"T'was the night before Christmas"
And all are asleep in my house.
Presents all wrapped and under the tree.
Baking done. House festive.
All that remains is to wish you
A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS full of joy and serenity!
With much love
Barbara
Hello, hello, hello.
It seems like ages since I have been posting on Seeking Serenity, due to the fact that I had two wonderful Guest Writers posting their wit, wisdom and words here for the last two weeks. So before I go any further can I thank both Susannah Bec (Joy Frequencies among others) and Niamh Griffin (Writer On The Way Home) for their beautiful and inspiring and uplifting posts. I enjoyed both and know, from the comments, that they went down well with you too!
So, its almost Christmas and we are getting ready to welcome the return of the light (methaphorically and physically). We are also in the last days of this year of 2009. I am sure that many of you, like me, have mixed feelings about 2009. It has been a difficult and challenging year but thankfully punctuated with good things and high spots too. So as we cruise towards it's end, it might be a good idea to remind ourselves of what was good about this year. And you know even, the trauma of recession and church scandals are fulfilling an important purpose in allowing a cleansing and detox take place. Our world may be moving towards getting rid of inequality of wealth, greed and injustice during this period of collapse of banking and financial institutions. And I am not for one moment trivialising the loss of other jobs, collateral damage as it were, in this painful process. But I am merely making the point that at the end of this process we may all be better off in ways it is hard to imagine now.
The church is also going to continue its painful period of being cleansed of bullying, secrecy, abuse and rigid control. I am proud that Ireland may well turn out to be the country that leads this re-examination of the Catholic Church. In my heart I hope that we can all return to the values that Jesus taught and leave the bullshit behind us. Then the thousands of children who suffered at the hands of these men of God, will not have suffered in vain. At the moment I am constantly reminded of Jesus's words "suffer little children, forbid them not to come unto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It may well be that these children are going to be remembered and honoured, as through their bravery as adults they began this important process of change.
So it is with optimism that I head gladly towards the end of this year. 2010 will be better, I am sure.
Finally, I want to thank you! I set up this blog in March, on a wave of enthusiasm after attending a brilliant Inkwell Writers workshop led by the wonderful Beth Morrissey. Since then I have posted all sorts of bits and pieces and more recently have set up my second blog, My Word Songs, which is dedicated to my writing. I have discovered a whole new virtual world, made some new friends (whom I have never met) and have so enjoyed reading your comments. So thank you - for checking in, for leaving comments, and for being new friends.
Nollaig Shona go leir agus here's to 2010 - lets hope it brings us all an abundance of all that is good!
Irish Lips are Smiling
The traditional review of the year is certainly an interesting one for 2009. Personally I had a few challenges to overcome when moving back to Ireland after working abroad. The biggest was answering daily queries on my sanity; who moves somewhere in the middle of a recession?
The other was staying cheerful. But one year on I’m still here; hanging on by my finger-tips maybe but still here. And now that Barbara has asked me to write something positive about Ireland for 2010 there’s actually a lot to say. So in spite of the pitch-black mornings there are still lots of reasons to throw off the duvet, let go of the hot water bottle and get out there:
Driving across the whole country. Sounds great and takes Americans days weeks to complete but we can do it twice in a weekend.
Train Friends – last time I took the train from Cork to Dublin the lady next to me talked for the whole journey. We did the meaning of life, the Church, the recession, arts and where to buy boots. The train arrived, we said goodbye and that was that.
Speaking Irish – OK not as often as we could but we try. And you can say things like ‘An raibh tu sios ag an sign-on place? Bhi an organizer i do lorg’ and everyone knows what you mean.
Sense of humour. Who else would greet a freezing swimmer crawling out of Killiney Bay with ‘Ah lads, I caught a mermaid’ as I got recently? Although wrapped in a wetsuit and hood I didn’t really fit the Disney profile …
Live music: the only reason Irish people hate Bono so much is because they want to be him. You can find the next guy every night somewhere.
Brown soda bread and salmon sandwiches - hot with melting butter. Who needs haute cuisine?
Brandy butter – speaking of butter. A Canadian friend here had never tried it before and her reaction confirmed that this is indeed a cuisine miracle.
Bogs – hike out to the mountains and jump into a pile of wet peat. Fun as long as you don’t sink in too far. One way to deal with the constant rain is just take advantage of the puddle-splashing and bog-hopping opportunities created.
And just remember that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. So never mind the Budget and the gloom; keep on smiling and we’ll get through this.
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Niamh Griffin is a freelance writer and travel addict. For now she lives by the sea in Ireland rediscovering what it actually means to be Irish not Oirish.
Niamh's blog is Writer On The Way Home and is a great read for natives (as it often gives us a quirky look at ourselves) and for new arrivals (who will regularly find very useful local information).
As we make our journey through life we gather memories on the way. The happy moments that we treasure become part of the fabric of our lives, the shared family stories that anchor us and give us a sense of belonging, that let us know that we are a part of something bigger than just our solitary selves. They strengthen us and our bonds with others. The sharing of our memories and the retelling of our stories is an ancient thing. People gathered around a fire sharing the myths and legends of the tribe was the way in which knowledge and folklore was passed from generation to generation.
