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ME AND MY GOD
A series where contributors reflect on their understanding of God and how it has evolved
ARRESTING EXPERIENCES
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THROUGH A SERIES OF UNEXPECTED ARRESTS, I HAVE COME TO A MORE MATURE UNDERSTANDING OF GOD
BY SEÁN O'CONAILL
The avoidance of sudden arrest – at least until the very end – must surely be a primary purpose of education. Cardiac arrest must happen to us all eventually.
It has therefore come home to me – via no less than six unexpected lifetime arrests – that nothing could be better designed to prevent us encountering the God I know than a sound Catholic education: you may never meet this God until you are arrested.
FIRST ARREST – 1952
Small but vital progress occurs when the parish priest in Sandyford, County Dublin, hauls me out of altar server training on a justified charge of knowing nothing of the Apostles Creed. My sainted mother has me reciting that creed from memory by the end of the following week, aged nine.
Even so, the later discovery that innumerable historical persons have also suffered arrest for not knowing the creed – or for contesting some of it – does not convince me of its inherent usefulness, and there's a period when the Communist Manifesto of 1848 seems more to the point.
Vatican II is happening around then, however, in the early 1960s. I catch a vibe of 'history on the turn,' and decide that history teaching can be my career. Though the NI 'Troubles' soon ensue in my school context in Northern Ireland, they too cause me to 'think again' about the causes of inter-Christian violence.
SECOND ARREST – 1994
Aged just 14, my youngest son tells me suddenly one evening: "I don't believe any of this Jesus stuff, and most of my class don't either!" That statement arrests me, at 51, because by then, after 25 years teaching history and current affairs, the popular project called secularism is – to my eye – close to crisis.
Reason, divorced from faith, has clearly been failing since 1789 to give the world liberty, equality and fraternity, so how can it succeed if, in a future global climate crisis, there is a struggle for survival? However, just then, I'm at a loss to explain to my son why I believe the Gospels to be important in our own time.
That's the whole point of an arrest. You are stuck – incapable of forward motion under your own power.
It isn't yet the creed that I pray then, however. Instead, I frankly admit my predicament in the most direct words and ask to be able to see.
What I begin to see, within weeks, are repeating patterns of thinking and behaving that clearly unite the Gospel world and the world of 1994. Those repeating patterns always relate to the issue of honour and shame.
Put simply, our consistent mindset in all eras is that we start out as nobodies who suppose we can only become somebodies if we can convince a significant number of other people that we are indeed somebody. We seek this reassurance from others that we are somebody, even though we don't trust our own judgement on the matter. (Q. Is this sensible?)
This is a fraught affair, this bid for the admiration of others. Almost everybody else has the very same objective. That's why we tend to bully one another.
Jesus's closest followers had the same problem. In the very first Christian century, they argued over which of them was the greatest. The mother of two of them asked Jesus to prefer her sons as his topmost men in the same kingdom. And this also had started a row.
Significantly, less than a century earlier, and in the same part of the world, a character called Julius Caesar had set out to become a somebody by killing as many enemies of Rome as he could. Out of his success had arisen the Roman empire, the cradle of Christianity.
Wherever I look in history or news media, I see the same dangerous pattern of belief. Nobody is ever a somebody unless a considerable number of others agree on the fact.
Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, had an utterly different mindset. He treated everybody as a somebody, without precondition, and did not seek to be a somebody. He said that even children are somebodies before they have impressed anybody.
He never shamed anyone yet was crucified to prove he was a nobody.
With that insight, I began writing on that repeating pattern of honour and shame in the
events then happening – including, in 1995, the issue of the hiding by bishops of clerical child abuse.
Put simply, the search for honour is always driven by a fear of its opposite – shame, the contempt and rejection of onlookers. Catholic bishops were especially averse to shame since they were still, in the 1990s, honoured leaders of an honoured Irish institution. How could the church survive if its priests could be shamed?
THIRD ARREST – 2003
In Belfast City Hospital, I'm told that a malignant cancer has moved into my lymph system and may not be curable. I am on my own in an alien place.
