"Anam Cara"

I pictured You like this ~

There is Something I see in Your  Eyes

Some quality in Your Speech

That puts me in the mind, of another place in time. 

Long ago, You were out of reach ...

I can't say where or how

but I have known You for a long, long time.

Do You remember me ?

Am I familiar, too ?

I have looked for You,

each place I've been...

My Soul has searched for You

from a distant Place in Time.

My  Heart goes out to You

Like a Magnet strikes to Iron...

I can no more ignore the force

Than a Moth drawn to the Fire.

~ An empty Space was left inside my Heart

and caused an ache that would not cease...

Until  I  Found the missing Part.

One Day if I disappear

and I am gone for good ~

Remember when I was here ~

and we Both understood.

And if You go away ~ if We are far apart...

I'll keep you Safe and Warm

In a Secret Corner of my Heart.

~ Until We meet again,  in another Place and Time

I hope You will not forget...

You are a Friend of Mine.

~ Unknown

~ Beannaichte'
3 December, 2020

@beannaichte.twitter.com

" And People Stayed at Home"...

~ And People Stayed at Home,

and read books,

and Listened,

and rested,

and excercised,

and made art,

and played games,

and Learned New ways of Being,

and were Still,

and stopped and Listened more Deeply.

Some Meditated,

some Prayed,

and some Met their Shadows,

and people began to Think differently,

and the people Healed.

And, in Absence of people 

who live in ignorant,dangerous,mindless,

and heartless ways,

the Earth began to Heal.

And when the danger passed,

and the people joined Together again,

they Grieved for their losses,

and made New Choices,

and Created a New Way to live,

~ And Completely Healed the Earth Fully,

as They had been Healed.

~ Kitty O'Meara

Copyrighted material;

2020

 

  

beannaichte@twitter.com
http://beannaichte.blogspot.com

"Death of an Irishwoman"

Ignorant,
 in a sense

she ate monotonous food

and thought the world was flat,

and pagan, in the sense

she knew the things that moved

at night were neither dogs nor cats

but pukas and dark-faced men.

she nevertheless had fierce Pride.

But sentenced in the end

to eat thin diminishing porridge

in a stone-cold kitchen

she clenched her brittle hands

around a world she could not understand.

I loved her from the day she died.

She was a summer dance at the crossroads.

She was a card game where a nose was broken.

She was a song that nobody sings.

She was a house ransacked by soldiers.

She was a Language seldom spoken.

She was a child's purse
 full of useless things.

Michael Hartnett

(1944-1999)

Limerick
Ireland

~ Beannaichte'
 28 May, 2020 

~ Covid-19

beannaichte@twitter.com

"Fifth Season"

This is the Fifth Season

Where did the other four go

I sit and look from my window

How time it  passes so slow

 I sit, my mind filled with memories
Feeling  I'll die with this Pain
Wondering what game Time is playing
They told me next Season is Spring

I've restlessly waited for someone

Who really could show me some gain

But it seems people are so indifferent

 Please tell me someone, if you feel the same

  Why have they been so dishonest

The rest were given a name

Spring, Summer, Fall , and Winter

This is the Fifth Season ~ Pain

You sit, looking so complacent
I really would like to know
Are you really like this
Or don't you want the Pain to show

You know it won't help much

Turn your back, it doesn't go away

Hide, while in your guts, you're crying

Seasons, not like people, have their stay

 Free yourself and look again

My eyes, if you must have a reason

What you see are the Tears of Pain

Do you also know the Fifth  Season ~

Do you also know the Fifth Season ?

~ Alicia O'Hara 
~ Copyrighted Material
~ Written and put to music, during the Winter of 1975.

@beannaichte.twitter.com

"Tiny Beautiful Things"

              

               Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out.  You don't have a career.  You have a life.  Do the work.  Keep the Faith.  Be true blue.  You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your complaining.  Your book has a birthday.  You don't know what it is yet.
              You cannot convince people to love you.  This is an absolute rule.  No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it.  Real Love moves freely in both directions.  Don't waste your time on anything else.
              Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be.  Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose.  Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go.  Acceptance is a small, quiet room.
              Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relationship to your naive pomposity.  Many people you believe to be rich are not rich.  Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got.  Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering.  Many people who appear to be olde and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.
              When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that the kiss doesn't "mean anything" because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back.  Your daughter will have his sense of humour.  Your son will have his eyes.
              The useless days will add up to something. The horrible waitress jobs.  The hours writing in your journal.  The long meandering walks.  The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and  dead people's diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not.  These things are your becoming.
              One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don't look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you.  Don't hold it up and say it's longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm.  Your mother will be dead by spring.  That coat will be the last gift she gave you.  You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life.
              Say, "Thank You".

     ~ From "Tiny Beautiful Things,"

by Cheryl Strayed

~ Beannaichte'

5 May, 2020

@beannaichte.twitter.com

"Pinned"

              ~ Countless people have been devastated for reasons that cannot be explained or justified in Spiritual terms.  To do as you are doing in asking If there were a God, why would he let my little girl have to have possibly life-threatening surgery?-understandable as that question is-creates a false hierarchy of the blessed and the damned.  To use are individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true Compassion.  It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason.  It fails to acknowledge that the other half of Rising-the very half that makes Rising necessary-is having first been nailed to a Cross.

