Glendalough Sanctuary

23/02/2025

Hoping and Wishing
Please Note that I only speak for Myself. I do not ask you to agree with my ramblings.

The longer that I live, the more aware I am becoming of an innate longing to connect with something beyond most of the human beings that I meet.
I find myself struggling to remain on the path that I have been conditioned to walk as I keep encountering those great souls that enthusiastically conform to what it is to be an unemotional adult.
I watched an excellent documentary on RTE the other night called "Lost for Words" highlighting the struggles of both adults and children to fit within the rigid framework of the 'one size fits all' educational system.
For me, it reminded me of how far a system and even society can go to create a human being that may as well just be a 'head' with a body to get it from place to place.
Long before Industrialization or indeed the technological age that we now live in, human beings had to only be conditioned by their peers to a level capable enough to survive, probably in order to keep our species evolving.
This evolution of our species has escalated so rapidly in the last 200 years that it seems to have distracted us, all the way up into our heads and away from our intuition.
This seems to have led us to a state of existence, farther away from our intuition , our connection with nature and indeed our spiritual and emotional journeys.
Over the centuries, religion offered the promise of a God that was somewhere up in the sky that we would meet, and who would reward us when we die, was enough to keep us collectively connected in our struggles. And that there's something better beyond " this vale of tears " if we keep hoping and wishing within this framework of faith.
But now that we are so 'educated' we even seem to have forfeited that connection too.

You might ask...
How have I come to this conclusion?
As I said above, I can only speak for myself.

Lately I have been watching the growth of one particular Daffodil.
Every day, and sometimes even several times a day, I look to see if it's yellow petals have been released from the callyx-like wrapping at the top of its deep green stem.
yesterday when the Sun shone for most of the day and I imagined that I could see a shade of 'yellowness' starting to appear!
But today, here in Glendalough, it is wet and windy and the flower seems to have advanced little from where it was yesterday!
So I'm giving up on this 'Hoping' and 'Wishing' and even 'Waiting' for the flower to reveal it's yellow bonnet and I have decided to do as my forebears did, and to have Faith in Nature .
Faith that when the plant has inhaled enough sunlight it will bloom.
Not a moment sooner nor a moment later and definitely not when my head thinks that it ought to.

Today I encourage you to allow your own intuition to reconnect with the intuition of Mother Nature, and to enjoy the 'Sacrament of Encountering' one of Her surprises around every corner on your Springtime journey.

30/11/2024

The Bar stewards have hacked my Facebook Account. Watch out..

21/11/2024

A really worthy cause and an uplifting Christmas Song

Hello, this is a live version of our Christmas song, ''Christmas Without You''. We are releasing it as a charity single and hope to raise as much funds as po...

03/11/2024

The Power of Shame.

Last night I went to the pictures.
I wanted to see a film called
'Small Things like These' from a book of the same name written by Claire Keegan.

I am not a film critic and this post is neither meant to encourage nor discourage you from going to see the film.

Neither is this a condemnation of anyone depicted in the film. It is just a reflection on how I experienced it.

This morning I awoke with an overarching sense of the potential that the power of 'shame' has on an individual and even on a whole society.

I am reminded that shame was used as a powerful weapon wielded by people that thought that they were doing the right thing.

I have come to the conclusion that 'shame' is a corruption of the seed of 'love'
And is delivered like a Trojan Horse, implied as love.
But its contents soon become, like an inhaled virus affecting almost everyone that listens to the subliminal message that it contains.

The corruption of the seed of love, as lived by a fella called Jesus of Nazareth took hundreds of years to perfect before being delivered in small doses to the masses until every believer was infected.

I dont remember even breathing while watching the film as Cillian Murphy's character nearly broke into a million pieces as he struggled to break free from the claustrophobic collective conformity of blind silence that had enveloped this country.
Leaving a deep wound of shame on the national psyche.

