Credo

 Credo - Dec 2024

1. What I believe has evolved over my 73 years in what I would hope is a logical and considered way. 
2. It may appear on the face of it that I have moved from orthodox Catholicism to liberal agnosticism in a gigantic reversal. But for me the two positions are not that different in essence and for me there is a consistent spiritual journey. 
3. I have moved from being serenely religious to nervously agnostic. 
4. I have moved from religion to spirituality. 
5. I believe religion is the attempt by mankind over the ages to express spirituality and to understand and respond to the internal and external world. 
6. I am well disposed to religions but I feel it is fair to observe they are mostly determined by their geography and time in history. Indeed many religions see their role as a development of prior, less developed beliefs. 
7. I think in the 21st century we have a knowledge of ourselves and the world that debunks many religious ‘facts’. 
8. Where religion still scores is on ethics. That said I feel there is no ethical position that cannot be discovered and embraced by spirituality without the support of religion. Agnostics can love their children too and mostly do. 
9. I describe myself as a cultural Christian. Embedded in its sensibilities, its traditions, art and literature. I have enjoyed the privilege of learning the life and teachings of Christ, which even allowing for exaggerations at the time and thereafter reveal a wonderful approach to life in supporting the underprivileged. He was a devout Jew and perhaps unaware that a religion would be created in his name. 
10. I do not enjoy the certainty of either the religious or the atheist. 
11. I believe that existence is best explained by a ‘spirit’ impossible to define or capture. 
12. I do not believe in a personal God, in a God that looks or sounds like humans. 
13. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ or of any human. 
14. I do believe that great and holy teachers had ‘God’ in them to a superior degree. 
15. Words fail to describe what God might be other than exclude what he cannot be, which is every form dreamt up by religion no matter how well intentioned. 
16. I do not believe in the story of Original Sin, of the redemptive crucifixion, in a glorious resurrection except perhaps as metaphors which displease both religious and anti religious alike. 
17. I am witness to the goodness of believing people who walk the walk. I cannot explain it away. But I cannot explain it either. 
18. I do not believe in intercessional prayer. I think the Buddhists have it right. To think well and warmly of another - alive or dead. To wish them well. Both of people we like and those we don’t. Every good wish has a tiny direct effect. So no ‘intercession’ needed or possible. 
19. Prayer is best wordless. No calling on deities to do this or that. Simply an affirmation of gratitude, a wonder at the universe, an act of wishing well. No prayers or hymns mean anything to me. I respect others who love them and hope they respect my wish not to engage in something I cannot and will not believe in. 
20. I do not believe in a heaven or hell but am open to the thought that rigor mortis may capture our last emotions like a fossil be it love or hate, courage or fear. Perhaps our lives build up to our last breath. In that sense life is truly a preparation for eternity. Possibly. Who knows?
21. Good is its own reward. We treat others well because of their inherent self worth, not for the promise of eternal goodies. 
22. Nature is both kind and cruel. It is completely amoral. Animals kill and maim each other from the biggest to the smallest. Cancers kill young children. Stars are consumed constantly by black holes. Life on earth continues thanks to the most amazing luck and despite enormous set backs. 
23. History is merely the diary of the survivors. As Bertrand Russell once said ‘war does not prove who is right but who is left’. 
24. There is a sense in which willing and hoping for good can sometimes produce results. Not always and never predictably but always worth the courage to hope. 
25. If and when we end human existence it will mark the end of music, dance, art and song not only in our solar system but in our galaxy from what we can discover and perhaps beyond that. Humanity is perhaps unique in its beauty and selfishness. 
26. Nothing can deny the beauty of nature, of land, sea and sky. Of sunrises and sunsets and points to a mystery we cannot understand and even less explain. 

PMM 4/12/24 

Climate change and me

 Climate change and me

1. I come to this topic with some advantages. 
2. I was a business banker for thirty years and must have seen thousands of accounts and financial projections. 
3. While some of the accounts were accurate the projections almost never were. 
4. I did not grow weary or cynical. Bad as the projections were, I knew without them we would never know by how much we missed our targets. 
5. Projections failed at times because people were lazy or indeed lying, but mostly through misplaced optimism or the hope that if we wished for something that would make it more achievable. 
6. So I have brought this healthy distrust to many other fields, from politics to rugby predictions. 
7. So when they brought out the Paris Agreement in 2015 with a target of 1.5% my immediate response was to double it to 3.0%. And I wrote poems to that effect. 
8. In the first instance that’s my best guess as to where we will reach in under a century.
9. In the second instance it’s a reachable target when it is important for people not to lose heart. 
10. In the third instance it sounds small but in fact is terrifying. At a guess about 90% of the worlds population will be directly impacted. 
11. A world sweltering at 3 degrees above the historic average will give rise to massive climate changes. That world will not support 7 billion people. 
12. At a guess the surviving population will be closer to 2 billion. 
13. All our current preoccupations of trade and travel, of electric cars and divisive politics, of leisure and land-wars will be overtaken by the new imperative to simply survive. 
14. It is conceivable that AI will be forced to sort it out. 
15. We will be left with a civilization with very different values and no national boundaries. 
16. Mankind will change not when it should but when it has to. 
17. And in the meantime?
18. What is the point of our tiny inputs when facing such challenges and the knowledge that others are doing so little? 
19. The answer is the age old invitation ‘to do our best’. Why?
20. Because it is the right thing to do irrespective of the overall outcome or the expectation or behavior of others. 
21. Virtue is good for its own sake. 
22. Our little bit combines with others doing the same and maybe the increase will be only 2.9 degrees or 2.8. 
23. By the same token we need balance. Logically we should all commit suicide and avoid further damage to our planet. But we can learn to cut down and plant up. 
24. We will learn to overcome the anger we feel when we see decent people make continual missteps and misjudgments. 
25. Never was this prayer more appropriate. 
26. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 
    the courage to change the things I can, 
    and the wisdom to know the difference. 
27. July 2023. Greece is burning. Portugal is smoldering. Italy is baking. Spain is sweltering. 
28. Il faut cultiver notre jardin (Candide by Voltaire 1759). 

