I Am Said I (Huruma)

http://eamonnmonson.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/mary.html

I am the woman Discovered undercover Caught in the act Exhumed from hiding Beneath skin and flesh The secret desirings Of heart and mind I am the boy Who took refuge there A place of escape And safe solace My habitual habitation I am every one Who exists on the outside The other side of right And there is nothing That will not be revealed In the end And this is my end The law abiding strong Throng my orthodox accuser With only one solution The right of righteousness I am petrified Panic stricken stood bowed Barely able to breathe What will the first Struck stone feel like? What part of me Will bleed and break Before I am all blood broken Bone splintered? I gasp for air For life But God is merciful He who alone is Good Stands upright Sees all that I am - ALL - Absorbs me into Himself He bends down So that my bending Now has no shame in it And He writes my Pardon In the sand. Great is His Name Amen

It’s providential that we are saying farewell to each other on the feast of the Ascension, the day when Jesus and His disciples said goodbye. Somehow, I feel that our parting is graced by the Ascension, is lifted up with Jesus and then it becomes a sacred and holy experience, an experience in which separation and union become one and the same thing because we are all held together as one in Jesus, especially every time we come to Holy Communion at Mass. In all my years of leaving different places I have never felt as emotional as I do on leaving Shankill. I have always said that you have taught me to be a real priest but I completely underestimated the depth and strength of the bond that exists between us and I have been really touched by your response to the news of my leaving that was announced a couple of weeks ago. We are truly one body, one spirit in Christ. The preparation for my life here came in the form of the Camino to Santiago, a journey that emptied me of every...

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" (Isaiah 6:8) The echo Of a seagull's cry On a winter's dawn Crystal clear Carrying a call From another coast It comes to me At the altar Sacrifice Separation From all who hold me Dear To leave familiar loves I am reluctant Resisting Surrender But still I will go If You lead And need me To take Your People To heart In a different land Gratefully and In Love As Eucharist In Your hands (Shankill, a November Sunday 2016)

“…they pressed him to stay with them. ‘It is nearly evening’ they said, ‘and the day is almost over.’ So, he went in to stay with them. Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; but he had vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?’ ” This is one of the loveliest and most tender moments in the Bible, a moment that inspired this prayer that we say in the Divine Office: ‘Stay with us, Lord Jesus, as evening falls; Be our companion on our way. In your mercy inflame our hearts and raise our hope, So that, in union with our brothers and sisters We may recognize you in the Scriptures And in the breaking of Bread Who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.’ It is the desire of us all that the Lord...

The Resurrection of Jesus is a fact in itself, but for the disciples the experiences of the Resurrection are different and varied. Each of them experienced it in his or her own way and at their own pace. And the running of Peter and John to the empty tomb is very symbolic of that. John ran faster than Peter and got there ahead of him but each of them came to the experience of Jesus in their own time and at their own pace. Resurrection can be a very difficult reality to comprehend or to make a connection with. I find myself when I’m going through Holy Week that I have a very strong connection with Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the early part of Holy Saturday – these touch something very deep inside the heart. Resurrection is a very different thing because we haven’t yet experienced it ourselves. But what I do believe is important is the intensity of desire that is in our hearts to have the experience of Jesus risen from the dead and that we go on and persist in our intensi...

Being an ordained priest is a wonderful privilege and some of the most inspiring moments are not those that we plan ourselves but the ones we are led to experience through God’s kind providence. On Tuesday of last week I was called to anoint a man who was given just a week to live and at first sight he looked like he might not last even a day. But he sat up in the bed, asked me to sit on the edge of it and he leaned against me for support. We had never met before and he seemed to have lost his connection with God, at least consciously, a connection that was broken because of the hurt he experienced as a father. Both of his sons, his only two children, were dead and the pain of that loss was palpable. For some reason we started talking about home. He came from Connemara and his great-grandmother was from Inis Mor, the same island that my grandmother came from. They were both Flahertys from different villages but the two families are related. And this thought that he and I...

When I was Addicted To Eurovision She would be The most beautiful Presenter I built her a stage Appropriate for the Graceful Entrance She would make A sanctuary of all The tender goodness In the world She did not come To this theatre Yet I find her here In my soul In memories of her son On this stage And Bohemian Rhapsody Sung Live Awakens memories Of an innocent Winter A happy Spring And a Summer filled With sorrow A long delayed Autumn And a recovery Of sorts

My Soul Was a child An infant In flight In slow descent A rasping Desperate cry Without words To express the pain That cannot be Consoled By a mother's Total tenderness Nothing at all avails Until flight is ended And we whimper Into relieved silence Quivering Sleeping My Soul Is a child That soon forgets Its distress As God forgets My sin And I am Lazarus Waking Called forth Into Sonlight In Christ And by Him Unbound

