Hi Everyone

It was great to be part of this group last week.  It was 1 AM for me when we started but certainly worth staying up past my bed time for!!  It has been wonderful for me to join the group and to hear everyone share.  Soul is a bit shy in these parts but I do hope to contribute through posts etc. I would like to share the poem that picked me last week:

Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives-

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Though I did not know specifically what the session theme was going to be, I do think now on reflection that this poem captures beautifully a wonderful "moment of wonder" that Robert was describing in his talk.  The "miracle in the mundane".  My own mother who is going to be 86 next week and who has dementia came to stay with us for Christmas and I am aware of some beautiful moments simply sitting beside her on the sofa, arms entwined, feeling her breath next to mine and being conscious of how truly precious these moments are. I now know why this poem picked me!

I would also like to share an experience I had the day before our group started, in which I was going through some old materials in a storage cupboard in my office.  A new years resolution to "let go".....

I came across an old pencil case which I had not seen for years and which I recall using when I was either in school or early days in college (yes I am a hoarder!)....In the moment of seeing the pencil case and looking inside and discovering pencils, pens, rubber bands etc I was transported back to my adolescence.  I was gripped by it.  Having read Robert's essay for our first session, I could say "my adolescence was in the pencil case".....it has stayed with me since then and I have it in front of me know as I write.

Looking forward to next week! Philip