and laughed through the screen, seeing her so joyful, filled my heart with joy and gratitude to God. I knew in my deepest heart, I was gazing on the Beautiful Face of Jesus.

Mary got a raw deal for much of her life, she missed out on stuff  we, her peers, availed of, but it is all the same now. Mary, said and led all her life, happy and content, a long road that knows no turning. She has no responsibilities, at seventy three years of age that suits her fine. Her every need is attended to and while she did not get the life she wanted, with the passage of time Mary has found peace.

All things come to those who wait and Mary has waited longer than most. She inspires me to persevere at all times, harbour no resentment ever, she teaches me forbearance. When she thanks me for the cigarettes I tell her it works both ways. After my recent illness she told me: ‘ I prayed for you down on my two knees’, deeply meaning every word. 

Hard to put in words the effect people like Mary, who suffered so much, have on us, a soul experience that cannot be explained, it can only be felt way down deep in our hearts.

‘To behold beauty dignifies your life; it heals you and calls you out beyond the smallness of your own self-limitation, to experience new horizons. To experience beauty is to have your life enlarged. (Divine Beauty by John O’Donohue)

                                                       Mary and her dear brother Micheal.❤️

September ladies.👭

Walking home from Holy Mass in the warm September sunshine, I encountered  two delightful ladies. I wondered aloud if they would allow me take their photograph in that perfect setting. Joan agreed, Mary declined in the most generous manner. ‘I hate photos’, she said, fixing her perfect hair. ‘Would you be really upset’, I asked, and with all the gravity it deserved, she replied, ‘I would’, still smiling, concerned only that she might have offended me.

‘I always hated my photo taken too’, I said. ‘In fact I used to cut myself out of pictures. Not anymore, God put in my heart that He makes no mistakes in our creation, we are all perfect in His eyes. Could this be the day you are receiving a healing Mary?’ She simply whispered - ‘God knows’. 

A local man died suddenly last night, instead of a photograph, we prayed Hail Mary for his soul. It felt so right. We all agreed that our prayer was much more beneficial and perhaps that was God’s plan from the outset. Kindness like snow beautifies everything, good always comes from encounters with kind generous folk.

I felt elated as I took leave of them both. They had no idea how much our chance meeting affected my day, if I told them they would laugh in disbelief. Just as little children give love unknowingly, expecting nothing in return, so did my September ladies give to me this day, I am truly grateful.

‘There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy’. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Patient plodding.😄

Tim relaxed enjoying his cuppa, taking it all in, joyous heart reflecting in his countenance. He is not in need of company but when I sit down, he is happy to see me. We are friends a long time.

Tim has no Corona anxiety. Corona does not occupy one inch of his head space, it does not keep him awake at night. Unlike the rest of us, Corona hasn’t changed Tim’s life very much, he was never part of the ‘in crowd’, never deemed one of our ‘local Notables’. Tim knows suffering but with the passage of time, his life has improved greatly, nowadays he has what we all need and want badly: Peace.

‘So the last will be first, and the first last’. (Matthew 20:16)

Tim and his friends are our teachers now, they give us Hope. They show us a better way, teaching us how to keep our intellects free from wordly entanglements. We hardly noticed them before, now we see them clearly. With our world crumbling around us, we are being freed up from the attachment to stuff. 

This is a time of redemptive discipline, letting go is painful but we are very fortunate to know folk who live happily and at peace without the trinkets. We weren’t made to ‘fit in’, we were born to ‘stand out’.

‘I believe resolutely that ‘Ordinary folk’ who rarely, if ever make the headline news have a marked influence on national and world affairs. They possess a priceless virtue ‘patient plodding’.              (Wilfred Pickles)

 ‘Our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people often overlooked. People who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines or on the latest television show, yet in these very days of pandemic they are surely shaping the decisive events of our history’.                                                     (Patris Corde Apostolic Letter)

Killian’s Birthday.🎁

 

Killian, my youngest son, is 27 years old today. Hard to believe.

He was only nine when we had no choice but pack up and leave Swords, all that he knew and was familiar to him had to be abandoned, a new life in Kerry began. He wasn’t happy about it, but Killian did what he always does - he got on with it, a powerful trait he is blessed  to possess.

He started in his new school, he got involved in football, and to us all it appeared seamless. I have no doubt that it can’t always have been easy for him but Killian never complained. 

