subtle intimations of dawn

Morning coffee in the town of Naas with the artist Josephine Hardiman.
She is one of Ireland's greatest living artistic treasures.
Modesty prevents me from naming the other one.
Arf, arf.
(That old gag. - Bob Hope note.)
Josephine said: "Did you hear The Kildare Voice is closing down?"
I dropped my steinervortzel and gaped handsomely.
"No way."
"Why no way?"
"Because the two lads who were in charge when I was fired from the High Command are supposed to have landed up at The Kildare Voice."
"Well I definitely heard it's gone bust."
Oh gentle travellers of the internet.
We might allow ourselves a wry smile.
All these great Hirums and Fire-ums themselves getting hired and fired.
What was it the Christians said...
Something about the standard that we use shall be the standard that we are measured by.

Now bold readers.
The events I have described over the past few days, happened just as I described them.
No exaggeration.
I expect you to know when I'm acting the sack.

This morning I emerged from the cafe and bid Josephine a fond au revoir.
When she'd gone, I stood there wondering.
Have I just been upheld by the creator of the universe?
Have I just been upheld big time?
I mean God can hardly be smiting people at my behest, can he?
If he was he'd be smiting half the country not to mention the Jihadis.
But it seems, honestly now, as if all those who have unjustly sought my ruin have come to nought.
None of them have profited from it.
And stranger yet.
It seems I've been let know.

I have to tell you this next bit because it happened too.
As I stood there on Naas main street, a mildly bemused poet, asking myself yet again, just how real is God and suspecting not for the first time he is more real than we can imagine...
As I stood there Mary Bates wandered by and stopped to greet me.
Before becoming a journalist, I had worked with Mary in a local government office more than ten years ago.
Mary was a nice girl.
"You won't believe this," breezed Mary. "You're the second former colleague I've run into today. Just a few minutes ago I ran into Fenella Mardoozian."
Yes Mary had been a nice girl.
But the office had been a miserable little Kildare County Council effort rife with backstabbing and resentment and desolation.
I kid you not.
One of the girls in the office had been Fenella Mardoozian.
Fenella had been diagnosed schizophrenic.
I never accepted that she had schizophrenia.
I knew she had been messed around by a senior council official. I knew she had certain repressed resentments about life. I knew she had suffered. I never accepted she was sick.
Yet we were never friends.
And we had such epic battles.
Because I had always refused either to judge her or to let her away with anything.
When other people in the office had sneered about her being mentally ill I had spurned them.
At the time I thought it was an abysmal tragedy that Fenella and I weren't friends because we were both Christian.
And down through the years I never stopped praying for her.
Now Mary Bates stood before me having just met Fenella.
"How is she?" I asked.
We paused while a flurry of school kids skipped past us.
Then.
"She seemed great," said Mary. "Really calm and in control. I've never seen her looking so well."

Presently I was alone again on Naas main street.
For a second time it seemed I had been let know how things stood.
That my prayers had been answered.
The second miracle was the real one, wasn't it noble readers? Even if the downfall of my enemies felt more spectacular.

And late tonight I walked with Paddy Pup in the storm.
The wind rifled the tree tops all along the avenue.
I thought of the psalm about the Lord being enthroned upon the storm.
I opened my spirit to the voice of the wind.
You know the Hebrew words for wind and spirit are the same.
My soul filled with the voice of the wind.
All the bitterness, resentment and hatred that has festered in me over recent years was swept away.
All I could hear was glory.
When the storm was at its height I said in a voice soft enough to be heard at the far end of the universe:
"Thank you."