Leadership and other thoughts, August 2012

 

He had the gift

We felt the lift

Smiling as you met

Laughing as we left

 

Time for only you alone

For in that moment

You were the only one

It was simply you and him

 

How was it that you felt

Did resistance melt?

It may have been a spell

No one could really tell

 

But no one cared

And no one spared

Their joyful giving

For the cause was living

 

Tired but happy fools perhaps

Ecstasy and agony

Mattered not a bit

Content to serve

A cause bigger than ourselves

 

 

Carpe Diem!

 

Seize the day, squeeze it dry

Drink the sun while it’s high

Smell the beans, enjoy the taste

Grasp the moment, none to waste.

 

Embrace the person, next to you

Give one last hug, it might be true

You can save your money, but not your time

I may be poor but the ‘now’ is mine

 

For money blinds and dulls the sight

Looking the wrong way with all it's might

I've got today, that's all maybe

I’ve got you, that’s enough for me

 

Joyce’s regret

 

 

The startling clouds

All black and gold

Sit on the Dublin Hills

They threaten and give joy

 

What holds him back

From seeing Dublin Bay again?

Written in his heart

Strangled by strange pride

 

The passing years build up the wall

And lower the rampart floor

A virtue is fashioned needlessly

 

 

Quietly at night the familiar  calls

Of sea gull and of cormorant

 

Gone forever the three steeples

Of Glasthule and Dun Laoghaire

The handsome granite piers

Hewn from Dalkey quarry

 

And all the while the clouds bank up

Layer by layer over Sandymount Strand

Gone and gone is Dun Leary of the soul

A bitter price for artistic pride

 

The August evening sun peeps above

And hugs the gentle waters

Licking handsome terraced houses

Keeping watch over a changing sea

 

Ireland of his youth

Dublin of his dreams

Now but the artists palette

In a coast less land

 

 

 

 

Early hint of autumn in Churchtown, Dublin 14

 

Sitting here in the shade

Of the spreading tree

In leafy Castle Park

Car door and windows open

A gentle breeze

Rustles the leaves

Beneath the pale blue china sky

A warming sun

Full of August promise

The first few leaves

Of the early Irish autumn

Scurry along the pavement

Like playful schoolboys

Hurrying nowhere in particular

With carefree insouciance

And joyful innocence.

 

This magic  moment

Only came to be

Through a haircut

For an aging lady

Of almost ninety three

Confused of days and hours

Bravely facing loss of powers

The common fate of missing

The early death of friends

The nether coin side

Of the doubtful blessing

Of advanced old age.

 

Is how we live

The path to how we age?

And do we die

To live again?

In that same style

With little parts

That echo God

Whatever that may mean

 

A pigeon calls

In Castle Park

In trees above

The handsome homes

And gleaming cars

A man with silver hair

Cleans clubs with care

And sounds of grass being cut

Are punctured by the Angelus bell

From Churchtown church

 

Midday sounds

There is sleepy sunny peace around

While hair is cut

And ladies prolong their style

The Lord's Prayer - Pater Noster

The Lord’s Prayer – Pater Noster - One

Our father who art in heaven,
And above and below
And within and without
Father, brother, mother, sister
Always was and always is

Hallowed be thy name
Thank you for the miracle of being
Thank you for the cup half filled
Enjoying that what is
Not mourning that what might have been
Or never was
We lift our cups half full
In grateful wonder
To celebrate life
In humble awe of
What is

Thy kingdom come
Heralded by many through the ages
And to this day
With many Princes
Chief of whom
Is Jesus Christ
The anointed one
Who leads the way to you
Along the lowly joyful paths
And through the narrow door
Where all are welcome
By you God who are shepherd to every flock
Who welcome all
For all are called
And most are chosen

Marie Colvin Remembered

Parish Church, Louisburg, County Mayo, December 2011. On tour with Claire.


Speaking Truth to Power – Marie Colvin remembered






Marie Colvin’s life will not have been in vain if we can do something to save the people of Homs in Syria who, while we drink our cappuccino or walk our dog, are being slaughtered on our watch.

We thought that after the Holocaust mankind would have learned to turn away from inhumanity. We felt comfortable that the terrible murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies and Mentally ill was safely preserved in a time capsule ; it was when the world went mad, in another time, in another place by another people.

