Tag: cork

Carol, St Dominic’s, Faith, and I

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Carol and I

The empty Cashel Blue cheese packet was evidence of my sorrow. I took one small bite: then one after the other, rotating each morsel around on my tongue. Its creamy saltiness offered solace on a night when I felt a deep loss.

Emotionally drained, I sat in silence, numb, alone in my existential crisis; looking out towards Black Sod Bay where the tide weathered the stones, and the wind whirled, swirled, and whirled again. Stony still I sat, and I reflected on my decision to distance myself from mainstream society for the winter, to allow me time and space for mourning.

2024 was a difficult year. Three good friends died, and their passing created a huge crater of loss in my heart. Their deaths pushed me to a lonely place, which was especially challenging because, as an introvert, I have always lived life with a handful of close friends. I looked forward to the Bells heralding in the New Year, yearning to say goodbye to a year that brought nothing but sorrow. However, January 25th would offer another huge blow; I was given the news that my good friend Carol had died.

Although I do not remember the exact circumstances of our first meeting, our friendship was quickly established. Carol had spent most of her life in mission as a nun abroad, but she had come home to Cork to retire. She was a deeply spiritual woman who bore no resemblance to any of the dour, bleached-faced nuns I knew in my childhood. She was easy to befriend, as we had so much in common.

At that time, I was working in St Dominic’s Retreat Centre in Cork. I genuinely enjoyed that job and never once wished to skip a day during my time there. Thus, it was a wonderful place to work, and at the core was its strong Catholic ethos. Upon reflection, it was working in St Dominics’s that gave me my first exposure back to Catholicism.

Carol was the local church’s facilitator of the RCIA (The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), and she asked me to prayerfully consider accompanying a young man on his journey to enter the Catholic Church. Though grateful for the offer, I was cautious. I was being handed a huge responsibility, and I needed time to deliberate, to consider whether I was worthy of such a role.

Despite being Catholic, I had moved over to the Protestant and non-denominational Churches. In the beginning, I felt at home there, and in those early days, I would never have considered giving thought to Mass. My experience of Catholicism appeared to me to be institutionalized, misogynistic, boring, inconsequential, and removed from the “real world.”

However, by the time I had met Carol, I had become disillusioned with Protestantism. I must emphasize that I have no intention of bashing Protestantism. I fully understand that there is no such thing as a perfect church, and in all my years in Protestantism, I observed the genuineness of faith, the commitment to Jesus, and how everyone did their best to live in spirit and truth. However, I experienced a sense of detachment, observing from the periphery even though the congregation welcomed me warmly. I wrestled for a long time with the idea that something must be wrong with me.

My meetups with Carol were the highlight of the week. We would discuss scripture and spiritual matters over tea, and it was during one of our meetings that I realized there was a huge void in my Christianity. That is the life and times of the saints and martyrs.

The churches I frequented didn’t really think much of saints; we were all saints by virtue of our connection to Jesus, called to live holy lives. Hence, I never gave them much thought. Carol spoke about them warmly, and she sparked my interest in their stories.

I love reading autobiographical stories. I love to read how the characters in the stories face their challenges. Life never runs smoothly, and this type of story helps us to navigate the map of our lives. One story is the powerful account of Perpetua, a young noblewoman, and Felicity, a pregnant slave, both women who, despite having differing socio-economic backgrounds, were united by the same faith. Their story is found in one of the oldest Christian texts, ‘The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity.’ It is one of the earliest prison diaries where Perpetua details her arrest and imprisonment before being thrown to the beasts in the amphitheater of Carthage. Perpetua and Felicity’s story was impactful and gave me insight into how precious faith was to both women. Their story showed me that the walk of faith isn’t always an easy journey; sometimes we must stand and carry our cross.

There were many chats over tea, and each time I came away with the desire that I needed to change direction. It was difficult; I struggled because my childhood religious experiences in school and church were negative. That’s the thing with people, we are imperfect and flawed, and yes, I would have to say horrible things have been done in the name of religion by people who have distorted and manipulated scripture to suit their ego in the power search. But at the centre of it all is Jesus, one hundred per cent God and one hundred per cent man – perfect. He wore a crown of thorns so I could have a crown of glory.

