Giving voice to beauty

It’s a sad week when the world loses two of your heroes, but that’s happened to me in the last few days as we have learned of the deaths of singer Kate McGarrigle and rugby commentator, Bill McLaren.

There’s not much that obviously links the Borders born rugby man and the golden voiced Canadian singer, but their passing will leave thousands bereft, albeit in different ways. The clear connection, of course, is in their individual voices, how they used them, and the effect they had on their listeners.

Both of them achieved top success in worlds which are increasingly devalued in the twenty first century. Sports commentating, once a close relative of high grade sports journalism, an adornment to the beauty of perfect movement  achieved through the use of perfect language, can so often now be a refuge for former sportsmen and women who have an interchangeable stock of cliches and easy phrases. The world of contemporary music,  once reigned over by musicians connected to tradition and determined on excellence, has become, in many cases, an entry porch to nebulous celebrity. This was not remotely the case when you thought of Bill McLaren and Kate McGarrigle.

They truly deserve the epithet ‘We will not look upon their like again’, and perhaps the best tribute we can pay to them, by way of thanks for the enjoyment they have given us, is to spend some time reflecting on why, when we listened to them, we chose to hear.

The intensity, the accuracy and the evocative nature of the former’s rugby commentaries came about through a coalition of hard work, deep knowledge and passion.  Similarly, the beauty, emotion and  truth of McGarrigle’s performances and songwriting were testament to her craft, her talent and her deep commitment.

Yet, for all the intensity of those words, the glory of both these heroes was that, whilst never underestimating the importance of what they did to their listeners, neither did they ever take themselves too seriously. McLaren injected humour into his commentaries and was quite happy to take the mickey out of himself and out of some of rugby’s more self important luminaries; Kate could alternate between the most poignant of ballads and side splitting, weirdly funny numbers. I’ve often thought that those with the true ability to connect with our feelings, to raise our spirits, to make us cry, or share  pain, only really succeed if they can also make us laugh.

Not being a rugby fan, McLaren’s commentaries were not really a constant in my life, but I could not tear myself away from the radio when I heard him interviewed. I regret never having listened to his commentaries when my cousin played for Scotland – just so I would have had the joy of hearing his distinctive accent pronounce my surname.

I saw Kate and Anna McGarrigle twice in the Usher Hall  in Edinburgh. They were captivating, funny, moving, endearing and joyous. They turned the musty Victorian auditorium into a family gathering; no-one who saw them will ever forget the warmth of the experience

Perhaps a convincing  demonstration of the integrity of both McGarrigle and McLaren can be found in the influence they both had on their families. You cannot hoodwink children into following your interests; you cannot fool those who know you best and see you ‘off duty’, yet, for both of these ,the testament for the true passion they felt for their subject is found in their close and extended families.

It’s impossible to listen to Rufus or Martha Wainwright, to acknowledge their slightly off the wall, yet beautiful, approach to their music, without recalling the McGarrigle Sisters, whose debut album in 1975 hit us with such force: fresh yet familiar; comforting yet challenging; traditional yet strange. The purity of their voices was matched by the careful attention to detail in the writing, the production and the choice of songs. Talk to me of Mendicino and Heart like a Wheel cut achingly into our souls whilst Kiss and Say Goodbye, Complainte  pour Ste Catherine and Swimming Song unfailingly raise the spirits. In a way, Kate and Anna became ageless as they nourished and nurtured their children’s musical talent, leading them on but leaving the space for them to develop in their own directions, playing songs with them and their friends, continuing the tradition, glorying in music for music’s sake, and in family out of love and support.

Likewise, the continuance of rugby in many ways in Bill McLaren’s family is a testimony to his abiding love and passion for the game and the enthusiasm for its being played at its best that he passed on, not only to children and grandchildren, but also to  the primary school pupils for whom he was such a beloved and revered teacher for so many years. Can there have been a prouder or more sublime  moment in commentating than when McLaren commentated on his son-in-law, Alan Lawson’s try against England? Yet, tellingly, the commentary never wavered from the professional, because the Hawick man knew instinctively that anything else would not only have demeaned his commentary, it would have stolen some of the glory of the score.  Like Henry Longhurst in golf and John Arlott in cricket, he had the distinction of enhancing the game through description rather than participation. Who could ever forget his comment on Jonah Lumu: “I’m no hod carrier, but I’d be laying bricks if he was running at me”.

