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  August 18, 2008 11:07 PM


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I had a gentleman in with me yesterday - he has been attending therapy for nearly two months now suffering from depression. Following his session with me yesterday I was left with quite a lot of thought for reflection.

This gentleman had been in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during what we Irish euphemistically call "the troubles." We are great that way, we Irish. Imagine thrity years with bombs exploding randomly (some of them without warning) and shoot-outs between three militarised factions and we call it "the troubles." It is like the weather-man saying the weather this summer has been disappointing - as I said I could think of a much more appropriate description of the weather than that.

But anyway - to get back to what I was saying. Yesterday this man spoke with great feeling about the choices he made and the things he had done and how they were coming back to haunt him. He spoke about the times he gave people severe punishment beatings, and about the times he helped plant bombs that killed and maimed people. He never said whether he personally shot anyone but it would not surprise me if he had done so. He said he was following orders and doing what he had been directed to do. But, he added, that was really no excuse - the truth is he chose to follow orders and to do the things he had done. And, he added, he is sure that many of those did not deserve what he dished out to them - many were of mistaken identity and many others were innocent people caught in the crossfire or caught up in a no-warning bomb.  Now these choices were haunting him and causing him great distress.

After he had left I thought of what must be going through that man's mind as he faced the approach of death. He may live for another twenty or thirty years - he is only in his early fifties. But these deeds are a burden to be carrying with him to his grave. I can understand his depression - that he may live another thirty years and have to struggle with these memories each day. I could understand a man being tortured like that contemplating suicide - and this man does think about it every day because to end it seems better than to live with it. And there is nothing I, as a therapist, can do other than sit with him as he works his way through the maze of horrific memories that makes up his conscience at the moment.

And thinking of him my thoughts turned to death. When my dad died, and likewise when my mother and another dear friend died, my thoughts were on where they are now and how my life must go on without them. And no matter how painful it was letting them go, the sadness was always mellowed with the thought that they are gone to a better place and my life continues.

But yesterday my thoughts were a bit different. I was thinking that when my time comes and the lights go out on me I will never walk this road again - I will never again set eyes on the mountain up behind Belfast; I will never again walk in the forest park - I will never again look upon this beautiful land of Ireland. That thought did not make me sad - it frightened me because so much security in life comes from what we know; and so much joy comes from absorning the beauty of the world that surrounds us.

And I thought to myself that the best way of preparing to face death was to walk lightly as I journey through life. That gentleman inflicted heavy pain on people - this was indeed heavy material. His footsteps shook the ground he walked on and now they are returning to haunt him. As he faces death he carries very heavy memories - like footprints planted on this earth that were so heavy they cannot easily be erased. I must walk lightly so that my footprints will not be a burden on anyone. Only love treads lightly - hatred and anger and evil are heavy footprints.


If my prints are light, then letting go of the earth I love may not be so frightening. If, on the other hand, they are heavy prints I will fear facing the future burdend down by memories I would rather not have.

Have a good tuesday - and let you footprints today be light.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 17, 2008 10:52 PM


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Monday again - another beginning and another week. I hope this week will be good for you and that you and I will be good.

It was a strange weekend for me. We had torrential rain here on Saturday - and when I say torrential I mean torrential. We had a weather warning for between two and three inches of rain on Saturday and actually got a lot more than that. It rained all Friday night and Saturday morning - but that was ordinary Irish rain. But then, about 1.30pm Saturday the heavens opened and it became so heavy I could barely see the houses across the street from me. A newly opened underpass here in Belfast quickly filled up and when the downpour ended at around 7.30pm the underpass was under twenty feet of water. I am lucky insofar the estate I live in is built on an incline and I am half way up that incline - the people at the foot of it were flooded.

But that was Saturday. The other news was that over the weekend the Irish singer, Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners, passed away. He has suffering from throat cancer - not surprising I suppose considering he was singing for nearly fifty years. Ronnie was really the face of the Dubliners - not that I wish to imply that he was the best of the group. There was Barney McKenna regarded as the best Banjo player of his time, and then there was the late Luke Kelly who was a great tenor. But the huge eyes and the gritty rasping voice of Ronnie made him stand out the most.

In an interview before he died Ronnie admitted to being very scared of death. A few months previously the famous Irish journalist and writer, Nuala O'Faolain also died from cancer and in a radio interview before she died she too spoke of her fear of death, and of how death seemed to make nonsense of life.

There was a time when I myself was terribly scared of death - that was when I was quite young. I think I would have been about nine or ten years of age at the time. I wonder how many people are scared of death at that young age? A classmate of mine was killed in an accident and another was drowned when washed out to sea by strong undercurrents when I was about that age. Their deaths made death very real to me and it was not a very comfortable thought.

Since then I have lost much of my fear of death - maybe I shouldn't have lost it. At times it strikes me that it must be a very lonely moment, the moment the lights go out. No matter who is there holding my hand I will have to make a journey and make it on my own - and I do not know the way.

Did it ever seem to you that the unknown was a dark place. I remember before going to the Philippines I wondered what it would be like and all I could imagine as darkness. I don't mean to say it was a bad place - it was just unknown to me. The same was true when I first visited the U.S., London and Berlin - trying to imagine what these places would be like left me with a picture of darkness. That is how the unknown is always pictured in my imagination. It is sort of like being in a dark room and trying to work out where the door is. Then I arrived in Manila, or New York or wherever it was and behold the sun was shining and the place was bright. Well, death has the same image in my imagination - the lights go out and I gotta find my way.

I know that there are stories of people who had near death experiences and they spoke about going towards a light. When I read those I was comforted - death was a journey towards the light and not a leap into the dark. And then I thought - that is fine for them - but what about me? Will it be the same? I don't know and I won't know until I get there. That's the problem. It is a bit like Hamlet who contemplated ending it all and he said "To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye - there's the rub!"

Well - anxiety about the unknown future can cripple us. So, as we are told in the Gospel, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Let me make sure that whatever I do this day will be done to the best of my ability. I know I am limited by many factors and therefore whatever I do will be of limited value. But, as long as I can say that it is done to the best of my ability then, when death comes I will do that too to the best of my ability. Death will not be something that happens to me - it will be something I do as the great final act of life. As Macbeth said about king Duncan after he had killed him: "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it."

Have a good Monday - let this be the beginning of another good week for you.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 14, 2008 11:21 PM


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Friday again - I hope that this has been a good week for you. I know that I have complained a lot about the rain this past week - but then, complaining about the weather is our national pastime here in Ireland. As someone once said - in Ireland the weather always makes for a safe topic of conversation whereas to talk about politics or religion can be dangerous.

I had a lady in for therapy yesterday - she has been attending for some time now but yesterday she began talking about her niece's wedding which she attended since our previous meeting. She spoke about how beautiful her niece was, and how afraid she was that the man may not be good enough for her. I listened as she expressed her fears and when a break arrived I wondered if maybe she was feeling a sense of loss that her own marriage had broken up. You see - she had been married to a soldier for twenty one years and then left him because he beat her a lot.

She thought for a few moments and agreed that she felt the pain of loss and disillusionment - and even at her neice's wedding she could feel the bitterness rising in her. She described how her husband beat her on their wedding night and regularly for the entire time she was with him. But, she added, being a soldier he knew where to hit her so that no one would see the bruises. He used to slap her face but not hard enough to leave a mark, but he would punch her hard on the body. Why, I wondered, did she stay so long in the marriage? Because she kept trying to work out what she had done wrong.

This raised two issues in my mind. The first is no matter what she may have done she did not deserve to be hit - no one deserves to be hit. The other, and the more important, is why she presumed she had done something wrong, and this is the issue we pursued. She automatically presumed she had done something wrong because why otherwise would he hit her. She kept throwing that round in her head - why would he hit her if she had not done something wrong. Eventually she concluded that she had not done anything wrong - that he hit her because he was a bad man. She never even thought of that in all the twenty one years she was with him. And yet, despite coming to that conclusion, she still wondered what she could have done to please him. She came to see that there was a difference between what she felt deep inside and what she knew - she knew she had not done anything wrong but she felt she should have been able to please him more than she had done. The dichotomy between knowledge and feeling became apparent to her and this is something we will need to delve further into as therapy proceeds.

Last night as I was reflecting over my day's work I couldn't but think of how often women get beaten and mistreated by their husbands. It is something I find difficult to comprehend - I know it happens and have come across it so often in therapy. Why are so many men folk so bad to women? And I thought of my parents - I am sure they had their differences but I never heard a harsh word uttered between them. Any differences they may have had were private and never expressed in front of us. And I know my dad and I know he would never have dreamed of lifting his hand to a woman - I doubt if her ever lifted his hand to anyone. He was just not a violent man. I would like to think that I have inherited some of his attitude - an attitude of reverence and respect towards people in general and especially towards women. He was never a chauvinistic pig of a man who belittled women by patronising them and treating them as if they are helpless creatures - you always knew from him that he regarded my mother as his equal and would never tolerate any cheek from us in relation to her. I remember on one occasion when I was in a bad mood - I was about nine or ten years of age at the time - and without thinking I said something ill-mannered towards her. He called me aside and said "Brendan, keep this in mind. What you say to your mother is between you and her, but what you say to my wife is between you and me. Let me never hear you speak like that to her again."  I'm telling you but that simple statement sorted me out rightly. 

Today I thank God for the example of respect he always displayed - an example I would wish to emulate. I wish that I and all men would be as gentle and as respectful towards women as he was to my mother. 

Well - it is Friday and the working week is almost over.  I pray that we all will be able to relax and gather our strength throughout the weekend and be refreshed for another week. Have a good Friday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 13, 2008 11:04 PM


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Good morning again - I will not delay you this morning because I am short of time and you too may well be in need of a break from my meandering thoughts.

Yesterday morning I mentioned how I now know what Noah felt when he looked out the window of the ark and discovered the rain had stopped and the flood waters were receding. After what seemed like weeks of constant rain and thick cloud cover, we had a bright and a dry morning here yesterday. I'm afraid, however, that it did not last. We had a few hours of sunshine and then the rains came back and are forecast to last until Sunday at least. And it is quite cool - if it got much cooler we would need to switch on the heat.

But enough of that - you must surely have tired of my moaning and groaning about the weather by now. And I bet that we here are not the only people who are suffering out-of-season weather. But it is not all moan and groan. As I look out the window to see more rain falling and thick clouds overhead I am thankful that I am alive to see it - and thankful that I have the sight that sees it. And above all else, I am thankful that I can be thankful. 

Being thankful that I am thankful may sound like an odd statement - but I work with many people who suffer from intense depression and they are incapable of feeling thankful for anything - they are incapable of seeing anything to be thankful about. That is what depression does to one and I am thankful that I am not depressed like that, and that I can be thankful even for small mercies let alone big ones. A small mercy would be to win the lottery whereas being alive and healthy with good friends are big mercies.

So, despite the rain that depresses many I leave you with the message that I am genuinely grateful to you for being my friend and for always being there when I need you. I hope I do not bore you each morning with my greetings - it is just my way of keeping contact with real good people and of saying that I am glad we are here for one another. Have a good Thursday - have a truly blessed day today.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 12, 2008 11:13 PM


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It is a cool but beautiful morning here this morning - much more like an October morning than like August. But the sky is clear and blue for a change. This makes me imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his group in the Ark when they looked out and saw the deluge had stopped and the floods were receding. Not that I believe the Bible story is one of historical truth - it is theological rather than historical. But it does lift the spirits to see the beauty of a lovely morning - and the spirits feel free to breathe once again. The night has passed and the light of day has arrived; the rain clouds have gone and the sun is shining; the depression has lifted and the heart sings once again; evil no longer dominates our hearts and virtue and goodness reign once again.

Yesterday I commented that we do not know whatever it is we do not wish to know. It is our nature as humans that there be a consistency between our knowledge and our behaviour. I think it was Thomas Aquinas who, many centuries ago, said that we cannot choose to do something unless we see it as being good - either good in itself of good for us. So, even an evil action must somehow be seen to be good before we will choose to do it. I will not kill someone, for example, unless somehow I see that action as being beneficial to me or beneficial for someone - or unless I see it as being a good thing to do. It does not have to be good - the behaviour or action does not have to be good in order for me to choose it - what is required is that I see it to be good.

A deeply embedded need in each one of us us is the need to protect ourselves against anxiety. This goes right back to our childhood - right back even to when we are newly born. We experience things like hunger and wet or dirty nappies and we do not understand what is wrong. Melanie Klein, the child psychologist/psychoanalyst pointed out that the infant does not know what is making it feel this way and so fears that something may be about to annihilate it. All anxiety is related to this fear of death. Everytime we feel anxious this anxiety relates with our unconscious infantile fear of death. Hence, we instinctively try to protect ourselves against all anxiety.

When we combine the need for consistency between knowledge and behaviour with our need to protect ourselves against anxiety we come to realise that sometimes a way of diminishing anxiety is by not knowing something - when we do not know there is no anxiety-provoking need to act. A psychological defence kicks in such as denial or intellectualisation or projection or whatever - anything to keep anxiety out of our lives.  In other words, we choose not to know something as a means of reducing or avoiding the anxiety of having to do something about it. 

Now - take this a step further. In the gospel Jesus speaks about sin and he said that no matter how great our sin it can always be forgiven. But he then added an important statement - he said that there actually is a sin that can never be forgiven. Not many realise this - that Jesus actually spoke about an unforgivable sin. He said that a sin against the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven. Of course when we look more deeply at this we see that the holy spirit is the spirit of Knowledge and Truth and Courage. When we reject the Holy Spirit we will never arrive at the insight that moves us to ask forgiveness. A sin against the Holy spirit is basically what the German theologian, Bernard Haring, called a fundamental option against God. A fundamental option is an irreversible position we adopt.

It is amazing the thought and reflections that a simple statement can bring. A simple statement made yesterday that we do not know what we do not want to know led my reflections down the path of psychological and theological insights like this.

Today is Wednesday - may it be a day when reflection on the intricacies of life lead us to a greater appreciation of the truth because, after all, the truth shall make us free just as the end of the deluge allowed Noah and his companions to be free to leave their imprisonment in the Ark.

Have a real good day today.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 11, 2008 11:19 PM

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It is tuesday and the week is fast moving on. I hope that this will be a good day for you - just as I hope yesterday as also a good day.

While each of us lives in our own local world with our own immediate concerns and worries, we also live in a huge global world in which concerns that are far distant from us affect our lives. For example, the cost of crude oil has a powerful impact on us and problems in the American housing market impacts on the world economy. These are but two examples of how we are affected by events far from our own local world.

What concerns me at the moment is that the global world we live in appears to be becoming an increasingly dangerous place. There are the obvious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which may broaden out at any stage to include neighbouring countries like Kuwait, Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia and Israel. Now there is the Russian military incursion into the sovereign state of Georgia ostensibly to defend the ethnic Russians living in the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Kasbakhia. And only the other day Charles posted a CNN news item about the deployment of American Aircraft carriers in the gulf area as if preparing for military activities possibly in relation to Iran.

These are dangerous times.

Watching Western television the reports out of Georgia indicate that Russian troops have intentions other than the protection of ethnic Russians living in Georgia - that they seem intent on destroying the Georgian military and government so as to prevent Georgia from joining the NATO block. In the process they have been reported as being guilty of inflicting untold grief, death and hardship on the civilian population. On the other hand, watching Russian television we are told a different story - a story of the terrible treatment of the ethnic Russian population by the Georgian military wth no mention being made of the casualties caused by the Russian troops. People living in the western world will obviously choose to believe what they are told just as the Russian people will believe the stories from Russian television.

Who was it said that the first casualty in any war is the truth?

What makes this world a dangerous place is the absence of truth. The population in each side is told what the authorities want them to believe so that their actions will be supported rather than challenged. The same happened in pre-war Germany where the population had no idea of what Hitler was doing. And, of course, the on-going debate between Western intelligence and the Hans Blinx investigations over the presence or not of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the invasion is another example of truth being sacrificed. It is a psychological truth that when we are willing to believe something we will believe it, just as when we are not willing to believe something we will remain in a state of denial.

This clouding of the truth of what is happening, and of what the true intentions of people are, makes this world a dangerous place. As we live in our local worlds we oftentimes prefer not to know what the intentions of others in the global world of politics are so that we can remain in a state of psychological comfort - as if we really believe that what we do not know will never hurt us.

Only yesterday a colleague of mine told me she had never before heard of a country called Georgia - an admission that really surprised me. How many of us really want to know what is happening beyond our shores? There may be little we can do to alter the course of world events - but we can make it our business to be aware of what is going on in the global world and to try and discover the truth behind these events. It is only when we make the truth our business that we can hope to have any influence over events - otherwise we will always choose to believe those who keep us psychologically comfortable irrespective of how dangerous our world really is.

Let this tuesday be a day when we commit ourselves to always telling the truth and to wanting always to know the truth.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 10, 2008 11:29 PM


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Good morning - here we go again at the start of another working week. Not only is it the start of another working week, but here in Ireland it is also the start of another week that is forecast to be wet. This must surely be one of the wettest summers on record here. I was watching a football game in Dublin on TV last Saturday and at times the rain was so heavy you could barely see the players. And the cloud cover was so thick that they had to switch on the floodlights at 5.00pm. And this was only the beginning of August, for God's sake.

From what  I hear, parts of the U.S. are having very little by the way of rain and very high temperatures. Are we here in Ireland stealing your rain or are you stealing our sunshine. I love you so much that if I could I would send you lots of rain and take some of your surplus sunshine. But, I'm afraid, the weather is one thing over which we have no control. We may be able to inadvertently effect climate change - more by default than by design - but I fear we cannot move the rain from one area of the world to another. If we could we would go a long way to solving the problems of drought and famine in Africa.

I was watching the USPGA from Detroit over the wekend and, as an Irishman, I was proud to see our own Padraig Harrington win. This was his third Major title overall and his second in succession having won the British Open last month. Listening to the players afterwards I noted how Sergio Garcia, who had held the lead for a while and ended up joint second place with Ben Curtis, said that some things hd not gone his way and they had gone Padraig's way. On the other hand Padraid admitted that he had fired some of the wildest shot ever seen on a golf course but through sheer will power had pulled himself back into contention.

That reminded me of when I used to play college hurling - a sport we play here in Ireland. After winning a game at the death which we ought to have won comfortable I said afterwards that we were lucky. The coach went through me like a dose of heavy laxative telling me that we never win a game by luck. We win some by playing far superior than the other team, and we win some by being able to take advantage of the mistakes of the other side. And that is how we won that game. Coming in to the last minute of the game we were trailing by two points. A high dropping ball came into the goalmouth area of the other team and the central defender put his hand up to grab it. He normally would have caught it but this one he fumbled and as the ball fell from his grip I instinctively drew on it and it hit the back of the opponents net for a goal - and one goal in hurling equals three points. So we won by a point. The coach was right - that was not luck, that was the ability to take advantage of an error by the other side.

Why am I saying this? I'm saying it because there are many things in life over which we have little or no control - the weather is one of them. But we have control over our actions and our behaviour, and our maturity and moral development hinges on our willingness to accept responsibility for these. Sergio did not lose the USPGA by bad luck - he lost it by making elementary mistakes whereas Padraig won it by undoing the elementary mistakes he had made and through will power he played powerful golf when it was required of him.

Well, as we begin another week it is my wish that this be a fruitful week whereby we make our days count rather than just counting our days to the next weekend. May this be a week we look back on with satisfaction.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 07, 2008 11:02 PM


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I just love that Friday feeling. The working week is almost over and I am free for two days to do whatever I like. Of course, it never ever turns out that straightforward because pleasure anticipated is always greater that the reality. But the anticipation of relaxation is enough to make that Friday feeling special.

Well, today is the start of the Olympics in Beijing. I hope they go well for the sake of the athletes who have spent so much time and energy in preparing - not to talk about the money spent. I also hope they go well for the sake of the people of China who have looked forward to this event for the past seven or eight years, who have put enormous effort into the preparation and who will, no doubt, extend the warmest of Chinese welcomes to the visitors.

I have always loved the Chinese people and always wanted to visit there ever since reading the of travels of Marco Polo when I was a child. I was almost there once - in fact I was there. I visited Hong Kong when it was a British colony, and stayed in Fanling which was right on the border between the New Territories and Communist China. I had an aunt who was a missionary there in Fanling. I found the Chinese people so hospitable and so affectionate. Maybe someday I will be given the privilege of visiting that beautiful country.

It saddens me so much to think of such a beautiful people being denied basic human rights of free speech and religious freedom. I know that different cultures have different social networks and different political systems. But irrespective of culture and history, people are people whether they be rich or poor, warm hearted or cold, religious or otherwise, from a very ancient culture or from the New World, or whatever their background - people deserve to be treated with the utmost respect and accorded the dignity that is rightfully theirs as humans. 

There is not much I as an individual can do to bring about change in a country as far distant and as large as China. But with the eyes of the world focused on China I pray that sufficient people worldwide will be moved to play a role together in bringing about a more humane regime governing both China and Tibet.

And not only is the need for change in China. It would be very wrong to imagine that China and China alone is in need of change. There is an entire world order that ignores the poverty, starvation and disease in Africa. This is in need of change. There is the terrible divide between rich and poor; there is the ignorant discrimination against people with physical and mental disability; there is the total abuse of the resources of this world leading to the great danger for us all. All these and many more are examples of a world order that is in need of change. And this change will come about only through attitudinal change on the part of everyone. I pray for the attitude that holds the denial of basic human rights, the ignoring of the needs of the less fortunate and the abuse of our world as intolerable and no longer acceptable. Am I praying for too much. I certainly hope not for the world cannot afford anything less than this. As, in the Olympic movement, we celebrate the common bond of humanity that unites us, let us pray together for such changes.

Have a real good Friday, and may the peace that we all have a right to be ours.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 06, 2008 11:14 PM


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We had some torrential rain here last night - it is still raining as I write this but it is more of our normal Irish rain now. But last night at midnight the heavens opened and it just bounced hard and heavy off the ground. We certainly are getting more tropical style rain these days than we used to - I only wish we also got the tropical heat with it.

I won't delay you this morning because I am running a bit late - I think the rain must have kept me awake a bit too late last night and so I was a bit late waking up this morning. But as I was reflecting while having breakfast this morning I was thinking over an incident yesterday. Well - no, it wasn't an incident at all. It is just that at one stage yesterday I was taking a 'breather' (if there is such a word) and looking out the window. Me eyes fell on an elderly gentleman across the street as he hobbled up the road to wherever he was going. He was obviously struggling - may have been suffering from severe arthritis or something like that. I would guess he was in his mid to late seventies. As I watched him it struck me that he was once a baby and he grew slowly into a boy and then an adolescent and a man and is now in his twilight years.

As that thought sank in I found myself feeling one with that man. He, like me, has a history. He has a history that is very different from my history. He has memories of his younger years - memories he treasures and other memories he would rather be without. Are we not all the same.

And as I watched him with these thoughts in my mind I felt a great respect for that man - not that I knew anything about him to be respected. No - it was greater than that - it was more than respecting him for things he may or may not have done - it was respecting him for being a person who, like me, struggles through life.

Why did I think these thoughts as I watched that man? Is it important? No - it is not important why I thought like that - what is important is that I did think these thoughts, and as they flashed through my mind I could feel deep in my soul a bond with him. Like me, he has his feelings, his ambitions and desires, his needs, his worries and his loved ones whom he loves and who love him. And when he passes from this life someone's world will forever change. Why should I respect him any less than I respect myself - any less than I would wish to be respected myself.

I'm glad I thought those thoughts. I think I am a better person because of them.

Have a good Thursday - take care, be good and stay safe.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 05, 2008 11:17 PM


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Good morning - it is Wednesday and midweek. The weekend is not too far away now, thank God.

Today in the calendar of the Catholic Church we celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration. I love this Gospel story for a very strange reason. According to the narrative, Jesus took Peter, James and John up a mountain where he was transfigured before them and was seen in the company of Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets on which the faith of Israel was based. When they were there Peter suggested that they stay there - it was a pretty comfortable place to be far away from the trials and the troubles of life.