One afternoon over tea, Carol invited me to a prayer group which was going to be held at St Dominic’s. I recall that my jacket was no match for the November wind. There were seven of us in what was known as the Green Room. Carol read out scripture, and we sat and meditated on it. I was struck by the peaceful silence. There was no immediacy to get a word of knowledge or even offer wise words. We all sat quietly in a circle, and then an ivory white candle in a beautifully designed votive was passed around. Carol instructed us upon receipt of the candle to offer a short prayer. The prayers may have been short, but they were meaningful and had depth. It was a breath of fresh air to have short, carefully summarized prayers rather than lengthy prayers, which can sometimes wander into a person giving us an opinion or a brief theological lesson. The experience was so beautiful, I cried, and with tears pricking my cheeks, the realization came – I had come home. As rain pounded the streets, I made my decision that I was going to be part of the RCIA group and accompany the young man on his journey towards Catholicism, but I still wasn’t ready to close the curtain on my Pentecostal Church.

The day I said, “I can’t do this anymore,” and walked out was triggered by a minor issue, but it grieved me so much. I walked into a sports hall, the place where the church gathered for its meetings. I slipped into a seat at the back, quietened myself, and prepared for the service ahead. It was during my quiet moment of prayer when I sensed two women bounding towards me who were eager to chat. “Why couldn’t they wait,” I hissed under my breath, “until tea at the end of the service.” I forced a smile, hiding my true feelings. So, there I was faking my feelings, feigning an outward appearance of niceness which was totally false. Then I was stunned into silence. It was the moment I took note of my surroundings: a hall with tinny, hollow acoustics, bare walls, and windows locked from within. Perhaps, if I were in a church with stained glass windows, crucifixes, and carvings, there would be less inclination to come over and chat. Thus, the room did not lend itself to reverence. Despite knowing that it’s the gathering of people that is the church and not the building, I wanted something that resembled a church.

The sound of pitter-pattering on my caravan window brought me back to the moment. Everything sounds louder in a modular home at dusk, and I moved into the sound of the old well by me. Its constant gurgling is like soothing balm for the soul. Carol taught me that if one pauses, nature can teach us a lot, and at that moment, the shapes and shadows of the bog presented themselves, declaring its winter beauty.

It isn’t just water in the old well; life is abundant, albeit dormant in winter. Rain sustains life, cleanses, and replenishes, and the water reflects the Heavens above. Now, I feel comfortable embracing the God of the universe — the One who made the stars and the rivers. For a long while, I worried that my tendency to find symbolism in nature was excessive, as some people in my former Baptist Church cautioned me, I was deviating into Paganism.

St Dominic’s Retreat Centre has since closed, and when I heard this sorrowful news, a knot of deep grief overwhelmed me. Its closure and the death of Carol signaled the end of an era. There would be no more meet-ups, no more visits, and no more walks around the garden. All that I have left are fragments of memories. As I stood looking out over the bog, the loneliness of thinking back to something no more overwhelmed me. The Irish word for this kind of loneliness is ‘cumhaidh,’ a feeling that runs in the blood of many Irish people.

I catch my reflection in the window, and I notice the webs fixed around my eyes. I am grateful that I have a God who shows me goodness through nature. Soon the snowdrops will show, and the beaches here will have people. Winter’s deepest truth is that everything passes, and when the wheel of the year is in winter, it will always turn to spring.

Thank you West Cork

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I turned the key and said ‘goodbye’.

It was thirteen years ago when I left Donegal to relocate to Bandon.  The air had that aroma, the one that comes when wet leaves begin to turn into new earth.  I got lost in the passing landscape as the train sped by.  ‘Things will be fine; things will be fine’ played repeatedly in my mind.’   I wasn’t too sure that would be the case.

I was returning to Co. Cork to begin my master’s in Digital Arts in the Humanities. My whole being ached by the deep wound of unemployment.  I had lost count of the innumerable applications I had sent. The days lay long and endless, and my self-worth was dwindling away daily.  I hoped that this master’s would release some sort of a future, again the pessimist in my voice was strong.

So, thirteen years later, here I am in the beautiful Sheep’s Head and once again I am relocating. Once more I am venturing out into the unknown and once again I am hoping for new experiences.   This time I am a little more optimistic.

Strange as it may seem I suppose this is my love letter to West Cork.  I write with more than a hint of fondness as I recall memorable years. The years here have been good.

It began with my master’s. My master’s year was certainly challenging.  I struggled from my first day.  I recall one Thursday morning standing outside the old library in Bandon at the end of a writing workshop, near to tears.  I believed failure was inevitable, my first module was in game theory, a subject which caused great panic because it was like navigating a brand-new world.  Furthermore, I had no idea what my thesis and digital artefact would be and to make matters worse I could not quit.  My CV did not need an extensive gaping gap of nothingness.  I was so gloomy that several people around me thought the course was too much for me and I ought to drop out. However, failure was not an option.  I chipped and chipped away – until.

One raven black night I was on the verge of giving up when I discovered ‘Pizap’.  Pizap is a user-friendly app which has blank canvases, backgrounds filters, text and stickers. The room was no longer shrouded in my grief as Pizap ignited an awakening.  This was something I could do.  I placed character stickers and speech bubbles on a background and the story –  the defeat of the XML monster by Zotera, Vector and Blog.  Full of delight I uploaded the image up to Facebook, my first own creation.  I felt as though I had scaled Mt Everest.   

Thus, I did not fail my master’s.   I even got a reasonably good mark for game theory. My thesis was on Storytelling in the Digital Age, and I created a comic for my digital artefact.    

So, I would like to take this opportunity to say ‘Thank you, West Cork’.  You have signposted me into both storytelling and comics and for the record I don’t use character stickers now. I draw them.  Nowadays, I am a self-employed creative practitioner in schools and libraries. I absolutely love working for myself and I have had the most magical and wonderful experiences in the world of storytelling and comic art.

The excitement of seeing my work in print makes my whole being bounce with joy . I recall being so overwhelmed with floating bubbles of joy when my maiden article was published in ‘Vox.’ Even when someone tried to conceal the magazine the sense of joy in me elbowed out any hurt that may have glued itself onto me.  It was a great feeling working with Andrew Donkin to produce my graphic story for ‘The Big Issue.’    Oh, and the thrill of working with other comic artists on a political zine highlighting the issue of violence towards women, in that still the streets are unsafe to walk. I swapped placard for pages to highlight an issue which gave me a great sense of achievement in that I was doing something worthwhile.  And, and, and, my very own story in the magnificent comic ‘Occupy, Occupy, Occupy’, which tells the stories of Scottish social movements. I am there, right there in the same comic magazine as my hero The Birdman of Pollok, Colin McLeod. I am so humbled by this.

There are so many memories of spinning stories, too many to mention but what I will say is that through storytelling I have met so many amazing people who have inspired me.    Even the sorrowful evening which I call ‘The Night of the Empty Chairs’, which I shall detail in a future blog proved fruitful despite the disappointment that no one turned up.  I gained so much on a personal and emotional level that I can now truthfully say that I am grateful for the experience.   Often growth comes from the dark and low places and painful though it may be, unfortunately necessary for personal evolution.

In addition, I have had so many great memories spinning stories in Glasgow as part of the ‘Little Donegal’ project.   I shall also write more on this in a future blog.  However, it is basically the stories about the Irish people who migrated to Govanhill and The Gorbals.  Hence the area became known as ‘Little Donegal’.

I was honoured to be asked to facilitate a workshop at COP26 in Glasgow. I had such a marvellous time.  Even though dark grey clouds spluttered down cold darts of rain, the atmosphere was warm.  I had so many conversations with people who detailed their lived experience of life in the Amazon, Australian Outback and the Indian Reservation.  I truly value listening to the stories of people.   Listening is an essential element in storytelling.

There is so much I can thank Co. Cork for, but this is a blog post and I desire it not to be too lengthy.   One thing I can say the last thirteen years I have lived life and did not just exist day to day like I did when I was unemployed. To anyone who is reading this and is in that situation I urge you to hang on, life can change, it only takes one key to unlock something, in my case a blank canvas and a handful of stickers, to spring you forward.

I shall conclude with the beautiful experience that I have had recently – eight weeks on The Sheep’s Head. From the outset it was temporary, a much needed haven away from the fast paced frenzied world, a place from which to see my school residencies through. I did not realise at the beginning that my heart is rooted in rural living. I appreciate the vast sky dotted with stars, pitch ebony black, and the sounds of animals and birds. My time on The Sheep’s Head was magical and it has undoubtedly changed me and no doubt I shall write more about it.  One thing I can say is that I no longer have any desire to live in a city or a town so I am intending to head to rural Donegal next year. Co. Cork is expanding with new builds and I just can’t cope with lines and lines of belching traffic. In addition, I have now grown in self-confidence and know I can live in a remote setting. So I am going to try rural life out by spending this  winter in a remote island. Of course, I value friendship, but I no longer crave people.  I am now rather choosey about who I invite into my circle. I have suffered at the hands of toxic people who dragged me down and I cherish peace.  Oh! I long for a simpler life.

The story continues.