I Am Said I (Huruma)

I feel September In my bones The cool air of Autumn On my skin The colour of Summer On my face And peace within The youth grown suddenly tall Returning in the joy of festival freedom A church bell tolls The passing of the Hours The turning of the days And night lengthening It will soon be time To go inside With quiet reflection New lessons learned And all things gathered To the fire and to the soul The warmth that keeps us Through dark seasons New beginnings and fresh hope

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 ...

Moxie Brend Van Deurzen and I met for the first time in a hostel in Los Arcos – about 120km into our 800km pilgrim walk to Santiago de Compostella in Spain – on a very wet Saturday. We became kindred souls in the course of the journey. Over a year later he decided to come to see me and to see Dublin. As happens with the young, as happened on the Camino, as was happening now – he drew me out of myself, taking me to places, to experiences that are new. Temple Bar is one of the places he was keen to see so we went there in search of the TradFest, which began on January 22. We came across Moxie, a young band of students from Limerick and Sligo, who play traditional Irish music with a contemporary edge. A wonderful sound! There’s a freshness, a vibrancy in the way young people play music because they have not yet become cautious and what they create is a very joyful blend of the old in the new, the traditional in the present. It strikes me that life in the Spirit is very mu...

I went to see the movie ‘The Life Of Pi’ the other night. A powerful story that is layered with many meanings – physical, emotional, mental & spiritual. Following a shipwreck the only survivors are Pi Patel, a 16-year old boy, and a tiger. They end up - just the two of them - in a lifeboat drifting across the Pacific Ocean and in the course of the journey the boy trains the tiger to give him his space on the boat. They even develop a connection with each other and when they are on the verge of death the tiger’s head is resting on Pi’s lap. They survive. The boat drifts onto a beach where the boy collapses and the tiger simply walks away straight ahead into the jungle - out of the boy’s life forever. What hurt Pi was that the tiger left him without even looking back and in his desolation the boy is expressing something that is essential in every human life – that we be noticed, acknowledged by another, that we matter. Not so much for the things we do but simply for bein...

It feels like a scene  From a movie Drinking tea From china cups Among the exotic In a faded place The air hot and heavy The smell of sulphur Everywhere A terrible tormenta Spanish for storm Is raging Unleashing hail The blackest sky Apocalyptic Uprooting ancient Trees blowing the roof Off a shanty church What an authentic Pentecost might do With scant regard For our attachments The sacred icons By which we are Connected to the Divine Snatched from our grasp So that we have nothing To hold Us back from surrender To that which we cannot Control (San Antonio De Areco,Argentina)