Last summer I took a three-month sabbatical in Ireland to write two books. One of them has been published (Star of the West, a history of our parish from 1776-2026, available on The Bookshelf opposite our Adoration Chapel and at the parish office). The other is entitled Mother of the Light, and I have returned to my little farmhouse in County Cork to prepare that manuscript for submission to a publisher. My secluded writer’s abode is found a few miles up Long Hill Road from Dunmanway, a village of 2000 souls dating from the late Bronze Age. One of my parishioners in San Francisco, Justin Murray, was raised in this village, and his sister lives here still. It’s a small world.
My Celtic refuge is owned by Donncha O’Cochlain, an Irish farmer who spent twenty-five years building homes in San Francisco, discovered Star of the Sea during Covid, and married our schools’ teacher and principal, Marisela Miranda. He took her back to Ireland with him to become a farmer’s wife and kindly offered me one of his farmhouses when he heard I wanted a quiet place to write. We couldn’t, however, agree on a name for the house, and on this side of the Atlantic homes have names. I wanted to call it “Weathertop” from The Lord of the Rings (because you can see the countryside in all directions from its summit), but he wanted to call it “St. Joseph’s House.” So we call it “St. Joseph’s House on Weathertop,” and I spent a wonderful hour of prayer this morning on its front porch.
Yesterday, on the plane, I watched an English action thriller called Shelter. I have to confess that I watch a movie or two on longer flights, not only to pass the time but also to better understand the society in which we live. But one must be very careful, because the vast majority of movies today are more or less poisonous. Shelter, like most movies today, shows a lot of killing, which stirs bloodlust in any normally-functioning male (when media figures wring their hands over violent crimes like school shootings, remember that most actors make lots of money promoting violence). This movie portrayed much violence but also a man trying to escape his violent past. He had “shed much blood” (in God’s words to King David) as a British special ops agent, but when an orphaned girl needs his protection, his heart is moved to shelter her from government assassins. Thus a fictional movie character's fatherly protection provides a glimmer of God’s paternal love for us. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, the poet says, and even a commercial movie can give a glimpse of the Father’s infinite love for that which He has created.
This morning in Ireland, God’s fatherly love, all bright and beautiful, glimmered and flitted around me: birds of many shapes and sizes, grasses and flowers, clouds and sky, cows and sheep, mountains and hills, windmills and smoke curling from my neighbors’ chimney. God is a hidden God, but He provides just enough visible goodness for us to believe in Him. I came here to write, but I see that it is all written already in the billowing clouds, the waving grasses, the quite neighbors, the soft breezes, the rustling leaves and the soaring birds. All of them speak to me of the God who made them, here in the silence of St. Joseph’s House on Weathertop.
My Celtic refuge is owned by Donncha O’Cochlain, an Irish farmer who spent twenty-five years building homes in San Francisco, discovered Star of the Sea during Covid, and married our schools’ teacher and principal, Marisela Miranda. He took her back to Ireland with him to become a farmer’s wife and kindly offered me one of his farmhouses when he heard I wanted a quiet place to write. We couldn’t, however, agree on a name for the house, and on this side of the Atlantic homes have names. I wanted to call it “Weathertop” from The Lord of the Rings (because you can see the countryside in all directions from its summit), but he wanted to call it “St. Joseph’s House.” So we call it “St. Joseph’s House on Weathertop,” and I spent a wonderful hour of prayer this morning on its front porch.
Yesterday, on the plane, I watched an English action thriller called Shelter. I have to confess that I watch a movie or two on longer flights, not only to pass the time but also to better understand the society in which we live. But one must be very careful, because the vast majority of movies today are more or less poisonous. Shelter, like most movies today, shows a lot of killing, which stirs bloodlust in any normally-functioning male (when media figures wring their hands over violent crimes like school shootings, remember that most actors make lots of money promoting violence). This movie portrayed much violence but also a man trying to escape his violent past. He had “shed much blood” (in God’s words to King David) as a British special ops agent, but when an orphaned girl needs his protection, his heart is moved to shelter her from government assassins. Thus a fictional movie character's fatherly protection provides a glimmer of God’s paternal love for us. The world is charged with the grandeur of God, the poet says, and even a commercial movie can give a glimpse of the Father’s infinite love for that which He has created.
This morning in Ireland, God’s fatherly love, all bright and beautiful, glimmered and flitted around me: birds of many shapes and sizes, grasses and flowers, clouds and sky, cows and sheep, mountains and hills, windmills and smoke curling from my neighbors’ chimney. God is a hidden God, but He provides just enough visible goodness for us to believe in Him. I came here to write, but I see that it is all written already in the billowing clouds, the waving grasses, the quite neighbors, the soft breezes, the rustling leaves and the soaring birds. All of them speak to me of the God who made them, here in the silence of St. Joseph’s House on Weathertop.
St. Joseph’s House on Weathertop
RSS Feed