As we get older, many of us feel we get wiser, which is simply perhaps recognition of our youthful excesses. Many of us get less courageous as we advance in years and hold onto to the dwindling days of our lives more tightly than we did in our twenties. We can feel less secure and surround ourselves with familiar places and possessions.

Marie clearly was an exception. She could have retired ten years ago and made a good living from her memories while drinking Gin and Tonics on a Caribbean beach. But she felt driven to expose injustice where and when she found it. She simply could not bring herself to retire in good conscience.

I often fear that our big institutions for good works, the Churches, the United Nations, Amnesty International, become ossified over time and calcified with bureaucracy. The courage and vision of the founders is inherited by people with mortgages to pay and families to rear. People like you and me.

Speaking truth to power was first used by Quakers in the States in the early twentieth century when they encouraged their Government to stand up to seemingly irresistible forces of Communism on one side and Fascism on the other. The phrase is often incorrectly attributed to George Fox, founder of the Quakers. It may not have been something he actually said, but it is something he actually did with his life and suffered in prison many times for it.

Prophets it seems can often be difficult people to know and love. However Marie seems to have been the exception. There is genuine mourning among her journalistic colleagues. She has held up a mirror to their better selves and has shown that grubby phone hacking scandals do not completely define them. If proof were needed she confirmed that the fair sex is not the weaker sex, as we married men know all too well.

Marie’s mum spoke with grief and poise and dignity. Above all let us not forget why Marie died and let’s write a letter to someone somewhere arguing for change, for peace, for the carnage to stop before the night falls. She must not die in vain, and that is up to us.

She has done her bit.

May she rest in Peace!

On reflection, I am sure she does.

PS I have decided the lucky recipients of my letter will be the Russian and Chinese Ambassadors to Ireland.
PPS Read Jim Muir’s lovely piece – his last letter to Marie on the BBC

Youth Unemployment

This may be the biggest problem facing mankind for the foreseeable future, together with the linked problems of climate change, food production and depletion of resources.

Traditionally we solved the problems of over population by waging wars or were helped by nature with pestilence and famine. Fortunately, no doubt, these remedies are no longer to hand – for present at least – and we are tasked with finding more human solutions.

It goes without saying that population containment is one candle to light in the dark. It is a problem we clearly cannot land at the feet of the gay community. Religion in all it guises needs to realize that the extinction of man which traditionally was threatened by lack of fertility is now threatened by its oversupply. We may have to set aside decades of teaching on family planning which was often morally dubious and now is patently impractical. Responsible parenting may imply just that.

But humanly, socially and psychologically the most destabilizing phenomenon is that of youth unemployment. The reality is that it here to stay and will only get worse if present moral and mental approaches apply. Why?

Well, for the last fifty years we have boasted on how we have invented, manufactured and deployed labor saving devices. Corporate earnings improve on the back of ‘downsizing’.

Tractors have taken over from laborers, computers have taken over from bookkeepers, and automation in industry has taken over from assembly line workers. We have dishing washers, tumble dryers, forklifts, central distribution points. And we wonder where all the jobs have gone? Are we blind?

I am not suggesting for a moment that we go back to tilling the fields with horses and ploughs, although the Amish have some interesting points to make. But if we want to know where all the workers have gone, look no further than your kitchen.

Added to that is the equally important question of who is getting rich? Is it the farmers? Clearly not; for the past fifty years we, as a society, have driven them from the fields -from the dustbowls of the Midwest to the paddy fields of the Mekong Delta. We complain we are ‘subsidizing farmers’ when in fact they have been subsidizing us. How have we rewarded people who work 365 days a year? Not quite as well as hedge fund managers. The financial global industry is grotesquely big in proportion to the services it offers mankind.

Until we decide to reward farmers, factory workers and small business people we will live in an upside down society.

But this means making choices we have not to date been willing to accept. Why should we spend so much money on our iPhone and so little on our turnips?

For the past 100 years work has been measured exclusively in monetary terms. The concept of service has been lost in the past thirty years particularly. Communism hasn’t worked and never will; inevitably it resulted in the enrichment of the very few at the expense of the many even in a more brutal way than capitalism which at least was reasonably transparent. Naked capitalism which was always ethically dodgy has been shown in recent years to be economically illiterate.

