Writing Through to Write your Masterpiece

THE FIELD THEORY OF CREATIVITY

George Bernard Shaw talked about the “field theory” of creativity, borrowing a term from physics.

 Good ideas do not exist alone but in a larger field of imagination.

 As a young man Shaw wrote five novels. Can you name one? 

Shaw had to work through his novelist phase before he could arrive, in his late thirties, as a playwright.

 Shaw believed in productivity — just keep writing, was his advice to everyone. 

Norma Jenckes, a Shaw scholar at the University of Cincinnati, says Shaw’s attitude was that “you had to write yourself through all sorts of things, and then something might become your masterpiece.”

 Geniuses work hard. They’re prodigious. They can’t stop themselves from churning out work. 

Thomas Edison couldn’t stop inventing. Joyce Carol Oates can’t stop writing.

 Shaw published 55 plays. 

Milton Avery spewed paintings by the museum-load; when asked how he got inspiration, he said by going to the studio every day.

No piece of writing is wasted. Even if you don't like it when it's finished. At least you wrote it.  Now it is no longer clogging your brain. It is out there; it made room for the next idea to surface.

You have cleared the way to write something else

When I wrote my first play in the 1990s, I showed it to the great playwright, EDWARD ALBEE.

He was teaching in our department and we had become friends,

He read it and said, "Good  NOW WRITE TEN MORE." 

Then he added "But this will get you into YADDO and it did!

Byron's Ode to the Ocean

 

George Gordon Byron

I fell in  love with Lord  Byron when i was only six years old.

I loved his address to the sea.  

In fact every year I recited it as I entered the ocean for the first time each summer. 

 I adored his good looks 

and I must admit that I took collections of his work from the  Pawtucket Public Library and cut the  image of him that was often the first page of the collection.

 I put those pictures on  my bedroom wall. 

He was to me the most handsome of men.  

Also I knew many of his shorter poems by heart. 

 I often chose  Byron as the poet to  read aloud and talk about in those weekly poetry sessions with my mother.

 I recited my favorite 

 the verse "They know not I knew thee,  who knew the too well.

Long , long will I rue thee too deeply to tell.

If I should meet you after long years,

 how would I greet thee? In silence and tears."

believe it or not 

seventy years after I first read those lines, on this night, I am writing them down from memory, I did not condescend to check their accuracy.

 You,dear reader, may have that pleasure.

HERE IS WHAT I CHANTED TO THE OCEAN--

"Roll on, Thou..."

(From “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, Canto the Second, CLXXIX.)

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore; -- upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, not does remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror—’twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here

TO ACCEPT WHAT IS--THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF REALITY

  

The IDEA THAT YEATS WROTE ABOUT OF "A TERRIBLE BEAUTY 

Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former Buddhist nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community in France, reflects on coming to terms with the unpredictable challenges of life:

In the Buddha’s most essential teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he shares his discovery that suffering is a part of life, and there is no escape from it. This is the first Noble Truth and acknowledging it can help us to suffer less. If we can accept where we are, and not judge the disruption in our life as wrong or bad, we can touch great freedom. This is because fighting what is doesn’t actually work. As the saying goes, “whatever we resist persists.”. . .

Thay [Thich Nhath Hanh] often said, “A true practitioner isn’t someone who doesn’t suffer, but someone who knows how to handle their suffering.” We could say that the measure of our accomplishment or success is not that our life has no ups and downs, but that we can surf the waves!

This attitude of acceptance is freeing when we apply it not only to our personal suffering but also to the suffering in the world. Once, as a young nun, when I was practicing a classic Plum Village guided meditation, I came to the final exercise, “Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment; breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment.” Suddenly I found myself stuck when I did this practice, questioning how we could truly affirm it was “a wonderful moment” with all the violence, hatred, inequality, and preventable tragedies that are happening in the present moment all over the world. . . .

I sat in the question of it and began to see that along with all the suffering and pain, there are also many beings that are supporting others in the present moment. There are many hearts of compassion, opening to relieve suffering, to care for others, to teach, to show a different way. There are people who are courageous and standing up for what they believe is right, protecting our oceans, cleaning rivers and beaches, advocating for those who are oppressed. There are those in every corner of the planet who are quietly doing the things no one else wants to do: caring for the forgotten people, places, species, and doing what needs to be done.