But Jesus took them back down the mountain, and on the way down he began to tell them about his crucifixion. Peter did not like this one bit and objected to it saying it must not happen. Jesus then reprimanded him saying "Get behind me Satan." Not that he was implying Peter was Satan - but what Peter was saying was not from God.

I like this story - and there are many other stories I like about Peter. Take the trial of Jesus - when Peter was questioned he denied even knowing Jesus - he was frightened and lied to protect himself. Yet, this was the same Peter who shortly beforehand said he would die for Jesus.

What I like about Peter is that he is so human. Very often when we read about great saints and holy people they are portrayed as almost superhuman beings -they are presented as people with no weakness at all. It is hard to identify with such people. We have our weaknesses and failings and when we read great stories of great saints it seems that we can never be that good - they seem to be a completely different breed of people altogether.

The Gospel presents Peter as a man of great passion and great fear.  He was a man very aware of his own human weaknesses - when he was first invited by Jesus to join him he said he was a sinner and not worthy to be one of the chosen twelve. Yet, he was so honoured to be accepted that he professed his undying love for Jesus - and then denied ever knowing him. And in the story of the Transfiguration he showed that he did not want to hear bad news - he wanted to live in some form of utopian heavenly place far removed from the harsh realities of life.

Now - that is the Peter I can identify with. At times I too want to be cocooned in a comfortable place. I have frequently said that once we are born we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back into the womb - back into the safe place. At times, the difficulties of living and of making good choices make me want to escape. I also have to live with people whose opinions are not the same as mine and I have to accept that - and accept that their opinion prevails when mine is rejected. And, let's face it, I don't have to be paranoid to know that there are people who do not like me and who might even delight in my sorrow. Not everyone wishes me well - I know that and I got to live with that too without allowing that knowledge to turn me sour or bitter or fill me with hatered and anger. Yes - at times it would be nice to build a tent on top of the mountain where nohing can upset my equilibrium.

But I must struggle on like Peter and make the best of what I have been given. And that is alright - that is what builds strength and character. And in accepting my own failings I can empathise with others. I do believe that our weakness is our strength - in discovering and acknowledging our weakenesses we can become strong like Peter, the Rock.

I like Peter - I like him because I can identify with him. There was nothing grandiose about the man - he was like an uncut diamond that was crude and had no beauty. Yes, I can identify with that. Of all the saints whose lives I have read about, Peter is the most human - and he is the one whose life tells that it not not just alright to be humsn - it is actually what God wants us to be. The uncut diamond can become an invaluable treasure; we, by dealing with our selfishness and weaknesses, can become good.

Have another good day today and remember - it is cool to be human.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 04, 2008 11:26 PM


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Good morning my dear friends.  This morning as I opened my inbox I received news from a dear friend of mine that Dariana had passed away on August 3. Dariana had been on my friend list for a long time now - and I knew she was suffering from terminal lung cancer. We corresponded occasionally, and when she was diagnosed with cancer she opened a Cancer Care websit which she invited me to join. I gladly joined her website and occasionally corresponded with her through it. But I must admit that it was only occasionally I did so.

What stunned me about the message in my inbox this morning is that yesterday as I was sending my morning greetings to her I wondered how she was and said a prayer that God protect and keep her safe. I sent her my greetings every morning for as long as I have been greeting my friends - but it was yesterday that I wondered and prayed. I did not know she had just passed away but I did think to pray. Yes, I believe in telepathy.

As I think of this, I remember all my friends. We pass the road of life but once and we meet and make many friends on the way. Some become bosom friends and others are like ships passing in the night. Let us wish each other well along the road.

Let us remember that even those we think least often about are as precious as you and I are. They have loved ones they care for and who care for them - they are the centre of someone's world. Why should we think any less of them. They have hopes and ambitions - they have needs and desires - and they feel the way you and I feel; they know joy and the know sorrow; they know laughter and they know grief.

It would be great if we could remember each and everyone every day. But we are human - not divine. Maybe we cannot remember each one every day - but we can remember our friends on a daily basis even if we do not remember each one individually by name. We can think and pray that God keep our friends safe - and that he also keep those we dislike safe too in the palm of his hand for they too are as precious to him and to their loved ones as you and I are.

Have a wonderful day today. Thank you for listening to my meandering thoughts. And cast a thought for Dariana and her loved ones. May she rest in peace, and may God comfort them in their sorrow.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 August 03, 2008 10:46 PM


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Here we are again - back at the start of another week. I hope this will be a good and a productive week for you. We are having a lot of rain here in Ireland - the past two days I was caught out in a downpour more reminiscent of a tropical rainstorm than of the gentle rain that is said to fall in Ireland -  and each time I had to stop driving because the rain was so heavy I could no longer see where I was going. And I am not the only one - most drivers stopped until the heavy rain eased up a bit. That happened me regularly in the Philippines during the rainy season - it never happened me here before. And according to the weather man it is going to be more of this during this coming week. He described the weather for June and July - and for the start of August - as 'disappointing.' Disappointing is not the word I would have chosen - but then, the word I would have chosen would not have been allowed on television.

The gospel at Mass yesterday was the story of the feeding of the five thousand people who had come to hear what Jesus had to say. Each time I listen to a gospel story something new strikes me. What struck me yesterday was that Jesus told the apostles to go and feed the hungry. We so often think of how Jesus worked a miracle to feed those people. But we should not overlook the fact that he told them to do it - and in that way he told us to feed the hungry.

I know that so often we think in terms of giving charitably to feed the hungry - giving to charitable groups who collect funds to help fight world poverty. But I think that the story involves more than that - I think it actually involves a changed mind-set about the world order where the poor get poorer and greater in numbers, and the rich get richer and fewer in numbers. I suppose where it comes home very much to me at present is the push for  the development of bio-fuels. While this is being put down as an ecologically friendly policy, the truth of the matter is it will push up world prices of food because so much of the food produced will be used for fuel properties rather than as food. And who will suffer most - well, it won't be the Western world where obesity is an inceasingly serious problem. Of course, it will be the poorer nations who already suffer food shortages.

Many people who come for therapy have said that they cannot believe in the existence of a God who allows so many people to suffer - if God was a loving God he would have intervened to save these people from pain. The fact that they continue to suffer means there is no loving God. But, what strikes me from the gospel yesterday is that when God intervened it was to tell us to look after these people. I wonder what would have happened in the gospel story if the apostles told Jesus to go feed them himself - that it had nothing to do with them? If they refused to respond to the request I wonder what would have happened? I think we may have the answer to that question when we look at the present situation in the world - the people would have gone hungry.

Just a thought to start the week - have a good day today because a good start to the week is the beginning of a good week.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 31, 2008 11:13 PM

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It's Friday and it's August - where does the week go and where does the year go. It is hard to believe that we are already moving towards the end of summer. We here can notice a shortening of the days and a lengthening of the nights.

There is not much that we can be assured of anymore when it comes to seasonal change - these past number of years the summer has tended to be very wet whereas it used to be dry and sunny. But the one thing that never changes is the lengthening of the days as we move towards summer followed by a shortening of the days as we move away from summer. The climate may be changing as we feel the effects of global warming, but the one thing that is stable and reliable is our orbit around the sun.

As I reflected on this today it struck me how our world may change from day to day and week to week, and how depression may set in with the onset of winter. The one thing that we should strive to hold firm to despite our ever changing world is how we centre our lives around or God and our value system.  

Adhering to our values is never easy. It is relatively easy to espouse the values of love, justice, equality and community. But we all have needs and our needs are not always supportive of these values. This arises because of the dichotomy between what we want on an emotional level and what we profess to want on a rational level. Our needs such as our need of achievement or power or recognition, or our need to be loved and our sexual needs etc can be so focused on self and on personal security and self-esteem, and can be so driven by powerful emotional energy demanding immediate gratification, that they strongly resist being subjected to the more reasonable values.

Adhering to our values always requires sacrifice - sacrifice being the submission of our needs to the demands of our values whenever our needs and our values are in conflict. Our values offer us stability - just as our orbit around the sun is the one stable feature in our ever-changing world.

I wish you a good day today and a restful weekend. And may August be a good month to us all.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 30, 2008 10:59 PM



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Good morning - it is thursday which means that tomorrow is Friday. But not only is today Thursday and that last day of July, but it is also the day the Catholic Church celebrates the memory of St. Ignatius of Loyola. He was the founder of the Society known as the Companions of Jesus - better known as the Jesuit Fathers. I always take note of this day because I regard him as the first real psychologist. I know that most people regard modern psychology as having begun with Sigmund Freud, but we should never overlook the influence of St. Ignatius almost 400 years earlier.

While he wrote in the language of the times he was committed to alerting us to the fact that there are powers within us that influence what we do even though they lie outside the realms of our immediate understanding. He dedicated his life to helping people discover these hidden forces through what he called the "rules for the discernment of spirits."  And he was adamant that the human condition is neither all good nor all bad, which means no one is either completely good or completely bad - but that there are opposing influences that completely penetrate every aspect of our lives, and our life-journey is lived out in this dialectical opposition that exists within us. He may have described this in the language of religion - but what he taught is very compatible with what modern psychology teaches.

I find it sad that both psychology and theology are presented as opposing sciences. They are not in opposition to one another - theologians and psychologists may be opposed to each other but their sciences should not be. Each science is a search for truth. So often, however, both psychology and theology are used for the purpose of controlling peoples minds rather than for discovering truth. Each has much to offer to the other.

Today as the Jesuit Fathers celebrate the memory of their founder I will celebrate the influence of God in my life and the lives of us all as well as celebrating the growth of psychology which helps us understand the actions of the human mind because it is when we understand the mind that we better understand the spirit.

Have a good thursday and let it be another day in our journey towards self-understanding and an understanding of truth.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 28, 2008 11:17 PM

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Good morning - it is Tuesday and it is July 29th. In the calendar of saints of the Catholic church we celebrate the feast of St. Martha today. I really like Martha.  I think she is a wonderful and most likeable saint. Saints may be admirable people - but sometimes it can be hard to actually like them - but Martha is an exception to that rule. Why do I say that?

Well, let's look at the story. On one occasion when Jesus was heading to Jerusalem he dropped in to visit his dear friends, Mary and Martha, in the village of Bethany that was a few kilometers distant from Jerusalem. The story tells us that Mary sat beside Jesus listening to him while Martha was busy in the kitchen. Eventually Martha got fed up and complained that Mary was doing nothing while she herself was up to her neck in the kitchen preparing something to eat - and she asked Jesus to tell Mary to move her a***. Jesus told her that she was busy about many things while Mary had chosen the better role. So, it seems Jesus praised the lazy one and criticised the busy one. What a strange thing to do.

Let's take a look again. There is no mention of the twelve apostles - just Jesus. So - just one visitor to be catered for. Do you think Martha really wanted another woman in the kitchen - I don't think so. Do you think she was swamped with work and up to her neck - I don't think so. I think she was just jealous that Mary was getting all the attention and she herself was getting none. She was looking attention. So Jesus told her that what Mary was doing was the better thing - Mary was paying attention to Jesus whereas Martha was busy trying to get attention to herself. Now the story makes sense.

Aren't we all a bit like that - don't we often go in search of praise and attention. So often, we do the right thing but for the wrong reason - Martha did the right thing in preparing a meal but she did it for the wrong reason. I like her because she reminds me of me. We all have the strength of virtues and the weakness of needs and the virtues and needs interpenetrate one another through and through - and that is what it is to be human. That is why saints like Martha are so likable - they show us that it is alright to be human.

So, today enjoy being human and let us never get discouraged about having human weaknesses. But let us try to ensure that our weaknesses and defect don't interfere too much with our search for the true meaning of life. Have a good Tuesday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 27, 2008 11:12 PM



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For some reason I was loathe to get out of bed this morning - and that is unusual for me. I am normally a morning person - so why did I want to stay on in bed. I asked myself that question while getting shaved an dressed and having breakfast.  In listening to what was going on inside me in order to learn why I was reluctant to get out of bed I came to the conclusion that I wasn't so much reluctant to get out of bed as much as I just didn't want to go into work. I wanted a day off. By golly - that is some cheek seeing as I am only recently back after a two week vacation.

But we have had some lovely weather these past few days - and when you consider the terrible weather we have been having all summer I suppose it is but natural that a guy would want to take advantage of any bit of sunshine we do get. I did a lot of gardening over the weekend - I really love that. It is not that there is an awful lot to do at this time of year - it is more tidying the garden up, cutting the grass, dead-heading the flowers and removing weeds etc. But I just love it and could spend all my free time at it.

I remember when I was young I always had this dream of being a farmer and working with animals and working the land. Of course, in those days everything was a dream because life lay ahead of me and I was enthusiastic about everything. I wanted to be a train driver, an air pilot, a soldier etc. etc. And would you believe this - I even wanted to be Pope. But the one thing that kept returning was a farmer. And the one thing I never dreamed of becoming was a psychotherapist. Life has a strange way about it - the things we dream of becoming so often remain dreams and life has a habit of carrying us down undreamed-of paths.

You know - if I was living in Old Testament times I probably would see the hand of God in all of this.  I might even try to describe this in terms of receiving a vision like Abraham of old - not that I believe for one minute that I am that important but because it would be my way of saying that God wanted this of me even though I wanted something different. And who said that this is not what God wanted of me? I know that very often people tend to attribute to God things that they cannot otherwise explain, just as in ancient times people regarded earthquakes, hurricanes and disease as punishments for sin. But, when life leads me down a path I had not expected, and when I choose this path, who am I to say it was all my choice and God had no hand in it? After all, he gave me talents I use and without which I would not be any good in this career.

Maybe he did guide me and maybe he didn't. But this much I do believe - he wants me to give my best shot at whatever career I find myself in. God does not want half measures - he wants my best simply because the effort I put into my life determines the type of person I become. At times I will want to give half measures; at times I will be tempted to pick up the phone and phone in sick even though I am just lazy. But that is not what God wants of me - and neither is it what I want of myself. So, up I get despite the good weather and despite the attraction of staying at home - up I get and head on in to work. And I do so happily and without any reluctance or resistance in me. The temptation is there - but surely God would not begrudge me the pleasure of having a wee bit of temptation!! What counts, however, is the attitude of willingness - this is what makes a Monday a more enjoyable day; it is the resistance that makes Monday a day people just do not like.

I wish you a good and a happy Monday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 24, 2008 11:12 PM

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Well, today we mark the end of another week. For me it has been a difficult week - difficult in the sense of being very busy and tiring. But it has also been a satisfying week. At the end of each day as I sat down to reflect on the day I just had, I felt tired and weary - physically tired and mentally weary. But I also felt at peace with myself and satisfied that I had been there for those who came for therapy, and I sensed that I had succeeded in helping them.  

One of the aspects of therapy is you can never actually quantify success. It is amazing how often the funders - be they government departments or private agencies - expect you to quantify success.  I get the impression they view it like building houses - they supply the bricks and then enquire how many houses you built and how fast you built them. They just do not understand therapy. As I sit down in the evening to reflect on my day's work I cannot quantify success. And yet I know that I have done good work - I know it from the insights people can get and from the changes these insights are slowly but gradually effecting in their lives. And I know it from what I have learned through reflecting with my patients. I can see the healing power of therapy - just as I experienced the healing power of therapy in my own life.

Being present to people is never easy but it was never more important than it is today. We live in a world of pressure and stress and the opportunities of being heard are very limited. I have often commented on how, when I was growing up, I would see people call to the house and chat privately with my father or mother - and the same was true in my grandfather's house where people would call in and chat privately with him. And my parents and my grandparents would do the same thing - call to the house of another and chat. And much of that chatting was therapeutic - it was not professional therapy but it was therapeutic because it involved a meeting of minds and souls, and people knew they were important enough to be listened to. I tell my trainees at the University that the most important thing they have to offer to patients is their time. So often nowadays one has to almost make an appointment to visit a neighbour, and when they do call, the unspoken message frequently is "come in, sit down, be quiet and watch television with us."

In an age of increased pressure and stress people do not seem as willing to listen as they used to be; togetherness does not seem to be as important to society as it was. More and more is being asked of the therapist and I can feel it in my body. And as I sit quietly in the evenings, or at the end of a week, and feel the weariness, I remember the words of the psalm that says: "Those who are sowing in tears will sing when they reap." And the tiredness and weariness is accompanied by a sense of peace and joy - and for this I am truly grateful.

But let me be clear - I am well aware that it is not just the therapist who feels the weariness - all who go out to work feel it in their bodies; and the home-maker who stays to look after the home also feels the weariness. Much of the weariness comes from the monotony of doing the same thing day in and day out; and so much of it also comes from the absence of acknowledgment of the good work being done. We need to feel appreciated - there is nothing wrong in that. So often it is this absence of expressed appreciation that causes the weariness.

Going out to work each day is not easy and can be wearisome because while our spirits may be willing our flesh has limited energy. We must also take care of the flesh - we have been given but one body and without this body we cannot live this life. So, as the weekend approaches I look forward to a rest - a rest that gives my body time to recover because without that my spirit will also become weary.

This is Friday and we are coming to the end of another week. Let me wish you a good day today - and if possible, do get a good rest this weekend.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 23, 2008 11:04 PM


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Thursday - and the weekend is almost here. You know, I think I have not yet recovered from my vacation. It is not that I am exhausted following a hectic time away from work - sometimes people return to work in order to get a rest. I remember when I was in the southern Philippines a friend of mine took a week off to get a rest and when he returned he said he was exhausted. It was probably the wrong time for him to say that to me. I had been out in an outlying barrio half way up a mountain all day and it had poured the mother and father of all tropical downpours on top of me as I was trudging my way home. And here I was covered in mud from head to toe and soaking wet into the bargain. I arrived into the house and he was sitting there clean as a whistle and looking a hell of a lot more comfortable than I was feeling. The first thing he said is he was exhausted - he had been playing golf all week. I made some smart ass remark about people normally taking a week off to get a rest - and he knew from the tone of my voice that I was not in a good mood. Well, he was not pleased by my sarcasm - I think he expected me to welcome him with open arms but I was just not in the mood at that precise moment. I won't tell you what he suggested I do to myself - it is unpublishable. I probably should have been more patient. I'd had a good trip to the barrio and everything had gone well - it is just that it was mid May and the rainy season had to begin that afternoon.

But where was I - yes, I was saying that I think I have not yet recovered from my vacation. But what I mean is that this year I stayed at home here and did not travel down to the town I grew up in. I got a real good enjoyable rest - and discovered that I could comfortably stay here at home if only they would continue to pay me. A guy could get used to doing very little. And here I am now trying to re-adjust to being back at the office every day. It was great - pottering about the garden, doing things to the house, visiting my friends here at Care2 regularly and whenever I took the notion to do so, going on short trips up the Glens of Antrim and walking in the peace and quiet of the forest. It was wonderful just being me. My friend in the Philippines needed to recover from having tired himself out whereas I need to recover from being over-rested.

Well - the weekend is near and I'll get another taste of what it is like being just me. I always thought I was a workaholic and most people who know me would describe me as such. I just discovered that I could also be a lazyaholic (if such a creature exists).

You know what I discovered during this break - I discovered that I can like myself even when I am doing nothing. I do not have to impress myself with being able to work hard; I do not have to feel guilty about doing nothing; I can be me and be happy just being me.

Well, today is thursday and it is my wish that you have a productive day and that your biggest achievement today will be to re-discover how good and how lovable you are just being you. This is something God knew all along - but his goodness lies in the fact that he allows us to discover this for ourselves.  Have a wonderful Thursday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 22, 2008 11:12 PM


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Isn't that a lovely image - the moment I saw it I thought to myself: "That's the image for my friends" - the rainbow being an image used to indicate peace and harmony because in the Bible story of the Flood it was the sign that the rain had stopped, the deluge was over, and peace was restored between God and mankind. So - today I wish you peace and love and harmoney - and the litany of available words can go on and on and on....

Well, they have arrested Karadzic at last. The man held responsible and accountable for so many atrocities including the four year siege of Sarajevo in which tens of thousands of civilians died, and the man responsible for the terrible massacre of 8,000 muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, and for so many other atrocities in the Balkans. 

I am sure that there are many who suffered under him and are rejoicing today, and there are many others who supported him and are angry that he will be sent to The Hague for trial on charges of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. I believe it is good that there is the International Court at The Hague because it is so difficult for a man like him to get a fair trial in his home country - he has become a sign of such division and hatred. And it is not just that so many hated him, but his actions also led to such open hatred among the various communities within Serbia.

We all tend to love our own - it is natural. As they say - blood is thicker than water. But within most countries - moreso today than ever before - the general population is composed of numerous ethnic groupings each with their own values and belief systems, and each with their own culture and moral codes of conduct. These differences can lead at times to unspoken hostilities and animosities that do not ignite if they are left unspoken. These differences oftentimes find legitimate expression in fair competition such as sporting events where the pride derived from victory is confined within the legitimate boundaries of sport, and defeat is bearable because at the end of the day it is accepted as nothing more than a sporting event. There is nothing wrong with healthy competition where we learn to accept both defeat and victory.

But every now and then these differences and unspoken hostilities are exploited by those who ruthlessly seek to gain what can be gained through a process of divide and conquer. And when this happens it can take a nation generations to recover from the deep seated anger that is developed, and the suffering and suspicion that is entrenched in cultural differences. I remember when my brother was getting married in the 1980s we had to be careful with the guest list to ensure that certain people were not seated next to other people at the reception because of the hostility that still existed as a result of the civil war that had taken place in Ireland over sixty years previously. People still did not relate well because of the sides their great grandfathers took during that civil war. People in Northern Ireland are now just coming out of a terrible thirty year civil war and God knows how long it will take to overcome all the residue of that terrible time. And God alone knows how long it will take for Serbia to recover from the terrible crimes one ethnic grouping was encouraged to perpetrate against another.

It is so difficult to recover from anger. I have often said that when I am at peace with another I can go for weeks undisturbed by thoughts or feelings about them whereas when I am angry with someone I become obsessed with disturbing thought and feelings of hostility, suspicion and the desire for revenge. 

It is my wish that today will be a day where we focus on consolidating the peace that Care2 has brought to our friendships, and we bury the hatchet and reach out the hand of peace to anyone towards whom we, for whatever reason, bear ill feelings. 

Have a wonderful Wednesday - it is Mid-week and the weekend is fast approaching.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 20, 2008 11:04 PM


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We are back at the start of another working week so let me take this opportunity to wish you well - may this week be a good week for you.

Yesterday was a good day for me. Firstly, I watched a pretty exciting football game that ended with both teams on the same score and having to replay next week. Then I got home on time to watch my fellow Irshman, Pardaig Harrington, win the British Open Golf championship for the second successive year. Not many people win one of the Major Championships in golf - even fewer win two of them, and even fewer still win one on two successive occasions. The last time this was done was by Tiger Woods and the last time a European achieved this feat was 1906.

Sorry for boring you with sports information. But I got to thinking about it last night and again this morning. Watching Padraig win the golf gave me a great feeling of pride - because he is an Irishman like me. We sort of identify with our own and when one of our own does something awful we feel ashamed, and when they achieve something great we feel pride. It is as if we bask in the glow of their achievements or we feel tainted by their failure.

The tendency to identify with others underlines national pride - we are proud of our Irishness, our Britishness, our Americanness or whatever. And we assert our pride in our nationality especially through competitiveness such as in sports. For example, next month the Olympic games will take place and there will be a lot of pride in someone winning medals for their country. The truth is - the sports people will be vying for medals primarily for themselves and secondarily for their country, but we, as I have said, bask in the glow of their achievements.

Returning to the topic of golf - in September Europe and America will compete for the Ryder Cup. I have some very dear friends in America - I do hope that the competitive spirit that seems to be lodged deep in our being will not drive a wedge between us when that competition starts. You see, one of the problems arising out of our innate tendency to identify with others, and which leads us to take pride in their successes and feel diminished by their failures, is a tendency towards aggression and feelings of hostility towards others who compete for the pide of victory.

