OF YOU MY HEART HAS SPOKEN

When a son of Gera  Flings verbal dirt and stones  Into my sorrow  And I am tempted  To cut him off for good I am reminded  That God may have bid him Do it As He did the original  To King David  Perhaps I have offended  Neglected him And have need of repentance  I am reminded too That He has bid another To make my spirits soar With laughter  And the Hand that hurts Is the Hand that heals

Who am I and  Why should I be favoured?  Why should I be honoured with a visit from the Mother of my Lord, Mother of the Word Incarnate? She comes as I wait upon the Word of God at the beginning of the day Sifting through the usual words of comfort that emerge I recognise It when It arrives, and often It is not a word at all But a silence that enters from without and rises from within all at once. A silence that takes hold of my entire being so that I am, for a while, nothing other than pure silence.  It is the silence of the Aleph , the silence of God, the silence of God's presence. The Beginning and the End, the Aleph and the Tav , the Alpha and the Omega It happens on the deck of ship as it sails across the sea and can last for hours. Within this Sacred Silence I am whole, with no trace of anxiety, no burden, free of all that is negative or unwholesome. You might even say that I transcend, or that I am transcended by grace, by the movement of the Holy Spirit. ...

Sunday August 3, 2025 "I go out there to wrestle with emptiness. And success would be to bring exactly nothing home with me." (By Tim Robinson, from Connemara, Listening to the Wind.) To bring exactly nothing home with me. Yes, that's the ideal. Not sure that I can actually succeed in bringing nothing but maybe I can bring much less than I had planned. Maybe it isn't necessary to fill my car again with stuff to bring across the Irish sea. And in this process of clearing out my room, making way for another, I just have to look at what needs to be taken and what should be discarded. There are framed pictures, a mall box of them. There are the pictures coloured and painted by the children over the years for me personally and done so often with great detail and care. So I think I'll bring those with me. But all of the boxes of notes that go back 30 years, retreat notes and talks that I've hauled about with me, thinking that I might make use of them, that they migh...

  Martha and Mary. We miss the point when we get caught up in the argument of the two sisters and, most people come down on the side of Martha because she is us. We are her. We are busy. We want to be distracted. And we ask a fair question, “what would the world be like if everyone sat down like Mary?” Nothing would get done! But, of course, we miss the point. Martha and Mary are not the point. The point of it all is Jesus. It is He whom we serve. It is to Him that we listen. On a personal level, this Gospel has been significant for me since the first time I read it. As a young student I “knew” that I belonged in the place that Mary occupies. I felt that keenly and lived it to a great degree as a young priest in Tanzania. I feel it now as a call to return to the place where I truly belong. My home at the feet of Jesus, listening to Him. The new translation of the Lectionary adds another personal dimension for me. It is the word “portion.” Mary has chosen the “good porti...

We excavate The foundation Of our lives Drawing up Fragments of memory Broken pieces Of our past "But do not linger Long with these" Says my Soul For they are not The purpose Of our seeking. We will dig And delve deeper still And not give up Until we uncovered The Treasure of God's Glory Hidden in the mystery Of our being

  A garden in the city. The only cool place on this rather hot morning. Beautiful. Nothing to do but watch the antics of two cats. The mother, who has been named Beauty and her unnamed kitten, whom I have decided to call Binti. A wild, frightened thing and very funny to watch. I think if I remained long enough in the garden and sat still enough she would become accustomed to my presence, not take off in fright every time I stand up. It's the morning after a very emotional weekend. Part of me feels like a traitor. It's the kind of road I naturally go down. But I really must start taking into myself the sheer depth and strength of the love that the people of Hastings parish have for me. That there is love between us has been clear all along. I know this in my head. But it's another thing to absorb it into the fibres of my being, to risk being possessed by it, overwhelmed by it, consumed. Consumed. I have been consumed by my work in Hastings. Only now do I realise it. People h...