When I focused on that other part of the larger picture, I was able to touch that, yes, this present moment is also a wonderful moment. I saw that suffering doesn’t have to disappear in order for beauty to be there. That life is about all of these things. . . . The reality is that there is great terror and pain, and there is great love and great wisdom. They’re all here, coexisting in this moment.

Here's  how Yeats  applied this idea to the Easter Rising of 1916

I write it out in verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born

 

Hunger Strike Memorial

 

Here is a picture of the only American  monument to  Hunger Strike Leader Bobby Sands. It is in a traffic circle in Hartford ,

It is a very solemn and dignified monument. It is the only one in this country.

The three words below the name and year of death  can be translated 'Our time will come,"

 Tiocfaidh Ár Lá (our time will come) This is a slogan of the Provisional IRA and it has become a kind of mantra since the Good Friday Agreement.  Over one hundred years have passed since the Partition of Ireland. When will Ireland the entire island be  a Nation Once again?

That is a question I ask myself every day. Why can't we have a monument like  this Hartford  one in Rhode Island?

SLAVEHOLDER CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA

 WE MUST SPEAK OF SYSTEMIC RACISM

Maybe because I have been working on writing  a series of three short plays about John Brown and his raid on Harper's Ferry and the aftermath of that raid, I have been reading more of the eloquent  speeches of Frederick Douglas. I have come to be amazed at the eloquence of a man who was a slave and never went to school. What a genius he was.  

That fact made me think and wonder  of how many extraordinary minds and souls were enslaved and never could fulfill the promise of the genius that God had placed in them.

What a tremendous loss and what a crime against the progress of the human race.

Recently in my daily readings of  Father Richard Rohr, I was surprised by this analysis of this saintly Franciscan priest,

Slaveholder Christianity

 

 

 

Fr. Richard offers a critique of how Christianity aligned with empire and colonialism manifested specifically in the United States:

The form of Christianity that has grown in the United States and spread throughout much of the world is what we have to fairly call “slaveholder Christianity.” The founders of our nation drew on a Christian tradition that had been aligned with empire for more than a millennium. It must be said that this form of Christianity is far, far removed from the Gospel and the example of Jesus as it has failed to respect the divine image in all beings. [1]

Culture, tradition, and power can keep us from recognizing the true message of the Gospel, which is why listening to other perspectives and voices is so necessary. Historian Jemar Tisby shares the writing of Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), a formerly enslaved man, who published his autobiography in 1789:

By the time he wrote his autobiography, Equiano had converted to Christianity. As he reflected on his life, he viewed his experiences through the lens of his faith and commented on the hypocrisy of slave traders who claimed to be Christian. . . .

On the kidnapping of unsuspecting Africans and their separation from family, Equiano asked, “O, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?” [2] 

Black people immediately detected the hypocrisy of American-style slavery. They knew the inconsistencies of the faith from the rank odors, the chains, the blood, and the misery that accompanied their life of bondage. Instead of abandoning Christianity, though, black people went directly to teachings of Jesus and challenged white people to demonstrate integrity. [3

ANSWERING THAT CHALLENGE

 SHOULD BE OUR NATIONAL

                     AGENDA.

ALL SAINTS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN - SOME KNOWN ONLY TO GOD

 Looking for women saints to be role models.  Some of us need to look no further than our own mother.

I suppose it is a cliche to say that "My mother was a saint,"  But mine would pass the test.

  On All Saints Day, November 1,  I woke up thinking that there are many Saints that have never been canonized. Saints known only to God and to those of us who were close to them in this life. That HOLY  DAY -- ALL SAINTS-- IS THEIR Day.

My mother was endlessly patient with my two sisters who had Down Syndrome,  She always urged me to see my sisters as a Divine Gift,  She  often said that when we died and stood before God His one question would be--

HOW DID YOU TREAT THE TWO ANGELS I SENT TO YOU?"