Identification is a process that is based upon admiration for those whose successes make us feel good - it is not a tendency to emulate those whose actions are good in themselves irrespective of whether they makes us feel good or not. I often think that in this modern day and age there is a massive emphasis on sports and billions of pounds and dollars and euros etc. are poured into sports each year. And so much arises out of our love for a winner because winners make us feel good about ourselves. But life is about more than feeling good - life is about doing good even when we do not feel good about. Sacrifice is a part of life - sacifice is about doing good especially when we do not feel like doing it.  We become what we do - if we do good we become good people especially when it involves sacrifice.

I hope you have a good and a productive week ahead.
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 17, 2008 11:17 PM



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Good morning - it is Friday and we are coming to the end of another week - a short week for me because I didn't return to work until Wednesday.

Well, I learned yesterday that when I was on leave a patient of mine hung himself. He left a partner, a young child and his partner is pregnant with their second child. He was very depressed for some time and I had spoken with the psychiatrist about having him admitted to hospital. But sometimes psychiatrists do not understand - or choose not to understand if there is a shortage of hospital beds. The psychiatrist examined the fellow and told me he was just an attention seeker. Well, one thing I have learned is you never dismiss someone as an attention seeker. After all, people who are seriously suicidal often seek attention, and the problem really comes to a head when they stop seeking attention because that is when they have finally decided to act on the impulse. As one woman put it so aptly - when a psychiatrist asked her if she was suicidal she said: "if I was I would not be telling you because you would stop me."

Therapists form relationships with their patients - so much hinges on a good working relationship being developed between therapist and patient. I work with very seriously depressed people and I regularly have patients who choose suicide. I have stopped using the expression that they commit suicide - death is not something they commit - it is something they choose. I always worry more about people who feel the world would be a better place without them than I do about people who feel living is too painful. I worry about them both - but in my experience it is the former who are actually more likely to choose death and feel it to be a reasonable choice.

It is so sad when someone feels the world would be better off without them. This young man of 28 years felt his child and partner would be blessed if they were not burdened with him.

Life is a very precious gift and always to be protected. The psychiatrist who said this lad was just an attention seeker completely missed the point. Let's face it - we are all attention seekers. We all want to be loved; we want to be able to love and respect ourselves; we want to be valued. When such wants reach a pathological stage it is easy to dismiss us as attention seekers - but we are not attention seekers. We become people trying to give value to our lives and we can conclude that the best way of valuing ourselves and our loved ones is to choose death - it can seem an altruistic choice and not a selfish one.

I'm sorry to share sad news with you on a Friday morning - but I am glad to have you to share this with. You are good people and I love having you and giving time to you. Let us always look out for one another.

Have a good day today.
  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 16, 2008 11:25 PM


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As I sit here this morning the rain is belting down outside - it is so heavy that the mountain to the west of the city is invisible. I certainly hope we are not being visited by the curse of St. Swithin whose day we celebrated the day before yesterday. Maybe I should count the rainy days from here onwards to see if it actually does rain for forty days. But that would be too much trouble - sitting here each day saying it is now so many days rain since July 15 - I would not only drive myself crazy but I would drive you crazy too. But rain or sunshine, it is good to be alive and in communication with one another.

Well, I started back to work yesterday not sure of what lay ahead for me. I soon found out as eight patients had appointmanes and all eight turned up - I'm telling you but that is in at the deep end. I know eight patients does not seem very many in one day - after all, my doctor would see eight in an hour. But then eight patients for a one hours session in therapy per person is no joke. That is what I call a pretty full day. If I was going to start back then best start back properly.

It was a busy day for me but, thank God, I did not feel overly tired at the end of the day. I knew I had done enough and could not have seen another person. But when I was coming home I did not feel worn out - and eight hours of therapy would normally wear me out. 

One woman in the afternoon was very heavy work, and she did apologise a few times for being so heavy. She said on one occasion "I know it is your first day back and I am so sorry I am such heavy work today." Well, there was no point in denying the fact that she was heavy work so I just responded saying "You are very burdened today, aren't you." You know, it is good to be honest and truthful. When I said that she brightened up somewhat - just briefly but I could see the brightness as it barely flickered in her eyes. Had I said she wasn't heavy she would have felt I was not hearing her, or I was telling a lie. But more importantly, once I accepted what she said I no longer felt so burdened by her depression. I was no longer burdened by having to hide the fact that she was heavy work - no longer burdened by the need to lie or pretend. Yes, the truth does make us free. I know she felt a bit better too - not much better but a bit. And it was because she felt accepted and respected.

Being truthful is the greatest respect we can show to anyone. And this is what love and acceptance are all about - about respect and honesty. We do not have to like someone in order to respect them. I often say it is good we were not told to like our neighbours because there are neighbours we just could never like - but we can respect them. It is important that we do not allow our likes and our dislikes to influence the level of respect we show to one another. I know there is a very strong tendency to love our own and to be good to those who are good to us. But this respect we show to those who love us is really the template for loving and respecting all people no matter how we feel towards them. Love is a disposition of will - not a feeling. When my will is disposed towards the welfare of people, and when I wish them no ill, then I am respecting them. This is love.

Have a good Thursday - and let it be a day when we move a little closer towards being the loving people we can become.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 15, 2008 11:03 PM


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Well, Wednesday has arrived and it is back to work for me. I woke up early - as I always seem to do when I am working. I set my alarm for 5.30 am and I woke up about 5.15 - I beat my alarm to it. I always was a morning person.

Yesterday was St. Swithin's Day - according to legend if it rains on St. Swithin's day it will rain for the next forty days. There is a legend about St Swithin, an english bishop of the tenth Century. When he died he asked to be buried outside where people could walk all over his grave. This was done but many years later it was decided to exhume his body and re-buy him inside the Cathedral. They did this on July 15 and during the exhumation it poured rain. Since then July 15 has been known as St. Swithin's day. I doubt if it ever happened that when it rained on his day it rained for the next forty days. We had a beautiful day here yesterday - but it did rain in the early morning. Will it rain for the next forty days? Knowing the Irish weather it may well do so.

The significance of St. Swithin's day here in Ireland is it marks the start of the harvest. I don't know if there is any connection between the start of the harvest and St. Swithin's day, but yesterday was the day the farmers began harvesting their barley. Naturally enough they would be keenly interested in the weather because harvesting the barley in bad weather is not an easy task. I hope it will be a good harvest for the farmer - not just for himself but for us all because we all depend so much on farming to provide us with the food we need.

And as I return to work today I pray that my labours will also bear good fruit - not just for me but especially for those who come to me for therapy. And I pray that this day, and every day, will be a day that bears fruit for each and every one of us. I know many of us go out to work and many others are home makers or work from home. But then, there are also others who suffer various disabilities and are unable to work because of their disabilities or because of ill health. I think of that most famous of poets, John Milton. He wrote his greatest works when he was blind - his tremendous work entitled Paradise Lost which is one poem that runs to 12 books in length, followed by his other work Paradise Regained which runs to another six books - all written when he was blind. And I think of that very famous sonnet he wrote entitled "On His Blindness" which ended with the powerful line:"They also serve who only stand and wait." Illness and disability need not limit one's productivity - they certainly affect the way one is productive but they do not make on unproductive. So I pray also for those who suffer from ill health or some other disability that they will find suitable outlets whereby they can be productive to the benefit of us all because so much of our dignity as human persons lies in our ability to be creative like our God is creative.

Have a good Wednesday.
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 15, 2008 12:53 AM


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It's tuesday and tomorrow I return to work after a break of two weeks. It is going to feel strange rising again at 5.30am. I am a morning person and am at my best in the morning time - but I'm not too bad at night either. But these past two weeks I have been lying in until 7.30am - many people laugh when I tell them I describe sleeping on until 7.30 as lying in - but that is me. I am at my best when I rise about 5.30 or 6.00am - even in mid winter. I occasionally oversleep during the working week until nearly 7.00am but that is rare. It will be interesting to see how spritley I jump from the bed tomorrow.

And it is back to work - back to listening. I was always a bit of a listener - more of a listener than a talker, would you believe. I remember even when I was at college my peers used to share much of their worries and fears and hates etc. with me - I would listen and I seldom offered anything by way of advice because I couldn't - but somehow in just listening I was able to help. There was one lad, though, and he used call to my room every day and talk and talk and talk - and it was too much. Eventually I came up with a plan. I told the lad in the room across the corridor that whenever he heard this lad come to my room, then after about twenty minutes he should call in and say "Brendan, did you hear this joke?" And sure enough the other lad would immediately up and leave because he could not tolerate a dirty joke. Not that the friend from across the corridor had a dirty joke to tell - but he didn't have to have a dirty joke - all he had to do was imply he had one and our friend would run off. But that was way back in our College days - I was a listener even then.

Well, as a therapist listening is everything. I suppose that way back in my college days I knew it was all about listening - I knew I couldn't solve anyone's dilemma or worry or fear - all I could do was listen. What I find is that if you give people an ear to talk to they very often work things out for themselves. But, it is important to listen and to let the person know you hear what is being said and empathise with them.

There have been many times after a therapy session when the only description I can come up with for the pressure I feel under is to say my brain feels as if it is sweating. It sometimes feels as if I need to take off the top of my head, take out my brain, and wring it out because it feels like a washed out blanket still saturated with water. I don't always feel that drained - but I feel it frequently enough. Therapy can be tough work because it is all about listening, hearing what is being said and empathising. And once the person is given those conditions he or she can oftentimes heal themselves.

Well, we oftentimes underestimate the power of listening. Someone once said that each of us has been given two ears and only one mouth, and we should listen twice as much as we speak. Well, we should. But there is more to listening than listening to one another. It all begins by listeing to ourselves and what is going on in the depths of our own souls. And when we talk about listening to ourselves - which self do we listen to - is it the self-centred self or the self that cares for others. In other words, do we listen to our values or to our needs. 

Listening in these days of scientific discovery it is important that we also listen to mother earth and what she is crying out to us about climate change and possible ecological disaster.

But, listening is not just a matter of hearing - hearing with our neighbour is saying, hearing what our hearts and souls are saying, and hearing what mother earth is saying. It is also about empathy - in other words, we hear and we respond appropriately.

Well - this is my last day on vacation and it is back to work tomorrow. So, I'll make the most of today - and I hope you too will make the most of this tuesday. I wish you a real good day.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 14, 2008 1:03 AM


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It is the start of another week. I don't go back to work until Wednesday so it will be a short week for me. But come Wednesday I'll return to work - I could get used to being off work if only they would continue to send me the pay cheque at the end of each month. But I'm afraid it does not work that way.

I have enjoyed my two weeks off - I didn't really do very much and anything I did I have already told you about. But I didn't plan on doing very much - just to get a rest is all I wanted.

You know, I was just thinking last night that the week or two before taking leave were good weeks because I had my break to look forward to. I knew I was tired and in need of a break - but I knew the break was coming up and the anticipation of the break was good. I must say that the anticipation of returning to work in not so good. But it is not bad either - I am glad I have work to return to and I think of so many who have no work. In this day of economic harship we all must tighten our belts - but what of those people whose belts are already too tight? While we deal with what is becoming known as the credit crunch and with the rising cost of all commodities resulting from the hike in the price of oil and gas, we must remember that so many of us already live in the world of the affluent.  Let us always count our blessings and spare a thought for those who have not been so lucky.

But then, very often we find that those who have not been so lucky economically have been very blessed in other ways. Having lived and worked in the third world I was impressed by the love that binds people together despite their poverty - and maybe because of their poverty. I have seen a spirit of co-operation among people that we could do with in our more affluent world. But somehow, the more we have really means the more we have to lose, and our sense of wanting to protect what we have can so easily drive us apart. Not only can our desire to protect what we have drive us apart, but it can also drive a wedge between us and the world we inhabit with the result that we do not care for the welfare of our planet as much as we should.

Well, it is Monday and time to get a move on. Have a truly blessed Monday and may the week ahead be fruitful for us all.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 11, 2008 12:52 AM


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Friday at last - that wonderful day which marks the end of the working week and the beginning of the working weekend. That is normally the case for me - but this time it may well be somewhat different seeing as I have been on vacation from work for the past two weeks.

Well, today I plan to revisit the Glens of Antrim - to visit the places I did not see the other day. I love to walk in the countryside - put on my boots and have my raincoat handy and just enjoy the beauty of this world. But it is not just the beauty of this world - it is the freedom one feels when out walking in the countryside. I feel completely uninhibited by the proximity of other people. I don't mean that I feel free to go wild - nor do I wish to imply that I am suffering some form of disability or personality disorder that leads me to prefer isolation rather than attachments. No - I love people and I love being with others. But there are times when I need to hear myself think and the countryside is a wonderful place for that.

I have often wondered if the proliferation of crime and hostilities in our towns and cities arises from the lack of psychological space that allows people think about life and about themselves. When I am walking through the forest or woodland listening to the chirping of birds and the sound of the streams that oftentimes flow there I feel I am hearing a spiritual voice. As I smell the freshness of the trees I feel some heavenly scent is filling my lungs and purifying my life-blood with it's presence. And I have time and space to think of the beauty of the world we have been given - and to feel the beauty of who we are and who we want to become. It is there as I commune with nature that I commune also with my own soul and listen as my heart tells me that to be a loving person I must first learn to love - and if I cannot love nature then I cannot love my neighbour either.

We lose that in the cities. There is so much noise around us - noise that people create. We are a noisy people - aren't we? Did you ever get the feeling that you would love to scream out loud at the whole world and say BE QUIET!! I have often felt that the world would be a better place if time was set aside each day for silence because it is only in silence that we can hear ourselves.

Did you ever realise how noisy the forest actually is - when you walk silently through it and listen you will find that it is actually a very noisy place - possibly the noisiest place around. But - and this is the point - the noises of the forest do not impose themselves on us. Man made noises do impose themselves and invade our psychological space, but nature is so very different. The noises of the forest are like gentle background music enhancing our environment and our thinking rather than grating on our ear drums and making us wish they were silent. I never find myself wishing the forest was silent.

Maybe I am just getting old and the weekend is no longer party-time for me - it is quiet time instead. Anyway - that is me rambling on as I look forward to a walk with nature in the Glens of Antrim. There is a beautiful song called The Glens of Antrim - I wonder if it is on YouTube - I must check it out.

Have a good and a relaxing weekend and may the quiet of the forest always be yours.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 09, 2008 1:17 AM

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It is Wednesday already - which means that this day week I will be returning to work. Wow - but vacations certainly disappear very fast. Never mind - I have a full week left and so I'll try to make the most of it.

I was trying to remember what it was I did yesterday - I don't seem to have done very much. It was just one of those days where nothing stands out clearly as having been of note. Everything must have been quite ordinary if I cannot remember - after all, I am not yet old enough to be forgetful.

Life is a bit like that - isn't it. Most of life is just hum-drum stuff. We get up in the morning and do our normal thing throughout the day and go to bed at night only to start all over again the following day. Then every now and then we come across something or someone that really excites us and we feel so alive. When I was younger I used to play this game called hurling - it is an Irish sport involving two teams of 15 people per team all with sticks and playing with a small hard ball. I won't go into the details of it here because I'm sure that anyone who is really interested in it could google it to find out more. But that game really got me going - and even today as I watch the sport either live or on television I can feel the excitement racing through my blood. And when that happens I know I am alive.

But most of life is not like that - it is, as I said, pretty hum-drum. We have responsibilities to be carried out and there seldom is anything exciting about that because at the end of the day we are accountable for the way we carry them out. If I don't do my job to the best of my ability someone will ask me to explain why.

I often think that when we came into this world we were the centre of so much love and attention that we somehow felt we were the centre of the universe. Mummy looked at us and if we smiled she beamed with delight and we felt we had power to make her happy. We were hungry and bawled and mummy came running and we felt how good it was to have the power to make her obey. Yes - we were king of the castle - but we soon discovered the castle was made of sand because the time came when we were told 'do this' and we had to do it or 'come here' and we came. We had to learn what it meant to serve and we did not like that part of life. And that inner resistance we experienced in making the transition from being king of the castle to being the least among many we oftentimes feel again when we are accountable for our actions. We do not necessarily display the resistance because we cannot afford to lest we lose our job - but we feel the excitement drain out of life. The life of work becomes a hum-drum form of living.

But we can look upon our work as a challenge - a way of expressing our talents. Yes- we may be accountable but in giving an account of our actions we have the opportunity of saying we have done well. But not the way the Pharisee did in the Gospel - if you remember, he went to the front and told God how good he was by saying he was not like the rest of men. No - being accountable is our way of saying we were given responsibility and we carried it out to the best of our ability - the talents that have been given to us have been put to good use.

Ordinary life is never very exciting. It does not make the blood flow with delight. But it is in ordinary everyday life that we discover who we are. Excitement may tell us we are alive but oftentimes it is in the absence of excitement that we have the time and space to discover the purpose of our life. Excitement can be psychologically very noisy whereas the hum-drum part of life can be quiet and peaceful.

Have a good Wednesday - it is midweek and it is another opportunity for us to discover who we are and what we are capapble of.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 08, 2008 1:13 AM


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Yesterday I went for a drive up the Antrim coastline and then on in through the Glens of Antrim - it was a truly lovely drive. The Antrim coastline is not the most spectacular coastline in Ireland - in fact there is nothing spectacular at all about it. That is why I turned off and went into the glens. And they are spectacular. I parked the car and went for a walk in Glenarm Forest Park and while there I communed with nature. I love being in touch with nature. I even talk about the emptiness of city life where we cannot even see the stars at night because of the man-made lighting. When I am in touch with nature I am in touch with my soul and with my God.

Anyway - while I was there the rain stopped. Did you ever realise how you can actually miss the rain? I missed it when it stopped. Walking through the forest while the rain was falling was really a treat to be treasured....the sound of the raindrops hitting the leaves up above - and up above is right because the trees were so tall. And the trees offered me shelter from the rain without me having to seek shelter. And the smell of the forest in the rain is breathtaking. And there is a river running through the forest and the sound of the flowing water was so soothing. I can understand why so many gardeners love a water feature in their garden - the sound is relaxing.

Anyway - I eventually tore myself away from the forest and came on home in the sunshine. As it was getting on towards evening I decided to stop off and get a quickie take-away meal of chicken breast and chips. I normally don't go in for unhealthy foods like that but it was getting late and I didn't fancy starting in to cooking a dinner when I arrived home. It took them about five minutes to cook the stuff - and I call it stuff because take-away food is not what I call food. It suffices to ward off the hunger but it gives no pleasure to the act of eating. But it was a quickie meal - and what can one expect from a quickie!!

I got home and decided it was time to mow my lawn - the sunshine and the strong breeze that was blowing had dried it out enough for me to mow it. I also knew from the forecast that it could well be another week before it would be dry enough for mowing and it was already too long. So I mowed it - it is not a very big lawn so it didn't take long. But I was so pleased - this is the new lawn that I planted in early May. It is beautiful now - so rich looking and the grass has thickened up. I remember when it came up first I was frustrated because it was thin with plenty of bald spots just like my head. Well, it would be nice for a change if the hair on my head thickened up like my lawn. I was so pleased - and admit to being damned proud too. I told myself I have now got the nicest lawn in the cul-de-sac - I live in a cul-de-sac.

I got to thinking of the hard work that went in to preparing the soil and levelling it and carefully sowing the seed, constantly watering it because we were in a real hot spell in May, watching it grow and being patient with the initial baldness of it, cutting it carefully with a clippers the first cutting so as not to tear the new grass out by the roots by using a mower....yes, it was a slow job that took time, hard work and lots of patience. And I thought of the forest Park and the centuries it took those trees to grow so tall. And I thought of the fast food outlet and how what is produced quickly may be alright and serve a purpose - but it is so tasteless.

Building character takes time too - it takes a lot of hard work and patience. But character, like the lawn and like the forest, oozes life. And I thought to myself how we just have to be patient with ourselves - at times we cannot get thing quick enough. At times we feel the inner tension of frustration - but tension generates progress. As we hold the tension of frustration rather than dissipate it we grow stronger and character is built.

Well, it is tuesday. May it be a good tuesday for you - and be patient because the weekend will eventually arrive whereas frustration will not speed it up.
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 07, 2008 2:03 AM


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A few months back a smart-ass friend of mine sent me an email on a Monday morning. I opened up my inbox to find an email and all it said was "Brendan, it's Monday; deal with it!" It certainly brought a smile to my face. Well, it is Monday today and I am still on vacation from work. As I sit here looking out my window I see nothing but rain, rain and more rain. Whatever has happened to our lovely Summer weather?

Last Friday I travelled to Donegal to visit my aunt. It was a wonderful day - wall-to-wall sunshine is how I describe a day like last Friday. It can only hapen like that in Ireland - pouring rain for a week or more than then this beautiful day and the following day a storm blew in and we are still deluged with the rain that accompanied it. We talk about the Irish being moody - can you blame us - our weather is so changeable it is but natural that we moody.

I really enjoyed my trip to donegal. To me it is always a spiritual journey because so much of my earliest memories are there. OK - I didn't grow up there but my mother did, and we spent every summer up there with my grandparents. It is not a town - they are country folk, farmers and fishermen living there and they all know one another - and they all know me and I know them. It is unlike city life where so many people don't know who their neighours are. In a place like Malin Head everyone knows and cares for everyone else even though they do not live on top of one another.

It is a thing I have noticed so often about the way people live. When we live almost on top of one another in towns and cities we do not really know each other. It is as if the physical proximity is an invasion of our psychological space and in order to protect our privacy we become isolated and even secretive. In the countryside people do not live so close to each other that when they look out their kitchen window they are looking into their neighbour's kitchen - and because there is no invasion of physical space neither is there an invasion of psychological space with a concomitant a need to become distant and isolated.

Anyway, my first port of call on my way to my aunt's house is always to drop into the parish church to visit the cemetry where my grandparents are buried. This is a lovely chapel situated amidst the sandunes - I most post a picture of it sometime in my album -I'll let you know when I have done it. As I said - it is a lovely chapel all on it's own among the sandunes. I am always touched to see the gravestones of the people I knew - so many of them now. I always stop and say a prayer - it is a very sobering place to be - among the graves of so many people I knew on a first-name basis.

And as I stood over the graves I remembered that email sent to me on a Monday morning a few weeks back. And I thought to myself how precious life is - but life is also short. Friendships are blessings to be treasured and never forgotten. We must deal with life and love and we must also deal with death.

Have a wonderful Monday and let it be the start of a wonderful week.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 03, 2008 2:28 AM



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It is thursday already - I will soon have one week of my vacation from work behind me. How time flies. Before I know it I will be back at work feeling as if I never had a break. Sometimes I imagine it would be great to be so rich I didn't have to work. Sometimes I wish Adam had not eaten that apple that allegedly caused us all our woes. But then someone once said that it was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused it all - that sex is the root cause of all our problems.

What would I do if I didn't have to work? I know what I would do - I would sit here wondering what to do. It is a bit like the parents who get a break from the kids - they go out for a meal while someone minds the kids for them. And what do they do - they spend the whole night talking about the kids. If I didn't have to work I would want to work; and when I am working all I think of is having a break. As Shakespeare wrote: "If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work." And he was right - there is just no pleasing us - we always desire what we don't have and we never fully appreciate what we do have.

This is part of our human condition - the heart is restless and, as St. Augustine wrote, "it finds no peace until it rests in You." The 'You' he was writing about is God. We are forever wanting something else and  are never satisfied with anything for very long. Freud touched on this when he spoke about repression. He described how the Ego is constantly aware of the needs of the Id and is forever scanning the environment to accommodate these needs; but when the Ego judges that to gratify the needs would be dangerous it represses the needs. By repression he means it really just postpones gratification until another safer time. It is sort of like when I used to smoke a pipe. If I went to the cinema or got on a train where smoking was prohibited I would not even think of a smoke. But the moment I stepped out of the cinema or off train my first thought was for my pipe. I would be unaware of a desire to smoke as long as smoking was prohibited. The moment it was no longer prohibited the need returned.

This is one area I find where psychology in general is weak. I disagree with Freud on many things - although I still regard him as being spot on in many other areas. But psychology in general fails to take account of the human ability to renounce gratification of needs for the sake of a higher good. It thinks only of repression.