Three Degrees Warmer

It’s three o clock in the morning

It’s three degrees warmer at sea

What’s going to become of our world 

In under a century?

Two degrees is a figment 

There isn’t a chance in hell 

That Paris or any Agreement

Will save us from climate Hell. 

This makes three hells in one poem

Which doesn’t sound good at all 

But then neither does three degrees

And that’s what we’re heading for. 

There’s lots of numbers these days

It’s hard to remember them all,

Remember the number that matters

In eighty years time we’ll recall - 

Its 3

August September 2022

  I would be mistaken 

 

I would be mistaken if I thought 

With age came courage and sound wisdom

For so often the reverse appears

As we clutch onto things and moments

That we must yield so very soon. 

 

The generous teenage years will yield

Sometimes to desperate clutching 

Of what we sacrificed when young

The years and money that we gave

For adolescent hopes and dreams. 

 

The challenge in our seventies

To mine and find the seam of good

So that our failing days may shine

With the glow of golden goodness

The key to true enchantment. 

 

Lest we be found alone and cold

In our vault of useless gold

Starved of love bereft, untold

The stories that transform our lives

For only good and love survive. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sacrifice

 

A forgotten virtue if truth be told

When young men gave their lives

Forsaking wives and children

For kingdom, God and country. 

 

Now we feel betrayed by churches,

By leaders and by politicians

Who knows where truth lies anymore?

The well’s run empty as is the store. 

 

And what of us when young 

Who gave our all to serve a God unseen?

What now when old to give for climate change

So sadly near and very real? 

 

Do we feel we’ve paid our dues?

And now it’s time for others?

To sacrifice as once we did

Half a century earlier?

 

Do we feel our job is done?

That we can spend while the young 

Will have a future less secure

As we run down the family’s funds? 

 

Or do feel our time has come

To show the mettle when we were young?

Cut back consumption and our vices,

To follow through our old advices? 

 

 

Christina McDonagh

 

Christina the baby, one of thirteen, 

Reared in the Dairy numbered twenty 

On old Castle Street, in dear Sligo town

Beside the bookmaker Kilmartins. 

 

Impossibly exotic to a fellow of five

Impressed by the hair up in a bouffant 

Shapely high heels and ruby red lipstick 

The height of high style in the black and white fifties. 

 

Playing golf in Strandhill, cycling to swim

Going on far cruises, she never stayed in

She escaped to the office to tot up the sums

She was ever full of devilment and fun. 

 

 

I remember the fifties when she worked round the corner

The Austin Princess for glamorous weddings 

When big cars were big and impossibly plush

In a decade severe and so simple. 

 

Josie and Teenie bought their house

High on the hill on the road to the Point

Alas Josie never managed the move

From quiet town Centre to wild ocean road. 

 

Christina carried on riding her bike

Cycling each day to the sea

A figure bent over the bars

A character that lasted the years. 

 

Active and free like the wind

Until old age reeled her in, 

But still a familiar sight

In a Sunday hotel in Bundoran. 

 

Her days in the nursing home busy

Reading the paper each morning. 

Never a complaint from her lips 

Everything ‘grand’ was her motto. 

 

The last to arrive, now the last to take leave 

The end of a story that began last century 

In police barracks back in Glenties

In the turbulent year of nineteen fifteen. 

 

The end of an era in Sligo

With descendants all over the land

We mourn for Christina the baby 

And for each of the other thirteen. 

 Awake 

 

I wake, I check, I’m not dead yet. 

I think I might sleep on but instead

I’ll celebrate the day with coffee

Then I might walk to fair Dun Leary. 

 

Or perhaps I’ll wander down to Dalkey town,

Have a swim at White Rock while soaking up the sun

Return to Country Bake for a scrummy currant cake

Pop into the church for a moment of reflection. 

 

It’s a civilized old life we lead, retired and without needs

And if we had them, who would heed?

The class of sixty-nine with silver heads

The baby booming golden generation. 

 

Dalkey is so civilized, the perfect combination

A melting pot of rich and poor, old and young, 

Artisan dwellings and lofty mansions 

Stately piles and gleaming new structures. 