McLaren, of course, was always and forever identified with Hawick – he loved the place without ever becoming precious about it. Similarly, Kate McGarrigle will always be associated with her French Canadian heritage, though it never stopped her from experimenting and accessing other traditions and different cultures.

In family and geography, both these greats were grounded, connected and at ease in their own foundations. They were committed to excellence in their own particular areas of talent, but had the strength of character to hold all they did in context. I wonder if that’s why they were extra special.

As CLR James so tellingly wrote: “What know they of cricket, who only cricket know?”

They will be sadly missed but joyfully recalled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S617AieOPJo

http://www.muhcfoundation.com/mcgarrigle

What was all that about?

Had a bit of a Beatlesfest over the holidays. Among the books I got for Christmas were Ian McDonald’s monumental ‘Revolution in the Head‘ which gives recording details and provenance of everything the band recorded and Bill Harry’s account of the Merseybeat years: ‘Bigger than the Beatles’. He was the guy who chronicled the development of the burgeoning Liverpool music scene in the early sixties, principally by launching the pop music paper Mersey Beat which was influential in promoting the Fabs and providing coverage of the many post skiffle groups that operated around the city at the time. Inevitably this led to me getting some of the remastered CDs, notably the earlier stuff – Please Please Me, With The Beatles and Beatles for Sale, alongside the Backtrack CDs – all of which contained music I hadn’t really listened to since I put away my turntable a good few years ago.

Much to my surprise, a lot of the old excitement resurfaced; the flutter in the stomach whenever I heard the drum roll intro to She Loves You; Ringo’s drum fill in Ticket to Ride, the thud of the bass at the start of I Feel Fine; music and sounds that affected me in a way that nothing else ever has. I realised I can still recall, over 40 years later, when I first heard certain Beatles songs, where I was and what I was doing.

I also realised that middle aged fogies have always reminisced about their music  and their times, and I thought I’d like to investigate whether the Beatles really were that special, or at least reflect on what they meant to me personally – alongside the multimillions for whom they marked a coming of age.

I think more books have been written on the Fab Four than perhaps any other musical topic and I don’t really want to get into their seminal influences on later fashion or music; this is more of a personal recollection – not particularly special or unique, except to me, and my history.

When my father died in 1957, my mother and I moved from Edinburgh to England, and ended up in 1959 in Southport, a seaside town just 20 miles north of Liverpool, and I went to school in Crosby, a northern suburb of Liverpool. Bizarrely, to outsiders, Southport folk, ‘Sandgrounders’ as they are known, kept fiercely separate from anything Liverpudlian; they considered they lived in Lancashire, and even today, decades after local government reorganisation placed them as part of Merseyside, there is a determination not to be labelled as Scousers in any way. When I took the commuter train to school, halfway between Southport and Liverpool, there was a sense that the ‘Southport lads’ and the guys who lived in the northern Liverpool suburbs of Litherland, Bootle and Seaforth were different breeds.

In 1962, when the Beatles started to take off, the music scene in Liverpool was invisible to me. I was ten and my focus was on the 11+ and whether I would be successful in  winning a place at ‘the big school’.  Music was Cliff and the Shadows and men with shiny suits on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Indeed, while my friends, particularly those from the Liverpool end, started to mention these Beatles, I stubbornly stuck to my support for Cliff and the Shads.

I don’t actually remember when I first heard the Beatles, but I think it would have been Please Please Me on the radio,which was released in January 63. It must have had an effect on me as my first Beatles memory is standing on Crosby station in February of that year, looking at a poster for a Helen Shapiro concert at Southport’s Odeon Cinema on March 1st, and noticing that the Beatles were on the bill.

Over the next 6 months, From Me to You and She Loves You were issued and by the time of their  Royal Variety performance in November, I was hooked.  So much so that With the Beatles would  be the first LP I ever bought and waiting for each new single would be a major cause of  excitement, really for the rest of the 60s.

I remember when Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields forever were released, by way of what must  have been the original ‘videos’, on two consecutive nights on the BBCs regional news programme,  ‘Look North’, first hearing ‘Hello, Goodbye’ one evening at school before some sixth year event,  All you need is Love being premiered on the live satellite link up ‘Our World’ and Hey  Jude making its debut on a Sunday Night David Frost programme.