So where from here?

Here are a few thoughts

1. Start paying the right people for the real value of their produce – farmers and others for example
2. Shrink and refocus the financial services industry, which instead of serving mankind increasingly has been starving mankind. Close down investment banks and increase high street and local banks
3. Make community jobs have real value with career paths
4. Push back the industrial revolution – sanctify manual labour
5. Rethink responsible parenthood to reflect the 7 billion others
6. Focus on community based initiatives
7. Roll back globalization and the exposed world it creates
8. Encourage more social and economic resilience – more smaller local companies and less bigger behemoths
9. Work towards a global free market area with free movement of goods and people globally
10. No more glorifying ‘downsizing’
11. Reappraisal of the function and ethics of work and its relation to society and self-worth.
12. It is up to us. Once they told us that we had to obey kings and bishops and lords – we saw through that – after some time. Now they are telling us we have obey fund managers the market makers – I wonder when we will realize it is our world – not theirs – only when we leave behind their mindset, I suppose.

nO2 - No to

nO2 – No to

More bills
More hassle
More technology

Are you of an age where you do not understand your mobile phone bill?
Are you someone who worries when you are offered ‘upgrades’ by your mobile phone provider?
Are you a phone junkie who spends more money on your various phone and media bills than you spend on food?
Are you one of those idiots who haven’t a clue what phone plan you have signed up to?
Then this Post may appeal to you!

Welcome to the fold!

I have decided to say ‘No’ to
- any further upgrades
- any new phones
- any offer of tickets to gigs, concerts, music, basically no to anything
- any offer of meals, drinks, pubs, cafes or restaurants

I am of a generation which simply does not believe in the concept of a free lunch.
I also am of a generation that simply wants a phone to be a phone
It doesn’t have to
- make coffee
- take photos
- make videos
- link me to Facebook or any other book


Together let’s start a new revolution
- Reclaim our lives -get our mobile phones and lock them away for two days every week and twelve hours a day on the other 5
- Take 30 minutes before you reply to a text, any text, every text. If your caller is dying, you will have saved the cost of a text. Develop discipline and will power. Be your own man (or woman).
- Enter rehab if necessary to deal with the withdrawal symptoms.
- Donate what money you can to victims of Twitter who have abandoned their own lives and forsaken their sanity for the sake of others
- Campaign for global write down of phone bill debts owed by idiots who accepted ’free upgrades’
- Donate the money you save by not going to those concerts you really didn’t want to attend to good causes in the Third World

Remember
- It’s good to talk, but there are times when its even better to stay silent
- The conversations we don’t have are often more important than the ones we do
- Let’s give more time to the people around us, family, friends or work colleagues, let’s not cop out in the virtual world
- Let’s bring down the gears of life and enjoy the lower gears a bit more.
Excuse me now my mobile is ringing

Goodbye Garret the Good

I only met Garret FitzGerald once. And sadly it was only briefly. It was over breakfast at a weekend seminar organised by his son Mark for Sherry FitzGerald staff and friends.
At early breakfast Garret was looking good and many years younger than his 82 at the time. Many, myself included, were the worse for wear due to ‘socializing’ into the early hours. As a result over breakfast we were looking many years older than our birth certs might suggest.

It was the classic ‘quiet’ business breakfast that follows the noisy night before. Our husbands, wives and partners who should have been a civilizing influence had clearly failed and so small talk was of the hushed variety as conference delegates struggled to remember their own name, never mind the names of colleagues who had come from the far flung corners of Ireland and beyond.

It was in this context that I mumbled a ‘Good Morning’ to Garret who by this time, no doubt, had read both the Irish Times and the Financial Times. I often regretted that I missed the opportunity to engage in something more meaningful.

I could have mentioned how I was a member of the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland at the time of which he was Chairman for many years. But having never actually travelled on one of the steam engines that conversation might have disappeared down a cul de sac, or into a siding to use the technical term.