I am aware that this is not the way people speak now  of children with Down Syndrome. They  refer to them as Disabled or Intellectually challenged. Styles and terms changed, but the the reality of our life with Janie and Sheila was an unyielding factor in every moment of every day of our lives.

  My mother became aware of the crusade of an Irish Priest, Father Peyton, to encourage the daily rosary in family life.

She adopted his slogan--

THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

She  instigated a habit of daily prayer. She made an altar shelf on my bedroom  wall and tacked a blue skirt with white lace around it. She placed a statue of the Blessed Virgin there, and each night we knelt on the floor before that altar and said the Rosary. 

My  mother urged me to carry the rosary beads in my coat pocket and say the Hail Mary's as I went through the day.  She also encouraged me to visit every Catholic Church that I went past to say  a greeting to Jesus in the Eucharist  on the altar.

Joan Chittiser in a recent posting describes a childhood that echoes with my own.

I spent a lot of my young life making regular visits to church, trying to identify my place in the pantheon of saints. When the light streamed brightest through the colorful church windows and the great nave was empty, I walked up and down the aisles stretching my neck to study the glass figures, trying to discover what the pictures had to say to me about my own journey on earth. I looked always and forever for women saints, of course. They were painfully few. St. Martin, yes. St. George, of course. Sts. Peter and Paul and twelve apostles were everywhere there for the boys. None of them fit the identity I felt growing within me. The few small windows of women saints that were there, though no one talked about them, were important to me. After all, if even only a few women were there, were given places of honor in those windows—well known or not—it had to be possible for me to be there too.

 
The truth is that it’s important to know who our heroes are and what it is that binds us to them if we ourselves are to form a strong sense of self.
 
Social psychologists tell us that the development of distinct identities carries us through life. Without models to steer by, Cote and Levine discovered, we may never become the fullness of ourselves.  Instead, we stand to become unsettled and only partially developed adults. As a result, we may refuse to enter adulthood at all and become dependent on others. We can begin to drift through life, settling down nowhere and doing nothing of lasting value for anyone. As perpetual searchers, we go through life perpetually dissatisfied. Or, on the other hand, we may so internalize the past that we are incapable of change in a continually changing world.
 
The church at one time mandated that the names of saints were to be part of the baptismal rite. Then, forever reminded of the great heroes of the faith who have gone before us, the child had a personal standard to steer by. It would, in other words, become part of their identity.
 
My list of holy heroes at this stage of life is too long to recount. They are everywhere. Nevertheless, Joan of Arc and Teresa of Avila emerged in me somewhere along the way in my early childhood and hold a privileged place in my heart to this day.

I too searched for women saints and I  also found Teresa and Joan and chose Teresa for my confirmation name.
 

I don't want to leave you with the impression that my mother was always praying or urging  me to pray.

Quite the contrary, she had enormous energy. She worked a second shift factory job from 3 to 11 PM.  She got up at 6 Am to get me and my sisters up and dressed and ready for school. She made us breakfast and packed my sister's  lunches.

I walked to school and at noon I walked home for lunch and then back to school by 1pm When I got home at 3:30pm, my mother had already left for her work.   I would often see the evidence of her daytime  efforts. She   painted and papered every room in our tenement and transformed the space.  She taught herself to paper and she  improved our home enormously.  

My mother was very sociable and cheerful.  She had a lovely singing voice and she sang Irish songs often. I learned them all from her. I have already written about the  "SHOWS" she urged me to stage with my sisters.

In 1973 we finally travelled to Ireland and  connected with the  family and friends that my mother's parents had bid adieu in 1904.

I remember coming back home to Pawtucket on the plane;  she took my hand and said --

 "WELL WE HAVE CLOSED THE CIRCLE  THAT FAMINE AND POVERTY BROKE, AND WE ARE A WHOLE FAMILY AGAIN."

THE VOICE FROM THE TOMB

JAMES WILSON STILL INSPIRES US

I have mentioned before the fact that Pawtucket holds a Fenian Grave. It is, in fact, the centenary of the burial of Fenian James McNally Wilson in the cemetery at old Saint Mary's in Pawtucket.

