From Amsterdam to Budapest

 From Amsterdam to Budapest

Amsterdam

I’ve fallen in love with Amsterdam

I’m bitten, I’m smitten by the town

It reminds me of Paris on water

With canals wherever I turn. 

You take your life in your hands

While idly crossing the road

As cyclists fly speedily by

Without a care in the world. 

A cosy pub on each corner

And cafes in between

The long leg-ed Dutch

Overlooking the scene. 

Each person has three bikes

One for the job 

One for the pub 

And one for the road. 

This town’s seen some scenes

From glory and gold

To painters and pot

This place has the lot. 

Bring me back another time

To view canals I haven’t found

To drink more beer in the summer sun

Where stilly waters run. 

Bloomsday 2026

I’m sitting in a tiny café in Bavaria

Sheltering from the gentle rain

On a mild Tuesday in late June

In the tourist town of Regensburg. 

Easy to love this simple place

That dates back two thousand years

To when Marcus Aurelius 

Defined his Empire ‘s northern boundary. 

Where the Danube turns south

And cyclists navigate cobbled streets 

Beneath Saint Peter’s Dome

The scaffold covered Cathedral

With stained glass of a thousand years

Witness to Archbishops and lay people

Eyes raised , heads bowed 

In hope and humility.  

This is Germany of the middle tier

With humble homes and simple shops

Homely and disciplined

Where nature is loved and lived. 

Germany you have kept your secrets well

No calls to foreign tourists

No loud campaigns 

Things must speak just for themselves. 

Germany, the beating heart of Europe

Has now erased the madness of before

Teaching us that madness can strike

Anywhere, anytime, be aware, take care. 

I have descended 

I have descended the mountain

Patiently one step at a time

Down from youth’s lofty heights

To the ordinary that is mine. 

I have come down from the pulpit

Where youthful zeal spoke clear

Down to autumns misty valleys

Where all is not as it seems. 

Down in well worn pews 

Where Everyman sits and sighs

Life has shrunk and so have I

Though grateful to be alive. 

Let me sing in praise of the simple

Let me relish the wonder within

I will kiss the innocent flower

Alone on a village street. 

Everything that is, is wonderful

Everything a miracle of being

The meek inherit the earth

For the wealthy it lies unseen. 

Dürnstein

Durnstein sitting pretty on the Danube

A little gem on a resplendent gown

That can now be reached from Amsterdam

But apart from that her pretty coats

Beguile and charm the restless tourist

Who has happened on her by happenstance. 

Is it the Main or is it the Danube?

Sorry friend it does not matter.  

Are we in Germany or even Austria?

Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn 

All that I know is that we have been seduced

Our little crew has arrived in heaven. 

No need to ask the fleeting time

To halt and pause a second

We have arrived where time means naught

Like Eden in the beginning. 

Yes, we bought some stuff

As weary tourists do

Beyond that far, we carry in our heart

A light that always lingers. 

Come stay with me.

Come stay with me on a boat.

Be spoiled to death on a cruise.

Pretend you’re in heaven.

It isn’t as hard as it seems. 

Our every wish entertained

Our wildest dreams are met

In food and drink and food again

Until we cry ‘enough’! 

None of us really deserves this, 

To arrange to live this long.

We tried avoiding the bullets

We remembered to duck in time. 

German towns and cities all in a blur

Towns with bergs, towns with burgs

As long as they don’t ask 

Where we were as we leave. 

In time we will assemble

Some thoughts and photos that make sense

As for now, it’s all a blur

Of food and drink and sandwiches

Budapest

Budapest the imperial city

Clad in concrete vestments

Resplendent Art Nouveau

Bereft of poets praising her. 

She may gladden hearts

But lies bereft of words that rhyme

While Hungary though full of promise

Fares no better in the poets’ study. 

Her language long mined in Asia

Makes no effort with its forty letters

A gentle month to drink in its charms

Leave’s us more despondent than before. 

But folks ignore her language mute 

And drink in Boulevards as proud as Paris

With the Danube transforming all

From merely nice to beautiful. 

Another bloody church moan the gang

Who’ve sailed and dined from Amsterdam

Leave the churches and Museums

Walk the tree lined shaded paths. 

Before you die

You’ve got to fly

To the city

That stands pretty

On the Danube. 

No rhyming couplets

No heroic meter 

When stones speak louder

Than the consonants. 

 I’ve never been as happy

I’ve never been as happy

As sitting in Dun Leary

Bathed in Spring sunshine 

Of an April afternoon. 

We have laid aside the terrors

Of the news of wars and mothers 

Mourning dead and wounded children

From bombs that drop like rain

On Tel Aviv and Lebanon 

On Kuwait and Teheran

By the order of the evil

And distant far off leaders. 

We sit here on the wooden bench

While life goes by with peals

Of laughter from the teenage kids

With all their lives ahead. 

I do not strive for extra years

Grateful for what has been given  

Enjoying now, uncaring what the future

May or may not hold. 

We have the present sunshine 

Enough for all our wants and needs

Nothing wished for, nothing wanted,

The cup is full, and spilling over. 

The civic clock strikes five 

And yet the sun still shines

Above the Italianate Town Hall

Of the maritime sea borough. 

Once the Prince of postponed pleasure

Sacrifice a code of honour

Now content to carpe diem

Seize the moment - live the day. 

8 April 2026

Contents

 Contents Words

1. Free Gaza
2. Flying is a human right
3. The Fingal Party
4. I can see Wales in a clear day
5. Dogs are human too
6. Escape to a bolt hole
7. When St. Patrick 
8. View from a hospital bedroom
9. Football crazy 
10. Kevin Andrew Murray
11. The Queens English
12. What’s left 
13. You’re not the man
14. A tale of two Legions
15. Newsflash
16. The Cathar Creed
17. 7,300 days
18. Happy Birthday Kate
19. Of Cars and Men
20. Demon Drink
21. Compassion and the Irish 
22. A tourist
23. Discovering Arthur
24. Istanbul
25. Whither the Irish Church?
26. Party Political Broadcast
27. Back to school in Clare
28. Tony Blair’s Journey. 
29. Preaching to the converted
30. John Henry Newman
31. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
32. Benedict goes on tour
33. A Quaker’s dozen 
34. Noddy rides again 
35. A new National Government. 
36. To see that of God
37. Hospital Pass
38. Recession - bad news?
39. Escape the IMF
40. What car would Jesus drive? 
41. Camino de Santiago 2011
42. Reflections from 2008
43. Grave Matters
44. Time up for brave Brian
45. Garrett the Good
46. nO2
47. The Lord’s Prayer
48. Prison
49. An ‘Oatie’ at last
50. Home sweet home
51. Climate change and me
52. Time for my Brother
53. Credo - Dec 2024

The Book

 Window across Dublin Bay

Prose from 2010-2011 mainly

www.padraicmurray.blogspot.com

Padraic Martin Murray. 

Introduction 

Window across Dublin Bay was my first attempt at writing in public. It followed two courses on Creative Writing run by Helen Ryan in Dun Laoghaire College for further education. 

I had spent much of my professional career writing business reports and here was a chance to write about subjects that engaged me personally. As well as an act of public discourse it was mostly a journey of self discovery and of acceptance that values and truths had developed over the previous thirty years. 

There followed a blog on the trips taken in 2011 and 2013 on the pilgrimage path of Santiago de Compostela. Thereafter process replaced by poetry in a half dozen subsequent blogs. 

Looking back on the entries one is tempted to amend and refine them. But they have been left in their original state, warts and all. 

The passage of fifteen years has shown some comments to be mistaken, others have stood the test of time. But all entries, for better or worse, reflect my thoughts at the time. 

The blog is still available and has racked up about 35,000 views. The audience remains a mystery. This bound book will serve as a back up when the internet finally freezes over. 

1st August 2025

Time for my Brother

Time for my Brother

I never had a brother, but I had hundreds of Brothers. An only child for seven years, I yearned for company to play or even fight with. My sister Kate arrived when I was seven and my sister Margaret when I was ten, and that was that.

At the age of 18 years and three days I joined the Novitiate of the Legion of Christ in Leopardstown, County Dublin. The Seminary was a green building built on land that had been sourced by Archbishop John McQuaid – now a controversial figure in political and ecclesial history, known to my father who was a big fan of the Archbishop who could be quite charming in private. The Legionary Novitiate may be the only green building to my knowledge in all of Ireland. The green tiled building, conceived to ‘blend in’, sticks out like a sore thumb as you drive along the M50 motorway at the Sandyford junction.

In 1969 I joined twenty other young men with a view to serving God in the Mexican Missions. Within an hour of joining we were advised that we should address each other as ‘Brother’. It became natural over the following two years of the Spiritual Formation Course (the Novitiate) to call each other ‘Brother’. So much so that when two of us were sent under cover in mufti on a ‘delicate’ mission to Madrid in 1971 to pretend that we were lay students attending UCD, we found it almost impossible not to call each other ‘Brother’ and once or twice we lapsed.

