PoetryOfPlace
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Writing a Hymn—and Learning Stabilitas Overnight
This hymn didn’t emerge in a chapel. It came overnight. In silence. In storm. In the unbuilt monastery of the mind. “Wild winds rise fierce across the plain,My refuge be.” The imagery came quickly. But the deeper formation came slowly—as most Benedictine things do. I’m part of a Benedictine community without walls. We are dispersed… Continue reading
AnglicanTradition, AutisticFaith, BenedictineSpirituality, Christianity, ChurchOfIreland, ContemplativePrayer, Faith, Hymnody, IrishSpirituality, LiturgicalReflection, NeurodivergentFaith, NeuroDivine, PoetryOfPlace, Prayer, Psalm54, QuietMoments, RuleOfStBenedict, SacredRoutine, SacredSpaces, Spirituality -
Half the parish
Waiting on a haircut, tea on the tray, pen in hand—and “Half the Parish” found its way onto the page. ☕✍️ There’s something about the hum of a café and the simple coming and going of people that turns into poetry if you sit long enough. Firecastle, Kildare. Simple time well spent. Half the parish … Continue reading
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Unknown Paths, Rising Hills: Writing a Hymn for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year A)
The readings for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year A) always feel like they are about movement—not certainty, not arrival, but movement. In Genesis 12:1–4a, Abram is called to leave what is known and step toward a promise he cannot yet see. Psalm 121 lifts our eyes to the hills—not as escape, but as a… Continue reading
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Coffee Quiet.
Over lunch with my husband in our local café, I settled into the gentle rhythm of the room—the soft sigh of the coffee machine, the low hum of conversation. Around us, friends chatted and colleagues worked, all our different lives briefly sharing the same warm space. As one half of the gay pair from the… Continue reading
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Divinity in Difference: The Window That Says What We’ve Been Trying to Say
Every now and then, an image comes along that says in colour and light what pages of writing have been circling for years. This stained-glass window feels like that. It gathers the heart of NeuroDivine—the essays, the fiction, the hymns, the poetry—and holds them up to the light with one steady claim: Difference is not… Continue reading
ActuallyAutistic, AuthenticSelf, Autism, AutisticFaith, BenedictineSpirituality, CelticChristianity, Christianity, ChristInTheEveryday, ChronicIllness, ChronicIllnessFaith, ContemplativePrayer, Faith, FaithInTheEveryday, FindingConnection, Hymnody, InclusiveChurch, IrishAnglicanVoice, IrishHymnody, IrishSpirituality, LiturgicalReflection, ModernMonasticism, MonasticWisdom, NeurodivergentFaith, NeuroDivine, PoetryOfPlace, QuietMoments, Routine, RuleOfStBenedict, SacredRoutine, SacredSpaces, Spirituality, SpiritualJourney -
The Pharmacy of Praise
This morning I wrote a hymn about pill boxes and blister packs—about Sundays spent sorting seven small doorways for the week ahead. It’s personal. Andrew and I both live by the rhythm of medicines, colours divided into morning and evening, lids clicked shut in quiet preparation. Sorting tablets isn’t a small thing in our house;… Continue reading
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By the Triogue’s Edge
Inspired by the lone heron standing by the River Triogue in Port Laoise that I see as I walk up to dialysis. I stand beside the quiet streamWhere Triogue’s waters glide;The mallards chatter in their team,But I keep to the side.The park hums soft with passing feet,With prams and dogs and play;Yet here upon my… Continue reading
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In the Thin Place of Forty Days
Rooted in the landscape, spirituality, and imaginative tradition of the Irish midlands, the text interweaves the great biblical “forty” journeys—the flood, the exodus, Sinai, the wilderness, and the risen Christ’s forty days—with the sacred geography of Kildare and its surrounding boglands. Drawing on Celtic Christian imagery and the rhythms of creation, it invites worshippers to… Continue reading
AnglicanCommunion, AnglicanTradition, bible, BiblicalRoots, Christianity, ChurchOfIreland, Contemplation, ContemplativePractice, ContemplativePrayer, CreativeSpirituality, DivineLight, Eucharist, Faith, FaithAndHistory, god, GodsCreation, Hymnody, HymnWriting, Ireland, IrishAnglicanVoice, IrishHymnody, IrishLandscape, IrishReflection, IrishSpirituality, jesus, Kildare, Lent, Lent2026, LiturgicalReflection, ModernMonasticism, NeuroDivine, NewHymn, NewHymns, NewSong, Pilgrimage, PoetryOfPlace, QuietMoments, QuietWitness, SacredPerception, SacredSpaces, Sanctity, ScriptureAndSilence, ScriptureAndStillness, Spirituality, SpiritualJourney, SpiritualReflection, ThinPlaces, ThresholdOfGrace -
Fit Lads of Winter & The Birth of The Icicle Lounge
There’s something about winter that sharpens everything. The air is colder. The sky is clearer. The silence feels closer to the skin. And yet—in that cold—warmth becomes unmistakable. “Fit Lads of Winter” began as a playful meditation on contrast. I kept imagining figures striding through snow as if it were nothing. Jackets open. Breath visible.… Continue reading
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Arrival
Arrival is a poem about coming home—not only to a place, but to a moment, a body, a ward, a riverbank, a sky clearing after rain. Set along the familiar paths of Monasterevin and Ballybrittas, the poem moves through train platforms, hospital rooms, shared umbrellas, and sudden shafts of light. What might appear ordinary becomes… Continue reading
Arrival, Ballybrittas, ContemplativeLife, EverydayGrace, Faith, FaithInTheOrdinary, GentleStrength, GraceUponGrace, IrishLandscape, LightBreakingThrough, LivingWithVulnerabiity, Monasterevin, NeurodivergentVoice, NeuroDivine, PilgrimParth, PoetryOfPlace, Prayer, QuietMoments, RiverMoments, SacredAttunement, SacredOrdinary, SacredSpaces, SmallMercies, StainedGlassArt, ThinPlaces
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