I recall that my old and dear friend Al Mc Aloon told me how he  was a student at Saint Mary's School on the day of the burial. Their teacher a nun  took them to the window to see the burial "of a great patriot".

That day made an enormous impression on Al.  James Wilson  had been captured and jailed in Australia. From there he sent a letter to O'Reilly, a poet and writer  who escaped and went to Boston.

Here is an account of the letter that Wilson sent to O'Reilly.

 In 1869, O'Reilly escaped on the whaling ship Gazelle in Bunbury with assistance of the local Catholic priest, Father Patrick McCabe, and settled in Boston. Soon after his arrival, O'Reilly found work with The Pilot newspaper and eventually became editor. In 1871, another Fenian, John Devoy, was granted amnesty in England on condition that he settle outside Ireland. He sailed to New York City and became a newspaperman for the New York Herald. He joined the Clan na Gael, an organization that supported armed insurrection in Ireland.^[3]

In 1869, pardons had been issued to many of the imprisoned Fenians. Another round of pardons were issued in 1871, after which only a small group of "military" Fenians remained in Western Australia's penal system. In 1874, Devoy received a smuggled letter from imprisoned Fenian James Wilson, who was among those the British had not released.

Captain George Anthony, circa 1897

Dear Friend, remember this is a voice from the tomb. For is not this a living tomb? In the tomb it is only a man’s body that is good for worms, but in the living tomb the canker worm of care enters the very soul. Think that we have been nearly nine years in this living tomb since our first arrest and that it is impossible for mind or body to withstand the continual strain that is upon them. One or the other must give way. It is in this sad strait that I now, in the name of my comrades and myself, ask you to aid us in the manner pointed out… We ask you to aid us with your tongue and pen, with your brain and intellect, with your ability and influence, and God will bless your efforts, and we will repay you with all the gratitude of our natures… our faith in you is unbound. We think if you forsake us, then we are friendless indeed.

James Wilson

That letter had a profound effect and  the ship The Catalpa was purchased and Captain Anthony captained it to rescue the remaining Fenian prisoners. 

FREELOVE JENCKES FOUNDED DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY

 

WHAT A WONDERFUL FIRST NAME ---AND WE ARE RELATED! FREELOVE!

Finally, an illustrious woman relative.

Gravestone of
Sylvanus and Freelove Jenckes

Freelove Whipple Fenner, daughter of James Fenner and Freelove Whipple, was born on March 25, 1751 in Providence, Rhode Island. Though of “ancient and honorable family,” both of her parents died before her first birthday. The Whipple family were among the most prominent in Providence and the Fenners possessed one of England’s oldest lineages, as the name derives from the Fens, a Celtic tribe that settled on the island prior to the arrival of the Normans, the Angles and Saxons, and the Romans. More than a millennium later, Freelove Fenner’s great-great-great-grandfather Captain Thomas Fenner apparently was vital in England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

James Fenner
Fourth Governor of Rhode Island

As a young woman from a political family, Freelove Fenner was celebrated for her beauty and well known for her participation in the “Daughters of Liberty,”

 who organized themselves in Rhode Island in 1766. As Rhode Islanders began to resist the enactment of the Stamp Act, many women decided that they were going to join the fight against perceived British tyranny.

 Eighteen young women collaborated at the first meeting in Providence and decided that “Daughters of Liberty,” derived from the “Sons of Liberty,” would be a suitable name.

 Members of the organization included many young women who either were born into a politically prominent family, or married into one. The organization eventually sprouted branches throughout New England, in Massachusetts, Connecticut and in Newport and Providence.

The “Daughters of Liberty” conducted and participated in boycotts of British goods in order to show their loyalty to the colonies. Members of the “Sons” and “Daughters” organizations worked together and met frequently to discuss the issues of the time. Their patriotic efforts of providing “homespun” fabric and other domestic products decreased colonists’ dependence on British goods. They helped to find substitutes for products such as tea and sugar that were controlled and heavily taxed by Great Britain.

 Women’s new roles as “Daughters of Liberty” and leaders of boycotts became an integral part of the struggle against Great Britain. Without the dedication and commitment of these women, rejection of British taxation policies would have been much more difficult, if not impossible.