The truth is that I could have spoken to Garret on a wide range of subjects because he was uniquely Ireland’s Renaissance man with a passionate interest in a wide spectrum of interests, political, social, economic and financial. Garret was Ireland’s answer to Stephen Fry, and much much more. He was an elder Statesman in the mould of Paddy Ashdown or Neil Kinnock but without the slightly tribal chains that occasionally shackle them. You could be an ardent member of Fianna Fail and say you liked Garret and remain in the party. Because in truth Garret transcended party politics, indeed he transcended politics in its narrowest definition and was a Statesman in the true sense.

I had the good fortune to work as a consultant to his son’s company Sherry FitzGerald for two years. It was and is a remarkable company in terms of the humanity and egalitarian roots that shine through in many areas. It is hard to believe that it was a mere coincidence that the company co founded by Garret’s son Mark demonstrates so many of his own characteristics.

Our country has lost a great leader. Our people have lost an intellectual and moral touchstone. His family has lost a wonderful father and grandfather. I have lost the chance to enquire about the punctuality of steam trains in the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland.

I fully believe that he is resting at God’s side – ar dheis De – and while he may not need our prayers he will certainly receive our fondest thoughts for many many years to come.

Time up for Brave Brian

Shadows on the clositer wall of Santa Maria, Los Arcos, Navarra, Spain, May 14th, 2011

Time up for brave Brian

I only once met Brian Lenihan and when I did, I bought him a pint.

We were celebrating our monthly Class of '69 reunion as usual in Reilly’s Bar at the junction of Merrion Row and Merrion Street. It was about 10.00pm on a dark winter night when Brian and an advisor wandered in off the street and ordered a quiet pint. He looked spent after another long day in the office. One long day seemed to follow another in the gloomy winter of 2009 when Ireland’s economic bark began to ship water and even ladies travelling in first class with berths with balconies found the foamy sea swirling round their elegant high heels. Two of us approached the barman and asked if a round of drinks might be quietly and unobtrusively sent to Brian’s table.

Brian must have got many pints over the years from the party faithful. But we were not the party faithful. Just two ordinary citizens moved by the weary look of another human being who was punching in inhuman hours. I cannot remember if the news of his illness had become public knowledge at that time, but the bad news was well known in Dublin circles long ahead of the public announcement. Before he left, Brian enquired of the barman who had sent over the pints and the barmen pointed to the ex pupils of De La Salle Churchtown. Brian may have even spent a moment wondering if there was a Fianna Fail cumann in De La Salle Churchtown but he gave us a polite and discreet wave as he left after his second pint.

We then ploughed into our fourth pints as a vigorous debate took place as to whether the offer of drink was a political inducement or indeed even ethically acceptable. Some months later we were to meet Enda Kenny, then Leader of the Opposition in the very same pub. Enda proceeded to tell us a long and not very funny joke but to a man we were impressed by his 'down to earthness', if such a word exists and his politeness. Unfortunately I was walking the Camino de Santiago two weeks ago and out of the country so I missed the opportunity to buy HRH Queen Elizabeth a glass of sherry or even a pint of the black stuff Barack O’Bama.

During his many long months of political torture I identified with Brian more than most because he was dealing with a problem that was mainly of a Banking nature. Having worked in the industry for over twenty years I know what it is like to try and catch falling knives. That is exactly what Brian had to do on our behalf.

I am not sure if anyone could have done a better deal with the IMF and the EU but I am sure of one thing, no one could have done it with more dignity in adversity than he. Bankers quite rightly do not deserve much sympathy these days – unless they work in the local branches – in which case they are heroes – but in common with diplomats there are often times when discretion is called for and confidentiality lies at the heart of both arts.

People wrongly criticize Brian for not telling us in advance that the IMF was coming to town. The simple answer is that he could not have done so; indeed if he did he would have done great damage. I am delighted with the progress the new government has made and wish them well. It is instructive to note that they have adopted about 99% of what the previous government had suggested and realised about 1% of their election promises – but they are right on both counts and politics is a terrible game because we citizens are, by and large, feckless and we mostly deserve what we get in democracies.

Brian was a patriot in the true sense. He was a martyr and his name should be mentioned in the company of Pearse and Collins, Wolfe Tone and James Larkin. The work he did for Ireland almost certainly shortened his life and robbed his wife and family of a dear husband and a fine father. At a time when the currency of politicians is low, Brian has showed us that it is indeed possible to live and to die for your country.

May his gentle soul lie in peace. He owes me a pint in the next life.

Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis