Dancing at Lughnasa - A Story

It’s 1936 in the Mindy family’s small village croft in Donegal, a priest returns home after spending thirty years in a leper colony in Africa. 

His five sisters greet him but he is saddened because his mother has died. He is the only son - the only male in the family. His sisters have sent their pennies to him in Africa over all those years, knitting gloves and taking other poorly paid work. As a man, he should have been at home to support the family, emotionally and financially, but he doesn’t fit in with the repressed Irish Catholic society. He talks of goddesses and he plays with his young nephew! There is a thin veil of respectability in the family house that overlies a very embarrassing situation where an illegitimate child was born to the youngest sister - and another sister is having a love affair with a married man! 

The priest says, “I have come home to die!” The sisters have no money to bury him and are resentful! However, the priest slowly changes the lives of those around him - they begin to enjoy a more relaxed happiness in their lives, but the Bishop expresses displeasure with the priest and does not come to visit and tells one of the sisters that she will lose her job as a school teacher…. 

The Farmer's Best Wheat - A Story

Once, there was a farmer who grew excellent quality wheat, and every season he won the award for the best grown in his county. One year a reporter from the local newspaper interviewed the farmer and learned that each Spring, the man shared his seed with his neighbors so that they too could plant it in their fields...

“How can you afford to share your best wheat seed with your neighbors when they are entering their crops in the competition with yours?" the reporter asked....

“Why? because the wind picks up pollen from the developing wheat and carries it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior wheat, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of all the wheat, including mine. If I am to grow good wheat, I must help my neighbors grow good wheat"...

The Truthful Lady - A Story

In a US trial in a Southern small-town, a prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmother, to the stand. 

He approached her and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know me?' She responded, 'Yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a boy! You have been a disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you'll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you!'

 

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?'

She again replied, 'Yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him!'

22nd July Feast Day

Today, 22nd July, is the feast day of Saint Mary Magdalene. It was in very recent years (2016) that she has she been made into a 'saint' by the Vatican, as previously, she was only commemorated because since the early days of Roman Catholicism, she was regarded as a prostitute, a person extremely reviled in her time. 

Now the Vatican have realised - after 1,700 years - that the woman described in the gospels as having seven devils cast out of her by Jesus, two important things, firstly that prostitution might have had nothing to do with '7 devils', and also that this woman gave her money to support Jesus and his disciples in his 3 year ministry. So did the Church think that Jesus was living off immoral earnings! 

Black Madonnas

I have long been fascinated with the wooden and stone statues and Byzantine-like paintings of the black and crowned Mary with the Christ child on her lap. They have a reputation for having mystical healing and miraculous powers. There are approx 500 of these images in Europe, mostly in France. They date back in to the mists of time, as far as we can discover to 12th century Pauline Fathers, beyond the time of Saint Augustine, and St Bernard, both of whom had a special devotion to her. Bernard had an awakening while meditating on the Black Madonna of Chattilon. She was the patroness of the Knights Templars and the Teutonic Order. She was symbolised as a dove and was associated with the Holy Spirit. Isis was known as the Gatekeeper of life's mysteries and many think of the black madonna as a continuation of the Goddess Isis, with the child Horus on her lap after Osiris had been murdered by his brother Set. 

Alessandra Belloni

I would like to introduce my readers to Alessandra Belloni, a female performer born in Italy but living in New York. Over 35 years she has made pilgrimages to the sites of the mysterious Black Madonnas in Southern Italy. Her work is extremely impressive and known across the world. She has traced the mysteries back to the Earth Goddess and the long lost deities of Greece, Rome Egypt and Africa. The sacred places pre-date Christianity and many places have retained their magic. Saints days involve meditation, sacred chanting and ecstatic dancing in the sea or walking barefoot in the mountains, some of the rites continue for many hours throughout the night, and the trances produced can be licentious when men and women dance together! The dance of the Tarantella, a dance that mimics the bite of the tarantula spider, are from this region of Europe and relate to the 'bite' of passionate and unfulfilled love. Its complex rhythms have been used for healing abuse, addiction, trauma and depression.  

Lot’s Cave - An Extract

A monastery dedicated to Lot, (the hero from Genesis who escapes God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) has been discovered on a remote mountainside in western Jordan near the Dead Sea. The excavation is funded by the British Museum, and has uncovered a basilica with semicircular apses and a grotto that early Christians believed was the cave where the nephew of Abraham and his daughters took refuge. A 7th century monastery was discovered during the excavation of a stone reservoir near the south-eastern end of the Dead Sea. Decorated with vines and animals, mosaic floors take the Basilica to 691 AD, a period when monastic groups were developing in the region. 

Despite its arid location, the site was fed by a spring that irrigated terraces where monks grew grapes, apricots, and olives. Seeds and bones found at the site reveal 25 different foods, including meat and fish were served to visiting pilgrims. Archaeologists also discovered. a 7 cornered pulpit, coins, fine pottery and fragments of hanging lamps. 

One cave yielded a clay pot and drinking cups dating to the Bronze Age when Lot is said to have lived. Did his daughter seduce him in this cave and give birth to sons whose descendants populated ancient Jordan? 

Spiritual Healing

If someone wishes to receive spiritual healing, the healer must, by law, suggest that, if they had not done so already, get a qualified doctor’s opinion to provide a diagnosis and treatment. The words ‘hallowed’, ‘holistic’, ‘whole’ and ‘health’ are all connected to the word ‘healing’. Spiritual healing delivers loving energy in order to help to restore equilibrium the body, emotions, mind and spirit. Healers give good quality attention, recognition, acknowledgement, compassion, support, consideration, kindness, patience and understanding. These qualities are the secrets of the healing arts. Physical, emotional, mental and spiritual complaints, trivial, hereditary and terminal disorders are some of the conditions treated by spiritual healers. Whatever the cause, healing spirits know every heart-ache and discomfort and are ready to deliver Soothing directly to the place of greatest need. 

Second Force Field Analysis

Which of your emotions need changing? 

What habits are you tied to? 

What is at the root of your worst problem?

What grounds you/centres you? 

What desires do you wish to fulfil?

How are you using your power?

What are you envisioning, instigating, or initiating?

How do you express your ability to love?