Times are strange for sure. While Spring is trying it's best to break through we are also struggling with what Covid -19 has brought us. Anxiety and isolation mostly. Saint Patrick's Day has been cancelled. We all have to have private parades and parties. We wash our hands and cross our fingers. I've developed a nasty habit of . . .
This we have now……but are we already in the decline?
This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Nor a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn't. Rumi It's not that I didn't already know. I had been aware of the decline in wild things for the last few years. But the news this week that our insect . . .
Blacksod Bay
You couldn't be looking out into Blacksod Bay and fail to think of Rescue 116. The helicopter went down here last year, 2017, while on a mission in bad weather conditions. All four crew were lost. You can see Blackrock Island where the incident occurred from everywhere along this stretch. I had never been here . . .
Winter wasn’t quite finished with us after all
"This earth is my sister; I love her daily grace, her silent daring and how loved I am, how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty and I do not forget; what she is to me, what I am to her." Susan . . .
Better than the real thing
My dear old Dad loved Christmas and did his very best to provide a magical morning of surprises under the tree. During the years when he was left alone with four girls under the age of 9, his inner child often went shopping for the kind of presents that any small boy would adore. We girls got cowboy suits, holsters and dart . . .
10% of Irish people have no religion
According to the census results only 10% of people in Ireland have “No religion”. No religion doesn’t really cover the multitude and variety of individuals behind that new statistic. I know because I am one of them. I have a hunch that the real figure is probably a lot more than 10%. Do you think that everyone, in every home, was consulted about . . .
The good life in rural Ireland
"I see myself on the underworld side of that water, the darkness coming in fast, saying all the names I know for a lost land:" From The Lost Land by Eavan Boland While we all complain about our pet hates, those of us living in Ireland have an incredibly good life. We are lucky or blessed . . .
None of us can be proud of Ireland
I feel ashamed to say it. But there is no doubt. Ireland is a two tier society. It’s a country where half of the population can sleep easy at night in the knowledge that their safe pensionable jobs can support their private health insurance, their mortgage payments and their annual holiday. Meanwhile if you live in the Ireland of low pay or . . .
Your true home
"Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until . . .
The land of the free?
Dinner was to be at 7 but it was now late. I was staying in a small Bed and Breakfast on Inis Meáin, one of the Aran Islands. Guests were chatting and opening bottles of wine when our hostess came out of the kitchen almost in tears. Earlier in the day her husband had been helicoptered to hospital with a broken leg and she was simply overwhelmed . . .