I realise then that fear of death and fear of shame are the same – and begin repeating to myself, over and over, a sequence of 27 words.*
That is when I discover that this prayer is a solution to a lifelong problem – insomnia due to an ever-busy mind. When I wake, I am no longer fearful. I see my CD player and am soon listening to Ubi Caritas et Amor. 'Where there is caring and love, there is God.' Care, prayer and chemotherapy save me.
FOURTH ARREST – 2011
In a clear case of mistaken identity, I am arrested by three bona fide police officers and soon released with an apology. By this time, I have read a history of the creed and can see the point of these experiences. Jesus had also been arrested and crucified on a false charge – and the creed had been compiled in the most dangerous early era when all Christians needed that reminder.
I have also discovered that the creed suppresses panic in all such situations. Trust me on this!
FIFTH ARREST – 2015
I am hospitalised with atrial fibrillation caused by a chest infection. That could end any moment in cardiac arrest, but I am reciting the Apostles Creed and watching with interest as medics search for, and find, the antibiotic needed.
SIXTH ARREST – 2020
We are all arrested – by COVID-19. Most are soon realising that self-sufficiency is a myth. Pope Francis is talking of synodality and instituting a new ministry of parish catechist.
Bring that on.
The fact that the Irish Catholic church has also now lost the power to shame anyone, and that we are now ourselves sometimes subjected to shaming, is also both an arrest and a deliverance.
The point of the creed is to remind ourselves that human judgement is always fallible and passing away, that Jesus is alive and nearby in the Holy Spirit, while Caesar is not – and that we are always in the gaze of this God who judges justly, through the gaze of his Son.
*Those 27 words begin with "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins…”
A retired teacher, Seán O’Conaill lives in Co Derry. He is a member of the Association of Catholics in Ireland – acireland. ie – and has a website – seanoconaill.com – where most of his past articles for Reality can be found.
The People's Poet
THE LATE POET BRENDAN KENNELLY HAD A DEEP INTEREST IN RELIGION AND IN THE CELTIC TRADITION
BY JOHN SCALLY
Aheavy cloud of sadness fell over me when I heard that Brendan Kennelly had left us. One of the great blessings in my life was to have known him for 30 years, and I mourn his loss.
Brendan was perhaps Ireland's best-loved modern poet. His life and writing were marked by a fascinating combination of the relevant and the irreverent.
He was born in 1936 in Ballylongford, Co Kerry. It was fitting that he should spend his final years in Kerry because his interest in football was part of his native county that never left him.
"It has a great history," he told me. "I remember hearing stories going back to the origins of the GAA when Ballylongford were playing Tarbert. There was great rivalry between them then as there is now. The football began on the first bell of the Angelus at noon, and they kicked the ball between the two parishes until 6 pm, when the bell rang for the second Angelus. Whatever parish the ball was in at that time lost the game. I think it was wonderfully ironic because now whichever team gets acquisition of the ball is the one that has the advantage."
MEMORIES OF JOHN B. KEANE
Brendan was a close friend of the late, great John B. Keane.
"John B. had some reservations about my career in academic life," Brendan recalled. "He pointed out that teachers were very respected at the time but had very little money. He used to say I would be better if I had a job with a little less respect and a little more money!