'Yer man' from Nazareth, if he was sitting in the empty seat beside me would have 'turned in his grave' ( if he hadn't left it)
I often find that not so very deep beneath my own 'psychic skin', that shame is very easily triggered.
When it happens it feels like the worst fear that I ever experienced, as if the whole of society is looking and judging me in that moment.

It takes enormous courage to stand up and be counted. So I want to give a big shout out to all of those individuals, the writers, reporters, the movie makers and every individual that are much braver than I when it comes to calling out injustices.

Even though the root of shame courses under the surface, I have become more careful at censoring what I see and what I hear.

In my effort to become a 'better' Irish Christian than a 'good' Irish Catholic, I have done a lot of weeding and distilled the message that those well meaning individuals sometimes tried to beat into me, as One 'Commandment'.

Do Unto Others as You would be Done By.

The Nazarene left us with a message.
'Love one another as I have loved you'
I don't know where this got lost in the examples of the lives that we were supposed to follow, but it did!

I dont think it is possible to erase or eradicate the Shame wrapped up as the gift of Love but if we love a little harder, then others will catch the antidote and society will heal.

This takes huge vulnerability and after last night I have decided to begin to unwrap the wounds and not so much as to let the light shine on them but to allow the light to shine out of the cracks.

So today.
Dont be afraid to be vulnerable and start to sow one or two seeds of love wherever you find the opportunity.

You are capable of so much more than you were led to believe.

Society and the World needs your love

Grá mór daoibh.💓

02/04/2024

Yeahhh Susan. Well done.

Who am I really? What makes me tick? What is my potential? What blocks me? What expands me? How can I understand & relate better to others?

27/10/2022

Yesterday here in our little Glendalough Sanctuary we hosted the visit by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Master, as he kindly included us in his busy Irish schedule to speak and teach here to a very lucky audience of 30 people.
For me another one of those special moments glanced across my awareness as Rinpoche listened intently and reverently as Fr. Michael Rodgers outlined his own journey and his Christian beliefs now firmly rooted in the awe inspiring Natural beauty of Glendalough that has been his physical and spiritual home for the past 30 years.
When the 2 very 'wise and holy' men spoke we had a combination of over 150 years of thoroughly examined life exoerience.
It represented an amazing integration of the 2 major religious systems awash with core similarities of love for all sentient beings. Respect for our planet and an enthusiastic willingness to explore in a non sectarian way our common journey to the "top of the mountain" or wherever we wind up when we shake off this mortal disguise.
Our experience was enhanced by a song in Irish by Maeve O'Sullivan in beautiful voice & by Mairead Keenan in her inimitable voice, with a Sanskrit chant as she simultaneously played the Kirtan both of these women transported us to a time and place beyond ourselves. Check out Mairead on Fb. Kalirisewellness.

This is the reason that we have places like our little Sanctuary, so that dialogue tempered with a mixture of exploration of wonder and silence can take place. The magical patterns that are created when we all join the colourful threads of our lives together are sometimes stunning.
I have given up trying to think where my thread is connected to and where it might lead. Now I just pick it up each morning and follow it for that day. It is such a liberating feeling. I highly recommend you visualise your life that way.
Have you ever tried to push a piece of thread?
Good Luck with that one 😀😀😀

Keep well ad do check out our website for more exciting events like the upcoming meditative dialogue around a series of movies over 6 weeks. It is called Soul of Cinema.
More fascinating patterns to be created. Www.glendaloughsanctuary.ie for full details.
Namaste and Keep Well 🙏

04/06/2022

Hello World.

This morning, filled with humble gratitude & for the very first time in 2 years we had the privilege of announcing to the world that...
Here at our little Retreat Sanctuary.
We have a Full House.🌟🌟🌟🌟

Our new signage is reversible and hopefully so is the trend of the past 2 years.
We are so grateful to those that have helped us get this far with an optimistic smile on our faces.

August looks to be a little like a Waiter in the Costa, trying to invite the passer by to try our menu.

Www.glendaloughsanctuary.ie
If you are passing ! 🙏

All year retreats and accommodation nestled in the beautiful valley and 6th century monastic settlement of Glendalough.