I Am Said I (Huruma)

Birth of Jesus & the visit of the shepherds Click on the image to listen

A Christmas Song from our childhood Click On The Image

Click On The Image Above Click here to view the original video by Ryan Sheridan on youtube

She sets a table For two at Christmas Though she lives alone And no other is expected Maybe her husband or daughter Or both will come From beyond Perhaps the Lord himself Will fulfil his revelation And knock on her door today In a way not done before To take His place more tangibly In the kitchen of her soul She is prepared for the unexpected Just in case

Autumn will be all but over   When I return the leaves will have  Fallen and it will be colder There is something cleansing  About leaving, separation   The cloistering Take-off lets me let go  And I don’t remember  The September air of home Wholly present to now It’s the islands that occupy me  Completely appealing  Compelling There’s an island in me Not remote nor far from land  An island and a separateness And as soon as I am aware That the island is not remote I know  That I must journey To the remote recesses Of the inner and eternal

With the first  Confidence of a child No baggage yet To speak of and still Not named No reason to be afraid Now is where he lives Right now there is Nothing else The heaving sea Surging with trechery Magnificent in its moment Dreadful Absolutely admirable Co-operate Go with it Eyes vigilant Trained on the destination Riding it mastering The fear of it Trembling to the thrill Doing what you cannot Delving into resources Not known until tried

I scrabble for words  To give expression Of who I am The what and the how Of this life But all the tongues Of the world would not Speak it in its fullness I am mystery Unfathomable even To myself The root and mood Are sung in songs Of outer space On hot August nights Soul tugged upward To the orbit of its belonging My home ever a temporary Dwelling place An emptiness deep That clings tenaciously Daring me to let go Knowing that I will not That I am chosen for it And I have chosen The infinity of whom It speaks and in whom I am mirrored

Johnny Carty Mass

Snow on winter water White on white surf tumbles Frothing Unbearable cold Laughing children Do not mind Their voices rising Over thunder While Rufus follows Every stranger Seeking out the playful

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW Music by ===> Grabielle Alpin - The Power Of Love Paddy Carty (Traditional Irish Flute Player) Tanglewood - 'The Place Where You Were Born' & 'Homecoming' Philip Phillips - 'Home' The Lumineers - 'Ho Hey'

 ‘No servant can be the slave of two masters' (Luke 16)  You walk into a room and they're sitting there watching television. At the same time each one is doing something on their own laptop with headphones in their ears. They emerge from what absorbs them to smile and hug you and then they sink back into their respective absorption. It's the way things are. They remind me of myself when I was their  age, in my early twenties. Music was my first love which totally absorbed me. Listening to it on the blue transistor radio. All we had was Radio Eireann and an hour of Larry Gogan and at night we could get 208 Radio Luxembourg. Enough to feed my need for anything modern - pop, rock, folk. I got to know ever detail of the charts, becoming a bit of an encyclopedia, almost good enough to rival Larry Gogan who knew everything. By my early twenties I had acquired a radio cassette recorder and as I write this I realize that my nephews and nieces have no idea what ...

A wild tempestuous  Man The doctor Approaches my body With   reverence The touch is that Of a healer Healing more Than flesh It’s not the scandals That have ruined The Church he said It’s the culture People have too much And not enough Joy There never was joy In our brand Of Christianity We went to Missions With long reluctant faces And came back home With longer faces still They would have held Us longer by praise And drawn us to God’s Heart by it But they would not! For they could not The only thing That made the people Really smile Was winning The all Ireland The God almighty Thrill of it We didn’t smile that day We ran and we laughed And held up the Sam Maguire Like some sacred chalice With no notion of God In any of it And to think of the struggle To separate Church and State When years ago We cut God o ff  From life Treating o ne another As if He didn’t exist And played as though He knew nothing Of happiness Would you be well? The doctor asked If you would be well ...

I went to see Eamon Keane & special guest John Sheehan of the Dubliners at the National Concert Hall during the week. Eamon was previously an excellent presenter on Newstalk but he's an even more excellent piano player. He sits at his piano and improvises; it's suggested that he himself doesn't quite know what he's going to play. I close my eyes to take in the music and wonder what on earth he's at - there's quite a strong feeling of turbulence, something coming from the dark roots of the earth and then something beautiful begins to suggest itself, a hint of a familiar tune, then the tune itself rising like a butterfly from the caterpillar - Norwegian Wood , Scarborough Fair and more. These two movements of life are held together in balance, moving in and out of each other - darkness and light, turbulence and peace, discord and harmony. It's not a religious concert but the evening is brought to a close with Amazing Grace which John Shee...

