And can it be...

"AND CAN IT BE THAT IN A WORLD SO FULL AND BUSY,
THE LOSS OF ONE WEAK CREATURE MAKES A VOID IN ANY HEART,
SO WIDE AND DEEP THAT NOTHING BUT THE WIDTH AND DEPTH OF ETERNITY CAN FILL IT UP!"
-Charles Dickens-

Lament for a Son

There's a hole in the world now.
In the place where he was, there's now just nothing.
A center, like no other, of memory and hope and knowledge and affection
which once inhabited the earth
is gone.
Only a gap remains.

A perspective on this world, unique in this world,
which once moved about within this world,
has been rubbed out.
Only a void is left.

There's nobody now who saw just what he saw,
knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered,
loves what he loved.

A person, an irreplaceable person is gone.

Never again will anyone apprehend the world quite the way he did.
Never again will anyone inhabit the world the way he did.

Questions I have can never now get answers.

The world is emptier.

My son is gone.

Only a hole remains, a void, a gap,
never to be filled

(Nicholas Wolterstorff)

Foto: Blumen, niedergelegt auf der Treppe des Hauses Grosvenor Square 50, Dublin

There is a deep beauty

There is a deep beauty
hidden in the
luminosity at the heart
of the soul ...
behind the dull facade of our daily lives.
Only in your solitude
will you actually
find it, find the
neglected beauty of your life!

John O’Donohue

A piece from Ann Henning Jocelyn

...."A member of my extended family was killed in an accident aged twenty.
Who can you come to terms with that? How can his parents be expected ever to come to terms with that? All those years of caring and nurturing, seeing him grow and learn what were they for?

The only comfort I could find was the thought hat perhaps he wasn’t meant to live longer. His life span, we now know, measured twenty years. We shouldn’t look upon it against the possibility that it might have been longer, but accept the gift of those
years and value them accordingly.

„How do I know that I will survive?“ asked my young son after learning about his
cousin’s death. „You probably will“, I assured him. „These days in Ireland, most children do survive. But no one can be completely certain, and that is how it has to be. Because if we take for granted that everyone lives to a ripe of age, we wouldn’t treasure each day and each other quite as much as we do.

As I said it, my heart went out to those parents who have to pay the price for that precious uncertainty.

Let us never forget their pain, the cross they carry on behalf of those more fortunate...."

A piece from Ann Henning Jocelyn who was born in Sweden and now lives in a small village in the West of Ireland...

Foto: Geburtstag in Irland, 2007

Blessing

...."As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.”

Foto: Donegal, 2007

Memory Stone

...Somewhere on the beach in Connemara.. If anyone found it?

Turning Darkness into Light

I and Pangur Bán my cat

'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will
He too plies his simple skill.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Author Unknown

Dublin, 2006