Blog

Crime Pays!                       Word on the Week                          18th January 2020. When you survey the bloodshed of this week you see the ugly face of crime.   It is as if the whole country has been affected by an incurable virus which can only be curtailed not cured.    It broke out in Drogheda, the North-side of Dublin and […]

Forgive and Embrace                       Word on the Week              11th January 2020. Last week’s blog had scarcely hit the bin when the dreams of times past turned into nightmares!    Commemorate that lot – not on your life!   One correspondent, in a fine show of charity said, “forgive and forget” people were OK with that, but “forgive and […]

An Epiphany of Dreams                   Word on the Week              4th January 2020. The last decade in Ireland commemorated the centenary of the 1916 Rising and the decade we are entering promises many more of the same!   Community-led events are planned in the locations where they occurred historically and funding will be available to artists […]

It had been an eventful year in Jerusalem.   My Legion had been there from the start. Who could ever forget that memorable crucifixion.    The one where my Centurion (who had his belief in God confirmed) said “In truth this man was the Son of God” (St Mark Chapter 15 verse 39). Events followed with the […]

Incarnation Fleshed Out        Word on the Week              21st December 2019. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you” was the Prophet’s cry as he looked at the sinfulness of the people.   “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like […]

Like something reminiscent of a fairground ventriloquist’s dummy we had the Prime Minister of the UK endlessly repeating his chant “Get Brexit Done”!   All through the election hustling’s the refrain rang out from his lips.   It was incorporated into the answer to almost every question.   It reduced public debate to a mindless mantra – but […]

We had a couple of days of frosty weather this week and, right on cue, came our friends the fieldfares.   They come from Scandinavia in their winter wanderings and usually remain on higher ground of the Wicklow hills until cold weather brings them down to us in Kildare. They come in flocks sometimes mixed up […]

Getting and Giving               Word on the Week             30th November 2019. Black Friday has been successfully negotiated this week with many accounts in the retail sector safely in the black.   This import from the US (it is reputed to have started in Philadelphia) comes without the prior Thanksgiving Thursday where Americans celebrated the success of […]

The Arba’een is not only Shia Islam’s largest gathering, at 15,339,955 this year, it is the largest gathering on earth!    Held annually in the Iraq city of Karbala it now caters for a broad range of nationalities with a large contingent taking advantage of the new roads and cheap visas for Iranians. Arba’een means 40 […]