We too have our personal myths and folklore, made up of the stories we have heard about ourselves. Maybe you heard - "She is such a good girl" or "He is useless at sports, his brother is the sporty one, he has two left feet". Positive or negative, these too become anchors, ways of being. Then over the years we add the ones we tell about ourselves, "Oh no, I am useless at that!!" - "I will never be able to do it!" - "Just my luck" - "I am so unlucky with men" - "Nothing ever goes right for me". These beliefs and repeated stories become part of our 'script'.
The truth of the matter is, that as good as memories are for keeping us grounded and for continuity, they are based on the past, and the people and situations that we once were, and situations that once existed. We are constantly growing and evolving and if we are conscious of the negative elements of the story we tell about ourselves, then we can choose to change that too.
"Whatever your past has been, you have a spotless future."- Melanie Gustafson
Life is based on the choices we make every day, the book we are writing of our lives. We can write a comedy or a tragedy. We can write ourselves a part as a hero or heroine, or we can be the poor soul, the victim, the martyr. We can write a tale of drudgery and lack, or one filled with sparkling happy moments. If you thought about your life so far, what sort of book would it be? how would you as a character be cast? It is an interesting exercise to realise that we have a choice in how we want our 'story' to play out, what do we want to write in for our character? What adventures could we put in there for him/her? What hidden qualities could you find in your lead character? What baggage could they drop? What choices does she / he need to make in the coming pages? What is your 'happy ending'?
All the things you have experienced, have made you who you are right now. The good, the bad, the joy and the pain. But whatever your life has been, right up to this second, you have a choice in where it goes from here. Every moment is a place we have never been before, every day, a new day. Every day is a chance to add happy moments, as the future is lived one day at a time. The future is still unwritten. You have a blank canvas, a clean white page.
The new year is coming up, a time when lots of us look back over the year just passed and make resolutions for the coming one. This year why not do it a little differently and think of which stories you want to leave behind and which new ones you want to write in. Think of it as the start of a new chapter in the book you are writing about your life.
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Susannah Bec first started blogging at the beginning of this year and took to it like a duck to water! She lives in the UK with her partner Joe and three adorable cats. Check out Susannah's great and inspirational blogs at Joy Frequencies and My Name Is Zing.
It seems a little ironic that I am currently working on my last issue of Contact (our Parish Newsletter) in the midst of all the controversy about the Catholic Church, particularly in Dublin. I have really enjoyed my time working as part of the large Parish team of volunteers who work on a wide variety of projects within the community. I am drawn to voluntary organisations ever since my time working for The Alzheimer Society of Ireland. It is within such organisations that you meet and work with such committed volunteers – people who give of their time and talents for the good of others. That in itself is most satisfying.
I have been involved with Contact (Parish Newsletter – keep up) since 2003 and have been its editor for the last two years. I took the decision to ‘retire’ mainly to free up some more time to devote to my own writing (or more correctly to indulge myself in an experiment to see if I am in fact a writer). The Christmas edition is to be my last one. And although I will be a little sad to no longer have regular contact with some very good people, it does seem fortuitous that it is now that I am moving away from formal work with the church. Because right now it is not somewhere I feel at all comfortable.
Like many Irish people (and parents in particular, I would imagine) I am very angry with ‘the church’ – by which I mean the organisational structure. I am horrified by the huge gap that has opened between ‘the faithful’ and the hierarchy. Irish Bishops just don’t seem to grasp the horror of their cover up and self protection which sacrificed innocent children for decades. I cannot understand how these supposed men of God, Bishops who have been named and criticised in the Murphy Report for their handling of paedophile priests are still in office and clearly feel no need to resign. These men, so called Princes of the Church, are as far away from the teaching of Jesus as it is possible to be.
And of course, I wonder if any of this could have happened if women had been included in the structure of the church, and if God had been given a female aspect. I doubt it.
But I don’t want this post to be a rant. Let me just say, I am angry. I am sad. But I am very glad to be cutting formal ties with the structure that is the Catholic Church.
And so as we come to the end of this year and first decade of the second millennium, it seems that many of the Mayan prophecies are coming to pass. The world is being cleansed of greed, evil, power and ego. And I am hopeful that as we head towards 2012, our world will have moved into a place of greater Awareness and Love. The transition is definitely very painful but the end result will be heaven on earth!
Anyone else want to share their feelings?
Well, as you can see my blog has undergone a bit of a face-lift. (Imagine if it were that easy?)
Anyway Welcome to (the renamed) Seeking Serenity Blog. Nothing much else has changed. The content will be the usual mix of family life and my constant search for inner peace and the meaning of life amid all the chaos!
But I have also now created another blog - MY WORD SONGS, which will "showcase my fabulous writing talent"..... which is another way of saying will be a chance for me to test drive bits and pieces of writing on the journey to finding out whether I can write at all! The first post is up and is entitled 'Ben's Big Adventure'. Pop on over and have a read.... and of course let me know what you think. Honestly!
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