Freelove Fenner married Captain Sylvanus Jenckes in 1772. Jenckes captained ships for Rhode Island merchants, including John Brown’s infamous ship Sally, which Jenckes took to Suriname in January 1776 and brought back loaded with essential gunpowder and guns. In 1773 Freelove gave birth to her daughter, Sarah Whipple Jenckes, the only one of her three children to survive. Sarah later married James Fenner, her first cousin once removed, who served as U.S. senator from 1805 to 1807 and later in three separate terms as governor of Rhode Island. During his final term (1843-45) he became the first governor to serve under the new Rhode Island state constitution. Sarah and James Fenner also are buried at the North Burial Ground.

Arthur Fenner
Third Governor of Rhode Island

Freelove Whipple Fenner Jenckes did not live to see the end of the war, dying in 1780. Her husband Sylvanus died at Petersburg, Virginia in 1781, one month after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The two are buried at North Burial Ground, as are their daughter Sarah, and Sarah’s husband, James

Freelove Whipple Fenner, daughter of James Fenner and Gravestone of
Sylvanus and Freelove Jenckes

The Role of Art.

 

 

``

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. ... Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.” Pessoa

Two opinions of the role of art in our lives. One by Shaw the Irish playwright and the other by a Portuguese poet.

I don't know  what I think of art--creativity--for me that is writing poems and plays and of course, this blog. Does it help me to bear the crudeness of reality? Or  does it help me to ignore life?

As I have gotten older, my usual robust good health has  left me, and I  have had my first serious medical issues. I am not in unbearable pain, but I am in constant pain. So that  has perhaps made me turn to the creative projects that I have had in my mind, but  too often  delayed starting because of my activities of work and travel. 

 Now all I can still do is write and read and talk and think, and so those are the things that I do much more. That has caused me to explore my creativity more and to publish poems and have some of my plays produced. 

With the example and encouragement of another blogger, John Tew on Filiopietism Prism, I have had my entire blog turned into a book. Why? John convinced me that the  facts of the quick invention of new technologies  has made  such  things as  floppy discs outmoded.  What happens to material we have stored on old floppy discs?  He raised questions about what will happen to old blogs when the blogger is gone.  Then he mentioned an earlier  way to reserve our words and thoughts,

  WAIT FOR IT -A  BOOK.

HE HAD HIS OWN BLOG TRANSFORMED INTO A BOOK AND HE USED TWO DIFFFERENT  SERVICES TO ACCOMPLISH THIS.  HE RECOMMENDED ONE OVER ANOTHER.

I followed his  advice and  got in touch with the  group he had been happiest with.

Books may wane in popularity, but we will always be able to access them--to open the covers and read them. So after a few weeks, the people that are in the Netherlands sent back a lovely  hardback book.  It is set beautifully and has ten years of  my blog in it.

I did this for my grand daughter. 

 How often I wish that I had asked my grandfather Oscar Jenckes, when he was alive and living with us, to tell me about his father who was wounded in the Civil War, Ferdinand Jenckes. Or  ask him to tell me about his wife and my grandmother Ida Mowry, who died in the Spanish Flu scourge of 1919. I did not know enough to ask. I was too young.

Neither does my lovely grand daughter Rowan.  

But when I am gone, perhaps, she will take up this book and find some of the answers to questions she might be pondering about my life and my  time growing up in Pawtucket.

HERITAGE OF PAWTUCKET

 As the Pawtucket Preservation society has re-named itself as the Pawtucket Heritage Society I am inspired to think about what Pawtucket Heritage might include.

1. Beautification--

 this can mean many things.  Natural beauty is gained by planting blossoming trees along the streets.  Begin at the entrances to the city : Newport Avenue, Main Street, Prospect Street and Broadway and Pawtucket Ave should be the first  streets to be planted.

Beauty could be increased in the neighborhoods. So many of the little  local parks and playgrounds have been  decreased in size or built over entirely. One good example of this would be  what was once Novelty Park in Pawtucket, There are other examples. Another thing would be to identify any still existing local space that is open in Pawtucket. Concentrate on the area that borders the Blackstone River especially around the Division St Bridge.

