Another Circle Turns..

On January 24th 2017 I arrived at the London Irish Centre in Camden to take up post as CEO of the Irish Chaplaincy. I had no experience whatsoever of prisons, the main area of work of the organisation. Nor, having grown up in Coventry and later lived in Canterbury, did I know anything about the London Irish community. My sole contact with the world of Travellers, another of the Chaplaincy projects, had been the parties that our student SVP group used to put on for the children of Travellers. Those were lively affairs! I did have plenty of experience of older Irish; and I was enthusiastic, and happy to do something different after 28 years with the same charity.

My very first job was the crucial ESP funding application. After a morning spent trying to get to grips with that I felt totally overwhelmed. I wandered over to Camden Square at lunchtime and asked myself if I'd done the right thing. I'd left an organisation, L'Arche, where I knew pretty much everyone and everything and I'd come to a place where I didn't know anybody or anything! It was a sunny day and not too cold so that I could sit on a bench in the square and eat my sandwich and admire the tall trees. I started to feel a little bit better. Then I strolled over to St Paul's church and saw a poster advertising a time of silent prayer every Thursday lunchtime for half an hour. I knew then that everything would be alright. I went to the prayer that week, and nearly every week subsequently until Covid came along. It was a blessed point of stillness in my weekly routine.

Interestingly, that experience mirrored one that my mum had on her arrival in Coventry. Her first task after locating her digs was to go out and walk until she found the nearest Catholic church (no Google maps in those days!). St Osburgs, as it turned out, was just up the road. She told me that she knew then that everything would be alright. It was the church where she and dad were to be married and where I was baptised.

Mum came to England from her native-Newry in September 1957. It was the very month that nine Columban missionary priests arrived in England, sent by the Irish Catholic bishops to minister to the people like my parents who had left Ireland in their thousands in those post-war years. That was the beginning of the Irish Chaplaincy; and how amazing, I still think, that I found myself part of that Chaplaincy in its 60th anniversary year.

I was asked by several people in those first months if I was related to Bobby Gilmore, a Columban who had been Director of the Irish Chaplaincy in the 70s and 80s. I'd never heard of him but it turned out that he'd grown up just a couple of miles from my dad near Glenamaddy in Galway. He even remembered the day in 1949 when dad left for England. I was struck when he said, "It's like all the young people just disappeared overnight and it was just children and old people left!" Bobby's brother has done some research into the family tree and it seems that we may indeed be distantly related!

Those kinds of connections have run like a thread through my six and a half years at the Chaplaincy, and it has been the most enjoyable time. All was indeed well! It has been a privilege to work with such incredible people, all of whom are experts in their fields. It has been a privilege as well to go into prisons and care homes, into schools and Irish centres, into embassies and palaces, and into the homes of people who possessed little but were most generous in their offer of tea and a blessing. And who were deeply appreciative of the visit. I have relished the bacon and cabbage meals shared with groups of Travellers in prison; and the tea and Victoria sponge cake given to me by John, a Galwayman living in West London. My mouth has watered at the sight of the home-made scones on offer at Holy Family Primary School; and I was always delighted when Mary Allen insisted that I stay for lunch in the Kennedy Hall following our Masses. And more recently, the all-day breakfasts in Temptation café after our monthly team meeting haven't been bad either!

And there has been music! I suppose I'll never forget my first prison gig, when I brought my beautiful Ovation guitar into Wormwood Scrubs and played in the big, lovely chapel to a group of Travellers. And how one of them explained that he'd been a sessions musician outside and asked if he could have a go on the guitar. And how I gladly handed it over. I'll also never forget the time at HMP Chelmsford when we arrived for our Traveller event on the day someone had taken their own life in their cell. After the meal I was asked if I could sing 'The Fields of Athenry.' I was half-way through the first verse when one of the guys came up and put his arm around me and sang with me into the mic. And when we got to the chorus everyone was roaring out the words and punching the air. I can't sing that song now without picturing that remarkable scene of catharsis and unbridled joy in the multi-faith room in Chelmsford prison.

Each time I sing 'Be thou my vision' I remember the time when I sang it to a 92-year-old Cork woman Ellen on her death bed. And whenever I hear 'Once in a very blue moon' I will think of our concerts at St James's, Piccadilly and of Lucy Winkett, rector of St James's, singing it in the concert, just as she did in the L'Arche house in Kent where we both lived in 1992.

As well as being able to sing in my job I've also been able to write! The Irish Chaplaincy newsletters, the blogs, articles for all sorts of publications. And now also two books, Looking Ahead with Hope and The Universe Provides. I even managed to land a little Radio 2 gig, and so get to chat with Owain Wyn Evans at 5.45 on a Monday morning! And I can even pronounce his name right now! How blessed I have been. The universe provides indeed!

And now another circle rotates round to the beginning. Just as I found myself in its 60th anniversary year at an organisation founded to support those like my parents who had left Ireland, I will travel in the opposite direction! I am honoured to have been appointed as the new Leader/CEO of L'Arche Ireland, and will be moving to Kilkenny. I have a sneaky feeling that there could be more music in the air…

I come to the end of my time at the Irish Chaplaincy with a heart full of gratitude. Thank you to each and every one of you for these wonderful six and a half years. And thank you to everyone who has been part of or who has supported the fantastic work of this oganisation.

I was in Norwich at the end of August to visit an old friend and he took me to the church of St Julian. I stood with excitement in the very cell where the great woman lived for many years and whose most famous saying I am often quoting to people. And I conclude with those words:

All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.