I believe that one of the greatest human abilities is the ability to actually renounce the right to gratify certain needs. A man may love a woman, and in order to devote himself completely to her he renounces his right to be with other women. It does not mean the man is free from temptation and from desire - but he handles temptation and desire on a daily basis by renewing his renunciation. This does not mean he is weird or suffers from sexual hang-ups - it means he is very human.

Of course, he can only renounce what he desires and it is in the context of desire that he renounces the gratification of such desires for the sake of what to him is a higher good. Another example of this is the alcoholic who gives up the drink and does so on the basis of one day at a time - each day he renewes his choice. I gave up the pipe - I seldom think of it in the sense of desiring it, but occasionally when I do miss it I renounce gratification of the desire for the sake of a higher good such as my physical health. This is not repression - which is an unconscious act in itself. This is a conscious choice that is consciously renewed each time the need surfaces as a desire - and it is a choice consciously made for the sake of a hiher good.

Psychology may be my area of work - but I am saddened by the inability of so many psychologists to take account of the fact that we can renounce basic human needs without having to resort to an unconscious process of repression. But then, when we are speaking about renunciation we are actually prioritising values and renouncing lower values for the sake of higher values. And when we deal with values we are moving into another area - the area of spirituality which so much psychology ignores or avoids. It is this ability to direct our lives by a value system, and the ability to renounce lower values for the sake of the higher, that allows us to accept our differences and accommodate one another so that we can all live together in harmony and in peace. It is this ability that marks us out as truly human.

Well, it is thursday and the weekend is coming. I hope this will be a real good day for you - a day of peace and harmony in your heart and in your relationships.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 02, 2008 2:06 AM


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The great thing about being on vacation from work is I don't have to get up early in the morning. Well, I get up at about 7.30am and for me that is late. My friends laugh at me when I tell them this - one friend of mine does not rise before 1.00pm when he is on vacation. I just couldn't lie on in bed like that. Anytime I lie on in bed much beyond 7.30am I end up with a sore back - maybe my bed is wrong.

But I also like to be up early - I am a bit of a morning person. I hate to waste the day - and it feels to me like a waste of a day to sleep through it. When I'm working I'm usually up at about 5.30am because I like some time to myself before starting a busy day, and when I'm not at work I give myself tha extra hour or two.

That reminds me of a time when I wasyoung and innocent and didn't really know the difference between men and women other than they wore different clothes. I must have been very young. But I remember my mother saying how she and my dad had no honeymoon when they married because they had no money. So they got married and went home. She said that she woke up the following morning and he was not in the bed - she looked around and there he was out the back digging the garden at 8.00am. I was too young to know what she was saying - but now that I am older and wiser in the ways of men and women I know exactly what she was saying - the naughty thing!!!! And there was me thinking butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - I wonder do people outside of Ireland understand that expression - butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. For those who don't it means I thought she was pure and innocent and not a naughty thought would enter her head.

Anyway - sounds like I am a bit of my dad - he always got up early and so do I. And neither of us were ever any good at sitting and doing nothing - we always had to be doing something. My dad used always joke about her saying she never shut up but was forever talking; and she used joke about him saying he never sat down but always had to be doing something. I'm probably a bit of both - always doing something and always talking.

They were a good pair - my parents. They were very different and I know that as I was growing up there was tension at times between them. I remember a few times when you could feel the tension in the air. I remember on one occasion dashing off to the toilet just to get away from the tension - I didn't need to go to the toilet but I did need to get away. But while there were times of tension I must say I never saw them fight or have a heated argument. No doubt they argued and had their differences - but never in front of us. And as time went by they became real close. The came to accept each other's difference - and that is summed up in the way they used to joke about one another; he saying she never shut up and she saying he never sat down.

I work on a daily basis with persons who have been the victims of bad relationships - either they are or have been in bad relationships themselves, or they grew up in homes torn by strife and anger and the lack of love. I was blessed with parents who provided us with a safe environment in which to grow and develop - but through years of work I have become familiar with the damage that is caused by destructive relationships. We live in an age of aggression and anxiety. Does the anger and anxiety originate in the home or spill over into the home? It is the chicken and egg question - isn't it!! Does it really matter?

The willingness to accept that we are all different and to accept the differences we find in each other is an essential ingredient in good relationships. We don't ignore the differences - but as we come to understand exactly how different each one is we make adjustments so as to accommodate and accept each other. When we can do this much of the stress goes out of life. Not all stress is relieved by such accommodation because such accommodation itself involves the renunciation of personal needs and wants - but much of the stress is relieved. It is my wish today that in our immediate and intimate relationships we will find a warmth of understanding and a willingness of accommodation that makes these relationships an oasis in a world of anxiety and aggession. We can deal with stress if we have a safe and secure environment to come home to.

Have a good Wednesday, and where there are differences may there also be the generousity that allows love and respect to prevail.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 July 01, 2008 1:25 AM

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Did you ever find that it can be difficult to tell the different days of the week when you are on vacation? Well - this morning I had to put on the television to find out if it was Tuesday or Wednesday. Each day feels exactly like the previous day.

Anyway - it is Tuesday. So let me wish you a happy Tuesday; and for those not on vacation from work let me console you by reminding you the weekend is getting closer - just four days to go.

Yesterday was a dry day here despite the forecast so I spent a lot of time in the garden. I decided that I can clean the house when it rains. I don't have that big a garden but it took hours to get rid of all the weeds. It seems like there are a few weeds in the garden - but when you start weeding there are millions.

As I was weeding I was reflecting on my greetings yesterday morning, and I was reflecting on aspects of my life. I remembered when I was young - not too sure how young but pre-teens anyway. I remember being so scared of dying. The very thought of death scared the hell out of me. And the old folk used to talk about the end of the world being in the year 2000 and for some reason I didn't want to be around then - why I would have preferred to die before the second coming of Christ is beyond me at this stage. I think it had something to do with being judged in private rather than in public - I believed I was destined to be condemned so why also be named and shamed!!

Why was I thinking or feeling like that? Well, I think our understanding of God is very much influenced by whatever psychological stage we are at. In the earlier stages of life we are very much influenced by dependence on our parents and on other significant adult figures in our lives such as teachers etc.   We believe that if we win their approval we will be rewarded with acceptance - and if we fail to win their approval we will be punished with rejection.  This will influence our undestanding of God - a God who rewards the good and punishes the wicked.

I love the book of Job in the Old Testament. Of course this is more anecdotal than historical; it is theological work rather than a biography. The people believed that God rewarded the good and punished the wicked, and Job was a good man who had all the signs of God's blessings. Then he lost them all - health, wealth, family etc. etc. Why? Was it because he sinned? But he said he didn't sin. So - was he saying God was unfair? He couldn't say that because to do so would be blasphemy. So - why did he lose all the signs of God's favour? Job's comforters tried to convince him that he must have committed a sin without knowing it. And God then spoke to them through the wisdom of a child: "Where were you wneh I laid the foundations of the earth?"  The story has a moral. Did Job say God was good just because God was good to him? Or did Job believe God was good - even when he did not benefit from the goodness of God could he still say God was good. The story of Job is a story urging people on to a deeper understanding of God - an understanding and appreciation that is not determined by fear of punishment and a desire for reward. It is a story urging us to move our appreciation of God on from being under the influences of an earlier stage of psychological development to a higher stage of development.

Enough of that for today. It is just that as we work our way through this Tuesday let us not be anxious out being liked or disliked because anxiety solves nothing. Let us try to be ourselves because we are special. And if you are special in the eyes of God why should you be less special in my eyes - does being special in my eyes depend on whether you are good to me or not - or can I say that you are special even when you are not good to me. Have a good Tuesday, my special friend.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 30, 2008 2:15 AM


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Good morning - it's Monday again. How the weekend flies!! But I don't mind this Monday because I am on holidays from work. Two weeks off and nothing to do.  Well, I have plenty to do but nothing that I really have to do. I need to clean the house and tidy the garden but even if I don't do those things I will survive. But best get them done early in the holiday because the longer I put them off the less likely I am to do them.

It is a lovely morning here in Ireland - at least where I live. Now, yesterday was something else. I had to laugh at the weatherman yesterday who kept telling us to expect sunshine and showers - well, we had flashes of sunshine alright but showers was an understatement - torrential downpours would have been much more accurate. On my way to Mass yesterday morning I damned near got lost - the rain was coming down so heavily that my windscreen wipers at full speed could not clear it away. Showers - what a joke.

I was thinking to myself that it is quite some time since we had a good dry hot sunny summer here. Our summer has become the wet season rather than summer. But then we have to adjust to living in a world we cannot control. We may have thought we were in control whenever things were more predictable. But all that we can predict now is that everything is unpredictable - we live in a chaotic world. But we always lived in a chaotic world except we are probably more aware of it now than we used to be.

I have come to believe that even God is not in control of our world. I know many people take umbrage with me whenever I say that. But let's face certain truths here; when thousands die in earthquakes, in typhoons and in tsunamis; when millions die in war and at the whim of tyrants - who do we blame? If God is in control why does he not stop these things? If he is in control then he must be real callous to allow these things happen and then claim to love us.

Some people try to solve the apparent contradiction by denying the existence of God. They say that if there was a loving God he would not allow these things to happen. The fact that they happen and no God stops them means there is no such thing as a loving God. Well, that is one argument.

But maybe our understanding of God is wrong. Maybe God is not in control of this world. Maybe nobody is in control of what happens in this world. Maybe we live in a pretty chaotic and unpredictable world? And maybe the world is chaotic and there still is a loving God. Now - how do we reconcile these two realities. 

Well - do I want a God who not only advises me how to live my life - but who actually controls me so much that I have no choice but to do what he says. Do I want to live in a world where I cannot even desire to be with a woman who is not my wife? Do I want to live in a world where I cannot even want to lie on in bed on a Sunday morning and miss church? Do I want to live in a world where I am not even tempted to steal or tell a lie or even tempted to be angry and seek revenge? Do I want to live in a world where God exercises so much control over me that I have no possibility of sinning and enjoying it? 

Or would I rather that God gave me freedom to choose whatever it is I want to choose thereby rendering himself impotent? Is it God's role to deprive us of free choice - or is it his role is to be there with us helping us to deal with the chaos that is our world, and the chaos that is our lives. When I make bad choices he tell me "Deal with it"; and when I look at a world suffering from disasters both natural and man made he also says "Deal with it." And I believe that his assurance is that he will be there to support us as we try to deal with it. As the wise man said: "Lord, if you cannot lighten my burden please strengthen my back."

Well, it is Monday again - so let's deal with that. Have a good Monday even if the weatherman does not promise us what we want. 
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 June 25, 2008 11:10 PM


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Well, this image seems appropriate for tday as it is just pouring out of the skies here this morning - as we say, it is not taking time to rain. I remember many years ago when we first heard of the possibility of global warming we were warned that this does not just mean that the climate will warm up - it also means that our summers will get wetter. And our summers definitely have got wetter. I remember how my grandmother used to quote some ancient Irish saint who forecast that before the end of the world all the seasons would become as one - to which my dad used to respond:"Why the bloody hell can they not become like Summer - why do they have to become like Winter?"

I was reflecting yesterday on letting go of our need to be thought well of by significant others as part of the process of maturing and become independent individual persons. Mature individuation is a humble acceptance of who we are and does not contain any narcissistic arrogance. We never really do become totally independent of wanting to be liked and thought well of - we may be mature but we are never that mature. As Freud himself put it: "there is no such thing as a normal Ego but every Ego approximates to the psychotic to a greater or lesser extent" - in other words we are all somewhat neurotic and some are actually psychotic. I derived great comfort from that statement of Freud's when I first read it for I know I am not completely sane.

I remember at times having confided in people I really trusted oly to find that my confidence was misplaced. I remember confiding in my mother at times only to learn later that she broke confidence and told a neighbour. As a teenager I developed crushes on girls and I remember once telling my mother because I was hurt and just couldn't contain it. A few weeks later I discovered my morther had shared this with a neighbour who in turn shared it with others. I remember confiding in people I took to be very trustworthy only to learn that they were not as trustworthy as I had thought. Hurts like that make it difficult to trust - the past hurts live on and affect present decisions. Another example is fear - fear, for example, of the sea. We can pick up the anxieties of people we trust and develop an abnormal anxiety about the sea. I remember I was in my twenties before I taught myself how to swim because I had a fear of the sea - a fear I had once again picked up from my mother who kept telling me as a child to be careful - so much so that I saw the sea as being very dangerous.

Letting go of the past and becoming our own independent persons involves seeing how past experiences of wanting to belong, or wanting to be thought well of, or wanting to be liked, can lead us to unwittingly accept attitudes that influence present decisions. As a result of these unconscious or semi-conscious attitudes we can sometimes make unreasonable choices and decisions.

There was this American Jesuit who wrote a tremendous book entitled "Insight" - his name was Bernard Lonergan. I'm not sure but I have a feeling he lived in the Boston area - he is now dead. But he made the statement in that book that life really is about the achievement of conscious intentionality. In other words - we gradually become more and more independent of the presence of unconscious influences arising from our past and we arrive at a stage where all the major decisions we make are consciously intended rather than carried out by 'automatic pilot' under the influence of unconscious influences.

Well, today is Thursday and the weekend is getting closer. I hope it will be a real good thursday despite the rain. And I hope that this will be another day when we come a little closer to being our own individual persons by becoming more and more independent of past experiences so as to gain greater control over present choices and decisions. For it is when we consciously intend whatever it is we choose that we become our own persons.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 24, 2008 11:23 PM



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Wednesday has come again - hump day for those who are not too shy to post naughty pictures. And, by golly, when it comes to looking for images of Wednesday there is no shortage of naughty and provocative images. It is actually getting more and more difficult to find non-naughty ones. Anyway, whether this be our mid-week day or our hump day let it be a good day for all.

Patients always have an effect on a therapist. I sit and listen to people and I strive to ensure that they feel heard. And sometimes it is only in therapy that some people feel listened to. But listening evokes not only emotional responses from within the therapist - it also evokes thoughts and insights that have been dormant and that come to the surface as we listen attentively to our patients.

For some reason the other day thoughts began to emerge during a quiet moment when no patients were with me. I have no doubt that the seeds of these thoughts were germinated by listening to patients. And I'm not even too clear yet as to what these thoughts are. But I will try to share them over the next day or two, if that is alright. But first let me be clear - there is nothing earth-shattering about them. Others have already expressed them, and I have no doubt but that others have already expressed them much more clearly than I ever will. And you probably have already reflected on your life and come up with these insights too. So, I am not sharing something new - what I'm sharing is just where it is I am myself at this stage in my life.

You know how it is when we are young - it is important to us that people like us. We do not really want to think that our parents might not like us. We want them and our siblings and our friends and neighbours to like us. We want them to think nice thoughts and say nice things about us.

I still remember when I was about fourteen years of age and was buying bread in the bakery. I collected the bread and paid the money and thanked the lady behind the counter. As I was leaving the shop I could hear her say to the next customer: "he's a lovely lad." I was thrilled and over the moon - and at the same time I nearly died of embarrassment. It was important to me then that I be liked - important because I was not too sure if I actually liked myself. And because I was not too sure if I liked myself I was embarrassed - it was as if I feared the lady who said that might realise I was really a fake just pretending to be nice so as to be liked.

I remember another occasion and this time I was probably only about ten - I was heading out somewhere or other and my mother was standing talking to our next door neighbour as I passed by. I overheard the neighbour say to my mother: "He's the image of his father." And I was thrilled because I idolised my dad at that stage and that was the greatest compliment I could have heard said about me.

Yes - it is important to us when we are younger that we be liked and loved - because that is how we come to believe that we are likeable and lovable.

As we get older we gradualy become more and more independent of what peple think. It remans important to us that people like us - but not as important as it used to be. We begin to let go - let go of how others affect our attitude to ourselves. In other words, our self-esteem is no longer tied to what others think of us - it is related more to who we discover we are. I suppose we come to realise that others who think well of us today can think ill of us tomorrow. But more importantly, we discover our innate ability to respond to the demands and duties of life; we discover that we can be people of integrity who direct our lives by values rather than being subservient to public opinion.

And as we discover this we come to like ourselves more - and our self-esteem is no longer dependent on being liked by others. It is not that we are arrogantly narcissistic - we just discover that we are actually alright. We discover that "being good enough" is actually alright. We do not have to be the centre of anyone's world; we do not have to be the best there is; we just have to be good enough to be likeable to ourselves - and we are good enough.

As we mature we let go of many of the childish behaviours and attitudes. And this is part of the process of letting go of many of the hurts we suffered in the past and which still bedevil us so often in the present. In other words - letting go of the past is the process of attaching our self-esteem to our own set of values and we become independent of what others want us to be.

Anyway - enough of that rambling for today. I hope this Wednesday will be a good day - a day when we come to realise a little more that we are actually good enough.
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 June 23, 2008 10:59 PM


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Good morning again - not that it is a very good morning here but I hope the morning will be good to you and that you too will be good to it. As I sit here it is very dark and overcast and heavy rain is promised. Thank God for Summer!!!

Yesterday was a rather sad day at the office. I may have already told you that our secretary/receptionist is leaving to start up a new life in Australia. Her partner of seven years is from Australia and he has been offered a job in Sydney. So, off they go. Yesterday was her last day with us. She was excellent at her work and very easy to work with. We will indeed miss her.

Life is like that - people enter our lives for a while and then they move on - just as we enter the lives of others and then we too move on. We get to know people and we invest a certain amount of ourselves in friendships so that when people move on they take that bit of us with them and we feel the loss - as much a loss of the bit of ourselves we invested in that friendship as it is a loss of the friendship. The loss can feel like a wound - as if someone ripped a bit from us. And, of course, the closer we are in friendship, and the more of ourselves we have invested in that friendship, the greater the sense of loss.

When this is true of a work colleague moving on to a new life it is even more true of a loved one who passes away. In the case of a loved one the relationship is deeper and the departure is permanent as they pass from this world to a better life. I will never forget the feeling when my dad passed away - he was the closest friend I had. While on the one hand I felt how gentle God is when he comes and I was so pleased for my dad that he had a gentle death, I also felt what can only be described as a gaping hole in my life and it struck me that this is the part he took with him when he went. I have no doubt but he went straight to God - God had no cause against him. And I felt that as he was with God a part of me was there too - closer to God.

But let me not be too morbid. Yesterday was a sad day as Lorraine took her leave. What struck me forcibly is how something in the present can re-awaken experiences long past. As I thanked Lorraine and hugged her goodbye the emotions associated with my dad's death came to the surface again. I am glad they did - it may be over twenty years since he departed but he will never be forgotten.

Here in Care2 we form good friendships also - some will be very temporary and others will be deeper and longer lasting. But no matter how deep they be it would be nice to think they will never be forgotten.

Have a good Tuesday - take care, be good and stay close always.
  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 22, 2008 11:05 PM


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What a terribly wet and windy day we had here yesterday - it poured all day and blew a gale for most of the afternoon. I know the calendar does not lie but it is hard to believe this is really Summer. And now that today is Monday what do we get - lovely sunshine to help us smile all the way to work. It is a beautiful calm morning here and the sun is shining and it feels like summer. I used to joke that whenever the sun shines here we should declare it a public holiday - but if that was the case we would not have very many public holidays.

Well - it is back to work again for another week - back with nose to the grindstone doing what we do all week. I was just thinking the other day that we get so accustomed to our routine in life that we would be lost without routine. Take me for example, I get up in the morning and without thinking of what it is I have to do I automatically head into the bathroom to shave and wash my teeth etc. and then I get dressed and head down to prepare a bit of breakfast. I never have to think of it - I do it by some sort of what I call 'automatic pilot'. Wouldn't life be hard if we had to make decisions about each and everything we did. In about an hour's time I'll leave the house and head off to work and will not cast a thought as to what route I'll take. It is as if I could close my eyes and end up at work without looking to where I was going. I actually remember times when I was driving down to visit my parents when they were alive and my thoughts would be on many things -so much so that I have actually driven through major towns without any recollection of having done so. I remember one time where I got a fright because when I came out of my thoughts I just didn't know where I was. I thought to myself: "Where's Portlaoise?" I had driven through the town and not even noticed. That is what I call automatic pilot.

This ability to work by routine is a great benefit because it helps us to avoid having to make decisions about every little thing every minute of the day. It also means that while I am doing one thing I can be thinking of another. It means we can multi-task.

But as I head in to work in a short while I am aware that as a therapist I must curb this tendency and give each and every person my full conscious attentiveness. Otherwise a patient could be sitting there telling me of his distress and I would be picturing myself sitting on a beach somewhere in the south of Spain. And very often it is this level of focusing on the immediate moment that can be so draining for a therapist. Not only is it the focusing of my attention all day, but in doing so I am hearing things no one wants to hear, and feeling things I would rather not feel.

Anyway - another week is beginning and let us hope this will be a fruitful week for each one. I hope that this week I will be able to keep my focus - that I will not just sit there routinely in the chair but will consciously attend to each peson who comes to me for therapy.

It is in consciously doing what we have chosen to do that we make our lives fruitful. Have a good week - have a good Monday.
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 19, 2008 11:01 PM

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Friday at last. I just want to wish you a happy and relaxing Friday. The working week is coming to an end and it is time for us - for each and every one of us.

We have had a pretty good few weeks this past month - May was a hot and sunny month as was the first week of June. But this past week here has been a mixture of sunshine and torrential rain. Driving home from work yesterday there was a stage where the rain was so heavy that I could hardly see where I was going - it was coming down so heavily that my wipers were not able to keep my windscreen clear. Our summers are becoming more and more like that lately - more like tropical rain than summer sunshine. But at least we have not had the disastrous flood they are having in Iowa. That must be terrible - and it seems the floods are going to work their way down the length of the Mississippi. My heart goes out to the residents of those counties and states - the people whose lives are being devastated.

While I look forward to a peaceful weekend here I cannot forget that there are people worldwide who cannot look forward to such a weekend. There are people in Africa whose lives have been blighted by drought and famine. There are people in Zimbabwe whose lives are at risk from terror and the death-squads of Robert Mugabe. All over the world there are people who are suffering from one disaster or another - sometimes from natural disasters and sometimes from man-made disasters. And then there are people whos lives are destroyed by the selfishness of neighbours or of others who are supposed to love them - wives beaten by husbands and children neglected or abused by parents. And then there are those who suffer internal turmoil and psychological distress and despair. There seems to be no end to the list of people who suffer.

"Lord, there seems to be little or nothing that I can do for those who suffer. Do not allow me to be guilty of the sin of indifference whereby I care nothing for what happens to these people. Show me what it is I can do because it is in caring for your people that I become like you."

Have a wonderful Friday and a good weekend.
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 June 18, 2008 11:33 PM


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It is Thursday - it is getting closer to Friday and the weekend.

I was really exhausted last night because I was attending meetings all day yesterday. My day was so filled with meetings that I did not see my first patients until 7.00pm.  I hate meetings - give me patients anyday even though the work can be very stressful. It is stressful but it is rewarding whereas meetings can be exhausting and unrewarding. And the meetings yesterday were of the unrewarding sort.

I was just thinking that so often we attend meetings and everyone has their say but nobody really listens to anyone else. Each one is concentrating so much is ensuring they state their position that no one is listening to anyone other than themselves.

I was listening to a discussion on the radio as I drove home last night and there were four people discussing an issue - a political issue. Well, you would think they were in a bar with each one trying to out speak or to talk down the other. And you know how it is - people get louder the more drink they have taken; well, these four kept getting louder and louder. Nobody was listening to anyone. Meetings can be a bit like that - and that is why I find them so exhausting.

One of my meetings yesterday was supervising a trainee Clinical Psychologist who is on placement with me. She was discussing a specific incident in which a patient arrived at 3.30pm for her 3.00pm appointment last Monday. The trainee pointed out to the patient that she was half an hour late and the patient then apologised saying she thought the appointment was at 3.30pm. The trainee said "No - you should have been hre at 3.00pm."  When I wondered why the trainee had said that she explained that she was just pointing out that the patient had got it wrong. I then explained that I knew what she was doing - I just wondered why she had done it that way.

