Skip to main content

OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

Eamonn Monson SAC

Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Posts

THE WOUNDED HEART OF GOD

on September 16, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

TOUCHED BY THE PRESENCE OF GOD

on September 11, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

A Future And A Hope

on September 06, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

THOU ART MY ISLAND

on August 29, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

You Are Weeping Now

on July 31, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Twenty Years After Maura

on July 26, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

INSOMNIA: They Who Fly Home To God

on July 09, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

GLASTONBURY: Do You Love Me More?

on July 02, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

RETIREMENT?

on July 01, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Fathers Day 2019

on June 16, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

SLOWING TO THE PACE OF A POND

on June 15, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Fr. Mick Timlin Remembered: 20 Years On

on June 13, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

FREEING THE PIGEON: A Pentecost First Communion

on June 09, 2019

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Popular Posts

THE WOUNDED HEART OF GOD

She puts her two hands on her hips and rolls her eyes to heaven. In that moment I feel like the most stupid, embarrassing man in the world and, in my awkwardness, I say something else stupid so that she rolls her eyes again. We used to have such a happy relationship. As a little girl she would jump for joy at my arrival but now there is a distance growing between us. People tell me it’s what happens with teenagers, that she will come back to me but in the meantime, there is the pain of a wound in my heart and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I did it myself in a different sort of way. As a teenager I justifiably felt that life at home was unfair, impossibly unhappy and, with my youngest sister, I used to plan my escape. It was a fantasy in which I would get out the bedroom window and she would let me down by a bedsheet. From there I would hide away in one of the ships down the docks and end up in some faraway country.
Of course, I never ran away but I did escape by shutting…

TOUCHED BY THE PRESENCE OF GOD

One of the lovely experiences of my time at home was being with my grandnephew who is just over three months old. The first day I arrived at their home he was restless, in need of sleep and his mother was trying to settle him. She handed him to me, so I walked around the room with him, singing to him the Swahili song Malaika, praying the Hail Mary over him in Swahili. It’s a very soothing language and, after the second Hail Mary, the child fell asleep, his head resting on my chest for about an hour. It’s one of the most tender things a man can experience, to be so trusted by a baby, to gaze upon his sleeping face, the beauty of it, to be one with him in that way and to be touched by the presence of God in such a moment.

But I’m aware too that suffering has already entered into this little life of his, the suffering that comes to every baby born, the very act of coming to birth. It is sometimes written on his astonished face. His mother was telling me about his experience of having inje…

Twenty Years After Maura

Up till then I never loved anyone as much as I loved my older sister Maura and then I wondered had it been a mistake to love so much. The pain of her absence was unbearable, and I honestly thought I wouldn’t survive. I thought too that I would never dance again. It was with her that I danced best, most joyfully. But I have survived and have loved again. I have danced, but never so joyfully as with her.
The morning of July 28, 1999 I was in London on my way home from holidays. There was a message to phone my sister Rose. There was no answer. So, I phoned Maura. Her youngest son answered. I said, “can I speak to your Mum.” He said, “she’s dead!” She went to bed at the age of 46 and never woke up. That was the beginning of my worst nightmare. I didn’t just cry. I howled. Those who were with me then still speak of the sound of my grieving. The experience left us all reeling as a family, fragmented and nearly destroyed.
She was my best friend, my sister and the link that held us…

THOU ART MY ISLAND

There's a breeze that blows before the rain. It meets the resistance of the rhododendron, braced against the weather, not a trembling but more a stiffened shaking, a soldier standing to attention in a storm.
This is a day of hibernation, a day with no plan, free flowing. Water begins to pour through a carck in the eve shoot of the house on the corner. I'm home for the holidays. My first day. Been up since 8.00, having gone to bed at 10.00 and now it's 11.00. Still not dressed, a coffee and a tea later. Brown bread in the oven.

The ship that brought me home sailed at 2.40am and at three o'clock in the morning on the upper deck of the Ulysses I found myself stretched out on my back, looking up at the sky. It was black. At first! And then the stars came out. They were out already. It's my eyes that must adjust. I think of Aelfred sleeping out beneath the stars; a woman in the Sahara doing the same and I wonder will I do likewise when I arrive at the desert night.
Two…