If it wasn’t for Corona, Killian would now be settled in Canada. I know for sure that he was disappointed about that but he is happy to be here for now. He works from home and it is trouble free and uncomplicated, we have an easy alliance. We both know that this too will come to an end and so we make the most of it.

Thankyou Killian for the adventure that every day is, with you in my life. Our many laughs make the gloomiest of days brighter. Thankyou for your vigilance and quick thinking in my recent illness, without you, the ending would have been so very different.

Father God. I am extremely grateful for your many Blessings to us all the time, too numerous to mention. Today, I am extremely grateful to you too, for trusting me with your fine son, Killian.

Thankyou Killian for choosing me to be your Mom. I’m glad you did.

‘I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the Truth’. (3 John 1:4)

Prayer to The Holy Spirit.🕯

Twenty three years ago, Ruairi’s Confirmation Class were gifted this prayer. Battered and bruised now but badly needed in these Corona days of trial and testing. 

Beautiful Holy Spirit makes Christ dearer, Heaven nearer, and the Word of God clearer to us all.

Holy Spirit guide our way, in these tumultuous Corona days. Amen.

Grace and Grapes.🙏🏻🍇

‘That’s community, a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world’.

 (Henry J.M. Nouwen)

Mary has a fine crop of organic grapes this year, we the fortunate beneficiaries. She shares them with us  - our little church community. Christine shares her beautiful lettuce, I share little pebbles of wisdom I pick up along life’s highway. All of us share.

We attend Holy Mass every morning and have done for quite some time. Our friendship and camaraderie grew over time, now we cannot imagine life without one another. We live our lives independent of one other but whenever any one of us is absent for a few days, one of us will always text and make sure he/she is ok. A Divine Bond of friendship in these tumultuous times. Debbie oftentimes says - ‘ A friend is for life’, double-barrelled meaning in my heart - Enlivening and enduring.

To the unaware eye, we are a group of prayerful people who take life very serious but nothing could be further from the truth. We laugh a lot and often, we keep each other joyful, we swop prayer requests. We are not a select group, newcomers not alone welcomed, they are celebrated. God did not design people to thrive without the support of a loving community.

We have the Grace to witness to Jesus when we stay close to Mother Mary and it is our great privilege to serve God in an attitude of humble service through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told Gabrielle Bossis in ‘He and I’ - ‘Pray for others and God will take care of you’. Such comfort and assurance.

JOY - Jesus first, others next, yourself  last. In our modern world putting ourselves last seems so ridiculous, counter-cultural, but in God’s world it makes perfect sense. Easy to do when we know and believe that Jesus is doing the work through us, our only task is simply to ‘show up’ , be conduits for His Mercy and Love. With Jesus, there’s a newness that never grows old.

‘When someone does a Kindness, it always seems to me, That’s the way God up in a Heaven, would like us all to be’. (Helen Steiner Rice)

‘Saint Mother Teresa’s face took on a golden glow from her time gazing on Jesus in The Blessed Sacrament’, I told Mary. ‘ Really’, replied Mary - ‘It is very sunny in India too’........🤨😂

‘Serve The Lord with gladness’. (Psalm 100:2)

I would like to be an Angel, who continually sings Your Glory, offering my heart to You with face all aglow’. (Eucharistic Hymn)

September 2023 - many Asylum Seekers arriving in our town. Our Church community banding together to aid our sisters and brothers in Christ. Everyone of us has something to give, none of us have everything. To be Jesus Hands and Feet!!

Be not afraid.🙏🏻

The devotion to the Eucharist is the most noble, because it has God as it’s object; it is the most profitable for salvation because it gives us the author of Grace; it is the sweetest, because the Lord is Sweetness itself’. (St. Plus X)

I just heard Fr. Leo Clifford say on EWTN  - ‘People don’t need to be instructed so much as to be reminded’. Wonderful words resonating in my deepest heart.

We are privileged, in spite of Corona, to be able to participate in Holy Mass again, after a hiatus of three months, I am ecstatic receiving Jesus again, He is my strength for the journey, my comfort, my peace. When I wonder sometimes how long more Holy Mass will continue in these turbulent times. I remind myself that right now is all we have, right now we are experiencing a little piece of Heaven every morning, heightened sense of Spiritual Delight.

If we really believe without question or doubt, that Jesus Christ is truly present on our Alters, how can we say, in all honesty, that watching Holy Mass on our iPads will suffice? How can we stay home and miss the chance of a lifetime?

