Tag: Fr. Pat Ahern

Beach Walk March 24 2018

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Bryan and Kitty MacMahon on their wedding day

Recently someone researching her own O’Connor family tree came across this lovely photo on a genealogy website.

November 4 1936

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Fr. Pat Ahern Honoured

Photo and text from the Diocese of Kerry website

Fr. Pat Ahern was honoured 19 Feb 2018, for his outstanding contribution to the artistic, cultural and literary tradition of the county, in a civic reception held by Kerry County Council. Fr Pat spoke with gratitude about his journey, outlining the impact the various Bishops of Kerry had on his work his location and his focus. Norma Foley spoke about his inspirational impact on Kerry and the country as a whole and she spoke with great feeling and emotion about his work with young people. Norma has worked directly with Fr Pat and has experienced his gifts first hand.  It was a warm gathering of Fr Pat’s family and many friends.

Fr Pat Ahern was honoured yesterday for his outstanding contribution to the artistic, cultural and literary tradition of the county, in a civic reception held by Kerry County Council. Fr Pat spoke with gratitude about his journey, outlining the impact the various Bishops of Kerry had on his work his location and his focus. Norma Foley spoke about his inspirational impact on Kerry and the country as a whole and she spoke with great feeling and emotion about his work with young people. Norma has worked directly with Fr Pat and has experienced his gifts first hand.  It was a warm gathering of Fr Pat’s family and many friends.

Fr Pat reflected on Siamsa Tíre:

For me Siamsa Tíre is no more or no less than the celebration of simple things – things that belong to everyday human living. Things that are not bound by time at all – that carry a timeless value.  The challenge is to notice them and to value them and to not be afraid or too embarrassed to celebrate them.

A few lines from the poet Patrick Kavanagh come to mind:

“Ashamed of what I loved I called it a ditch and all the while it was smiling at me with violets”.

I hope we will always have eyes and ears to appreciate and to celebrate the beauty of simple things, that we usually take for granted, maybe don’t even notice: the wonder and the colours of the sunrise or sunset  the beauty of the  wild honey suckle, the scent of a primrose, the song of the blackbird, the things that lift the spirt in us, lift it above the mundane,  above the material, mechanichal, digita,l lifeless, soulless world that is increasingly absorbing us…

Present-day society doesn’t want for sources of knowledge and information. The PC is fast replacing the world’s libraries. What you won’t find, however, in library or PC, is a quality, or value – aptly captured, perhaps, in that lovely little Irish phrase,  ‘ciall cheannaigh’– acquired wisdom / the wisdom of experience’.

A wisdom that is rooted in nature itself, and that is mediated through the lived human experience of  thinking, reflective, discerning  men and women over thousands of years… and which often comes to us through the imaginative and creative spokes-persons of our culture – in the handing on of stories and sagas, myths and legends, poetry and song, beliefs, customs……

the wellsprings of ciall cheannaigh.

I leave you with a few lines from a fellow Moyvane man, the late poet/mystic, John Moriarty:

            Clear days bring the mountains down to my doorstep

            Calm nights give the rivers their say.

            Sometimes the wind puts its hand to my shoulder.

            And then I don’t think, I just leave what I’m doing,

            And I go the soul’s way.

 Fr. Pat Ahern’s words Civic Reception

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Opening of Sheridan’s Spar in Market Street in the late 1980s

Patrick Godfrey found this old photo of himself and the late Joe Lynch at the official opening of Sheridan’s Spar .