EVENTS THIS WEEK
- Today's 'As I was Saying' was prepared by Fr. Dick earlier in the week.
- Paddy Lyng died at 4:30AM Wednesday morning. At the funeral mass, Fr. Johnny Lyng said that Eileen had hoped to bring Paddy back to Kilkenny to die at home, but God took him home first.
- Quite a large number of parishioners travelled the distance to Kilkenny for both the removal and funeral mass. The Augustinian choir from Galway sang at the mass in The Rower on Friday afternoon.
- About 40 people turned up for the 2 meetings of both the Eucharistic Ministers and Mass Readers on Wednesday night. Fr. Ben said mass for Paddy Lyng in the parlour.
- Arising from the mass readers meeting, there is a practice session with the sound engineer on Tuesday evening in the Church to go over the nuances of the microphones!
- Our Holy Father Pope John II has invited the leaders of other faiths to join him in Assisi on Thursday 24th January for a day of prayer for Peace. The Pope has chosen the native city of St. Francis as the venue. ln order to be united in prayer with the Holy Father, the secular Franciscan Order Galway Fraternity has arranged for the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at The Abbey on Thursday 24th from after 4:00PM Mass until 7:00 PM.
AS I WAS SAYING...
We all have our blind spots. Instinctively sometimes, we filter out the unpleasant and disturbing. We turn a blind eye to unpleasant reality
I move between five different worlds at the moment. I work as a priest in St. Augustine's. I teach a bit of history in the University; I teach a few hours Theology in what was the Regional College. I visit the hospital very regularly. Occasionally, I go into a Bookies shop and place a bet. I have rarely returned to collect. Over the last couple of months, I have been meeting my own family regularly, sometimes twice a week. My brother Paddy is dying in a Dublin hospital. He is 52 years old and he has a wife, Eileen, and two children, Lizzie who is 18 and Patrick who is 14. My family is from Kilkenny, so, as Paddy's condition waxes and wanes, I move between Dublin and Kilkenny.
I move constantly then between five groups of people who see the world very differently. I meet five different visions, five different perspectives on life, five different views of the world .
The University kids are young, earnest and very serious about life. We have been given this image of University students as hard-drinking, hard-living, sex-loving and carefree. These day, that group is in a very tiny minority. The way the general population see these kids, and the way I see them would be very different. They are too timid by far, they are afraid, even when coaxed, to ask questions in Tutorials. And they are mortified if isolated for special attention. So much for the self-confident, brash beer-swilling University student. That view is seriously flawed.
The Regional College group is different. They are studying theology for a start. That fact means that the group is in many ways self-selected. Many of them are 'Mature Students', men and women who have experienced life and want to filter that experience through an academic and spiritual lens. They come from a variety of backgrounds; some have been disillusioned by the world of commerce. It didn't deliver on the promised dream. Others are young men and women who are very interested in the spiritual dimension of life, in the inner life. A generation or two ago, they would probably be in convents and seminaries. But the vision of life has changed. That's not how they see themselves now. They now view that sort of lifestyle as cramped and crushing, a lifestyle that is fast receding if not extinct! Others still are women who have reared their families, or whose kids are at school. They now want more from life. Their vision has extended beyond the home. And I get the distinct impression that it is for their own children that they want to sharpen their spiritual focus. But this group are far more relaxed and far more at ease with themselves and their world than the University group. Life's experience has broadened their vision.
I visit the hospital when called upon to do so. That is regular enough. I imagine you get a very different view of life from the hospital bed. Pain reduces your vision of the world to a hospital ward. The hospital experience alters perspective, in some cases radically. A person falls ill, is moved to hospital -understandably obsessed with his or her own sickness. Inevitably, they find there people in a worse condition than themselves. Their view of life and themselves changes overnight; they begin to count their blessings. Their vision of their own condition mellows when exposed to the searing pain of fellow human beings.
I visit another hospital regularly now, a Dublin hospital. That is where my brother is being cared for. The visit to my friends and parishioners in the Galway hospital, the visit to the Dublin hospital is like moving from one world to another . Obviously I see my brother in a very different light to that of a parishioner. I have been privileged in that I had many hours of private conversations with him since he fell seriously ill. When a man is facing the final fence, his vision of life grows very intense. It is not my intention to romanticise the experience at all. It was and is truly horrible. Yet the intensity of his vision has altered my perspective. His voice has diminished to a one-sentence whisper now. 'Life, love and death boy, that's all that's important.' He was the farmer; I was the priest. But now he was the teacher, and I the pupil. I think and I hope that I have learned more about life from his dying, than I ever did from all the retreats I ever made or all the pilgrimages I undertook.
I will finish with my visit to the Bookies. They see things very differently in the Bookies. I always associate Betting Shops with tunnel vision. All are experts there and all are -by the standards of this world- failures. Yet, we return, again and again! I remember being in Mulholland's shop a few years ago and this strange face rushed in the door. He grabbed the first person he met and demanded "Who is the expert on horses here?" Pat Joyce looked around, pointed to this character writing out a docket; his arse was out in his trousers, his jacket rotting on his back and his two shoes burst: "There," said Pat pointing over at him, "there's a man who knows all about horses!" We all have our blinds spots indeed! !
-Dick Lyng
Did you know ?
- It is impossible to lick your elbow.
- A crocodile can't stick it's tongue out.
- A shrimp's heart is in its head.
- In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
- It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit
- More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call
- Rats and horses can't vomit.
- The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
- The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
- 23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks.
- Most lipstick contains fish scales...
- Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbows :- )
[GjL]
Felix Randal
Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal.
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!
-Gerard Manley Hopkins.
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