‘Seek The Lord while He is still here. Call on Him while He is still near’. (Isaiah 55:6)

Yes, many people are fearful but I can say, without the tiniest scintilla of a doubt, I feel extremely safe in our Church. We wear masks, hand sanitizer is readily available. Readers bring their own missals or magnificats, social distancing is paramount. We receive Jesus on the hand as opposed to the tongue. We do not chat after Holy Mass in Church, like we used to before Corona, we chat outside and so our sense of community strong as ever. Holy Reverence adhered to like never before, that definitely big positive.

Missing out on Holy Mass, in my opinion, is ignoring the zenith of all life events and experiences. Of course there are always very good reasons why people can not attend, myriad underlying health issues requiring vigilance. For those of us who are in a position to attend though, it would be very remiss not to do so!

 As they say in Kerry: ‘Let us make hay while the sun shines’.

‘I am the Living Bread which comes down from Heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world, is my flesh’. (John 6:51)

                ‘Totally love Him, Who gave Himself totally for your love’. (St. Clare of Assisi)

Each moment is a diamond from the Hands of God.💎

Marina and I are allowed one half hour visit per week. She has regressed in lockdown, today she has many worries, most of them imagined. Human contact is vital in this time of pandemic, particularly for our most vulnerable. 

Fears allayed, she relaxes, smiling again like the old days. I admire her newly painted nails, I write a letter to her friend as she narrates. Time comes to depart, I promise to visit again next week. Those of us who can visit Nursing Homes safely at this moment in time should do so, many residents are extremely lonely.

Walking home, thinking back to a time when Marina and I were having tea in a local cafe and Marina stopped to chat with a lady she once knew. The lady in question very uncomfortable speaking with Marina, highly embarrassed in front of her friends. What would they think? a lady of her standing in the community, conversing with a person from the psychiatric unit. I watched in pain for Marina, but ever the beautiful lady that she is, Marina said her piece and then walked on gently, dignified.

‘Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person’. (Colossians 4:6)

Ten years on, how things have changed, ’important’  lady doesn’t look very important anymore. The dust has settled and if the opportunity arose today, Marina and important lady would probably have a very pleasant conversation. But, alas, the moment has passed, that ship has sailed.

Every moment is a diamond, a jewel from the Hands of God, every interaction a privilege. Each and every person we encounter has something notable to share with us, if we just look below the surface with the eyes of our hearts. 

Each one of us is unique, God does not make copies. He does indeed throw away the mold.

‘And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye’. (Antoine De Saint-Exupery)

Thank you God for Everything.🧺

 

My dear Dad was elated handing me my new shoes. He had traveled to England for his brother’s funeral and he knew I needed shoes. Thank God my face did not reveal how I really felt, they were winter shoes, summer was almost here. They were strong shoes, they would last a long time and that was crucial, money was scarce in our humble home. I put them on and did my best to sound as happy as he was. My dear Dad had no idea how I felt.

In school, the other girls were beginning to wear their pretty summer sandals. I would look so out of place - in my own mind at any rate. There was only one thing for me to do - ask God if He would put His glorious sunshine on hold until school holidays and my summer job would enable me buy pretty sandals too. God answered my prayers, that month of June was a wet month, rain fell almost every day. My strong brown shoes fitted right in, how Great is our God.

Roll on many years until summer 2020. Having been seriously ill, I was allowed but one litre of fluid per day, tea and coffee included. How would I cope in the long hot days of Midsummer June.🧐 Only one thing for me to do - ask God if He would put His glorious sunshine on hold until I felt a little stronger. Once again, God answered my prayers, no sunshine in our little town and slowly my strength began to return. Our disappointing summer must have made many people unhappy and my heart did go out to them. As the ancient adage goes - ‘It is an ill wind that blows no one any good’.

A pattern is emerging, joy to behold. Oftentimes I am catapulted back to former times and similar life experiences, Life is becoming more and more circular all the time. One time I thought I might put my life journey with all it’s twists and turns in print, Ruairi being an English teacher would be my guide. However, writing in linear fashion would not flow easily for me. Instead, a current life situation evokes a memory from way back and both events step forward and walk together into my heart. One thing renews another, seamlessly.

Thankyou Kind Lord for this beautiful gift of writing that enriches my life so much. Thank you for my memories, thankyou for my life. Thankyou for my beautiful parents who by their words and deeds left no doubt in my mind and heart, that You are more real and nearer to me than my breath. I am never alone.

‘Go to sleep in peace. God is awake’. (Victor Hugo).