In our house, it was common enough to find girls lying down in dark rooms listening to poetry sung by an older, Canadian man. My own battered copy of Songs of Leonard Cohen, with the sad face on the front, would throb away, the soundtrack to my homework, so annoying to my father. Leonard Moan he called him We girls hid our records and . . .
Mystery
Today some portraits, illuminating the mystery of endings. Leaves, lives, moments. Mysteries, Yes Truly, we live with mysteries too marvellous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stone are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of . . .
Late bloomer
There's an exquisite late blooming iris outside my window. It catches the precious dewey light and as everything around it is dying back, grabs the spotlight at any time of day. It's a quiet reminder that not only is it never too late, but later might even be better. It is food for the soul of any late . . .
For our girls
I want to have the 8th Amendment to our Constitution repealed. I’m not going to try to persuade you or argue about whether termination of pregnancy is right or wrong. I’m not going to judge or hate you if you disagree. I’m well past benefitting from this personally, my next role in life as a woman will be to be a grandmother! I just want all of us . . .
A decision to make
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It’s always our self we find in the sea. -e.e. cummings During the last week in France, Mont St. Michel becomes visible on the horizon and gets closer every day. It towers over the bay, between Normandy and Brittany, and as many times before, it . . .
Autumn walk
"There is human time and there is wild time" Clarissa Pinkola Estes This year as part of the Waterford Imagine Festival I will be hosting a Sunday morning walk on the wild side at Carrickavantry Lake. The numbers are very limited and you can book here. The walk will be a real life, real world sharing of contemplative . . .
The ebb and flow
"We come from the sea, Tim; our blood is salt, and strange tides ebb and flow within us all.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Books of Magic It has been a month by the sea. Quite literally the sound of the waves crashing on the northern shore of Brittany has been the soundtrack to our nights here. On the last evening the wind kicked up . . .
Resilience
Everyone has their place in the family. Mother, father, child. It all starts there. Our memories, our emotions and our dreams are formed early on and whether we were basking in love or surviving trauma, these days of our lives stay with us forever. One of the joys of my life was growing up the eldest of 4 girls. I still remember each of my . . .
Winners and losers
I never liked competitive sports but I know lots of people (not a million miles away) who would put money on two flies climbing a wall to see which one would win. Like my neighbour, who thought it would be great amusement to organise a race between my two lads aged 5 and 6. She had an old medal she had won for something, and this was to be the . . .
Girls
"I think of when I was in high school in the 1940s: the white girls got their hair crinkled up by chemicals and heat so it would curl, and the black girls got their hair mashed flat by chemicals and heat so it wouldn’t curl. Home perms hadn’t been invented yet, and a lot of kids couldn’t afford these expensive treatments, so they were . . .