              That's where you were the other night when you wrote to me, dear woman. Pinned in a place by your Suffering.  I woke up at 3a.m. because I could feel you Pinned there so acutely that I-a stranger-felt Pinned too.  So I got up and wrote to you.  My e-mail was a paltry little e-mail probably not too different from the zillions of other paltry little e-mails you received from others, but I know without knowing you that those e-mails from people who had nothing to give you but their kind words, along with all the Prayers people were praying for you, together formed a tiny raft that could just barely hold your weight as you floated through those terrible hours while you awaited your daughter's fate.

              If I believed in God, I'd see evidence of his existence in that.  In your darkest hour you were held afloat by the human Love that was given you when you most needed it. That would have been true regardless of the outcome of Emma's surgery.  It would have been the Grace that carried you through even if things had not gone as well as they did, much as we hate to ponder that.

              Your question to me is about God, but boiled down to the essentials. It's not so different than most questions people ask me to answer.  It says: This failed me and I want to do better next time. My answer will not be so different either: To do better you're going to have to try. Perhaps the good that can come from this terrifying experience is a more complex understanding of what God means to you so the next time you need Spiritual solace you'll have something sturdier to lean on than that rickety I'll-believe-he-exists-only-if-he-gives-me-what-I-want fence.  What you have learned as you sat with Emma in the intensive care unit is that your idea of God as a possibly nonexistent Spirit man who may not hear your prayers and may not swoop in to save your ass when the going gets rough is a losing prospect.

              So it's up to you to create a better one.  A bigger one.  Which is really, almost always, something smaller.

              What if you allowed your God to exist in the Simple words of Compassion others offer to you?  What if Faith is the way it feels to lay your hands on your daughter's Sacred body?  What if the greatest Beauty of the day is the shaft of Sunlight through your window?  What if the worst thing happened and you Rose anyway?  What if you Trusted in the human scale?  What if you Listened harder to the story of the man on the Cross who found a Way to endure his Suffering than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah?  Would you see the Miracle in that? 

~ Cheryl Strayed
U.S.A.

~ Beannaichte'

 19 April, 2020

@beannaichte.twitter.com

Bright Blue Rose - Tommy Fleming

Hard Times - Tommy Fleming

An Irish Blessing

"Ordinary and the Sacred"

My Friend,  you are many miles away

 The distance means nothing in a Friendship such as ours

I reach for your hand, and it is there

Our hands clasp in the Strength of  Friendship

I know you are with me; and that is good

I know that you care; and that is better

I sense the Warmth that is you-

and at the same time, me.  

I know you will stay awhile; and I am glad

You understand my fierce independence

There is no criticism between us

We  Share a time that dwells on the edge of night

 Lingering, until the morning borders

All boundaries fade into the shadows-

Only Sacred  Light remains.

We do not have secrets

We have known each other for a very long time

Our Souls met and touched, somewhere on the Other Side

Our lives remain separate; our Hearts joined

 We come together, with a mutual Grace

When it is right; and that is good-

There is only room for the Truth of Knowing; and that is better.

I do not miss you, when it is time for us to part

The Strength and Tenderness of Being, remains

There is no holding on, as time must move forward

We are each Stronger for the time, shared

  Embracing that which is born out of struggle

 Seen through the eyes of Acceptance and Compassion-

We each seek the Path.

  

 I love you; and that is good

You love me; and that is better

It is a love that is born of the Divine

We speak the ancient language of the Circle

A language rooted in the Ordinary and the Sacred       

This is the Way of the Warrior- 

My Friend, "May all be well with you."

Alicia O'Hara

~ Copyrighted Material; 6 October, 2013

~ Beannaichte'
     2 February, 2020

@beannaichte.twitter.com

"Woman"

Woman, look to the mirror

In the Autumn of your years

Woman, you try so hard on hidin'

As you're makin' up at the vanity of your fears

You're paintin' your face in the mornin'

And you touch up your grey- streaked hair

with a dye of auburn-brown

With a pencil you're linin' your eyes to smile

But the years of your hardened heart 

still turnin' your mouth to a frown

Take off your mask... my Lady

The Marriage will come...

so prepare... for the Cleansing  of the Lamb

See the diamonds in that crown

you've been wearin'

Now do they resemble the thorns

in the crown He did bear?

Did He see you...clothed in scarlet linen

As you turned the homeless away

from your door, with only a prayer?

Do you remember the Power,

how He loved those who pierced Him

While you were crusadin' by the power 

of your blood-stained sword?

Were you sleepin' with kings, in a bed
that denied Him?

Will you let go of the gavel,

 Hold the nail-scarred hands He bore

Woman, look to the mirror

What will He desire of you,

in the Autumn of your years?
Your sins have marred you, but

 He will bring you beauty, again

He will hold You...

if you cry a humblin' tear.

~ From"Woman",
by John Michael Talbot* 


*www.johnmichaeltalbot.com/
*www.michaelcard.com/

24 January, 2020

beannaichte@twitter.com