" What It Means to Me to Be Irish"

                   To be proud of our history, our culture and our music.

                   To love our language, but not go to any trouble to learn it or speak it among ourselves.

                   To be slightly embarrassed at the more maudlin of our ballads, but to like them all the

                    same.

                   To be glad your antecedents survived the Great Famine.

                   To love talking, telling stories and gossiping.

                   To want to know who everyone you meet is, who they're related to, and to poke your

                    nose into their business.

                   To love mixing and drinking, and mixing and mingling.

                   To have a small inferiority complex, because we're a small country.

                   To be proud of the achievements of our people in sports and arts and entertainment,

                    because we're such a small country.

                   To sometimes begrudge the success of our neighbours, because we think they're

                    "losing the run of themselves".

                   To smile and be happy, even in adverse circumstances.

                   To distrust and often mislead authority, because we still have issues with our

                     colonial past.

                   To stay in the pub until the publican finally throws us out.

                   To feel a little uneasy with wealth, because we're not used to it, and maybe it

                    won't last anyway.

                   To be very generous with charities and poor nations, abroad.

                   To think we are the smartest, wittiest, open-minded nation on earth, bar none.

                   To be surprised when visitors tell us how witty, smart and open-minded we are.

~ John Collins

Waterford, Ireland
~ Copyrighted material; November of 2015*



                   

   * You can find John@Twitter.walkcork. 

~ Beannaichte'
30 November, 2015

beannaichte@twitter.com

Living Space Christ the King | Sacred Space

Living Space Christ the King | Sacred Space

"Postscript"





And some make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you'll park and capture it

More thoroughly.  You are neither here or there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.  

~Seamus  Heaney

Ireland

~Beannaichte'

 17 November, 2015

@beanaichte.twitter.com

Living Space Sunday of Week 32 of Ordinary time | Sacred Space

Living Space Sunday of Week 32 of Ordinary time | Sacred Space

"Celtic Wisdom"

May the Light of your Soul Enlighten you,

May all your Worry and Anxiousness

About becoming older be Transfigured. 

May you be Given Wisdom with the Eye of your Soul,

To see this Beautiful Time of Harvesting.

May the Commitment to Strengthen your Goals,

Heal what has Hurt you;

To Allow it to come Closer to you,

And Become One with you.

May you have Great Dignity,

And have a Sense of how Free you are.

May you Above All know of

The Wonderful Gift of Meeting the Eternal Light,

And the Beauty that is Within You.

May you Ever be Blessed and Find,

Love in Yourself and All you Encounter.

~John O'Donohue
<<+>>

Ireland

~Beannaichte'

28 October, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com

~In Loving Memory of our Mother; <<<+>>>, One of His Own Flock.
 We Remember...We Remember.

Living Space Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary time | Sacred Space

Living Space Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary time | Sacred Space

"Farmer's Tribute: So God Made a Farmer"

            And on the 8th day, God looked down on His planned paradise and said, " I need a caretaker."

So God made a farmer.

            God said, " I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.

So God made a farmer.

            " I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.  Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon - and mean it."

So God made a farmer.

            God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt.  And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.'  I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps.  During planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon. In spite the pain from the 'tractor back', he will put in another seventy-two hours.

So God made a farmer.

            God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbour's place.

So God made a farmer.

            God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.  It has to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners.  Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church."

            "Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.' "

So God made a farmer.

~Paul Harvey

U.S.A.

~Beannaichte'

 17 September, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com.