the all nighter

Up all night.
Walked Paddy Pup in the dawn.
Gospel shiver through the trees on the avenue.
Birdsong everywhere.
Conscious of graces I've received.
The memories come flooding back.
Things I'd prayed for, touches of the eternal on my life.
A friend giving up drugs, returning safely from busking around Europe, and getting to know Jesus.
Marie finding Tedwardo Del Garcia and marrying him.
My brother businessman Tom and his wife Jackie and their kids.
Doctor Barn and Fiona and their kids.
Diana coming back to me.
The incomparable Hoddlebun.
Aunty Marie bringing miracles on her deathbed when suddenly I realised I wasn't there to help her but that she was there to help me.
Finding Jess in the graveyard two miles out the road in pitch darkness after she bolted from the Halloween fireworks.
Uncle Jim's story about the visionary who told him his guardian angel's name was Stephen, the same name as Jim's son who died in infancy.
Uncle Jim saying he saw Jesus as the bread of life in the dancing sun at Medjugorje.
Judith James' face lighting up with love when she looked at me in San Giovanni Rotondo.
Mam.
Dad.
The robins, the wood pigeons, the chaffinches, the magpies and Scaldy Pants. (The scaldcrow.)
The international brigade.
Finding a lost family heirloom painting at Christmas in the attic and feeling I'd been guided to it and it was a present to me.
Looking at a battered photo of a sunset I'd taken years ago, and suddenly walking to the bookcase and pulling out a pristine version of the same photo without consciously knowing it had been placed there.
The back pain at Christmas, and then the gout, and then the shoulder, and then the ankle, and then the intuition that these were spiritual afflictions arising from my hatred of Arab and Muslim terrorists.
The realisation that hatred is a sickness.
The understanding that every affliction becomes a liberating gift from God when it is understood.
Saint Father Slavko's intercession freeing me from pornography.
Saint Therese sending me flowers.
Guidance from the Bible.
Seeing shooting stars when I was praying about my work situation and knowing that my employers too were accountable to a higher power.
Memory of my blood praising God one night in my teenage years.

The savour of these and other graces have come to me with the morning.

Of course I'm high as a kite on a cocktail of droooogs Doctor Barn has given me for my swollen jaw.
It's nearly 5am.
I must try to sleep before the drugs wear off.
Whatever intemperate remarks I may have made recently about political matters, I want you all to be aware of one thing.
The great issues of genesis and catastrophe fade into insignificance when I contemplate the possibility that my tooth ache will reassert itself with hours remaining before I'm permitted to take any more medication.
Goodnight gentle travellers of the internet.
Be ye well.