We lived a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Poverty meant having no possessions of one’s own – literally. We were all assigned jobs, Sacristan, Cook, Medical Officer, Farmer, among others. My favorite job was Receptionist because it entailed spending much of my time in a little office at the front of the building where I could see all the comings and goings. I got to sleep in a little room beside the reception so as to be able to take phone calls that might sound in the night. This was in the days before phone extensions and mobile phones.

In the years after I left in 1976 I used to claim that my only possession was my watch – which was not strictly true. Stricly I had no watch. The watch I brought to the Seminary was given to young man called Thomas Price – ‘Brother’ Thomas Price – to give him his full religious name. Thomas had the toughest job of all. He was in charge of ‘time’. With the help of my watch he sounded the bell every time a new task was due. He rang the first bell rang at 5.50 am for Morning Prayer, followed at 6.00 for meditation, followed at 7.00 for Mass, followed at 7.30 for breakfast – in silence – and so on.

The Brother in charge of the Bell needed to be punctual and diligent. Thomas Price had those qualities and more. Over the following 41 years nearly all my companions left the Legion of Christ – but because we were never allowed discuss personal matters in the Seminary – our decisions to leave were made alone, without access to colleagues or family. Often when we left, our remaining colleagues were told we had moved 'to Mexico' or to another mission. That is what happened in my case. It was reported that I had left on a top secret mission to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico when in fact I was back in Dublin walking Dollymount Strand.

As a result, having been deprived of communication while we were within the Legion, the information blackout nearly always continued afterwards – often for years. Many were so traumatized by the Legionary experience they chose not to contact others, no matter how well meaning. Purely by chance, some years ago I learned that Thomas had unsurprisingly left but surprisingly and sadly had died at a very young age. I was shocked and saddened. Thomas had been a gifted footballer. He hailed from the Liberties and I can still see his parents in my mind. Our parents were allowed to visit the seminary twice a year for an afternoon. I have pleasant if black and white memories of their reunions with Thomas from my vantage point in Reception.

Yesterday as I drove around Glenageary roundabout, thirty nine years later I took a call on my (hands-free!)mobile phone from a friend in Amnesty International – where I had served as honorary treasurer for three years. In moving premises they had discovered a Bible donated to a Brother Thomas Price, LC (Legion of Christ) on the occasion of his Profession (Vows) in 1971.

Memories flooded back of the red headed Brother Thomas as he made his way along the polished Seminary floor in the early morning and how he glanced at his watch – my watch; memories of him playing football in the field which now houses Bewley's Hotel in Leopardstown, of working with him to harvest potatoes in the autumn of 1970 in the land that is now occupied by Central Park.

Coming up to our first Christmas in the Seminary, in December 1969 Brother Thomas dropped the watch on the marble floor and it smashed into many pieces. So that was the end to the only thing I had in the world. Those two years in Leopardstown and the five following years taught me a very privileged lesson – possessions don’t really matter as long as you have three decent meals a day and a roof over your head. Many in Dublin and in Mexico will not have those luxuries this Christmas.

I have undertaken to try to track down members of the Price family and return the ‘Amnesty’ Bible to the family of my 'Brother' – Thomas Price. So if anyone out there knows of someone related to a wonderful red headed young man (as he was in 1969), hailing from Cork Street in the Liberties, who played a mean game of football and who was never late in his life, just give me a call and we will try and offer the family a small memento and remember a life that, if short, was nevertheless heroic.

PS Best of luck to all in Amnesty who will be moving into new offices over the Christmas Period!

Do not go worried

 Do not go worried

 

Do not go worried into that good night

Old age can brighten up each start of day

Take, take the blessing of the evening Light

Embrace a morrow when the sun shines bright. 

 

There comes a time to set down arms

Against the fight for life when death

Is but the gentle friend that takes us

To the other side where sorrow dies. 

 

Where life continues on, but differently 

Where all that’s left of us is love

Spinning towards remote infinity

As we embrace a new eternity. 

 

There comes a time for sweet surrender

To relax and slip into the slumber 

The day is done and work is over

Work clothes lay tidy in the corner. 

 

The time has come to walk into the Light

That has guided us by day and night

Everything we’ve borrowed now returned 

As we pass with nothing whence we came. 

 

Freed of all possessions that weigh us down 

Up the soul can rise like featherdown 

Embraced by bonds of concern and care

Tethered tight to those whose love we share. 

 

 

With thanks/apologies to Dylan Thomas and Cardinal Newman. 

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