Another effort could center around improving neighborhoods. With an emphasis on  improving house exteriors and yards and gardens. There could be a series of contests with  prizes .

2. Commemoration  

This would include and require a  serious historical understanding of how Pawtucket was settled and built. I would like to see  Neighborhood History  investigations that would enable us to characterize and identify the key Neighborhoods and also to  discover symbolic  house types and styles that are connected to each neighborhoods.  I am thinking of  Neighborhoods like Fairlawn and Woodlawn and Darlington  and Quality Hill. Create a map of the neighborhoods and  find a style for each. This would allow for distinctive and different items like signage and  street lights etc. Don't forget often forgotten neighborhoods like Pinecrest and Bishop's Bend.

3 Recognition and Appreciation of the Demographics of Pawtucket

There has been an increase of  Hispanic residents in Pawtucket. There should be some  recognition and appreciation of this. Use of Spanish language and Hispanic restaurants .Learn more of the style of the countries of origin like Colombia and Guatemala.

Also celebrate the people who have improved and  gained fame from Pawtucket.

I am thinking of founders like Joseph Jenks, more about his foundry and also Samuel Slater. What about the Dunnells and millionaires like Joseph Ott? But what about those who served in the Revolution from Pawtucket and those in the Civil War.  Oak Grove Cemetery has many graves that date from the Civil war era and so does the Mineral Spring Ave Cemetery.  Do some historical research into these figures. Include artistic figures.  writers like poet Galway Kinnell. Make it a high school project and give prizes to the best historical figure essays written. Give scholarships.

4.     Place greater emphasis on  education 

Can we induce an institution of higher ed. to locate in Pawtucket? Perhaps Salve Regina  could open a program here. Education should be improved as the school buildings themselves are improved.  This could be a 20 year project. Also schools should encourage the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. Need more stress on history and the living history that remains of Pawtucket's past.

 5.Preserve what we do still have.

Think again about preserving Memorial Hospital. So much of Pawtucket was lost in the building of Route 95. And perhaps create something exotic like a Chinese  Garden and Tea room on the Apex and riverside sites.   Should make a serious inventory of all mill buildings in Pawtucket and try to see how they could be used now. Lorraine Mills come to mind but there are other large complexes like Darlington Fabrics on Central Avenue and the   mills on the Riverfront near the YMCA  on the river that was once the Reserve Station.

MAKE PAWTUCKET A DESTINATION!

AMOR SINE MODO

The Sisters of Mercy who taught me  until I graduated from High school each had two secrets. 

 One was a hidden pocket  that often was made of a bright and patterned cotton and was the only thing that was not black or white in their habit.

  The second was  that they each had chosen a motto and it was inscribed inside the wedding ring that they wore as Brides of Christ.  My favorite teacher showed me hers . It was  three words in LATIN -- AMOR SINE MODO.

The Sister translated them as LOVE WITHOUT MEASURE.

   She said that was the motto of her life.  And  from my experience she lived it to the full. She as the most loving of people and she had a deep cheerfulness that brought forward even when I had done something wrong and was sent to the Principal's Office.  

This sister's love for her students, her  religious sisters and her Lord never faltered.

Everything that exists speaks of God, reflects that love energy of God. But God is more than anything that exists. God is always the more of our lives. We can’t contain God. If we try to control God, that’s not God; God always spills over our lives.

 So, God is our future. If we’re longing for something we desire, it’s that spilled-over love of our lives that’s pulling us onward, that’s luring us into something new. But we don’t trust this God [of implanted desire] often. We were pretty sure that God’s there, [and] we’re here, and we just need to keep [on] the straight and narrow path. . . .

What Francis [of Assisi] recognized is God is in every direction.

 That you might arrive, you might not arrive. You might arrive late; you might arrive early. It’s not the arrival that counts. It’s God! It’s not the direction that counts. It’s just being there, trusting that you will be going where God wants you. In other words, God is with us. Every step of the way is God-empowered love energy. But we tend to break down and start controlling things: “If I go this way, I’m going to get lost. Well, what if it’s wrong? What will happen to me?” Well, what will happen to you? Something will happen. But guess what? Something’s going to happen whether or not you go; that’s the whole point of life. So, it’s all about love.