I remember one Saturday morning when the band were returning from their first hugely successful American tour. The BBC treated it like a state occasion and carried live coverage from Heathrow airport where thousands of screaming fans were draped all over the viewing balconies. David Coleman provided the commentary, and as their plane hove into view on the flightpath It won’t be long now from their With the Beatles album was played. The household stopped to watch!

Every TV appearance was an event and caused genuine excitement. As the curtains drew back at  the start of ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, there in silhouette were the four famous  moptops, till the lights raised to reveal Bruce Forsyth and several stagehands carefully posed with  brushes and mops.  I never understood the screaming of the girls, but I can still recall the  undeniable and quite unique excitement I felt whenever I watched them perform.  I saw all three of  their films in the company of my best mate, Steve, a fellow fan. By the time it got to Let it Be, a rather sad epilogue, we made a conscious decision to see it together. It’s only as I’m writing this that I realise, by a twist of fate, the cinema in which we saw all three films was the same Southport Odeon in which they had appeared with Helen Shapiro. I thought of that tour again in the 70s when, as a Christmas student postman, I found myself delivering letters to Helen Shapiro, still recognisable, sleepy and in her housecoat, having moved to Southport after her marriage to impressario, Duncan Weldon.

I suppose these days it is difficult to recall, or even understand, how incredibly London-centric was the entertainment world in those times. To have anyone remotely local as a success was an incredible thing.

My mother, as a Liverpudlian, was particularly proud of ‘the boys’ as she called them, and of course, a major part of their early success was that they were the first  pop band to appeal across the generation gap, partly due to Brian Epstein’s instinctive marketing of them. However, in the eye of the storm, as it were, I’m not sure we really appreciated how huge they had become, nor how connected to them we were by the accident of geography.

My mother had a schoolfriend who became a priest – Frank Danher; it turned out that his sister was Paul McCartney’s  granny. Another priest friend worked in a parish in Speke and quite often talked of visiting a parishioner called Louise Harrison, who turned out to be George’s mum. During the sixties, folk recognised as coming from Liverpool were often asked if they knew the Beatles. If they replied yes, they were generally seen as shooting a line, but frequently it would be true as it really was quite a small and tight knit community in those days.

Again, it would be good to say that I was a part of the scene in the early sixties, but 20 miles was a long way, and as an eleven year old, I was really just too young to take full advantage of what was happening. Our school had produced two Merseybeat stars, both drummers – Chris Curtis of The Searchers and Dave Lovelady of The Fourmost – but they had left school before we arrived and got precious little recognition from our staid and reactionary music teachers. It’s really in retrospect that I see how lucky I was to be so near to it all, albeit a little unconsciously.

Perhaps the best way to cover it is to describe an event that was quite regular in my childhood – a trip to Liverpool with my mother.

We would get off the commuter train at the now defunct Exchange Station, and, my mother invariably heading for Marks and Spencers and George Henry Lee’s, we would walk down Moorfields, cross Dale Street and cut down Stanley Street. Towards the bottom of Stanley Street, we would pass Frank Hessy’s music shop, and then carefully cross the small side entry called Matthew Street. Then, across Whitechapel, we would pass NEMS with its modern looking radiograms in the window, and if Mum was feeling flush, we would have a coffee in the Kardomah Coffee House.  It was decades later that I realised that this was more or less a prototype ‘Beatles Tour’ and that thousands of fans probably dreamt of walking those streets.

The thing was, what we were doing was nothing to do with the Beatles.  It was merely a visit to town.  When I was bought my first electric guitar, my mother took me into Hessy’s because it was the one place she knew that sold electric guitars. I’m not sure if I even knew that Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe and eventually the rest of the Beatles had bought their own first instruments there. However, forty years later, when my avid guitarist son played the old guitar, far more effectively than I ever managed, I was delighted that it still played and that it retained  what had become the iconic Frank Hessy label.