RAFORD: A Place of Grace

I’m remembering Raford, the house on the hill in the country that was my mother’s birthplace, and I’m thinking of the clear cold water from the rain barrel at the gable end, cold water scooped up in a white enamel basin put standing on the kitchen table. White soap in a saucer and a blue towel to wipe away from my face the shock of the cold water of the morning. Granny cut slices of brown bread made by her own hands, the wholemeal wholeness of her heart in it and lavished with salty country butter churned by the same hands and mine. Everything and everybody was washed in rainwater and we went to the well down the lane to draw that which would quench our thirst and wet the tea. We brought tea in a billy can across the fields to Grandad in the bog and helped him load the cart with turf, sitting on top of it for the journey home, staring down into the black water of the bog holes, terrified that the cart would turn over when its wheels went to the very edge. It never did and we never fell …

DAD

FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

This time 28 years ago – December 29th - on the eve of the Holy Family Maura and I were in hospital visiting Dad who had taken ill on St. Stephen's Day and was being checked out. As we were leaving him, she and I looked at each other and said "he's dying." There was something in his eyes that made us both think this. So, we went to the nurse in charge and said we thought our father was dying. She said, "not at all. He's fine." And we went off home.
When I told Mam what Maura and I were thinking she said, "well if you think he's dying then go back and anoint him." This we did and when the praying was done two interesting things happened. First Mam took hold of his hand but he took it away as if to say this is not the time for holding but the time for letting go. Then he pulled the bed clothes up under his chin looking content and complete and told us to go off and get a drink for ourselves. We did!
And at home we …

RETIREMENT?

It's a long enough journey home - 10 hours from house to house - but there's no complaint except a weary body which is not a complaint. Just a fact of nature. There's a great amount of pleasure in the whole process - the train, the airport with an americano stretched out to last an hour so that I can charge my phone, a delayed but lovely flight and running in the rain to catch the 19.45 GoBus with only minutes to spare. And there I listened to all 10 episodes of Vesna Goldsworthy's 'Gorsky' on BBC Radio 4, so beautifully read by Philip Arditti. A voice that has soothed me to sleep some nights. It brought me to within 10 miles of Galway.
I'm home for my brother's retirement as head teacher. He's seven years younger than me, so it's natural that I might taunt myself with the question, "what about me?" A taunt and a temptation. I’m naturally and essentially a very lazy person attracted by idle thoughts of spending my life dreaming, writin…

A Future And A Hope

It's an incredibly beautiful day at sea. The ship sails steady on the white edged choppy waves and peace reigns now, with loneliness left behind in Dublin port. Mostly left behind. Out here I am suspended between two realities, ready to return yet slightly apprehensive. There is a tug between home and Hastings, both of which I love; a pull between Ireland and England, this world and heaven.
In a meditation at the retreat in Thurles, the director asked us to be blind Bartimaeus begging, to imagine ourselves being him. It’s a meditation I have guided on retreats going back many years, so it was necessary for me not to be stuck in an established way of seeing this gospel.
I wasn't blind but paralyzed, unable to walk, sitting on one of those four wheeled mobility scooters for the disabled. Disabled is a word still used in the UK. I am disabled in the meditation but my scooter takes me to Jesus at speed, the cloak flying off my back. When Jesus asks me, "what do you want me to d…

I AM (Mud Hut)

It grew from the earth
Sprouting grass for roof

Sagging soon a lump
Mud hut retiring

In shy apology

For the way things are
Underdeveloped

I hope you don’t mind

INSOMNIA: They Who Fly Home To God

"Insomnia can become a form of contemplation. You just lie there, inert, helpless, alone, in the dark, and let yourself be crushed by the inscrutable tyranny of time. The plank bed becomes an altar and you lie there without trying to understand any longer in what sense you can be called a sacrifice." (Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas)

Insomnia! A brand of coffee and a state of being! Being awake when you should be asleep. It's been part of my whole life since childhood, though it's less of an affliction now. Most religious people seem to resort to formal prayer like the rosary to help them through the dark hours. Not me! I just groan - "oh God!"

One such night many years ago my distress was so great that I sat up, took hold of my Bible and asked God to speak to me. What opened before me was Ezekiel Chapter 13, and I was particularly struck by verse 10: "...they have misled my people by saying Peace! when there is no peace."
My inclination is toward…

Eamonn Monson Podcasts

EAMONN'S OTHER BLOGS

Wordpress
Sean
CAMINO - One Million Steps To Freedom
I AM Huruma - Mostly Shankill

Archive

2019 40

2018 56
- December 5
- November 7
- October 4
- September 5
- August 8
- July 7
- June 4
- May 3
- April 4
- March 4
- February 3
- January 2
2017 43
- December 7
- November 7
- October 7
- September 8
- August 2
- July 7
- June 5

Show more Show less

Powered by Blogger

Copyright Eamonn Monson 2018