BENEDICTUS In memory of the actress Susan Fitzgerald who died today. I met her twice and encountered true inner beauty and serenity. During our last meeting in August I played Karl Jenkins' 'Benedictus' for her and dedicate it now as a prayer that she rest in the peace & beauty of the eternal Benedictus of Jesus "who comes in the name of the Lord" Click on the photo for slideshow to the music of BENEDICTUS by Karl Jenkins

Click On Photo To View Slideshow https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2BxqHcSmGbMajJBcG9FVUkzNnc/edit A Place Of Quiet - Pallottine Retreat Centre, Thurles, Co. Tipperary, Ireland Music by Michael W Smith

Draw back the curtains Roll up the blinds Unveil the day Intense red sky Fading to grey-pink clouds Patches of blue Before the breaking through Moon gives way to sun Mary gives way to Jesus Mother to son "Do whatever He tells you!" There will be wine today A miracle Transfiguration His Word is Light In stained glass flooding My face, a child's painting Colouring my soul awake My senses, my thoughts, my heart.

I am a child In my Grandmother’s Kitchen With the evening Closing in And we are alone The two of us By the open fire And she handing me Rice on a red plastic Plate and I savouring Its loveliness The lapping of flames In turf and the clock ticking We are not in need Of words And do not speak them I am a child In my Grandmother’s Kitchen Kneeling at her feet Hands joined and resting On her lap Finding God in The kitchen and the home Of our lives And being loved This is my prayer

August 2, 2013 “My grace is enough for you; my power is at its best in weakness…” You can smell the flood, the after-effects wafting from the closed hotels and shops. In the river a snapped tree juts sideways into the air. Reconstruction, sacred areas cordoned off, inaccessible for now. Thankfully the Grotto is open. There’s an overwhelming innocence in the unpretentious humble pilgrims. A recently born baby in her father’s arms, toddlers, normal modern young women and men, the old, the sick; every race and nation. A lot of Indians and Vietnamese. We file along the base of the Grotto, touching the rock made smooth by millions who touched it before us, wiping ourselves with the water that seeps there. Time was when I would have been too sophisticated to engage in this. Sophistication has thankfully abandoned me and I abandon myself to the grace of the present. I kneel in the spot where St. Bernadette prayed and my prayer is intense, sad with the sorrow of those ...

The arrival home of Mam’s relations from England for the Galway Races was the high point of our summer. They usually stayed at the home place at Raford out in the country but they would visit us and sometimes stay the night. All the anxiety and tension of life went out the door when they came in and it was a time of enjoyment. There were crowds of them from Birmingham and London. We watched it all from the distance of childhood with fascination and much pleasure. They might go off to the Merlin Bar where Dad worked part-time and come home for a session that filled the house with the dense blue fog of cigarettes, bottles of porter, loud conversation, laughter and music. In the early mornings I’d get up before everyone else and immerse myself in the aftertaste of the night’s pleasure – drinking the dregs of empty bottles and smoking the butts that overflowed in ashtrays. Breakfast could wait. People would appear and the place got cleared and the fry fried, its aroma mingling with the sce...

St. Catherine of Siena had a mystical experience in which she was taken up to Heaven where she experienced the fullness of life and joy in the presence of God. After a while Jesus told her "It's time for you to go back." And when she protested He said, "I need you to go back to bring love to the world!" "I am not able to love" she said. Then Jesus took her heart from her, placed His own Heart within her and said, "now you are able to love!" A lot of the time we are good Samaritans to the people we meet in life; like the man in the gospel our hearts are moved with compassion for the sufferings of others, moved to the extent that we actually do something to help them. But there are times when we feel unable to love as we should and there are times when we are like the priest and the Levite - when confronted with the wounds of another we pass by on the other side and do nothing; sometimes our eyes are shut, our ears and hearts are clos...

    Away, I'd rather sail away Like a swan that's here and gone A man gets tied up to the ground... (Simon & Garfunkel - El Condor Pasa) The line from 'El Condor Pasa' has been with me for a couple of weeks and it expresses something of the yearning for freedom that is in every human heart - to fly and soar unfettered. But we are also tied down by  many things and so we are held in the tension of these two realities of life. " When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free" (Galatians 5:1) Galatians 5:1,13-18  © . Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in a single command:  Love your neighbour as yourself.  If you go snapping at each other and tearing ...

The smooth touch Of cold marble Beneath the pilgrim feet Bloodied in the ascent We have taken off And left our shoes outside With our weapons Our strength and proud boasts In the cool of the sanctuary We are introduced again To the pure nakedness of birth Entering into life Surrendering again to love Adoring Him The old woman Pours water unbidden On my feet Cleansing, soothing balm Drenching the soul She is Christ to me And I the beloved resting Near to the heart

June 10, 2012  The feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus (Corpus Christi) brings back memories from a distant past of processions and first Holy Communions and innocence. When Sister Frances was preparing us for our first Communion she said that our souls would be shining bright when we received Jesus and when the day arrived it was this brightness that I was looking out for. I watched the children ahead of me kneeling at the altar rails and I looked at the soles of their shoes to see the brightness shine there, not knowing the difference between soul and sole!  Of course there was no brightness to be seen but I adjusted to this by saying to myself that there must be something else, another soul. And when my turn to kneel came I closed my eyes, put out my tongue, received Jesus and saw the brightness at the back of my eyelids. It's been normal ever since for me to experience the brightness that comes with Holy Communion. Sally Read expresses it well for ...