When asked what I would have done under those circumstances I explained that I would have done one of two things depending on the situation. I might have explained for future reference that I never give appointments on the half hour - they are always on the hour so if there is any confusion in the future the patient will know the appointment is never 3.30pm. On the other hand, I  might say something like: "You know, when patients arrive late it sometimes means there is something they are having a difficult bringing up" - and I just leave it hanging to see what the patient might say.

But the point that came out of our discussion is the trainee was quite annoyed at the patient for being late and that is why she said what she said - she was not just telling the patient she was late but was actually scolding the patient for being late. But she did not realise how annoyed she was until I got her to analyse what was going on in herself.

Communicating is not just a matter of listening to what the other is saying - nor is it just a matter of ensuring I am clear in what I am saying - it is also a matter of being aware of what is going on in me as I listen and speak. I am communicating myself and hence must be aware of myself at that particular moment in time.

When I wish you a Happy Thursday I genuinely hope this will be a happy Thursday for you. I can feel the wish in myself - it does not come from my lips but has its roots all the way down deep in my heart. This is where communication begins. I know what is in my heart and I now ensure this is what I communicate.

Have a good Thursday - may it be productive and may you gain many blessings today. And if your day is burdened by a cross or two then I pray that God will strengthen your back to fit the burden rather than simply remove the burden.
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 June 16, 2008 11:11 PM


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Following my greeting yesterday morning I was thinking over my relationship with my father while on my way to work yesterday. You know how things long forgotten sometimes come to mind. Well, yesterday I remembered an incident that occurred when I was about nine or ten years old.

Living across the road from us was this very devout woman - she was probably about the same age as my parents, she never married and she was always dropping in to church. She was also a rather aloof woman - very kind but she never went out of her way to make friends. Her name was Mary.

One day as I was coming home through the town I spotted this funeral and it obviously was a pauper's funeral. A lone hearse drove slowly through the town on the way to the cemetry and behind it walked Mary - just Mary on her own. Afterwards at dinner I mentioned this and wondered why Mary followed the hearse. My dad looked at me and asked "Is it not one of the Corporal Works of Mercy that we bury the dead?"

My dad was that type of man - a man who always acknowledged goodness. Not only did he do the right thing but he also praised others when they too did the right thing.

I remember another occasion when he was laying pipes for central heating in a new house that was still in the process of being built. I was at home at the time and was helping him.  We came to a predicament in how best to take the pipes from a radiator in one room to a radiator in the next room - the floor boards had not yet been laid - we were laying the pipes before the floor went in. The angle for bringing the pipes from one room to the other was just awkward. It was not a complicated task by any means - just damned awkward. I came up with a solution that he acknowledged would work.

Then he changed his mind saying it would not look good. I asked why that was a problem - after all, the pipes would run under the floor and no one would see them. He looked at me for a moment and then said "What has that got to do with it?" And he was right - the fact that no one would see them had nothing to do with it - what mattered is what he knew and not what people saw. He was not a man for taking short cuts - when he did a job he did it right. I would not say he was a perfectionist - he was just a man who wanted to do what was right; and he was a man who always acknowledged when others did what was right.

On my way into work yesterday I was thinking over his influence on me - not only did he get me interested in gardening but he influenced me in many other ways too. And one of those ways was I developed an attitude supportive of values. There is a right way of doing things and there is a wrong way; there is a way of acknowledging goodness and there is a way of failing to acknowledge it.

Let us always try to do things the right way and acknowledge when we see others also doing what is right.

Have a good Tuesday.
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 June 15, 2008 11:21 PM

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Here we go again - the start of another week. The weekend sure flies by. I hope that all Dad's had a good day yesterday - that they were able to sit back with their feet up while everyone ran around looking after them. Just like every other Sunday, then.

I spent the weekend getting my hanging baskets sorted - I'm a bit late this year because I usually do this work in May. I was a bit lazy this year and have only got round to it now. This year I have a mixture of Marigolds and Pansies and another flower the name of which I can never remember in my baskets and then a mixture of trailing lobelia growing out of the sides of every basket. I had a picture of last year's baskets on my page but I notice all my pictures have disappeared. I wonder if anyone else had that same experience - of pictures disappearing from their page. I must try and get the pictures back up again - but I am a bit lazy still so it may well be a while before I get that done.

As I was working in the garden I was thinking how I have come to love gardening. My dad was a great gardener - as was my grandad. I suppose it was when I was small and wanted to be like them that I got involved in gardening. And I have maintained that interest ever since. I no longer garden because it gives me the feeling of being like my dad - I do it because I love it for what it does to me. And what does it do? Well, as I worked on my baskets over the weekend I could feel a tenderness in me towards the plants. I was damned near talking with them. There's a strong nurturing side to my character which the gardening brings out in me - the same as caring for my pets also brings a strong nurturing side out in me. I have no doubt that in learning to garden when I was young I developed this without even realising it - I developed a caring attitude towards the plants and I loved to see my flowers bloom. To me, their blossoms symbolised all the labour I had put into caring for them. And I imagine my Dad had a similar experience as he watched my brother and I grow up; he had put a lot of work into caring for us and ensuring that we developed healthy attitudes and good moral habits.

I have always said that what we do determines what we become. If we tell lies we become liars; if we care for people we become carers. In caring for plants and pets I have learned to care for people and this has, undoubtedly, played a role in my career choices in life. What is the difference in caring for a plant and in caring for a person - no difference. It takes the same basic attitude and character trait.

So - here we are at the start of another working week. May this week be a good week for you. May it be a week when each of us comes a little closer to becoming the ideal we have set for ourselves.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 12, 2008 11:16 PM



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It is Friday again - but this time it is the thirteenth. So what - wasn't I born on Friday the 13th of a month. Well - maybe that is indisputable proof that Friday the 13th is a day when bad things really do happen!!! 

My mother used to tell me that when she went into labour two months early with me, her one and only thought was that was as a Friday. She was a somewhat superstitious woman in her younger years - but more of that later. Anyway, as I was saying, her one thought was that it was a Friday and she had this belief that it was bad luck to have a child on a Friday. I wonder if that is where all my problems in life arose - she didn't want me on a Friday and I concluded that she just didn't want me!!!

But I digress - so, back to my story. She told me that when she went into labour she kept saying "No.... not on a Friday" and she said it so much that the midwife didn't have the heart to tell her it was Friday the thirteenth of the month. Her luck was out - or was it my luck that was out - because I was born about ten minutes before midnight on the friday - another ten minutes and I would have been born of the Saturday.

I was telling you that she was somewhat superstitious. Well, today being June the 13th it is the feast of one of the great Franciscan saints - St. Anthony of Padua. Although he is associated with Italy because most of his ministry is associated with Italy, he was actually born in Lisbon in Portugal in 1195. Anyway - we always had these lillies growing in the garden at home and at this time of year the lillies are in full bloom and she used to pick a lot of the flowers and bring them to have them blessed in the local Franciscan church on this day. These lillies were so associated with this day that they were always referred to as St. Anthony's Lillies. And when she would bring them all the neighbours used to go crazy for one of them. So, one day I asked her what the significance of the lillies was and she explained that any house that has a blessed St. Anthony's Lilly will not be visited by sickness throughout the year. I looked and in my droll manner I commented saying "Well, you certainly cover all possibilities, don't you." I went on to say something smart-ass about enrolling in health insurance when she has a blessed lilly in the house. Believe me but there was never a woman yet born who could give a withering look like she could - and I got that withering look that morning.

Well, today is the feast of St. Anthony - a great saint known for his love of nature and of this world, and his concern for the poor and the hungry. He was a great theologian of the church - but he was not one of those with a powerful intellect but who was completely out of touch with the world he lived in. Yes - he was a poweful intellect and a tremendous preacher and was known as the leading theologian of his day - in fact he is known as the first theologian of the Franciscan Order. But he is noted more for his love of people - especially the poor; and he is noted for his concern for the animals and plants and the world in general.

He is definitely a man for our times when nature and the world we live in is being endangered by human greed and avarice; he is a man for our times when so many go hungry and so many races of people are in danger of extinction due to drought and famine; he is a man for our times when human aggression and indifference places so much animal and plant life at risk of extinction. St. Anthony definitely is a man for our times calling us to care for the world, to care for all that shares this world with us, and to love one another unconditionally.

This may be Friday the thirteenth, but I hope it will be a real good Friday for you.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 11, 2008 11:48 PM



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Lo and behold - I came to the computer this morning and Care2 is working. Did you notice that it is down a lot lately - and what makes it worse for me is that it is down at the very time I come online - early morning here in Ireland. It is no good to me after that because when I head off to work I don't get back to my computer until 10.30 or 11.00pm - at which stage I am usually too sleepy to do very much. So - whenever a day goes by and you do not hear from me it is probably that Care2 is on the blink again.

You know - when I first joined Care2 people were always sending personal messages to one another. I would open my inbox to find comments posted on my page or testimonials or emails telling me how my friends are and enquiring how I am. But this past few months all this has stopped and all that ever arrives in are forwards or petitions. While I respect those who go to the trouble to find petitions I usually end up just deleting them. I wonder if the unreliability of Care2 has anyting to do with the end of personal messages and comments. Why would anyone use Care2 to make personal contact with others when they do not know if Care2 will be online or not.

Another thing I noticed too - most of the petitions that come to my inbox show great concern about cats and dogs and other animals. Now - don't get me wrong. I love animals and have four lovely dogs here in my house and I love them as they love me. They are part of the reason I do not get bacjk to Care 2 until so late - I get home from work, the dogs need to be fussed over and then after seeing patients privately I take them for a walk. This year I will forego a holiday because I have no one to mind them for me - the lady who takes them is ill and cannot mind them - and I would never put them into a kennel club where they would be ignored and not given the loving attention they need.

But while I love and care about animals, when I look at all the petitions I just wonder if animals are more important than people. I remember on one occasion taking issue with a young man in the Philippines when he suggested that in the Western World people are more concerned about their pets than about one another. And by Western world he was including Europe, North America and Australia - he was talking basically about white Caucasian cultures. As I read the petitions on Care2 I wonder that maybe he was right - care for animals seem to tug at our hearts more than the plight of the poor and the hungry. We never see too many petitions about injustice, global warming, poverty, tyranny and the denial of basic human rights. I wonder why?

Anyway - don't pay too much attention to me this morning. These past few days the television here has been filled with the European Football Championship and this will continue for three weeks. I enjoy football - but four or five hours of it per night is a bit much. And what is uppermost on my mind is we are being fed a diet of multi-millionaires kicking a football round a field. I think it really is obscene that people get paid up to £200,000 per week (close to $400,000) to kick a football round. We appear to be getting back to the days of the infamous Roman Circus where, in order to hide the level of injustice in the Empire and in the city of Rome the powers-that-be offered the people entertainment. We are paying a very high price for entertainment when so many throughout even the developed world are going hungry. I just think it is obscene.

And so it is my wish that we adhere to real values in life. Entertainment has its role but it is a limited role. And the more we turn to entertainment the more passive we become as persons - it seems that we may prefer to passively receive entertainment rather than fous on what type of people we actively choose to become; and we are willing to pay a high price to feel that everything in the garden is a rose.

Our real values lie in the way we treat one another, and the way we treat all else that inhabits the world with us. I wonder if we are losing sight of this - have we lost the personal touch and the care for one another that then inspires us open our hearts and to care for the rest of this wonderful world.

Have a good Wednesday and let us continue to care for one another - and to show one another that we do care.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 03, 2008 2:23 AM


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Well, it is Tuesday and we are now well into the week. I am late greeting you this morning because I am going into work late today - going in late because I will be working late.

Yesterday I was interviewing applicants for the post of clerical officer/receptionist at the centre where I am based. The person in post is leaving in a few weeks time to go to Australia and I would like to have someone in post before she leaves. The first person in was a young woman aged 21 and very attractive. Being attractive is certainly an asset but she was more than attractive - she was also very competent. After that we went through quite a number of applicants who were anything but competent. They had their skills when it came to using a computer or maintaining a database etc. but there was also something lacking in each case. Then the last lady on the shortlist walked in. She was 27 years of age and she really was not what you would call 'a great looker'. God forgive me for saying this but if looks were necessary for a job she would be in difficulty. But was she competent and she knew her stuff - and she came across as having a great personality; much more mature than the first lady who came in.

The other two on the interview panel were ladies and they do not work in the same centre with the result that I would be the person working with whoever got the post. They looked at me for my opinion and I sensed from one of them that she was wondering would I choose the attractive lady over the other - I guess she was even presuming I would. I went for the other because in this line of work you need that extra bit of maturity and personality. And people who are very depressed coming for therapy do not necessarily want to be welcomed by a very attractive lady - especially if the patients are women because when in the pits of depression women tend to feel ugly even when they are very attractive. What patients coming in need is a warm welcoming and homely person.

But I was thinking afterwards how looks can influence us. Yes - when a woman is depressed she may be very beautiful but feel like an unmade bed with the result that an attractive woman can make her feel all less attractive herself. 

I also remember when I was in the Philippines there was this convent of enclosed Carmelite nuns and at times young women would apply to join the convent. I remember one occasion in particular where the mother superior spoke about a very pretty young lady who entered the convent. She was really beautiful and the mother superior told me she had a beautiful soul. I wondered how long the mother superior would hold to that opinion - I somehow felt her judgement was being based on the fact that the young woman looked so pretty. Within six months this beautiful soul was driving every other nun in the convent almost insane. A beautiful body does not necessarily mean it contains a beautiful soul. And I know in my own case there have been times when I was a bit confused by a pretty face - especially if everything else was also pretty.

We can so easily judge a book by its cover and go for what is appealing in the immediate present. But it is important that we keep out eye on the ball and never forget what it is we are looking for. I was not looking for a pretty face - I was looking for the most competent person available because both the nature of our work and natural justice both demand that. Likewise, we can so easily be led by the appeal of immediate need satisfaction and forget our value system.  And when we do that we will almost certainly always make a mistake.

Have a real good Tuesday - take care and see you again tomorrow (hopefully).
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 June 01, 2008 11:12 PM


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Good morning again - the start of another week and another beautiful morning here with a blue coudless sky. But they are forecasting rain - well, they have been forecasting rain for the past few days but it hasn't reached us yet. I think the weatherman must imagine London is the centre of the world and whatever happens there happens everywhere. I also listen to the weather forecast from Dublin and that has been pretty accurate all along. But then - Dublin is closer to us that London is. Should that make a dfference - like, London is not quite the other side of the world.

Anyway - Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending a first communion ceremony for the daughter of one of my work colleagues. It was in one of the poorer parts of the town - and like most poorer parishes there was a great community spirit. It is amazing how people who have very little in life really appreciate what it is they do have - family and friends. You could feel how they all know one another and relate well with each other. And the parish priest really was one of them - you could tell by the way he related with them. He was not there patronisingly putting up with them - he really loved his people.

The ceremony was very moving. You see - my colleague's wife has not been well and had twice to undergo a liver transplant. She suffers from a condition known as Wilson's disease which leads to a build-up of copper in the system - and that would eventually kill her. She was on very heavy medication for years just to control the effects of Wilson's disease - control it is all that can be done as it cannot be cured. Eventually her condition deteriorated so much that she needed a liver transplant. She had the transplant and that was fine for a year or two when she rejected the liver and had to have another transplant. Both she and my colleague never thought she would see her daughter make her first communion - and that made it all the more precious.

The wee girl is eight - but because her mummy was on such heavy medication the wee girl suffers from learning difficulties and attends a special needs school. My colleague and I became close through all of this - through the two transplants and then through the realization that the wee girl has learning difficulties. He used to come and just talk his fears and worries through with me. Saturday was a day of joy in a world that contained too much sadness and anxiety.

And it was not just like that for this family.  You could feel it for the entire community. As I said - this was a poor part of town. These are people who have very little in life - life has not given them a good deal. But the first communion day was like an oasis in a desert - you could see how they had skimped ad saved to buy new clothes for the kids, and how the kids had been so well prepared for their big day. It was really a day of joy for them all as they brought their children for this special day.

As I sit here this morning looking out the window at the beautiful morning I thank God for the day that is in it. But I also think that there are many mornings throughout the year when it is wet and dark and cold and I complain. Rather than complain I should take time to thank God that even though the weather may be foul I can see it and appreciate the brightness - the brightness that dispells the dark. There will always be an oasis in the desert - we just gotta look to find it.

Have a good monday - and let us hope the month of June will be good to us.
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 May 29, 2008 11:02 PM



1

It is Friday again - and I for one am not complaining. It is not that this week has been difficult - but I love Fridays because they mark the end of the so-called working week and the beginning of the weekend. I always get a chance to rest a while over the weekend - and even when I am not resting I am working for myself rather than for someone else and that too is important.

I'm pretty tired this morning - not tired from the lack of sleep but just tired at the end of a week. As I sit here looking out the window at another sunny morning, listening to the birds greeting the sunrise, I am aware of things that normally thrill me but this morning they just do not seem to touch me. I love sunny mornings in May; I love to hear the silence of the early morning and the chirping of the birds; I love to look at my flowers blooming and adding colour to my garden. As I sit here this morning seeing and hearing all the things I love I tell myself I love them but for some reason I do not feel it. And when we do not feel these things we do not connect with them.

People who are depressed feel something like this only a hell of a lot worse. Depression disconnects people from their environment and their world. But tiredness does the same thing to us - except not as seriously as in the case of depression. Depression is a tiredness - a tiredness of living; a tiredness of the world and of being in the world. Depression begins to block this world out - or to lock ourselves into our own world of despair, of hopelessness and of worthlessness. Depression becomes a prison isolating us from all who love and care for us - it is a form of solitary confinement except we hold the key and we have lost it.

What I feel this morning is a form ot tiredness rather than depression. But it is more than just tiredness - it is my body and soul telling me something. As I sit here struggling to connect with the world around me I realise that no matter how intimately I do connect with this world I am still alone. Most of my life I connect with the world around me and find joy in the world - my relationship with the birds and the flowers and the sunshine and the rain all stimulate and uplift me. But, at the end of the day, I and only I am accountable for my life and how I live it. So, at the end of the day the bottom line is we are alone - each and every one of us is alone. We may love one another and support one another but we are alone.

There was a bishop in New York named Fulton Sheen who was also a psychologist and he once wrote saying that there are certain things we gotta do for ourselves like going to the toilet. When we need to move our bowels we do not ask someone to do it for us - we gotta do it for ourselves. Life is like that. We have our friends and we have those who love us and care dearly for us. But at the end of the day we gotta live our lives ourselves. And when I have this feeling of not really connecting with the things I love I am reminded that we are all alone. And the proof of this is the time will come when each one of us will have to let go of this world, of our loved ones and friends and even of our own bodies to make the final journey alone.

Let us enjoy love when we feel it and not fear isolation when we feel that. What ultimately stimulates and directs us through life is that we are accountable only to ourselves and our God - our friends and loved ones are a support and an source of joy but we are who we choose to be and only each individual one of us can make that choice for ourselves.

Have a good Friday today.
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 May 28, 2008 11:21 PM



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Firstly, I should like to thank all those who sent me their best wishes yesterday - it was very kind of you to do so. I am oftentimes amazed at how good our friendships here at Care2 are and how we think of one another and wish each other well. I note how concerned we always are for the welfare of animals and for our world which we express through the numerous petitions - but most important of all we are concerned for each other. I should like to thank you all for this generousity - it really touched me yesterday. I would dearly love to acknowledge each and every one individually but if I did I would be here all day and never get round to doing anything else. So, please accept this as my expression of gratitude to you.

Well - I didn't do what I had planned yesterday. I went into the office as planned because of an important meeting with funders. When they were gone I was feeling much better and instead of coming home I stayed on at work. I know some people would scold me right and proper for that - but I have no regrets because whatever was making me feel so unwell seemed to have passed by the time the meeting was over and I felt much better. And I still feel much better. Had I come home as planned yesterday it would probably have done me no good at all - I hate "lying down" under illness unless it is an illness that really knocks me off my feet. I often say that if ever I get sick I hope that I will be so sick that I will want to just stay in bed. I'd imagine that I would be a terrible patient.

I never get sick for long, thank God. I attribute this to the fact that I was never one to use medication unless it was absolutely necessary - and even then I was reluctant. I feel that my body has built up an immunity and an ability to fight off most illnesses and I developed a good response system to illness simply because I did not rely on medication to do what my body could do if left to its own devices. I have a great faith in the body's ability to recover. Of course there are times when we need the help of medical science. A number of years back I had a double hernia repaired - I imagine that the problem there came as a result of my sporting days. Now - there was no way that the hernias were going to repair themselves. I needed surgery for that. Then, as I mentioned yesterday, I had pneumonia when in the Philippines and was hospitalised for a week. I actually think the doctor hospitalised me simply because he knew I would not sit idle so hospitalization was like a form of incarceration. But apart from that, most times I feel unwell - no matter how severe the feeling - it passes very quickly. 

When we were young there was this very holy priest in our parish - a Father O'Neill. He is dead since, God rest him. He was a lovely man - but awesomely holy. Anyway, we used to joke that if a naughty thought ever entered his head he would beat the crap out of it. I often think that my body is a bit like that. No - I don't mean I beat the crap out of naughty thoughts - far be it from me to even pretend I do that. But what I mean is that if a bug gets at me at all my body seems able to beat the crap out of it in no time.

I thank God for the gift of good health - and for the body's in-built ability to heal itself. I also thank God for the gift of medical science. But at times I think that we often misuse science and rely on it to do for us what our bodies are quite capable of doing for themselves. I know there are people who, for whatever reason, have not been blessed with the same good health I have been blesed with, and they need medical science to compensate for what their bodies may be lacking. Now - there is the miracle of science - it can compensate for where nature lets us down. But we all have a tendency to want the quick fix, and while using science to do what our bodies are quite capable of doing for themselves we deprive our bodies of the ability to rely on their own in-built healing powers.

Thank god for good health; thank God for medical science. Let us always appreciate these gifts and never abuse them.

Have a good Thursday.
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 May 27, 2008 11:23 PM


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Poor fellow - he looks so miserable. I know how he feels because this picture depicts exactly how I feel this morning. I was very tired last night when heading to bed - much more tired than I normally am. It surprised me because yesterday was not a particularly bad day. But I sure had a bad night of it - I was hardly asleep when I woke up again with a flaming fever and a damned bad cough. And ever since the time I had pneumonia in the Philippines I worry about anything that affects my lungs. So, I was awake half the night drinking water and wishing I had a drop of Irish whiskey to make the traditional hot whiskey remedy. But you never have these things when you need them.

Ah well - I don't feel to bad now actually but I know I am not over it. I got a few hours sleep from about 3.30am onwards and that makes me feel a bit better - but i know that as the body tires the feeling of not wanting to face Hump Day will return. It is amazing how you have to be well for that.

I will go into the office first thing this morning because there is an important meeting with funders arranged for 9.00-11.00am and if I miss that it could take months to rearrange it. Funders are people who do not appreciate sickness. But after that I will come ome. There are a few important reports to be readied for Friday and they can be done from home and emailed in.

On Monday I am on an interview panel for a clerical officer - our clerical officer has decided to move with her partner to Australia and goes at the end of June. So - I am interviewing applicants for the post on Monday and do not want to risk missing that either. So - stay at home this afternoon and tomorrow if necessary - but whatever happens be on the interview panel on Monday.

I started this off as a short apology for not sending a longer greeting on this Hump Day. But you know me - as my dad always said, "Brendan doesn't believe in using ten words if he can use a thousand". I think he meant that I am long winded.

Have a good day and enjoy your health if you are healthy - because our health is our greatest asset after our ability to love each other.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 26, 2008 11:08 PM



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Good morning again - it is tuesday and I often think how nice it would be if we began every week on a tuesday. Would tuesday then have the Monday feeling? Undoubtedly it would for some because there is no pleasing some people. But when I am thinking of every week beginning on a tuesday I am also thinking of a four day working week with a three day weekend. That would be great - as long as it did not involve a reduction in salary. Yes - but as I always say, there is no such thing as a free lunch in this life. We always want something for nothing but all we ever get for nothing is nothing.

