It’s nearly the middle of the month and with the new year breaking in, it’s time for a fresh new notebook for storing all of your daily to-do lists. Keeping all of your to-do lists in the one notebook is a great way of looking back on everything you have achieved at the end of…
I was speaking to my heating system the other day, when I realised that we are currently living in the future. It’s now 2017, after all, which is yet another year straight from the realms of science fiction. Our house has become increasingly like an episode of Star Trek since Alexa arrived. Alexa is a…
Whoever said it was too late to send Christmas cards, forgot that Christmas doesn’t end until the feast of the Epiphany or the Three Wise Men on January 6th. Little Christmas is surrounded with tradition. As the official last day of Christmas, the tree is taken down, and the decorations are stored away for next…
Around the baptistry in our church there are beautiful wrought iron railings depicting flowing waters. In the midst of the waves there is another symbol, a spiral. The spiral is a symbol of life and energy, of growth and change. It is about being drawn back to the centre, to a place of truth and…
Chicken pox is a grim rite of passage for kids. In my family, we even have photos of my brothers and I proudly showing off our spotty backs. Indeed, one of my earliest memories is finding this strange crop of itchy spots all over. Last week, it was the turn of our children to undergo…
We were driving to Dublin from Donegal a few weeks ago, and there, on the side of the road beside a field was a bed. It was a double divan bed, the base lying at one side, the mattress over at the other side of the gate. It is not as if someone had been…
Ireland’s recent rugby victory in Chicago over the All Blacks prompted me to get back in touch with a good old Kiwi friend for some banter. However, a search of Facebook yielded only a memorial page for someone with the same name, who looked disturbingly like him. A Google search revealed the tragic story of…
Have you ever walked a labyrinth? I walk the garden labyrinth in Manresa, the Jesuit retreat house in Dublin every time I visit. Now a labyrinth is not a maze. It is not a place to get lost or find oneself in a dead-end. A labyrinth is usually a path on the ground – the…
Autumn is deepening. The last few brave flowers bloom through carpets of rusty leaves. Stark branches reach towards the glowering skies. The night surprises us, arriving early, and uninvited – a cold and unwelcome guest. Yet even the cold night is made warm and welcome by the fire, which we gather around each evening. All…
I remember a conversation in our house when our children were small about where they would live when they were ‘big’. Our youngest daughter even at the age of six was keen on New York, so that she could sing on Broadway. Our son, two years younger, announced that he would be living ‘here, in…
Erin Fox
Bairbre Cahill