I never visited the Cavern, and, indeed, Matthew St was quite unprepossessing, a dark and dank narrow side street, chiefly notable for its fruit wholesalers. When I think of Matthew St, I don’t see the Cavern, I see slimy cobbles littered with cabbage leaves. When my friends and I gathered in the listening booths at NEMS to hear the latest singles or LP tracks, we didn’t do so to be in the footsteps of the Beatles, it was merely a case of that being the one store where we could hear new releases. And a coffee in the Kardomah was prompted, not by it having been a haunt of the Fabs, but by its strong coffee smelling air of distant places and the dashing modernity of its glass coffee cups and saucers!

Only later, in retrospect, did we realise we had been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, although it is still difficult to convince people how far those 20 miles from Southport to Liverpool really were in the 60s, in lots of ways.

So yes, the Beatles were special; they conquered the world by bringing excitement, musical innovation and inspiration to a world that was ready and waiting for it. Their music stands the test of time and the effect they had on us who were teenagers at the time was formative and positively traumatic.

However, realistically, despite our proximity, there was no way we joined them on their road from  Liverpool to the universe; the best we can say is that we were close enough to recognise where they were coming from.

Running through the Acronym (5) Travel

We carry the gifts of our parents throughout our lives. The good points and bad, the appreciated and the resisited, the conscious and the almost invisible. Our genes affect who we are, how we act, and the way we face the world, but our parents made thousands of more simple choices to guide our choices and shape our development.  So, if we decide to do a quick audit and list out what we most memorably and positively received from our parents, it can be an interesting insight.

I realise as I reach the last letter of my blog acronym that all these topics have been to some extent passed on to me by my mother’s interests, her example or her guidance. So there’s no surprise that it is quite easy for me to associate my love of travel with the way my mother brought me up and her own personal history. I could, of course, go back further, and refer to my grandfather’s emigration from Ireland to Brooklyn to Edinburgh, but that was not travel. Emigration is for survival, travel is for education, in its widest sense.

My mother herself was brought up to appreciate travel. Her own mother, of a Liverpool Irish family had tried her luck in New York as a nanny, but had returned, unable to cope with the weather. As a schoolchild, my mother gained  a Dutch penpal whose family she remained in contact with throughout her life. My grandfather sent her on holiday in the Thirties, when she was barely out of her teens, and gave her instructions to visit the farmhouse in Belgium where he had been billetted as a gunner during the battle of Paschendaele in the Great War. As a young woman she frequently travelled to Ireland, but it was when she was widowed when I was only 5 that travel became a staple to her life. Seeking to minimise the difficulties of single parenthood, she took a job where she would be available to take me on holidays each Summer. From the age of 6 in 1958, I travelled Europe with her.

Of course, to me it was just ‘the holidays’, but these were times before package holidays and travel was relatively rare for ordinary folks. By the time I was 14, I had been to Holland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Ireland. It was a mixed blessing: in some ways I was too young to appreciate the wonders of Florence, Madrid or Innsbruck; but, on the other hand, travel had become a way of life which I took as ‘normal’.

Since those days, the USA, Malaysia, and Vietnam have been added to my experiences, and I have learned that travel gives you not only wonderful experiences and precious memories but, most important of all, a perspective on your own country, your own views and your accepted way of life.

In addition, where you travel and what you get from it, is linked to your other interests and extends your choices: an interest in American politics and the Kennnedys led me to discover Cape Cod, my family history takes me repeatedly and joyously to Ireland, my partner’s family to the Far East – and these places in turn lead to new discoveries in literature, music, cultures and history.

I’ll look to blog on each of the letters of my acronym F E A S T – but, inevitably, they’ll all be linked. I hope they’ll be easy to read, relevant in some way, and worth their while. I hope someone will read them!

Running through the Acronym (4) Sport

I have always been into sport – everything from football to volleyball and cricket to hurling – but, as I get older, I find myself fascinated by the role it plays in our lives: why is it so fascinating? why do people obsess about it? does it affirm or harm us when taken to extremes? And what is the difference between participating and spectating?

This reflection is made all the more interesting because, strangely, I can fully understand the opposing point of view. When somebody snorts at my devotion to Hibs and remarks: “It’s just a load of silly men chasing a ball around”, I can see immediately their point of view and wouldn’t really argue against it.

