Happy St Cuthbert’s Day with Chris Watson
Today is St Cuthbert’s Day. I must admit he wasn’t a saint I’d heard of before coming across Chris Watson’s work. Watson has had an interesting and highly varied career. Formerly…
Category: silence
“Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.” – Henri Nouwen on solitude and compassion
From Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers Here we reach the point where ministry and spirituality touch each other. It is compassion.…
“Mankind must join a sort of resistance movement. What will become of our world if it does not look for intervals of silence?”
From “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise” by Robert Cardinal Sarah, Nicolas Diat: Mankind must join a sort of resistance movement. What will become of our…
báisteach, fearthainn, ceobhrán,brádán,ceathanna, múrtha, scrabhanna báistí, aimsir cheathach,aimsir spairniúil, craobhmhúr (agus neart eile) – Irish words for Irish rain
Often it is said that “Eskimos” have fifty, or a hundred, or hundreds, of words for snow. I had vaguely picked up that this was discredited … although it turns out…
“A leader for whom silence was a virtue” Sudhir Hazareesingh on Charles De Gaulle
It seems a bit of a truism to describe Charles de Gaulle as an extraordinary figure, but truisms are no less true for being true. It is hard to know…
Every gravestone tells a story: from Drangan, Co Tipperary
Graveyards are full of stories. Thomas Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard captured this decisively in poetic form – so much so that any subsequent poem seems a pale shadow.…
“But to simply withdraw does not provide the way forward, for we then take our hurt or tired self with us”
From ” “Dare to Journey–with Henri Nouwen (Designed for Influence)” by Charles Ringma” We need to resist making unhelpful distinctions where we play off one thing against another. Prayer, for…
Séamus Sweeney 