 

Sensible mostly not to take itself seriously

Enough wags and wits to teach us humility 

Home to past stars, to Binchy and Newman,

And newer folk too, lured by its beauty. 

 

 

 The Angelus Bells

 

The Angelus bells ring out across the sleepy suburbs

And whisper all is well to devout believers

While unbelievers take comfort too

From forgotten childhood prayers. 

 

When the world was safe and the future better

The hopeful fifties promised bright progress 

From the troubled forties our parents once endured

And God was in his Heaven. 

 

The Angelus bells sound clear for rich and poor 

A democratic chime for this time and free to all

A chime of hope and innocence when all around

Dark shadows threaten and war cries sound. 

 

The silence has returned to our unbelieving parish

A midday peace slips down our garden wall

For we will savour what God gives in August

Peace is warmly welcomed in sun drenched lawns. 

 

 Eyes look out

 

Eyes look out from photos

Unblinking, full of life and hope

Now witness to the holocaust

That took their lives and futures

But could not take their memory. 

 

Eyes that connect with mine

Across the years and beyond the grave 

Their gazes unaware of horrors

Encountered in their final hours 

We shall remember and revere them. 

 

What man can do to fellow man

What executioners can justify

Now repeated as we crucify

Our precious world whose innocence

Offers no protection from the mindless. 

 

Innocent eyes stare out unaware

Of what lay ahead as they fall 

Their noses could not yet smell the gas 

That would claim them naked 

In the killing rooms of extermination halls. 

 

Standing in the tragic gap

Between man’s love and hatred

Holding two truths in our hands

Unwilling to succumb to baseless hope

Nor equally to helpless grief. 

 

We will take another step upon our journey 

That invites all pilgrims in the morning 

Heading West with faith intact 

Walking cheerfully with happy feet,

Raising hope in all we meet. 

 

 

 The hill

 

The hill I walk each day

Will reveal new discoveries

As the habitual lays bare 

New secrets on the way. 

 

Every day a new adventure 

A shaft of light through trees

Never seen before  but revealing

Novel shadows on the steps 

 

That lead up to the summit

Where all is changing on the hour

The sky, the sea, the Wicklow Hills

That invite the hopeful traveller. 

 

Today the wind is whistling gently 

In the summer trees that shed some leaves

Upon a path of dappled sunshine

Beneath a mellow sky. 

 

This moment is all mine

I must surrender to the now

Exile the transient, 

The petty troubles of the hour. 

 

The ferns are leaning 

As in prayer and bend

To gentle breezes

Rustling in the midday sun. 

 

A leaf comes gently

Floating to the forest floor

I stroke a noble oak

All this is now enough

Satisfied, we need no more. 

 

 

 What kind of God

 

What kind of God have we just created 

That somehow would require our prayers

To remind him of his tender mercies?

 

What kind of God would need reminding 

Of war and cancer, of death and grieving?

Surely not a God who’s deserving. 

 

Our prayers to God are framed by men

For God has done his bit long time ago

All help already here or not at all. 

 

For not all help is clearly seen

There are many things Horatio 

Not dreamt of in our philosophies. 

 

A God who hides in coincidences

Who does not respond to commands

But will appear when least expected. 

 

God is heard when noise abates

God is seen when the lights turn down 

At births and deaths and in between. 

 

 

 Hurry my lover

 

Hurry my lover and gather the music

That captures our bodies and souls

And run to our cave in the mountains  

Far away from the crowds and the noise of the city. 

 

The world will not miss us for after a week

People return to their normal survival

And the world will not stumble or fall

It really won’t miss us at all. 

 

But still we shall flourish away from the crowds 

Who can wage their own wars without us. 

The world will spin on and travel through space

Ten million miles in the course of a day. 

 

We shall be spared the worries and anguish

Of predictions and warnings that never take place 

On the world rolls while we curl closer together

Unaware of the markets or the price of old  

gold. 

 

At our front door we leave our shoes and our worries

For inside is a temple to sacred endeavour 

To quiet reflection and long solemn silences

To dance and to fun, to music and song. 

 

We shall dance through the evening 

And twirl through the night

Gripping waist, arms and  shoulders

Letting go, bringing in, holding tight. 

 

Skipping for joy and laughing for love

Enjoying a heaven that’s always been present 

Unlocking a paradise hiding inside

Patiently awaiting our time and our effort. 

 

 

 

 

 Quiet moments 

 

These are the quiet moments

Before the last storm breaks

This is the solemn evening

Before the air’s sucked out. 

 

Clouds are passing overhead untroubled

It’s an August afternoon like any other

Before the thunder shakes the ground

And lightning strikes chapel towers. 

 

For nothing’s safe or sacred now

No God above or Lord below

Can intervene to save a land

Overcome by climate change. 

 

It’s true the storm had gathered

It became our next-door neighbour

So familiar that it didn’t trouble us

Except for mad and anxious types. 

 

Now it’s here,  no going back

The ice berg’s come and gone

No turning back the icy clock

Time to repent is truly spent. 

 

Oh give us back our time again!

We could only use it better

But our pleas fall on deaf ears

Drowned by the waves with no one here.