These are from my own life. My personal favourites. Just in case I'm starting to hate Muslims, it's time to remind myself why I reject hate and why I dare to hope that the king who was born to set bondsmen free is actually real.
1. Uncle Jim went to the town of Medjugorje in Bosnia. He spoke with one of the young women there who claims to receive visions of the virgin Mary. She said to him: "Is there anything you'd like me to ask the blessed mother?" He said: "Ask her the name of my guardian angel." Later the supposed visionary came back to him. "Our blessed mother says your guardian angel's name is Stephen." Uncle Jim had a child called Stephen who died soon after he was born.
2. My gambling cousin Vincent was rallying his Ma's car out the road one night in his youth. The car came off the road, ploughed through a few gardens and wrapped itself round a telephone pole. Vinny climbed out of the wreckage, strolled back into town and went to bed. His Dad woke him to ask where the car was. Vinny grunted an explanation. His Dad walked out the road to look at what was left of the car. A resident of the area stood at his shoulder and said: "It's a miracle anyone came out of that alive." At that moment Vinny's Dad saw something glinting amid the wreckage. He reached in. It was a medal bearing a picture of the mother of God which Aunty Pat had been accustomed to slipping into Vinny's pocket when he was leaving the house.
3. Aunty Mary was walking along the bottom of the avenue holding her toddler Laura's hand. For some reason she picked up Laura and started running. Looking back she saw a trailer which had become detached from a passing car, slamming into the space she'd just vacated. The trailer crashed into a wall.
4. Aunty Pat was in bed in hospital. She noticed the room was full of flowers. She heard music that she says she cannot describe. Her dead mother stood by the bed and told her everything would be okay.
5. I prayed Diana would come back into my life after the bombings in Madrid and she did.
6. I prayed to find my old sheepdog Jess when she'd run away on Halloween. I found her at dead of night in a graveyard two miles outside of town.
7.Judith James.
8. One Summer in America I did a road test on the guardian angel, in spite of the fact that we're probably not meant to put such things to the test. I kept telling the guardian angel to bring my greetings to my cousin Emma. At the end of the Summer I returned to Ireland and Emma said: "You kept popping into my head at the oddest moments."
9. Feeling terribly defeated on the eve of some dreadfully dramatic meeting with my former employers at the Leinster Lootheramawn. I was walking in the fields. I looked up and the most splendid shooting star I've ever seen, tore the heavens. I felt it was from God.
10. The supposed visionaries at Medjugorje say they asked the mother of God to show them a saint living in their own town. They claim the mother of God replied: "Pasha, the Muslim woman."