However, against that, I have to weigh my own personal experiences over 50 years or so: the joy of your team scoring a goal, the perfect contentment of a day spent with friends watching county cricket, the explosion of community feeling at a championship Gaelic Football match, the nailbiting tension of a tennis tie break or a golf play off, the perfection of an expertly executed stroke in cricket, golf, badminton, hurling. And, as a participant: the release of a goal scored on the five a side pitch, an ace served in tennis, a perfect spike in volleyball, a cheeky flick in squash, a middle stump knocked out by a yorker, a blinding return catch, the perfectly timed header….and so on.

Sport is clearly about many things: a bonding exercise, the pursuit of some kind of perfection, translation of theory to practice, a competitive imperative in a less than serious world, a substitute for something else, a means of denial, a satisfaction of the craving for certain chemicals – or should we see it as something much more simple, something that should not be over analysed.

And maybe that’s the attraction: sport is everything and nothing, crucial and irrelevant, all involving and distracting, a raison d’etre and a mindless frippery, laughter and tears, empowering and humiliating, inclusive and divisive, fun and fury, satisfying and frustrating. In other words, it mirrors the human condition, and maybe that’s why some of us are enthralled by it, and others seek to dismiss it.

I’ve just become aware of the irony of the heading: since four laps round the school as a ten year old, through the London Marathon and countless 5 and 10Ks, running has been a part of my life, though not always as big a part as I would have liked (lazy b!). Inevitably, then, I am  not covering the acronym or following the acronym but running through it –  a bit like the pain barrier!

I hope I’ll blog the lighter, more fun and interesting moments and not weigh sport down under the intensity of scrutiny. After all, it is a thing of the moment which inhabits our memory and fuels our dreams.

Running through the acronym (3) The Arts

First I should say that ‘the Arts’ are only included here because they helped the acronym. I am really not comfortable with the expression ‘the Arts’ and can never imagine using it in a serious way. It seems to me to be the preserve of Sunday Supplements and TV luvvies.  A narrow view, I know, but it’s where I’m coming from.

That said, music, literature, photography, film and drama provide me with a huge amount of satisfaction and enjoyment and, it should be said, fascination.

My tastes are eclectic, though I do have friends who have  claimed that’s a posh way to say indiscriminating.

In music they range from bubblegum pop, through classic rock to traditional folk and country rock. I never stop thanking my lucky stars that I grew up in the sixties and enjoyed the experience of Caroline under the bedclothes (we’re talking Pirate Radio here!) and the wealth of good music that was produced and became so central to our lives. In common with most friends in my age range, going to concerts, listening to music and discussing bands is still a major preoccupation, despite the advancing years. Not something we would have forecasted back in the sixties when even the Stones and the Beatles didn’t expect to be famous for more than a couple of years. There are those who say that popular culture should be disposable and tat the sight of the Stones or the Who still performing is in some way distasteful. Well, each to their own. I still get a lot of pleasure from revisiting the soundtrack to my youth, as well as discovering new music.

Music was always part of my family experience – whether irish traditional, Radio Caroline’s top fifty or West End musicals, and, in the same way, if you grow up surrounded by books and learn that they can be your window on to the world, and, in particular, give you a view into worlds you could never normally expect to witness, then you are liable to grow up with the kind of love for reading that I have maintained all my life.

As with music, my tastes are wide, but tend to reflect my other interests. John McGahern, who wrote of communities and their people, and was based in my family’s homeplace of Co Leitrim, is  a particular hero for the calm and unadorned  style of his prose, his careful choice of language  and  observation of ordinary people in their ordinary life.  ‘When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.’ The short Stories of O’Faolain, Frank O’Connor and Liam O’Flaherty have also great sway over me.

For anyone who loves characters and plot, it seems obvious that Dickens is the Governor and I suppose, along with To Kill a Mockingbird, I would think of Great Expectations as the great novel. The opening of  Bleak House seems to me almost perfect:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows;fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

In poetry, I have to thank Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon for making me see that verse could be wonderful and relevant, and Wordsworth for representing romanticism so earthily. For marvelling at words and atmosphere, Patrick Kavanagh is king for me, and it’s a huge regret to me that I actually knew the woman who inspired Raglan Road, Hilda O’Malley, but never discovered who she was till it was too late. In those words Kavanagh, better than anyone, caught the hopeless optimism of lost love.