I was in a funny mood yesterday - I went into town for an hour or two because I just wanted to be on my own. I never have any problem about being on my own.  I can quite enjoy my own company - not that I am the most entertaining person on the planet but being on my own is never a problem for me. But yesterday I just wanted to be on my own and that is unusual for me to want to avoid company. So, I went into town and had a bagel and coffee and just sat there watching the world go by.

I think it may be a lot to do with my work in psychotherapy. I spend hours each day listening to people as they struggle with every type of difficulty. The majority of people I presently see are deeply depressed. After a while, listening to and empathising with people can burst in on top of you and you begin to feel like one who is claustrophobically locked in a sort of submarine with the pressure of the sea threatening to break in and crush you. I know that enjoying the company of my friends in the evenings or at weekends can be a great relief - but every now and then it is necessary to take time out for myself to sort of "space-out" - sort of like defragmenting my hard drive.

We all have our lives to live - we all have our cares and our worries, our responsibilities and duties - we are all part of this great world and all play our part in this world. But no matter how deeply involved we are with the world, or how tied up we are in the lives of others whom we love, we are always individual persons responsible for ourselves and no one else is responsible for us. At the end of the day I am me and no one else is me. If I need to go to the toilet no one else can do that for me. Only I can make myself into the person I want to be and so it is necessary to take time out - to take stock of my life. Only I can make the choice of choosing to be me.

So, it is back to work today. I hope that at some stage today we will all get a little time for ourselves to just remind us of who we are, of what it is we wish to achieve in life, and of what sort of individual we want to become. If we get time each day for this we will have good days; if we do not give ourselves time for this we will lose ourselves. Have a good day today.
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 May 26, 2008 12:46 AM


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This is Monday - as if you did not know. But this is no ordinary Monday for here where I live it is the Spring Bank holiday weekend and in the US it is the Memorial Day federal holiday.

Bank holidays were introduced here in 1871 at the height of the industrial revolution to give the bank employees a day to rest - and, of course, in those days there was no such thing as online banking so that whenever the banks closed all business came to a stop. So - a Bank holiday traditionally is a holiday for most and not just for the bank. But such holidays are important - having been introduced to give employees a day to rest they were one of the first expressions of concern for the worker. Workers were always the mules of the economy - they were treated like slaves so that the capitalists could enrich themselves and that way the economy of the country thrived. The economy was built around the success of capitalism - when capitalists suffered the entire economy suffered and so did the worker; when they enriched themselves the economy of the country was strong and the worker benefited - or he was led to believe he benefited. So, when we celebrate a Bank holiday we are actually celebrating the contribution of the ordinary everyday worker.

In the US, the federal holiday was introduced to recognize the contribution made by the fallen Union Soldiers towards the United States as a Nation - and this was then extended to include all US soldiers who died in the service of their country. It is important to remember our fallen soldiers - as we say on this side of the Atlantic: "At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them."

But there are thoughts that run through my soul as I reflect on these days - Memorial Day and Bank holidays. We can recognise the contribution of the fallen soldiers and the contribution of the worker - but these are more than individuals. When I think of the fallen soldier and I regard him as a hero let me not forget that his great contribution has led to heartbreak for his family. As we rejoice, they mourn. The parents, spouses, children and siblings left behind have also made a supreme sacrifice for their country. Let us remember them also.

And as we acknowledge the contribution of the workers let us remember that they have families they are trying to house, clothe and feed. There is always the danger that we think too globally and fail to keep our sights fixed on the realities facing us. Soldiers have families who are bereaved when they die. We may acknowledge the glory of the fallen soldier - there is no glory in grief. We may globalise the reality of the employee and praise his or her contribution to the economy - but they are not working purely for the economy; they work primarily for their survival and the survival of their families - and when a downturn in the economy means they are asked to make sacrifices it is their spouses and kids who must make that sacrifice too.

So, on these days let us remember and celebrate families - and let us celebrate the willingness of families to make great sacrifices for the welfare of all and not just the willingness of individuals. Great nations are built on great families and families are made great by their willingness to contribute to the greater good of the nation and to make the necessary sacrifices.
 
Have a wonderful holiday today - no matter which holiday you celebrate. And as we reflect on this day let it inspire us to become better citizens of our country and our world.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 22, 2008 11:11 PM


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Friday has come at last - the best day of the working week. I am always amazed at how easily that expression falls from my lips - I mean the expression "the working week" as if Saturdays and Sundays are days of bone laziness and sheer idleness whereas in fact I am oftentimes busier on those days than I am during the so-called working week.  But then, Monday to Friday I work for a salary and maybe that is how work is valued - when we get paid for it we value it but when we do it for no pay we devalue it. God help the home-maker if that is true because so many home-makers do it out of love and without a salary.

I was also thinking of how much we value salaried work - so many top executives get huge "golden handshakes" when they leave their positions. Recently the public services here have been completely re-vamped and quite a number of top executives were paid off. The executive in the area where I work was paid a tax free sum of almost £400k to take early retirement - that is almost $800k. Wow - if they offered me that I would take it gladly because it would take me twenty years hard work on my present salary to earn that - and that would be before tax.

But let me be careful. It is all too easy to be driven to work for social justice and equality by envy, anger and sheer greed. Of course, work for social justice and equality is not made wrong by the fact that our motivation may be all screwed up. But, when we are driven by questionable motives it can so easily happen that what starts out as work for justice ends up as work for revenge - we can start out trying to help the poor and oppressed and end up doing little other than hating the rich and powerful.  

Someone once wrote (I forget who it was - maybe someone can remind me) that the devil injects people with a little piece of religion so that they will develop a resistance to the real thing - sort of like the way we can be inoculated against various diseases; a little bit is injected into us and that builds up our resistance to the real disease. St. Ignatius of Loyola put the same statement is another way when he said that the devil never tempts a good man to to bad because the good man will always resist what is bad. Instead, the devil will tempt the good man to do good and knowing his weakness he will then lead him from there to do what is bad. Work for justice can be like that - we can be motivated to work for justice and equality, and this work can then feed into our own resentments and sense of deprivation and before we know it what started out as concern for the oppressed ends up as the expression of hatred for the oppressor.

But it is Friday so let us not get bogged down in the rights and wrongs of complaining about how work is valued. Let us leave that for another day and just make sure that we keep our priorities clear in our minds remembering that love and respect are more important than the presence or absence of our pay packets.

Have a wonderful day today and may the weekend be one of relaxation where possible - and where that is not possible let it be a time of valuing ourselves and valuing one another.
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 May 21, 2008 11:21 PM





It is Thursday and that means it is almost Friday and that means it is almost the weekend.  Now - that is what I call a good feeling. Not that I dislike work - I am grateful that I have work I like and my heart goes out to those who are stuck in jobs they do not like, and to others who have no work at all. I like my work but I also like my weekends.

Last night I was watching football - it was the final of the European Champions League between Manchester United and Chelsea. This is the first time ever that two English clubs met in the final and Manchester United won. For those who do not like football, and those who do not understand football, I will not bore you by devoting time to describing the match other than to say it was a brilliant game and very tense right up to the very end.

But I was watching the news this morning at 6.00am and a BBC reporter outside of the hotel where Manchester team were staying was reporting on the celebrations. He pointed out that the party was still going on and that by the look at the way the players were walking you can assume that a fair amount of alcohol has been consumed. And he then added: "And who can blame them - they deserve it."

And it struck me that for months now we have been bombarded by warnings about the need to be careful in our use of alcohol and on the dangers of binge drinking.

I am not here questioning the behaviour of the players - what I am pointing out is how we so easily give double messages. On the one hand we say that alcohol must be treated with care and on the other hand we see them drunk and say something like "who can blame them - they deserve it." 

I remember the morning after the England cricket team beat Australia a year or two ago, the BBC reporter was outside the hotel where the England players were staying and explained that the players were more than 'happy' following a night's drinking - and the reporter actually said this was great. One of the England players was interviewed and he could hardly stand up and definitely could not speak coherently and this was presented as a good sign of a good night.

Then, the next minute we learn of athletes being banned from sports events for using drugs.

It is amazing how easily we can forget our values - on the one hand we can promote values and the next minute we are doing or saying something that undermines and diminishes the importance of these values. We promote the value of health and then we say something like those reporters did about the celebrations of a winning team. We promote fairness and we then encourage the purchase of food products from countries that flourish on cheap labour, or we purchase clothes that are made in the so-called sweat-shops of this world or in factories that use child labour. And we justify our attitudes by saying that the workers are given a wage which they would not receive if we did not buy the products - as if to say that by supporting industries that exploit the poor we are actually supporting the poor. We cannot hunt with the hound and run with the hare at the same time - either we uphold values or we do not.

Our growth as persons involves the dawning realisation of all the inconsistencies in our lives, and our efforts to eradicate these inconsistencies so that our lives are directed by values rather than by needs or conveniences. It is convenient to be able to buy cheap clothes - but sometimes our values tell us not to buy what is the product of unfair trade practices.

I hope that you have a good day today and that we will continue in our efforts to be consistent in the values we profess, and to discover all the inconsistencies that lead us to choose pleasure and convenience over what is right and good.
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 May 20, 2008 11:21 PM



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Wasn't there a song once that went "Love is like a butterfly"? I forget the rest of it and I cannot even remember who sang it - but the tune is rattling through my head as I sit here greeting you this morning. Well, now that I remember that little song I am glad that I chose this image to accompany my greeting this Hump Day morning - because there is more to love than humping even though humping can be part of loving.

Another reason I chose this image is because I adore pansies - they were always among my favourite flowers.  They always wear a smiley face and although they look weak and feeble they are as tough as nails and can withstand the hardest frost that kills most other flowers.

This image reminds me that love is gentle, it appears to make us weak but, in fact, it makes us very resilient.

I am frequently called to give a talk to young people coming to the end of their secondary or high school education and facing the challenge of choosing a career. It is never easy for them - setting out to choose a life for oneself can be a daunting experience. And, of course, what makes it so daunting is that no one wants to be seen to be a failure. And in this age the signs of success are respect and wealth. These are very natural ambitions - after all, who in his right mind would not want to be rich and respected. For some, however, being rich seems to be more important than being respected.

I have oftentimes stood by the graveside of someone who was being buried and heard so many good things said - after all, there is the old maxim that says we should never speak ill of the dead. But I remember standing by the grave of one man who was a very unobtrusive and quiet man who always appeared to be pretty insignificant - the sort of man who could be at a party or a meeting and no one would notice his presence. And as his coffin was lowered into the grave the man beside me blessed himself and whispered a very simple statement. He said "He was a good man." What more could one say - you can add all the adjectives in the world to sing someone's praises - but there is really no improvement on "he was a good man."

When speaking to students about the choice of career it is never my objective to encourage them to choose one career or another. That is for others who follow me in the weeks afterwards. My objective is to try and communicate to them that what is most important in life is the type of person we become. After all, a good mathematician can still falsify the books so as to embezzle money - the career we choose does not make us good but how we use that career can make us good or bad people. So, I tell them about the funeral I attended and the lesson I learned. I tell them that the journey in life may not be straightforward but it is simple - a journey of becoming a good person. A good person is a person who loves - and that it is my wish that whatever they do and wherever they go they will become the type of person about whom others can say: "I'm glad I met him or her."

So - let us be like the butterfly - people who love and people whose love makes us resilient - able to forgive our own mistakes and the mistakes of others and able to withstand that harshest of negative attitudes.

Have a good Wednesday.
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 May 19, 2008 11:07 PM


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It is good to be back here again.  For the few days that Care2 was out of action I missed your presence. It may have been but a cyber presence but a cyber presence is a real presence also. It is a real presence to each other for those who are real and genuine here - and I believe you are real and genuine.

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time in my garden. I love the garden at this time of year - it looks even better in the Spring time than it does in the Summer because everything is fresh and young and so full of life. My daffodils have gone past their best and now it is time for the tulips. They are in full bloom now and my peonie roses are coming into their own and will be in full bloom before long. Everything in the garden has its own season and at this time you can see what is coming into its own - and what is past its best. This time of year, as I watch the tulips coming into bloom I know that their time is also limited and in a week or two they too will be past their best and the peonie roses will take centre stage.

I am by no means a morbid person but watching these changes in the garden reminds me that my time too is limited. Part of me wonders if I will still be here to see this cycle of change next year or will I too be gone. Nothing is certain. And part of me, while enjoying the beauty of this world, feels sad that some day I will have to let go and be here no more. I know my faith tells me I will be heading to a btter place - but my heart just does not like letting go of what is beautiful and wonderful.

And so each day I remind myself of two things. The first is that we pass this way but once and therefore it is important to take time out to smell the flowers. The second is that because nothing is certain it is therefore important to live each day as though it was my one and only day - for it may truly be my last.

And so, let me start this day by wishing you love and peace and happiness. I missed you when Care2 was off line and I am glad to have you back again. Take care, stay safe, and always be good.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 15, 2008 11:13 PM


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Well, it is Friday again and the end of the week is upon us. Today is May 16th - the day on which we celebrate the feast of St. Brendan. He lived in the 6th century in the very south west corner of Ireland. He was an extremely devout man and it is said that he spent years looking out over the Atlantic. In those days there were great missionary movements in Ireland with famous missionaries like St. Columban leaving Ireland to preach the gospel all over Europe. But Brendan was not looking at Europe - he was looking out over the Atlantic and one day he set sail with his companions believing there was land somewhere out there, and people who had not yet heard the gospel. So, while the most famous missionaries from Ireland went to Europe, Brendan set sail for what is now known as America. Did he ever find America? It is disputed but there is no evidence to support the claim he did. On the other hand, we Irish like to think he did. But ever since then St. Brendan is regarded as the Patron of Navigators.

Well, yesterday I had a gentleman in with me and while he is not suicidal he does say that it wouldn't worry him if he died tomorrow. He does not care whether he lives or dies. Life has little meaning for him. He gets up each morning, leaves home at 8.00am and works from then until 6.00pm and then returns home and that's it for the day until the next morning when he repeats the action all over again. Life seems very empty - nothing to be too upset about but nothing to be pleased about either. Why is he in therapy? He is trying to find out what life is about.

But - life is what you choose it to be within the confines of the situation you find yourself in. Meaning will not come to you - you gotta go and look for it. But for him to appreciate that is going to be hard work and take time. There is no point in telling him that because there is nothing in him at this moment that would respond to a statement like that. Inside he is numb.  Why is he numb inside - that is the huge question. There is no point in lecturing, all that I can do is listen and allow him talk. And as he engages more in the therapeutic situation I may be able to help him find the source of the numbness - what is it that caused him to switch off his affective side. Without affect, life is meaningless for nothing feels good and nothing feels bad. Life becomes empty and meaningless. That is a terrible place to be - I know because I too was there once and I'm telling you but I have no desire to return to that hell. It is amazing - we switch off our affective side so as to avoid pain that is hellish - and then we find ourselves in a hell of our own making. Hopefully, I can help that man.

I think of St,Brendan looking out over the wild Atlantic - one of the most beautiful but one of the wildest oceans on earth. I can picture him setting out in search of what life held in store for him. That is what we are all about - each one of us must find meaning to our existence. But the meaning does not just come to us - we must go out in search of it and choose our own meaning in life. Sometimes we find meaning in the inter-twining of lives and sometimes meaning lies in solitariness.

Another week is over in our endless search for the ultimate meaning of our lives. Let us relax - even God rested on the seventh day. So - let us rest and relax and get ready for the week ahead. Have a wonderful weekend and may St. Brendan watch over each one of us.
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 May 14, 2008 11:23 PM


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It is starting out to be a beautiful Thursday here - once again we hare having blue skies and warm sunshine. This is great weather and my garden is really thriving in it. Even my new lawn is thickening up rightly - unfortunately I cannot say the same for the hair on my head. Don't get me wrong - I have no problem of a vain nature about this but in winter the hair protects the head against the cold and in weather like this hair would protect my head against sunburn. So - there is a very good reason for wishing that I had more hair up there. If it was sheer vanity I would be glad to be thinning on top - actually baldness seems to be in fashion at present - that is if we go by the number of people who shave their heads completely.

Isn't it amazing how influenced we can be by our need to be in fashion. Someone somewhere decides that a certain colour is the fashionable colour to wear at a certain time and many go mad to buy clothes of that colour - and then they have no sooner bought them that someone changes the colour of the season and they go mad again to buy new clothes of the new colour. It really is stupid when you think of it.  Then the casual look is another example - people spending hours and a fortune to look like an un-made bed just because the dishevelled look is fashionable.

And it is all about appearances - all about shadow rather than substance. You know, when I go to my local for a pint of guinness at the weekend I get a real good pint with froth on the top. Fashion is like settling for the froth and not bothering about the guinness under the froth.

I think of my roses in the garden - they bloom year in and year out - but they never change colour. A red rose will always come up a red rose and a yellow rose will always be yellow. Why - because what we see is what we get. But fashion is about what people see and has no bearing to what people are. A guy can dress to look immaculate and yet be of a filthy disposition underneath.

But let me not criticise fashion too much. After all, as a man I must admit there is little in life that is as pleasant to my eye as a pretty woman dressed to her best. As long, of course, as we are aware that what we see is not necessarily what we get.

But, the important thing is what lies beneath and that can only be seen in actions and behaviour. Will an apple tree bear oranges and will a yellow rose produce lillies. No. If a tree looked at itself and saw it produced apples it would know what kind of a tree it was. If a flower saw itself produce red roses it would know what kind of a flower it was. When I look at what I think, at what I say, at the emtions I indulge in and at my behaviour I know what I am. If, for example, my thoughts and actions are of revenge, if my words and the emotions I encourage are angry, then I know i am an angry and spiteful man. Beneath the appearance, what am I? What do I wish to be?

Have a good Thursday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 13, 2008 11:29 PM


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Good morning again - this time it is Wednesday, midweek, hump day, call it what you will but it is another beautiful morning. I was sitting outside this morning eating toast and drinking coffee and the only sound I could hear was the chirping of the birds. That is until Poppy decided to join me in the hope of getting a bit of my toast. But then she looked up and saw a bird flying overhead and did not take kindly to this feathered alien invading her air space so she disturbed the quiet by barking at the bird.

I love this time of day - especially at this time of year when the sun shines and it is cool but far from cold and you can listen to the silence. I also listen to whatever  I can hear and gradually I can begin to pick out distant sounds of traffic and the sounds of the birds nearby. There is so much that goes on in our world that we do not even hear because we do not listen attentively enough. And as I listen to distinguish all the different sounds I become aware of all the movement that goes on around me. I don't quite hear the grass grow but it is really amazing how much we can hear if we sit out in the calm of the morning and just listen to hear what can be heard.

While sitting there I became aware of a gentle breeze touching my skin - a very gentle breeze. And this reminded me that not only are there others who share this earth with me, but I am also surrounded by realities I cannot see, but which touch me on a very deep level nonetheless. I know there are family and very dear friends who have passed on from this life - but they are never far away for they live on in my soul, and the values and ideals that directed their lives now direct mine.
 
And if I sit there long enough - and by long enough I mean a few minutes - I feel the blood as it courses gently through my body - and through this awareness of the life-protecting blood I become aware of the different parts of my body - the parts that combine together to make up the whole. My feet, ankles, shin bones, thighs and hips, fingers, arms shoulders - yes, all the individual parts that of themselves are just parts but in combination become the body that is mine. And I feel the air enter my nostrils - cool fresh air entering my nostrils and filling my lungs and exiting as warm air that is no longer cool. And I know that as there is a great world out there, and this world surrounds and touches me, it also enters deep into my psyche or soul or heart or whatever you wish to call it. And I am invited to return warm love to this world I am part of. And when I return such warmth to this world, I and the rest of the world combine to become whole just as the various parts of my body combine to become one body. The warmth of love unites us - let it be so.

It is amazing the reflections one can have sitting quietly in the morning relaxing and calming one's soul. Have a good Wednesday - let us love this world, and cherish our relationship with the planet and all who inhabit it with us.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 12, 2008 11:10 PM


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It is morning again and it is a beautiful morning here - I hope it is beautiful everywhere. At times like this I appreciate this world - as I sit here looking towards the mountain and hearing nothing other than the chirping of birds as they greet the sun and look for food. My garden is coming on and the lawn I planted last week is thickening up. Yesterday it looked a bit like my hair - thin in many spots. but now it is beginning to thicken. It has a long way to go before it will be a decent lawn but it is heading in the right direction.

In so many ways this really is a wonderful world. But then I think of the cyclone that hit Burma about ten or eleven days ago, and the earthquake that hit China yesterday, and I remember that while this is a beautiful world it is also a dangerous place to live because we never know the day or the hour when disaster can strike. But disaster does not always strike so dramatically as in incidents like that where thousands of people are killed and many many more affected. Disasters happen every day in every place but on a much smaller and more individual scale. Take the young man at a fast food outlet in Oxfrd Street in London yesterday afternoon - stabbed to death. Or take the sixteen year old stabbed to death in East London simply because he refused to fight. These are disasters for them and their families. OK - they are not disasters on a grand scale like the tsunami a few years back or the earthquake yesterday. But these are more real to their families than are the cyclone or earthquake. Yes - disasters can strike anywhere at any time.

I was watching the news this morning and was impressed to see the president of China at the scene of the tragedy - he wasted no time in getting there. Contrast this with the scenes from Burma where the emphasis seems to be on preventing the outside world from seeing what is happening there. And it was horrid viewing the pictures captured by under-cover journalists who went in to Burma and filmed the scenes there - scenes of bloated bodies lying in the paddy fields or floating in the river. How can the officials in Burma ignore the pain and grief of their people?

Sometimes I wonder would it not be better to send the troops in there and rid these people of the powers that enslave them instead of worrying about non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? But then I think that the people in Burma are suffering enough from the cyclone without adding war as well. And then again, I wonder would war really make things any worse for them? It is difficult to know what is best to do at times like this.

I do not favour bloodshed as a solution to any problem - but I do understand the hurt and anger that demands the death penalty for murderers who kill innocent people as in the incidents I referred to in London. But that is the eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth principle that leaves us both blind and toothless.

Yes - there will always be disasters both great and small. The test of character lies in how we respond to these. Our gut feeling may tell us one thing - our reason and our faith may tell us something completely different. Choosing what is right is never easy - but the choice w make may well determine who we are.

Have a good Tuesday. And remember - this is a beautiful world and we are the most beautiful part of this world. Let us never deface or disfigure the beauty we are nor the world we inhabit.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 May 11, 2008 11:05 PM



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Well, here we go again - Monday is upon us. It is raining outside as I sit here chatting with you despite the forecast which said it would be wall-to-wall sunshine here again today. But I cannot complain - I could complain only it would be rather selfish of me to do so because last weekend they forecast rain for the holiday weekend and we had wall-to-wall sunshine. I suppose it might be appropriate to complain about the inaccuracies of the forecast instead of complaining about the weather. But then, the forecasters are human like myself and make mistakes like I do.

I don't know what it is - I am normally a morning person but for some reason this morning I just didn't want to get up. I woke up and looked at the clock and my first thought was "Oh no!!" So - I'm human after all. Damn!!! 

I did a lot of work over the weekend - a lot to my garden and the house. My neighbour asked me at 8.00pm last night when I was working in the garden - he said "Do you ever stop?" But, I ask myself: What would I do if I stopped - sit on my ass and grow old? No - it is true that I seldom stop - sitting idly is not my thing. Don't get me wrong - I can enjoy myself. I enjoy sports - I used to love playing but now I just love watching. I love working in the garden and doing things to the house. To me - gardening is not work the way it is to my neighbour. Gardening is my hobby - my favourite source of enjoyment. Football and hurling at this stage are enjoyable but I no longer play - I am a passive participant in these sports now. Gardening is something I actively participate in and I enjoy that. It is always more satisfying to be actively creative than to passively enjoy someone else's creation.

And that is partly why I enjoy gardening. You see - when I am out nurturing the soil and watching the flowers etc. grow and bloom I feel that somehow I am continuing the work of creation. I am completing what God in his goodness has left undone - and it has been left undone so that we can complete the work. After all - he created us in his image and likeness and while we make terrible mistakes at times and mess up the image very often, we can always restore it by being creative ourselves. That is me theologising about my favourite hobby.

But good times come to an end and it is back to the grindstone. Bread has to be earned and we got to work for a living. And that is Monday. Yes - today I got to leave my favourite hobby and get back to work - and because I enjoyed the gardening so much over the weekend I woke up this morning, looked at the clock and thought "Oh no!!" That was not the expression of depression - it was an expression that life demands sacrifices and no one, me least of all, likes sacrifices.

Have a good Monday - it is only one day in the week.
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 May 08, 2008 11:10 PM


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It's Friday at last and we can breathe a sigh of relief - at least those whose days off fall on Saturday/Sunday can. We are now within touching distance of our weekend.

We have had wonderful weather here all week with wall-to-wall sunshine and the temperature here in Belfast rose to 23C (73F) which is a rarity for May in Ireland. But there has been a change overnight with thick cloud cover this morning and the forecast of rain. But that is alright - the sun is forecast to return tomorrow so I won't complain about a little rain. Last Saturday I planted a new lawn and have been watering it all week so with a little luck I'll have a day off from watering today.

I have been watching pictures of the devastation in Burma this past week - as I presume you have also been watching. How horrific - how terrible for those people already oppressed and living in poverty. They are just recovering from the tsunami a few years back and then the social unrest a few months back - and now this. I have lived through typhoons and they are horrific - frightening and dangerous. But this seems to have been a super one. God help the people - and especially those living in the Irrawaddi delta.

All week I was mentioning the importance of friendships and attachments and unconditional positive regard. I just cannot understand how the military junta in Burma can stand by and watch the suffering of their people and do nothing - not even allow foreign aid in to help their people. And did you notice from the few pictures that do come out from Burma that you seldom see the army involved in helping the people there. I have seen a few pictures of soldiers unloading aid but they were very few and far between.

One way we can normally show unconditional positive regard for people in such situations is through contributing what we can be way of clothing, water and food stuffs to them. That way we are trying to uphold their dignity as persons. No person should go without food, water and clothing. No person should go without shelter and medicines. But unfortunately we sometimes show more concern for animals suffering than we do for our fellow human beings. Not that we ought to ignore the suffering of animals - but if the rights of animals are so important how much more the rights and dignity of our fellow humans.

Well, maybe aid is not yet getting into Burma because of the cold callous attitude of the military junta. But I have faith that it will get through and so I will contribute my share - little though it may be it will be an expression of my affiliation with the people of Burma and my deep respect for the dignity of my fellow human. Hopefully it will get through to help the someone there.

Have a good day today and may the weekend bring you rest.
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 May 07, 2008 11:12 PM



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Another delightful morning - a bright sky with a light heat haze over the mountain all indicating that this is going to be another hot day. Of course, by hot I mean temperatures around 20C or 68F - cool by some standards but hot for Ireland in May. And without wanting to sound boastful, I believe that there is no country on earth as beautiful as Ireland on a beautiful day. The unfortunate thing is we do not get enough beautiful days.  But then, as I always say, the grass is never greener wherever the sun shines brightest.

We celts were always sun-worshippers. In the anciet Celtic religion it was the sun that people worshipped. They saw the sun as the source of all life - and, let's face it, without the sun there would be no life on earth. But, have you ever noticed how people always seem to be happy when the sun shines brightly. And everyone becomes so friendly as if they are no longer burdened down and kept apart by bulky dark and drab clothes and heavy worries. No - everyone wears a smile and bright clothes and everyone seems glad to greet everyone else.

I was talking these past few days about friendships and how we are influenced by our friends.  The great importance of bonding and attachments was really emphasised by John Bowlby in the 1960s when he replaced Freud's drive theory with his theory of Attachment. Following on from that you have various philosophers like Heideggar and Wittgenstein who stressed that our existence is first and foremost an existence in relationships and that we are inextricably intertwined with one another. But I remember reading a powerful statement by a man named Brazier when he took up the approach of Rogers and changed the emphasis slightly by insisting that a fundamental human need is not to receive unconditional positive regard, but to give it. 

You know - as time has progressed there is a greater emphasis on belonging, on attachments and on togetherness. Even a continent as divided as Europe has been by centuries of wars is becoming more and more united. And the internet and its social networks has allowed people come closer to one another. There are friedships I have made that I would never have made had it not been for the Internet.

I know people misuse and abuse the internet - just as people misuse and abuse everything from basic needs like food and drink to higher needs like love and affection. But I am grateful for the internet because through it I have made many new friends and have discovered new ways of showing unconditional positive regard to many people I would not otherwise have met. I know that many people say that internet friends are not real friends - they are more cyber than real friends. It is true that we never know for sure if the person at the other end is real of false - maybe she happens to be a he pretending to be a she. That is true - but that does not stop me from treating people with love and respect - the same love and respect that makes me who I am in relation to others like my colleagues and my neighbours here in Ireland. Others may not play real - that does not stop me from being me.

Have a wonderful thursday today - and remember that Friday is alsmost upon us. Take care and always stay safe.
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 May 06, 2008 11:16 PM


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Yes - it is hump day today and this means we are getting closer to the weekend. It means many other interestng things too - things like "let's get to know one another better". Well - that is one way of saying it, I suppose.

You know, on my way to work yesterday after sending you my morning greetings my thoughts were on what I had said. And it struck me how times have changed. There was a time when people were influenced by authority figures. For example, if the Pope said something people listened and obeyed. If the teacher said something the pupils listened and believed. And when parents said to their children "do this" it was done and "come here" and they came. And there was a time when, if children complained to their parents that the teacher had smacked them, the parents would then smack them believing that the teacher was right.  You see - people listened to authority in the belief that authority was always right, knew best and really cared.

I am not saying that those were always good times - I'm just saying that is the way things used to be. But times have changed. People nowadays are much more likely to be influenced by those who are experts in their field, or by those they have a bond with. The influence of authority figures has been diminished greatly.  I'm sure you have come across the book "How to win friends and influence people" - we have a much greater chance of influencing people we have bonded with than those we haven't. So often I have seen people with the right message being totally ignored because they were not very approachable as persons - or because they did not go about showing an interest in others. We always listen to people we really like and we seldom listen to people we know nothing about.

Tell me this - how do you feel when people you know nothing about fill your inbox with petitions?  Do you feel taken for granted? Do you open your inbox and see twenty or thirty petitions from people you know nothing about and then diligently go about reading and signing each and every petition - or do you just delete the lot?  Does it not make sense that if you know the person you are more likely to read the petition than if it comes from someone who really is a stranger to you?

It is my wish that today, hump day, will be a day when we take the importance of knowing one another more seriously. Have a real good day - take care, be safe and stay good.

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 May 05, 2008 11:15 PM


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Good morning - it is a few days since I greeted you because this past weekend was a holiday weekend here in Ireland and I took time off. Over the weekend I was reflecting on my Care2 friends - I was amazed to realise how few there are whom I actually know anything about. And I do not think that it is bcause I have been inattentive - it is more to do with the fact that so many here in Care2 share very little about themselves. And I wonder why?

I give away little bits of information about myself pretty regularly in my morning greetings. It is not that I regard my story as enthralling by any means. I am just an ordinary guy with a pretty ordinary story to tell. But the story I tell is my story and no one else's. And I believe that we are all very special people each with his or her own unique story to tell - a story of great interest even if it is an ordinary story like mine.

This brings to mind an incident from Arthur Millar's play entitled 'Death of a Salesman'. Linda was speaking about her husband, Willy Loman, and she said: "I don't say he's a great man. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person."  But it can be so difficult to pay attention to anyone when all we ever know is a name and what they have written on their page. I have often interviewed people for jobs and believe you me when you read someone's c.v you know nothing about them. Likewise, reading someone's page really tells nothing about the person. It is their story that tells us - and little snippets from each one's life are intriguing and interesting and make our friends more real. And when our friends are real, our friendships are also real. 

Everyone here at Care 2 is very special - but, do we trust our story enough to share something of ourselves with your friends? It is my wish for you on this Tuesday that you have confidence in your story and become more than a name on a page.

Have a good tuesday, take care and always be good.
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 April 30, 2008 11:10 PM


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For some reason I was thinking of my dad last night - he is dead over twenty years now.  He and I were always close - we went to the sports games together, went to the market every Saturday whenever he was off work, did the gardening together; we did all things together whenever we could. And we had great fireside chats at night after we succeeded in getting my mother to go to bed. Last night I was remembering how, after he died, I used to slip up to visit his grave every day and talk to him. I used to tell him about myself and my brother and mother and how we missed him and all sorts of thoughts that a son shares with his dad. An while I was there with him I used to feel the soil of his grave - it sort of gave me the feeling of being close to him. You see, I couldn't see him - I was like a blind man trying to chat with the dad he could not see and so relied on the sense of touch to feel near.

I always liked the feeling of the soil. I always said - and I still say - that the soil is very precious. When we keep our garden neat and tidy with beautiful flowers growing there we can often be distracted by the beauty of the flowers. And that is quite understandable - flowers as such beautiful things. But to me they are like the make-up on a beautiful woman - the make-up is not her beauty but it enhances her beauty and likewise the flowers really enhance the beauty of the soil. Or they are like wonderful children - flowers are a credit to the soil just as wonderful children are a credit to their mother. It is the soil that contains the real beauty - just as it is the woman rather than the make-up that is beautiful.

Back to the story of me and my dad. One day while I was at his grave feeling the soil I had the dawning awareness that we do not talk like that to the dead - we pray for the dead rather than talk to them. My dad was not in that grave - his remains were, but he was gone. It was something like after the Resurrection the angel said to the women "He is not here."  the touching of the soil - the feel of it in my hands - helped me feel close to my dad - but he was not there. What I was trying to do was to locate him. Through the feel of the soil I felt I had located him - except that he was not in the grave at all - he was gone. And that was an alright feeling because I knew he was gone to God - I knew that if ever a dad deserved to go straight to his God it was my dad. I had located him at last - he was gone to God and he had taken a part of me with him and because of that I felt closer to God. And so, instead of talking to him I prayed to him - I cannot say I prayed for him because it was more like I prayed to him and I still do to this day.

Why am I saying this. Well - it all goes back to the soil. The soil is so precious because it nurtures life - life that is a credit to the soil. I look at the flowers and at the tall and strong trees as they adorn the soil. I look to the fields of grass that feed the animals and fields of wheat and corn and potatoes, of cabbage and other vegetables that feed us and I know that it is the soil that produces all these. Yes - it is the soil - the earth - that is so precious. It is no wonder we call our planet 'mother earth.' And if our planet is 'mother earth' then who is our father. Well, we call God our father and that is good enough for me.

The earth is our gateway to understanding and knowing our God just as a mother is the one who helps us understand our fathers - for fathers are sometimes really hard to understand. The earth is precious - let us treat it as such. It is so wrong to destroy it or to abuse it. If the soil does anything it tells us God is good. Too often, however, we look upon this earth as being good for us - we view it through the eyes of self-interest. We strip it of its trees, we nourish it with toxic chemicals that give immediate results but which, in the long term, deplete it; we use it solely for our own immediate financial gain without a thought as to what tomorrow will bring; we abuse it the way an ungrateful child will take advantage of or abuse a good and faithful mother.

Have a wonderful Thursday - and on this, the first day of May, let us be grateful to the soil that produces May flowers to delight our hearts. Let us appreciate it as good rather than as useful - and let us allow it to point us towards our God.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 29, 2008 11:08 PM




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Good morning - it is now Wednesday. We are at the middle of the week - the hump of the week - happy hump day. There are so many sexy hump day images it is nice for a change to find one that says have a romantic Wednesday instead of a sexy one. I know romance and sex often go hand in hand - did I really say 'often'? - many people would say always. But anyway - romance will live on when sex is long gone and that is the way it should be. So - have a romantic Wednesday and remember that while there is no marriage without that four lettered word beginning with L, there is no romance without that other four lettered word beginning with L. Now - can you work out what those words might be.

There is a lovely story in the Bible about a man named Job. But before I continue I would like to stress that this story is not biographical - it is theological. It is pure fiction told in order to make a theological point.

In those days the people believed that God rewarded good people with great blessings - the blessings included a long life, great wealth, good health, plenty of children and they would live to see their children's children to the fourth of fifth generation. God was the one who rewarded the good and punished the bad.

Job was such a good man and he had all the signs of God's blessings. Then he lost everything - his wife all his children died, all his animals died and his land became barren, and he became ill and his body was covered in open sores from head to toe. It was the belief of the people then that this was a curse from God for some sin he had committed.

Job's friends came to comfort him and explained that all would be restored to him if he admitted his sin. But Job said he had not sinned. They insisted he must have committed an unknown sin because God never punished the good people. Talk about Job's comforters - now you know where that expression came from if you did not already know it. 

Job had a major theological problem here - if he admitted to sinning he knew he would be telling a lie and that would not be good - he was a good man who never told lies. On the other hand, if he insisted he had not sinned this would be tantamount to saying God did not play fair - God was unjust because God should have rewarded rather than punished Job. So - Job found himself in a dilemma - to either tell a lie or call god unjust and unfair.   To do either would be to sin in his eyes.

As he ruminated over this dilemma a young child passed by and overheard the debate that was going on. The child stopped and through the child God spoke and questioned the wisdom of Job and his comforters: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of this world?" God asked. Basically what God was saying - or more accurately, what the theologian who wrote the story was saying, is 'it is easy to say that God is good when God is good to you; can you also say he is good when he is not so good to you?'

We can be very self-centred in our understanding of God - very self-centred in our relationship with God. Our relationship with God is so often a one-way relationship where God does everything for us and we do sweet damn all for Him.  We can unwittingly have the attitude that because he is God he owes us. We won't admit to this but if we look at our attitudes we so often find that we blame him when things go wrong and we congratulate ourselves when things go right - as if we are God and he owes us an allegiance.

This story is basically a questioning of our attitudes to God. Yesterday I was saying how we must rise above the attitude the  leads us to judge people as good when they are good to us and leads us to judge them as bad when they are not good to us. This is also the story of Job in the bible - a non-biographical fictional story made up to convey a theological truth - a truth that is as psychologically important as it is theologically important.

And so I wish you a romantic Wednesday - a sexy wednesday can be too self-centred insofar as sex is exciting for me; but real romance is not so self-centred because it focuses on the welfare of the person I love rather than on the pleasure I can get from that person. Have a truly good Wednesday and let it be a loving day for us all.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 28, 2008 11:02 PM



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Good morning - it is Tuesday.  For some it is Tuesday already whereas for others it is Tuesday at last.  But, whether it be an 'already' Tuesday or an 'at last' Tuesday it is my wish that it be a good and a productive Tuesday for you.

Yesterday I was trying to describe the human condition of being both altruistic and selfish at the same time - seemingly contradictory conditions coexisting simultaneously in the one person. Wow - that last phrase certainly is a mouthful. Maybe I should patent the phrase lest someone else steal it on me and make a fortune.

But - I was describing the anxiety of the infant who was faced with strange and unsetting feelings such as hunger and did not know what these feelings were because it was too small and its congitive structures too under-developed to understand them. It would feel terrible anxiety that this unknown danger would annihilate it. Hence we have the initial anxiety as the fear of annihilation by an unknown entity. There you have the difference between fear and anxiety - fear being what we experience when faced with danger from an entity we know whereas anxiety is what we experience when faced with danger from an entity we do not know. Fear has an object whereas anxiety has no clear object - we can defend ourselves against fear but not against anxiety because in the case of anxiety we do not know what the danger is nor where it lurks.

In the case of the hungry infant mummy removes the anxiety by feeding it. Gradually there is the dawening awareness that mummy is its 'saviour' so to speak - and this is the beginning of an awareness that mummy loves it and therefore mummy must be good. But, the awareness is not the awareness that 'mummy is good'; it is more of an awareness that 'mummy is good for me.' And so the infant learns to respond with love for those who are good for it in the immediate here-and-now situation. At other times, however, mummy may have to reprimand the child - no matter how gently she does this she becomes a 'mummy who is not good for me in the immediate here-and-now situation.' So the child develops attitudes towards mummy - she is sometimes good for me and she is sometimes not good for me. And so at times the child loves mummy and at times the child hates mummy and probably says 'I hate you' to mummy. At this stage in its development even the child's love for myummy is selfish - I love mummy when she is good for me and I hate mummy when she is not good for me.

Our development as persons hinges on our ability to rise above such selfishness. Attitudes like this are age-appropriate for the child - but they are not age-appropriate for the adult. In the case of the adult who loves only that which is good for him or her in the immediate here-and-now situation we can say that such attitudes are actually psychologically pathological. So, when we apply this to our attitude towards this world, and we exploit this world for immediate here-and-not gain without a thought as to what damage we may be doing for future generations, we are actually behaving in a psychologically pathological fashion. Where does that connect with religion? That is for another day.

This morning, for it is morning here where I am, I wish you a relaxed and a peaceful morning - a morning far from anxiety, fear and trouble. Let this day be a good day for you - let it be a day filled with many blessings. Have a wonderful Tuesday.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 27, 2008 11:08 PM


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Good morning - it may be Monday but I hope the morning is good to you - and you are good to it. I remember receiving an email from a friend once that said: "Brendan, it's Monday; deal with it." I thought that was brilliant. Anyway - it is Monday and I am thinking of you like I think of you everyday.

You know - I was thinking things over when I was out in the garden yesterday. I was thinking over what I said the other day about each one of us having to develop out own spirituality of the earth - and our own morality of the earth. How do we go about that? Well, what makes it difficult is the fact that from the time of Freud onwards psychology and religion became enemies. Freud had no time for religon, and because psychology was able to explain away many of the myths of religion it ended up that religion had no time for psychology either. And yet each of these sciences has as its aim the welfare of the human person. Psychology, for example, strives to heal the human mind and religion strives to make us better persons. At least, that is what these are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, we will always find more than enough religious leaders and more than enough psychologists who use their expertise to control and dominate society. the Ayatollahs are one example of this - but the Christian clergy are not behind the door either when it comes to domination and control. And, of course, there are plenty of psychologists who are more into manipulating the human thought processes for their own ends than they are into healing.

But it is my belief that these two sciences have more in common with each other than they have against one another. And I also believe that to develop a new morality or a new spirituality the churches need psychology - and you and I also need psychological insight.

I always take as my starting point the human condition - a condition that from the psychological perspective is both altruistic and selfish. How can this be? This comes about because we enter this world as a bundle of needs and demands. When these needs are not met we experience anxiety - and I describe all anxiety as ultimately the fear of annihilation, which is the fear of death. When, for example, a new born infant experiences hunger it does not know what the matter is - all it is aware of is that there is this terrible feeling inside it which it fears will ultimately annihilate it. The pain on the face of a hungry infant is not the pain of hunger but the fear of annihilation - anxiety is another name for this. And so it cries out demanding that the needs be met - and it learns that when it cries out the needs will be met.

Of course, mummy runs and feeds the infant and gradually, over time, the child comes to the realisation that mummy must love it because she always alleviates the anxiety for it. So, there comes the dawning awareness that "I must be lovable."

Well, enough of that for today. That is a good place to stop because it gives me the opening to tell you that you are indeed lovable, and I hope today you will have every opportunity to show exactly how lovable you are as a person. Have a real good Monday, take care, be good and stay far away from harm.
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 April 24, 2008 11:11 PM



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Good morning once again - and I hope it is just that for you. I missed you yesterday because Care2 was out of action for maintenance work when I was online and so I was cut off from you. But here I am again, it is Friday and the week is almost over. I hope today will be a good day for you and for me - and that the weekend will be a relaxing time for us all.

I was reflecting on the message of Earth Day that occurred during the week. And as I reflected on this I reflected also on the beauty of the world in which we live. We do not take enough time out to admire this wonderful planet we inhabit. The more I admire it the more admirable it becomes in my eyes - which is another way of saying I come to appreciate it all the more.

Then a thought struck me - I never hear Church leaders saying much about the morality of the way we treat our world. There must surely be a moral issue in the irresponsible way we dump our waste - both domestic and industrial waste. I have seen black volcanic sand on the beaches of the southern Philippines bleached white by the waste from a Union Carbide plant that is poured untreated into the sea. God knows what that does to the fish and God help anyone who swims in that sea.  I have seen coconut trees look like they have been covered in snow in the Philippines - but what they are actually covered with is cement dust from a Portland Cement factory the belches its waste out into the atmosphere.

There must be a moral issue in the way we dessimate the rain forests for material or financial gain, or replace them with soya beans or rape seed from which to derive so called biofuel.

The list is endless - these are but a few examples. Surely there are moral issues involved in all these activities. I know the churches teaching on theft, on sexual issues, on murder etc. etc. But morality is not just a matter of how we treat one another - surely there is a morality about the way we treat our world.

Another thing that strikes me is how church leaders teach us to learn the love of God through love for one another - but what about love of God through love for our world. The Bible teaches that God did not just give Eve as a companion to Adam - he also gave Adam and Eve this wonderful world and all it contains. The message I take from this is that these are all God's gifts and through our love and respect for them we show our love and respect for our God. So, it is not just a matter of a moral issue - it is also a spiritual issue. Is there a moral theology of our treatment of this world; is there a spirituality of our relationship to the world. Surely there must be.

I have grown up in the tradition of Irish Catholicism and have learned that, like Christ, the church has always stood up for the weak in the face of the mighty. In this day and age the planet we inhabit is weak and we are the mighty. Sad to say I have never actually heard the church speak officially on matters of the way we treat our world.

And so, it seems to me, each one of us must develop our own spirituality and morality of the world - the way we treat it and the respect we show it.

As we come to the end of another week it is my wish that the very planet we inhabit will rejoice that we have seen the light. Have a relaxing weekend, be good and let us keep our planet safe.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 22, 2008 10:51 PM



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Good morning - it is Wednesday which means it is midweek already. It rained here last night - I don't think it rained very heavily but the ground is wet and the air is fresh. The sun has risen brightening the sky and showing little cloud and that adds a grey-blue tint to the heavens - quite a calm peaceful sight.  As I look out I can see the Cherry Blossoms in bloom and the new leaves are coming on the apple trees. I actually have an apple tree in my back garden - it is really only a little thing yet but I grew it from am apple pip - it is the first time I ever succeeded in achieving that. It is bout five years old now, which is young for a tree, and will probably not bear any fruit for another five years - that is if it ever bears fruit.

Anyway - yesterday we celebrated Earth Day - I do hope we all celebrated it by doing something no matter how small to symbolise our committment to protecting the earth. As I sit here the only sound I hear, apart from the low hum of the computer and the clicking of the keyboard, is the sound of birds chirping their greeting for the morning. I look at the new leaves coming on the trees. There is also a new brightness about the sunlight - a fresh brightness. My tulips are already gone into bloom and my peonie roses have sent up their shoots. This is a wonderful time of year - a time when life is renewed once again. and I remember the prayer: "And you shall renew the face of the earth."

I think of a time when farmers had cows, pigs, horses sheep, and each animal had its own name. Nowadays farming has become an industry and the animals no longer have names - they have numbers. I often said that giving a name to a cow did nothing for the cow but it did wonders for the farmer because it immediately formed a relationship between the farmer and his animals.

In these days this bond between us and our earth is quite a fragile bond - our earth has become another commodity in the world of business - a commodity to be exploited in the service of financial gain. And in turning the world into such a commodity we are changing our own role and becoming masters rather than stewards of this world.

Earth day is so important because we are important. How we relate with the world tells us who we are. When a man kills another he becomes a murderer. when a man tells a lie he becomes a liar; when a man sexually abuses a child he becomes a paedophile; what we do affects what we become. When we exploit and destroy this world we become plunderers, exploiters and predators.  On the other hand, when we care for the earth we become, like St. Francis of Assissi, gentle loving souls who can truly say "brother sun and sister moon." People who gently love this world will also gently love each other; people who exploit this world for their own selfish interests will also exploit each other for the same reasons. That is because we are not split personalities who can exploit the world and love one another.

I wish you a happy and productive Wednesday - and let love be the greatest product.
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 April 21, 2008 11:11 PM


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I had a dream once - a dream that I could go by spaceship and orbit the world and be able to look down on this wonderful planet and see all the beauty that it contains. Those were the days when I wanted to be a busdriver, then a train driver, then a pilot or captain of a ship of something else that I no longer can remember. Yes - I even wanted to be an astronaut. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to circle the globe and view the wonders of our planet from way out in space. It must surely be a beautiful sight. It was a beautiful dream.