"As a child, John B. was enthralled by the idea of lifting the Sam Maguire Cup and captaining Kerry to All-Ireland victory. So exercised was he by this idea that at Mass one Sunday, as the priest lifted the chalice during the consecration, he turned to his mother and whispered, 'Why does he get to win the cup every Sunday?' "As a young man, John B. was so serious about football that he decided to give up the drink for Lent as a sign of his commitment to the game. One Ash Wednesday, John B. met his neighbour Micky Joe. In local parlance, John B. was 'fond of a sup.' So Micky Joe was shocked when John B. told him he was I constantly marvel at the fact that giving up drink for Lent. He then qualified Christians believe that even before we were born and long after we die, there is his answer by saying, 'except in emergencies.' 'What does that mean exactly?' asked Micky Joe. at work a provident, gracious God who "With a twinkle in his eye, young Keane has created us and loves us and wants us replied, 'Well, someone might say: What are you having, John B.?'"to share in God's own life
SPIRITUAL MATTERS
Brendan had a keen interest in religious matters and was fascinated by Christianity and the figure of Christ. "I constantly marvel
at the fact that Christians believe that even before we were born and long after we die, there is at work a provident, gracious God who has created us and loves us and wants us to share in God's own life. This view shapes the Christian's moral life by enabling them to live in faith, hope and love. Accordingly, Christianity invites us into the heart of what it is to be human. I love the idea of the divine being most tellingly revealed by our humanisation. "Of course, as someone who has spent a lifetime studying words, I particularly admire the prologue to John's Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was with God.' "I love the idea of a religion based on love. It is best summed up in the quotation from St Paul, 'To live through love in God's presence.' Every day, I open the papers and read stories about the absence of love in the world, which depresses me. "Love of God must be expressed not only in prayer and Sunday worship but must permeate every aspect of our lives. The Bible has no ambiguities on one issue: you cannot love God unless you love your neighbour. The Old Testament prophets were scathing in their criticism of those who sought to appease God by prayers and sacrifices while oppressing the powerless. Jesus told us that all the law and the prophets are summarised in the commandment to love God and neighbour. All love invites love. God calls us to love. "The compassion of God enthrals me. There are days when I'm very far from this, but I'm always inspired by the image of Jesus in the Gospels. He brought the compassion of God to people, he didn't judge or condemn, and was with people wherever they were, especially those on the margins of society. That is why I really admire people like that great Kerry woman Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, because of her work with people who cannot help themselves."
CELTIC TRADITION
I had several great chats with Brendan about the Celtic tradition and its poetry, in particular. He told me that "the Celtic mind did not take kindly to obscurity." He pointed out that Celtic poetry had two other prominent characteristics: a great love of nature and a religious intensity. "The poetry of the monks shows their willingness to meditate on the qualities that make them deeply human, and that also relate to the superhuman. The problem of their sexual nature is a recurring theme in their poetry, and the challenge they faced was to transform their sexual energy into religious energy. This is not to imply that the religious and sexual are mutually exclusive, but they treated their sexual longings in a way that converted them into a longing for God. This is not unusual. One of the greatest poets in the English language, John Donne, was an accomplished metaphysical poet who went on to become a great religious poet. "The literature of the early Irish Christians is full of celebration of the fact that God and nature are closely intertwined. The Voyage of Brendan, for example, is the story of Brendan's quest to find the promised land of the saints. The work is an indication of how Christianity appropriated the indigenous culture as it borrows heavily from the Immran, a pagan tale of the seafaring Celts who had boldly explored the mysteries of the mighty and threatening Atlantic Ocean."
Brendan was keen that I would not have an excessively romantic view of Celtic Christianity. "There's a danger of an excessively mistyeyed approach to the 'golden age of Irish monasticism.' This era had its 'dark spots.' Monasteries were often under the control of local chieftains. There are quite a few examples of monasteries going to war with each other. "One of the problems with the Irish church at the time was that it was so identified with local lords that the original Christian impetus was lost. Sometimes the monasteries became little more than pawns in the wars going on between the local chieftains. "A warm welcome wasn't always guaranteed in Celtic Ireland. There is a story of a beautiful young woman who was pursuing St Kevin. According to legend, not alone did he reject her advances, but he threw her into a lake! "Fifteen hundred years later, in his poem 'Temptation in Harvest,' Patrick Kavanagh would write of his struggle to abandon his vocation as a poet. 'I go to follow her who winked at me.' Like Kavanagh, these monks inspire us to reflect on human relationships and the relationship we have with what lies beyond the human."
One of Brendan's legacies to me is a love of the eighth-century poem, 'Christ's Bounty.' Whenever I read it, I think of him:
I pray you Christ, to change my heart To make it whole; Once you took on flesh like mine, Now take my soul.
Ignominy and pain you knew, The lash, the scourge, You, the perfect molten metal Of my darkened forge.
You make the bright sun bless my head, Put ice beneath my feet. Send salmon swarming in the tides, Give crops of wheat.
When Eve's wild children come to you With prayerful words, You crowd the rivers with fine fish, The sky with birds.
You make the small flowers thrive In the wholesome air. You spread sweetness through the world. What miracle can compare?
I will remember Brendan for the twinkle in his eye as we talked. The words 'national treasure' are much over-used. Brendan will forever remain a national treasure.