On Grafton St in November we walked lightly along the ledge

Of a deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s edge

the Queen of Hearts still making tarts, and I not making hay,

And I loved too much, and by such by such is happiness thrown away.

In Drama, the Scottish Plays of the Seventies whetted my appetite: The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, Willie Rough, The Bevellers, 7:84 and Wildcat, Galway’s Druid Theatre doing Synge, and in photography the work of Capa, McCullin, Doisneau and myriad others upholds my eclectic approach.

Sadly traditional in the moving picture genre, I still mourn The Wednesday Play and Man Alive and my film director heroes are David Lean, Bill Forsyth, John Schlessinger, Mike Nicholls and Ken Loach.

And that’s quite enough for an introduction!

Working through the acronym (2) Education

Education, self evidently, is about Teaching and Learning, and as a teacher for all my  life, I’ve surely discovered that when you teach you also learn.

There is no template to successful teaching; there couldn’t be, not if you are going to meet the needs of different pupils in different situations, and if you are going to use your personality as part of the mix.

There are, however, according to my experience, some givens:

There needs to be a mutual respect between teachers and pupils, and that respect needs to be earned; each child is an individual with his or her own life, history, issues and character. For any teaching and learning to be meaningful or effective, a teacher has to be constantly aware of this and to act on it.

There needs to be a willingness to listen – on the part of both parties; adults are frighteningly good at either not listening or not hearing what young people say.

A sense of humour is basic, especially when it punctures any chance of taking yourself too seriously. Pupils warm to teachers who can laugh, which is , of course, not the same as wanting to be taught by an entertainer.

Liking children, and the job, is also a prerequisite for success, but, like parenting, that means setting boundaries and having high expectations.

Professionalism, at all times, is the least your pupils are owed.

Praise and support – for pupils and  colleagues is crucial. Education is vitally important and therefore hard to do right. Pupils or teachers who get it right will have invested a lot into their effort; that should be recognised as an encouragement to keep on getting it right. It’s not patronising, it’s recognising.

Use your seniority to operate through wisdom, not to exercise power. There is nothing sadder than a middle aged adult with a university degree talking about how a class ‘aren’t going to beat me’. We are the adults, we have the knowledge, we have the maturity. We need to use it.

Always leave yourself, and the pupil, an exit from confrontation. Shout rarely and only with good reason; feign anger if you need to, but never genuinely lose it.

Never confuse humanity with weakness or bullying with control – THINK!

In your teaching – BE INTERESTING; if you’re bored, how do you think your pupils feel?

“Come to the edge,”  he said.

They said: “We are afraid”

“Come to the edge”

They came.

He pushed them, and they flew.

Appollinaire

Working through the acronym (1) Faith

I suppose I may as well start by running through the topics in the order they are listed in the acronym. That means starting with Faith, which probably loses a fair number of readers right there!

As a personal and crucial element of our characters and personalities. Faith can be difficult to write about, never mind practice. We all have our different, individual connections with our God, assuming we have Faith, and detailing those connections or talking about those feelings can seem somehow wrong –  a bit like the Pharisee boasting in the front row in the Synagogue.

Of course, the other imperative is to acknowledge that, in most faiths, the ‘spreading of the word’ is part and parcel of your belief. The trick is sharing your faith without imposing it on others, explaining it without patronising and accepting without believing it gives you an entitlement to some kind of superiority – moral or otherwise.

Anyway, for me, my faith isn’t so much a badge as part of who I am. On both sides of my family, Catholicism has been handed down from the mists of time in Ireland and tracing back to one of the original 40 Martyrs of England and Wales on the other. It  shapes who I am and how I connect to the world and it’s part of the fabric of my personal and family history.

I’ve been inspired by individuals, not always Catholics or even Christians, who have lived their lives in keeping with the code of loving your neighbour as yourself, turning the other cheek and accepting the will of God in recognising we don’t always know what is best for us. Romero, Mandela, Trevor Huddleston, and less well known individuals have shown the strength of a loving approach to our world and its inhabitants.

Three quotes come to mind:

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing this. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We’re prophets of a future not our own

Oscar Romero

Act justly, Love tenderly, Walk humbly.

Micah

The wind extinguishes the small fire but strengthens the big fire.

After DeBussy-Rabutin