But not all our dreams are destined to come true and this definitely is one dream I will not fulfill this side of the grave. But, which is more wonderful - to view the earth from afar and wonder at its beauty, or to touch the smallest flower and feel its beauty. When I was young, (not that I am old by any means), but when I was young I would have said to orbit the earth and see its beauty was the most wonderful experience possible. But now that I have matured and got wiser (I hope) I would say that there is no experience as wonderful as to touch a flower ever so gently so as not to damage it, and to feel part of the wonder that makes this world such a great place to be. From space we may marvel at what we see - but we are outside of it looking in; from down here we marvel that we belong.

Today is Tuesday, and where I live it is bin collection day. We have three bins here; one for land-fill sites; one for recyclable materials and one for compostables. Today is the day for the recyclable and compostable materials so this morning I put out two bins. I'll tell you this - it is amazing how much is recyclable and how much is compostable. Before we had three bins everything was for land-fill sites and our bin was collected weekly. And believe you me but my bin was overflowing every week. Nowadays my land-fill bin is collected every second Tuesday and I can hardly fill that bin whereas on every other Tuesday my recyclable bin is overflowing - and my compostable bin is pretty full at this time of year when the gardening is in full swing. By recycling what we can, and by composting what we can, we are protecting our planet.

This is a wonderful world and we belong to it - let us protect it. Let us not dump everything to land-fill but let us reuse what can be reused and let us compost all that can be composted. And let us bend down today and gently touch a tiny flower and think; What a wonderful world.
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 April 20, 2008 11:06 PM


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Good morning - and I really do hope it is a good morning for you. I know it is Monday and back to the grindstone - but at least I thank God I have a job that gives me fulfillment and also puts food on my table and clothes on my back and a roof over my head. Today, as we begin another week, it is my wish that this be a productive and a happy week for you.

I was at Mass yesterday and was struck by the first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles. Now - don't get me wrong coz I'm not about to wade into a sermon. I was just struck by one line from that reading. Peter and the boys, it seems, were up to their necks in preaching the word of God and in distributing food to the poor and the destitute - so much so that it was becoming too much for them. So, they chose seven men to distribute the food. But what struck me was the description of the men - "seven men of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and with Wisdom" is what the reading said.

It struck me that so often nowadays people are motivated by the desire to do good works - but not necessarily out of the most altruistic of motivations. When we look at the world around us we so often see countries with oil or other strategic value getting aid whereas countries that are of no strategic value to the West are ignored. Why invade Iraq or question the human rights violations in China and leave Darfur abandoned and at the mercy of ruthless militias. Not that I am in any ay supportive of the Chinese regime's attitude towards Human rights any more than I was supportive of Saddam Hussein. These are but two examples - there are umpteen examples I could list if I so wished.

You see - there are no shortage of examples of people and governments motivated to do good works because of what is in it for them, and if there is nothing in it for them they do nothing. What the reading from yesterday's Mass was pointing out, among other things, is that in doing good works it is important to be filled with the Spirit and with wisdom - in other words, to be motivated by an unselfish desire to care for those less well off than ourselves. Does a man marry a woman, for example, so he can have a free cook, washerwoman, cleaner and sex partner or does he marry her because he wants to learn how to love someone other than himself. Who is the better man? 

I thank God that in my profession I can feel that I am doing good for someone. That way I can focus on the good that I do to anyone who needs my help rather than just do it for the sake of personal gain.  

I think of all those who work in offices, sweat shops, call centres etc. etc. - it must be very difficult for them to feel that they are doing anything meaningful to help others. I wonder how long I would last in those professions. And I think of the home makers who give their time and energies to making the home a place of comfort, love and safety and yet can go unrecognised for the good work they do. And I think of the unemployed who through no fault of their own have no work whereby they can express that innate characteristic of the human heart - the characteristic to be altruistic in helping others. 

I thank God for the blessings I have received and I pray that all will be so blessed. But most of all, I pray that we all will learn that to be good to others requires altruism because when we are good to those who need our help simply because of what we can get out of them then we are not as good as we pretend.

Have a wonderful Monday and let this week be a good week.
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 April 20, 2008 12:32 AM

2Sometimes this is the magic a friend.

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 April 19, 2008 12:33 AM

Thank you Pam - you put things so well and so clearly. At times I may be that man's oar - at other times I am his boat. But the fact that he never misses an appointment means he is still afloat and struggling to remain so.

That is what wer all do - we all struggle to remain afloat but some find it more difficult than others because while they are in rough waters others are in the rapids. And what is the difference between the rough and the rapids - one's perception only. And this makes all the difference.

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 April 19, 2008 12:28 AM



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I missed you yesterday because I over-slept and for this I apologise. I know that you will forgive me - after all, that is what friends do. But I must apologise because many of you have expressed appreciation for my morning greetings and I hate to let anyone down - especially my friends.

I will not delay you this morning - anyway, I don't have time to delay anyone. But just as some people regard wolves as wild and others regard them as dangerous and still others regard them as beautiful - let your weekend be what ever you would wish it to be - wild, dangerous or beautiful. Whatever your taste may be it is my wish that this weekend be the weekend you desire.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
Your the paddler April 16, 2008 11:42 PM

Brendan, well here I go again already popping in! But, your last posting made me wonder about the first man and then the second man. I thought of the first man in a boat in the middle of a lake with no way to shore because he needs a oar. Right now you are the paddler I think for him, because he comes to his appointments so timely. The second man paddled himself because he was able to find his own oar. And the difference is just as you said about opportunities making all the differences for each of them. It's the "what if's" in life and the way we travel through all of our own detours. If they are good times or bad we all deal with them individually as we allow. Some of us are tougher or put on a braver face to the world. Other's go so deep into their battles of life that they just have to pull up and hide. It's rough being a paddler for ourselves in our own boats sometimes little own paddling for so many other's as you do for your patients. Your struggle with finding your first man his own oar because of the lack of opportunity must feel like a no win situation every appointment. But, he knows you are there for him and that's the important part of your work. Just keep the faith in him and yourself.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 16, 2008 11:09 PM





1


Another bright morning - we certainly are having a good week this week - I hope this is not our summer. I remember when I was in the southern Philippines a friend returned from vacation in Ireland and I asked him what the summer had been like there and he responded by saying "It fell on a tuesday this year."  We can have smmers like that here - one sunny day in the middle of months of cloud and rain. Then last year we had an bit of a heat-wave in May and that was it - it rained for the rest of the time. But at least we did not get the terrible floods they got in England.

You know - when the soldiers of the ancient Roman empire reached England the were able to see the mountains of Ireland in the distance across the Irish sea. But the island always seemed to be clouded in mist and fog and so they named it Hibernia from the latin word for sleep. To them the island was always lost in the mists of sleep. But that is because of the weather we get - being the most westerly outpost in Northern Europe it gets the full brunt of the Atlantic weather systems. If you look at a map of Ireland you will see how ragged the western coastline is - the full force of the Atlantic sea surges have eaten into it. Compare that with the Eastern coast-line and you will definitely notice a huge difference.

Anyway - I am not here to give you a lesson in geography. I am here to wish you a good and a productive Thursday. But when I think of it - mists, fog and cloud so symbolize depression. In trying to express how they feel, depressed people often talk about a dark cloud hanging over them, or being lost in a fog and not knowing where they are or where they are going. But what we always got to remember is that this too will pass - we may spend the entire summer waiting for a sunny day here in Ireland but a sunny day will always come. Likewise, in the midst of depression time seems to stop and we get caught in this dark vortex sucking us down and down and down - but it will pass. The problem is we can lose faith and think it will be forever. That is where support and help are so necessary. But it can be hard to always stand by someone who is depressed because their depression has the tendency either to push us away or to suck us in and drown us in their depression. The families and friends of severely depressed people need support because living with someone else's depression is nearly as bad as being depressed.

I remember a priest in the southern Philippines was out in a barrio celebrating the feast of the local barrio patron saint. It was a barrio he could not travel to by jeep and had to hike. He told me how it rained on him all the way there and all the way back and when he arrived back into his house in the evening he was cold, soaking wet and covered in muck from head to toe. He sat down for a few moments when his assistant appeared filled with all the woes of the world and started moaning and groaning. My friend said: "Did you ever feel like just cutting your throat - well, when he started I no longer wanted to live." There were a few expletives thrown in which I removed out of politeness - anyway, Care2 would have blocked them. But you know how it is - living with someone depressed is depressing. It sucks the faith out of us and leaves us wondering if there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.

So, on this bright Thursday it is my hope that this day will start as brightly for you as it did for me. And it is my hope that just as you know thursday will always be followed by Friday, so also you will never lose faith in the fact that the sunrise always follows the sunset. Have a great day - and always take care.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 15, 2008 11:10 PM

Pam - please do hang in there with us. We love having you.I was amazed when I read your message talking about hanging in there - and I made reference to hanging in there in my greetings this morning. Like you, I too cannot wait for the gardening to start properly.

Let us hang out together, Pam - we are good for one another.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 15, 2008 11:07 PM



1


Well, we are at the middle of the week and I hope the second half goes as well as, if not better than, the first half. For me this has been a good week so far. I had a pretty busy day yesterday - the sort of day where I would normally have been exhausted and weary at the end of it. But my last patient in yesterday is doing extremely well and that gives the spirits a lift. What really gets me is when my last patient at the end of a busy day is bloody awful depressed - I am tired and have to struggle to avoid being sucked into depression as well.

Yesterday morning I had a very depressed guy in first thing at 8.30am. He sits there with me the way he handles his life - lifeless. I  worked my butt of yesterday morning trying to get a bit of movement into him suggesting all sorts of things he could be doing - anything to get a bit of physical or psychological movement into him or out of him. Poor guy - he is so depressed. But he would test the patience of Job. No matter what I suggested he agreed it would be good but he will think about it when he is motivated. Eventually I had to say that sometimes we just gotta grit our teeth and go ahead doing something even when we are not motivated - the motivation follows. I certainly was thankful that I did not have him in last thing in the evening.

But last thing yesterday was this guy who was very depressed when he first came a few weeks back and now he is grabbing his life by the scruff of the neck and there certainly is movement. And when I see someone taking the initiative it certainly is rewarding.

Of course, the first guy comes from the area of highest social and economic deprivation in Northern Ireland whereas the second guy is self-employed and comes from an area that is socially and economically secure - and there is a hell of a difference between the two situations. When someone comes from areas of high deprivation I know they are coming from an area where there really is a dearth of opportunity, and the absence of opportunity very often breeds a lack of ambition. Trying to motivate people who lack ambition is tough work - but he keeps coming and as long as he keeps attending I have faith that the process will eventually bear fruit. It is sometimes a matter of hanging in with one until they get the feeling that someone cares enough to hang in there - that can have the effect of lifting their spirits but it takes time. Thank god he is a guy who is happy to come first thing in the morning and has never yet missed an appointment.

You know, getting well is hard work. I don't mean it is hard work for me - I mean it is hard work for the patient. In the book of Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve that it is by the sweat of their brow that they shall earn their bread. He was not just talking about food for the body - he as talking about psychological nourishment also. Yesterday I referred to the need to self-care; well that is hard work.

Catholics have this prayer in honour of Our Lady in which we refer to this life as "the valley of tears." I have oftentimes described the valley of tears as the valley where souls are made and character built. And when I think of that first gentleman in yesterday - he is really in the dark night of the soul. Getting out of the darkness into the light is not easily done. It is hard work that does not come easily to anyone - we have all been there and we will be there again. But it is the hard work that brings life to a lifeless soul and that builds character. Day in and day out we put our noses to the grindstone to earn our bread - and to remain psychologically well.

We are now at the middle of the week. I certainly hope this week is going well for you - thank God it is going well for me so far. It is my wish that it will continue to go well and that each and every one of us will be blessed with good mental and physical health.


 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 15, 2008 1:40 AM

9Brendan, Teresa, and friends, hope you don't mind me drop a line every now and then. Just wanted you to know that I am most assuredly "hanging in there" and it's lovely to hang out too! I am so looking forward to some warmer more consistent weather here, I know you are to Teresa. We were spoiled a bit on Spring break with a few nice days. I can hardly wait for gardening. Have a goregeous week to all.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 14, 2008 11:18 PM



1


It is now tuesday morning, it is a clear day here, but it is still cool as it is only April and we are still affected by an arctic air flow. But who cares - as long as it is dry and the sun is shining I do not worry about the temperature. I think the weather lady said the temperature today is expected to peak at 9 Celsius. For those unfamiliar with Celsius that would translafte into about 44F.

I seem to have touched many hearts yesterday with what I said about hobbies because I got quite a number of responses. You know - an essential ingredient of good mental health is the ability to care for oneself. We know that children cannot care for themselves but their reliance on others is actually age appropriate. It is when this reliance on factors outside of ourselves is part of adult life that we have a mental health problem. That, for example, is when dependence on a drug is problematic - it is the reliance on a substance to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.

Sometimes I am invited to speak in schools about various topics. The largest girls comprehensive school in Europe is just five minutes walk from my office and I regularly get invited to speak with the sixth form girls - these are the final year girls so they would be about 17/18 years of age. During discussions it inevitably comes up about using drink to give them courage to go to night clubs and I always say that I would rather they never went to a night club than they use alcohol to give them the courage to do so. Ideally they will go without using anything to give them false courage - just grit their teeth, swallow their anxiety and go but do not rely on alcohol to get them to go there.

Hobbies are also an essential part of self-care. When I work in the garden, for example, I do not do it to please anyone but myself. Giving myself time in the garden is my way of saying I am important enough to deserve this time to myself; I give time to what pleases me. If I do not regard myself as deserving of time like this, then I must feel that I am pretty worthless. So - a hobby is not only a way of passing time but, more importantly, it is a way of telling myself I have self worth. When I look at it this way I can se that the absence of hobbies is the road to depression. Did you ever notice, for example, that people with drink problems or drug problems usually have no hobbies; did you ever notice, for example, that in the treatment of very severe depression the psychiatric services use occupational therapists to guide peple into the right use of hobbies - ostensibly to occupy their time but in reality to help strengthen their self-esteem.

What I am actually talking about here is the ability of self-care. When I have a hobby I do not rely on others to entertain me or to make me feel good about myself - I am taking responsibility for this myself. The use of drink or drugs, the over-reliance on others, watching too much television or working too much can be very destructive of mental health.

Have a good and a productive day today - we are nearly at the mid-week and let us be glad.


 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 13, 2008 11:19 PM

1

Here we go again - another Monday and another week. Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Belfast - the weather man got it wrong again because according to him it should have been raining - but I'm not complaining. I went to the garden centre to see if there was anything of interest there and found a few things - don't ask me what you call them for I have forgotten the name of them already but they look beautiful. I must also plant a new lawn to the front of the house - the lawn I have is like my head with too many bald spots.

Anyway - I was just thinking to myself over the weekend that we in Western Society - if not the world at large -  are experiencing an explosion in the use of drugs - and the most widely used and most destructively used drug of all is alcohol. While a small proportion of the population use other drugs the vast majority use alcohol - and there is an attitude these days that there is little point in drinking if you are not going to get completely blitzed with drink.

I was remembering Freud's contention that religon would gradually fade away and be replaced by science and pure knowledge as the source of meaning in life. Religion gave meaning insofar as it explained the pains of life in terms of preparation for a life after death. The prospect of eternal life after death compensated for the shortcomings experienced this side of the grave. But Freud did not believe in life after death and he then argued that knowledge and science would give us meaning and remove the shortcomings and the reliance on what he regarded as superstition. But as time went on and he grew older and a bit wiser he came to realise that knowledge and science themselves offered no solution to life's deprivations and meaninglessness, and he then wrote his work entitled Civilization and its Discontents in which he argued that we are destined to be discontent.

What has all this got to do with the misuse of drugs and alcohol? I believe that with the demise of the influence of religion and faith, and the realisation that education does not necessarily make life more meaningful, society is experiencing the discontents Freud spoke about and more and more people are using substances just to change how they feel. When we feel bored or annoyed or depressed or whatever negative feelings we have we ant to change them - and nothing better than opiates, stimulants or alcohol to do that for us.

In the past people turned to hobbies like gardening, sport, walking etc. etc. to change how they felt. And really, hobbies are very important aspects of life. You will actually find that people who are deeply depressed have no hobbies; you will also find that people who rely on alcohol or drugs to change the way the feel have no hobbies either. Psychoactive substances are the quick fix - they give temporary relief from the boredom and the meaninglessness of life. But only a relief that is of a very temporary nature. A longer term solution to the meaninglessness of life lies in hard work. Hobbies can be hard work but they do give a sense of well being that is derived from the fruit of our labours.

Today we start another week - may it be productive and may our labours give meaning to our lives. Have a good Monday and have a good week.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 07, 2008 11:25 PM



1


Good morning my special friend. As I sit here thinking of you I can see the red glow of the sunrise reflected in the windown across the street - my room faces towards the mountains to the west of the city so that all I can see of the sunrise is what is reflected in those windows. And you all know what a red sky in the morning means. It may be bright outside just now but it is not going to last.

I was outside for a bit earlier - i love the early mornings when winter is coming to an end because it is so quiet outside. I can see the motorway in the distance and the cars, buses and lorries speeding in and out of the city - but it is far enough away that I cannot hear them. All I can here is the morning chorus of the birds greeting the sunrise. It really is the best time of the day - it is no wonder that I am a morning person.

I remember when I was at secondary school I loved getting up ealy during the summer holidays and going out for a walk or for a ride on my bicycle at 6.00am. I lived in a small town and at that hour nothing stirred to disturb the morning except myself and nature. I loved to hear the sound of the birds and the cattle with the odd bark of a dog. It never seemed to rain in those summer days - I bet it did rain but I cannot remember it. I remember only the good times - which makes sense of the song that says "things too painful to remember we simply choose to forget." 

We may forget many of the painful experiences we have had but that does not mean we are left unaffected by them. For example, I often marvel at the different attitudes people have towards God. I work with people in therapy and frequently their attitudes towards God emerge. Some are so scared of God; their perception is that they must do all things perfectly because God is a hard task-master demanding perfection in everything they do.  "Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect." When you delve deeper you find that very often people who grew up under a very strict and intolerant parent, a parent they needed but feared, will have an attitude towards authority and towards the need for perfection that they live their lives in fear of punishment, rejection and abandonment.  On the other hand there are others who crave affection and love, and their perception of God is that he loves unconditionally and there appears to be a discrepancy between their faith in an all-loving God and their lifestyle that seems to be one of do what you like because it will be all right at the end of the day. In other words, they take God's love for granted.

But basically, what I sense is that our approach to religion is very much affected by our personality - some see God as a bit of a tyrant and others appear to see him as a bit of a push-over.  And there are numerous other perceptions in-between these extremes. Our experiences in life may be long forgotten - but their effects linger on and these colour our perceptions - our perception of our world and our perception of our God.

Is it not a pity that so often we fail to allow God to colour our perception of him and of our world. Maybe we should take time out mor often to listen to the world we live in - the sound of the birds, the cattle and the other animals that share our world and not be so deafened by the sounds we invent ourselves such as the traffic on the motorway; to view the stars at night rather than have the beauty of the universe blocked from view by the artificial city lights.

Have a good and a relaxing Tuesday - and let us remember that this world contains all we need to bring peace and harmony to our souls because everywhere we look we can find our God - if only we look.
  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 06, 2008 11:34 PM

Pam and theresa - thank you for your love and friendship. I really appreciate you both - you are wonderful friends. Let us always hang out - or hang in - together.  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 06, 2008 11:31 PM


1


Here we go again - another Monday and another week. Ah well - they say that Monday cannot last forever but sometimes it does not feel that way. It's a good job I'm a morning person - how would I deal with Monday if I wasn't?

Today I have a trainee clinical psychologist coming to me on placement - she is one of my students at the University here and will be on placement under my supervision from today until September 17th.

Last night I had a priest friend come to visit me for a few hours - we are long time friends but our approach to life can be quite different. The news came on while he was here and we watched the report of the trouble in London as the Olympic torch was being carried through the city. There were demonstrations all the way - protests at the human rights record in China and Tibet. He commented that these protests had no place in sport and that was like a red rag to a bull where I was concerned. I argued that the various governments had said they would be keeping an eye on China's human rights record and they argued that because of this the protests were unnecessary. The truth is, however, that the various governments would not be promising this but for the protests. In the same way, industry and business will not take steps to protect the environment unless forced to do so. These are all moral issues and cannot be set aside for another time or for another reason.

Anyway - I don't wish to get into all that here. I just want to wish you a good Monday today. Take are , stay safe, be good and always stay close.

  [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 03, 2008 5:39 PM

Brendan,

Thank-you so much, your words and your faith is so up-lifting...

 Hanging in is easy with good, gentle Friends, at your back.

I know I am blessed by those I call friend. 

 [ send green star]
 
 April 03, 2008 12:06 AM

Brendan thank you so much for these messages. You are a real inspiration! And now I see we are 4.

 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
 April 02, 2008 10:51 PM

1


It is good to be back again. Yesterday morning Care2 was down for maintenance and that left me cut off and unable to reach you. It came back online again just a few minutes before I was due to leave for work - not giving me time enough to greet you. I find it quite frustrating when that happens - and it seems to be happening with greater frequency these days. I was reminded yesterday of a time when I was living in a pretty isolated mountainous area in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. I had to drive nearly half a day's journey through rough unpaved roads to the city where I could do my shopping and collect my mail. A trip to the city and back again took and entire day and I made that journey once a week - sometimes I would arrive there only to find there was no mail for me. That was a disappointment because it meant another week would go by without any mail from home. I had that feeling again ysterday morning because as I left for work I knew I would not get back to my computer here until almost bedtime. But at least I had the consolation of knowing that would be just a few hours - it would not be an entire week away.

Friendships like to be renewed on a regular basis. It is always nice to be able to greet our friends. I usually get a chance to drive down to visit my hometown once a year in the summer times and it is really good to meet the folks I grew up with, to embrace them and thank God we are all still alive. Some of those folks are now quite old - many of the neighbours are into their eighties and it means a lot to them when I call. It means a lot to me also to know they still remember me and to feel the warmth of their embrace as contact is renewed. These are all gentle people - friendship and love brings out the gentleness in each one of us.

My day yesterday was a day filled with boring meetings and my mind often wandered to more interesting thoughts.  Among those thoughts was the thought of how good it is to contact friends - not just colleagues but real friends - and it struck me that real friendships are warm and tender. I know yesterday was Wednesday - or Hump Day as many call it. But hump day is a day where the emphasis is on hot connections. We look at the various images offered for hump day and they are all of a hot sexual nature. Not that there is anything seriously wrong with that - sex is by nature exciting and sexual activity by nature generates heat. But there is a difference btween hot sexual encounters and warm loving friendships.

Thinking over that I recalled the story from the Bible where the prophet wnet to the cave and while there he sought God. He did not find God in the thunder or lightning - nor did he find God in the storm. No - where did he find God? He found God in the gentle breeze. I could identify with this when I held my father's hand as he died many years ago - for God can be so gentle when he comes.

Yes - it is in this gentle patient and loving connection we have with one another that we find our God. This is because it is in the gentleness that we relax and open our hearts and mind to others - and this openness is where we come to understand, to accept and to bond with one another. Strong personally held opinions can divide us just as personal ambitions can separate us and turn us into competitors opposing one another; but the gentle openness that allows us to show our real selves to one another, and that allows us to see the real personal side of each other - this is what bonds us and it is in this bonding that we find our God. "If you cannot love your neighbour whom you see how can you love your God whom you do not see," and again "Where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in their midst."

Have a wonderful thursday - the week end is almost upon us. Let us hang in together because it is this hanging together that changes everything. As the song once said "Love changes everything."
 [ send green star]  [ accepted]
 
Brendan's Daily musing's ~ 3 April 02, 2008 8:55 PM

3394.gif picture by magentalou

Thank you for your words.... and time.

 [ send green star]
 
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