I am Wedded to Christ On Calvary Clothed In Garments Woven Seamless Gift Of a Mother's Interior Beauty Invisible To the naked Eye Night of darkness Shines And Joy Surprises The Crucified (Shankill March 2017)

In the timeless state Of Divinity All is present He lives in me I am in Him Eternal Word In womb and boy And man From heaven emerging To heaven returning In heaven abiding Even now I will not despise The means By which I am Conformed to Him

God does not see as we see. We look at appearances but God looks at the heart, the interior. ( 1 Samuel 16:6-7 ). In the healing of the blind man God seeks to lead us to the opening of the eyes of our mind, heart and soul so that we learn to see as God sees, that we come to see the presence of God in every circumstance of life, to recognize the blessings that flow from the presence of God, “ that the works of God might be displayed ” (John 9). A central purpose of the miracles of Jesus is to lead us to faith, a deepening of faith which in turn leads us to worship God. That was the purpose of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt – that the people of Israel could be free to worship God. The man cured of his blindness arrived at a point faith, “ The man said, ‘Lord, I believe’, and worshipped him” (John 9:38). The miracles are also of course expressions of the compassionate love that God has for us all, especially anyone in distress. Blessings come to us in many ways – th...

The Hands that ache to Reach and sooth and heal The sore These Hands are nailed Held back The feet obliged to To bear forgiveness For the hurt These feet are nailed Held back With Christ I hang Upon the Cross And we are powerless Now The only freedom lies In death descending To the depths of hell Still held With nothing To be done But wait Until the dawn Of Grace

Light beckons the soul To night I fly in its wake Into the depths Of darkness The disappearance Of all that would give Me sight Trusting the Presence The Absence that is Evidence Of the One For whom I ache And yearn and thirst His imperceptible Breath Inflowing to me The Holiness to which I am called The Love of which I am incapable

In the second account of Creation in Genesis chapter 2 we are given an insight into two aspects of our true nature. The first is when God creates man from the soil of the earth we are reminded that we are created from the soil of the earth meaning that we are earthly, in the living of our faith, we are to keep our feet on the ground. Secondly, we are told that our earthiness is infused with the breath of God’s own life and this is the essential part of our nature that sustains us in our life, a reminder of the divine nature that is within us and sets us apart from all the rest of God’s creation. When Jesus goes into the desert He holds these two aspects of our nature as one and in the desert, He represents each and every one of us in our struggle with temptation, in whatever struggles we go through in life, reminding us to hold as one these two aspects of who we are. What Satan seeks to do with Jesus in the desert, the idea he seeks to get across to all of us is that we do n...

‘The Lord has abandoned me; the Lord has forgotten me.’ Everyone knows what this feels like at some point or time in life. The sense of abandonment, desolation and isolation that can befall us for whatever reason and for no reason at all. In times like these we can be confronted by, what I call, the tyranny of joy. Not that there is any tyranny in joy itself but there are people who slap us in the face (that's how it feels) with a version of it and present it to us as if it were something that can be turned on at will. It’s like saying to a depressed person, “snap out of it” – the “don’t worry, be happy” kind of thing. These comments are well meant but totally unhelpful because they are powerless to create joy. They remain external to us. The response of the Lord God to our sense of abandonment and desolation is, first, that He enters into the experience with us and offers us a Word that is relevant and has a power within it to stir even the tiniest flicker of joy. He res...

Be holy in all that you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you. (1 Peter 1:15) The Climb The Cloud The Vision and The Voice Word without Speech No Sound The Holy One Calling Be Holy I am struck With amazement Astonished Transported To the hushed Half-light Of Saturday night's Cathedral Waiting For confession's Mercy The ardent Thirst for holiness Inflaming My soul Centre-point On the horizon Of my destiny Hope that Sustains My every endeavour The mountain The valley The desert and The river Of my heart Oh my Holy One My Love I offer you Childlike obeisance On the earth floor Of my life Glimpsing glory Through a prism Of clay

Winter was slow To release its grip On the springtime                                             Of our content Adulthood barely tasted We tested fresh waters Finding new reasons For laughter And how we laughed In the Spring of seventy seven In the loving Of countless homeless Children in Care Going together after work To the Continental Where we drank as little As fast as we could afford When we hadn’t A soda-and-lime or a Pint of Harp between us We went to Seapoint For the last dance for free Throwing down our coats The girls threw down their bags On the floor where we danced Together in our circle And the Memories  Did Bohemian Rhapsody Better than Queen So it seemed to us Dry ice and all And the night would not Be deep enough And we being slow as Winter Gate-crashed the party ...