So, it’s not like we’ve got this, “Here’s God; here’s us. God’s just waiting till we get our act together and then we’ll all be well.” That’s a boring God; that’s not even God. God is alive. God is love. Love is pulling us on to do new things and we need to trust the power of God in our lives to do new things. . . . We need to unwire ourselves to recognize that the God of Jesus Christ is, you might say, the power beneath our feet, the depth of the beauty of everything that exists, and the future into which we are moving. . . .

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

THOMAS ASHE DIES ON HUNGER STRIKE AFTER 1916 EASTER RISUNG

 

Colour lithographic print, featuring the original 1917 painting by Leo Whelan of Thomas Ashe, wearing a kilt, made of green material and playing the uileann pipes.Photo: National Library of Ireland, PD ASHE-TH (1) III

Thomas Ashe dies on hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail

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Dublin, 26 September 1917 - Thomas Ashe has died.

The 1916 rebel leader, who was serving a one year prison sentence in Mountjoy Jail, died at 10.30pm yesterday in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, where he had been admitted five hours earlier in a very weak condition. Diminished by hunger strike, the damage to his system was exacerbated by forcible feeding by the prison authorities. 

The deceased had been taken by cab to the hospital at 3pm yesterday and was attended to by the hospital staff, alongside the Sisters of Mercy and the hospital chaplain, Rev. T.J. Murray, who administered the last rites to Ashe before his death.

A police report outlining incendiary sentiments being expressed at Sinn Féin meetings in the days following Thomas Ashe's death. At Kells on 26 September, Frank Thornton said: 'Commandant Thomas Ashe was murdered in Mountjoy Prison. We intend to see this matter out. We want an Irish Republic in Ireland - we mean it and we will have it. Let England beweare. There are thousands of men in Ireland ready, not alone to go to gaol, but to take the rifle and do as they did in Easter Week.' Click image to enlarge. (Image: National Archives, UK)

Ashe’s death is certain to further inflame an already volatile political atmosphere. An Irish Independent editorial is adamant that should ‘more ill-feeling’ arise as a result of the shock death, ‘the authorities... will, to a great extent, be responsible’.

The ‘forcible method’ by which Mr Ashe had been fed was ‘revolting’, the editorial claimed:

‘It is obvious that long before his removal to hospital he was in a critical condition. So much is clear from the fact that he survived only five hours after his admission to the hospital.By their negligence in not removing him sooner to a place where he would have been humanely treated the authorities have incurred a grave responsibility.’

Life and work
The 35 year-old Ashe was the son of a farmer from Lispole in Dingle, Co. Kerry, but has been teaching in Lusk, Co. Dublin, for several years.

A member of the Coiste Gnótha of the Gaelic League, he was an accomplished piper and singer who possessed a deep knowledge of folk songs and airs.

He was also central to the development of Irish separatist politics in recent years. Most notably, he commanded the Volunteer forces at Ashbourne during the 1916 rebellion, for which he was tried by court-martial and condemned to death – a sentence that was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life.

The exemplary Thomas Ashe, Irish

 revolutionary who died for Ireland in this

 month in 1917

Thomas Ashe was only 35 when he died on September 25, 1917, after a so-called “botched” force-feeding while on hunger strike in Mountjoy prison.

Cahir O'Doherty

Reading "I Die in a Good Cause," originally published in 1970, is to connect with the great national narrative that once electrified Ashe himself. Author O Luing was born only a few months before Ashe's death in 1917, and his book reminds us of the enduring power of a legacy.

Thomas Ashe was only 32 when he died (after a so-called “botched” force-feeding while on hunger strike in Mountjoy prison). Ashe and his fellow revolutionary inmates had insisted they be categorized as political prisoners, and their hunger strikes had commenced in the hope of conceding the point.

But as so often in the story of the struggle for Irish independence, much of Ashe's legacy now comes to us from the lingering questions over who he would have been, what part he might have played in the wider national story, had his promise not been so cruelly cut short.

There is more than a hint of reverence in this clear-eyed but celebratory telling. As long as there is an Ireland it's a story that will not age and a book that will never be out of print.