Poems I Like: Father O'Flynn

This one isn't really a poem, but rather the words to a song. But it can be read as a poem.

I'm not claiming this is great poetry, but I've found myself thinking of it lately. Lines from it have come into my mind unbidden.

I've always liked it. It's gentle, sentimental, and good-natured. It's well-written, too-- there's nothing awkward or crude about it. And it's a reminder of a time when priests in Ireland were admired for being priests-- not for being social crusaders who happened to wear dog collars. I very much like the fact that Father O'Flynn is lauded in the poem for being something of a disciplinarian.

As for the Irishisms:: "Sláinte" is the Irish version of "Cheers" or "To your health!" (you probably knew that), "Father avick" means (rather nonsensically) "Father, my son", and there are two renderings of Irish dialect that might throw you: "onaisy" just means "uneasy", and "Is it lave gaiety all to the laity?" means "Should we leave gaiety all to the laity?".

"Dad and the devil and all" seems to mean "everybody". I've never heard "Dad" used in that way but that's what the context suggests. It's probably a contraction of "Bedad", which is a dated Irish exclamation.

My favourite verse is the one that begins: "Oh, Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way with you..."

This poem was written by Alfred Perceval Graves. I never knew, until I looked him up just now, that he was Robert Graves's father. Robert Graves is a poet I've never admired at all, although I can see he had talent. I've never read I, Claudius and I'm never going to. Historical novels are not to my taste.

Father O'Flynn by Alfred Perceval Graves

Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
Still, I'd advance ye, widout impropriety,
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.

Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainté, and slainté, and slainté agin;
Powerfulest preacher, and
Tenderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.

Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous for ever at Greek and Latinity,
Dad and the divels and all at Divinity,
Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
Come, I venture to give you my word,
Never the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from Mythology
Into Thayology,
Troth! and Conchology if he'd the call.

Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
All the ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
Still for all you've so gentle a soul,
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control;
Checking the crazy ones,
Coaxin' onaisy ones,
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.

And though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
Still at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the playboy could claim an equality
At comicality, Father, wid you?
Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
"Is it lave gaiety
All to the laity?
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"

How Can I, Personally, Right Now, Mitigate the Banality of Modern Life?

This question haunts me constantly. I think, instinctively, that it should haunt everybody.

And I think this despite the fact that it's hard to make a moral case for this. Banality isn't evil in itself. (Which is, I suppose, why the phrase "the banality of evil" exists. They wouldn't have to be paired if they weren't distinct. Besides, we all know that evil is often cool and stylish-- superficially, at least.)

Life is becoming more homogenized, standardized, rationalized, disenchanted, etc. etc. I'm convinced of this, though it's a hard thing to quantify.

What can we do about it? What can I do about it? I'm not talking about a grand strategy for a transformation of society. What can we do about it in our immediate environment, right now, with our way of life?

What element of eccentricity, colour, romance, contrarianism, visual poetry, and so forth...can we personally inject into our world? How can we re-enchant our immediate environment?

I haven't even found an answer to this myself, but I'm always asking it.

I'm inspired by people such as the Poe Toaster and Ferdinand Cheval. It would be hard to reach the heights of the latter in particular. But we could try!

Of course, you could all be doing this already.

My Cartoon of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee

I have a growing urge to draw cartoons so you can expect to see more of them here...whether you want to or not!

I'm a huge fan of both both of these men so this meant entirely affectionately.

Loving America For What It Is

I get very tired of people professing to love the "other" America.

Usually the America of Howard Zinn and the Beat poets and Ledbelly and labour activists and Bob Dylan and college towns and Mother Jones and Allen Ginsberg...you know the drill.

Usually it's that. But choose your own "other" America. It can be Russell Kirk's America just as easily.

I love the America of Mom's apple pie and Fourth of July fireworks and "sir" and "ma'am" and Bibles in hotel rooms and the white picket fence and Norman Rockwell and cheerleaders and  shiny-suited televangelists and the Stars and Stripes on the porch and get-up-and-go. (I don't have much of the latter quality myself, so I admire it.)

You might say this is all a dream, an ideal, an idyll.

Well, you could say the same about the "other America"-- except that's more of a sour-faced ideal laced with resentment. (I'm not having a pop at labour activists, by the way, or even Bob Dylan. You know what I mean. I'm talking about the ensemble.)

Humans are such aspirational beings that it's really impossible to separate the ideal from the reality, because the reality is always striving towards an ideal.

Give me the Norman Rockwell, Happy Days ideal over the one any old day. (Yes, I know Norman Rockwell was a Democrat. Democrats used to be sane!)

I touched on this subject in this blog post ten years ago. I haven't changed my mind.

That's it. God bless America. The vulgar, dime store America.

(You can point out I have never lived in America. I can point to the millions of real Americans who are happier to chant "USA, USA" than to cheer along with "American Idiot" by Green Day.)

A Great Interview with a New Convert

I was aware of Joe Schmid, who is a bit of a YouTube philosophy wunderkind, when he was an agnostic. Deo Gratias, he has now become a Catholic.

Here is a very interesting interview between him and Trent Horn, the Catholic apologist, in which he talks about his conversion. Interestingly, he was greatly influenced by many compelling Catholic miracles, including those of Padre Pio and the Eucharist. Joe seems like a very likeable guy.

Strange Likings: A Weird Post

Well, not so much strange, but...

I've been reading a book about Liam Cosgrave, a former Taoiseach of Ireland. He was a devout Catholic. He actually voted against his own government's Bill that sought to introduce contraception to Ireland.

One of the more endearing things about him was his love of Rome-- the city itself. He visited it often and he even encouraged journalists accompanying him on a state visit to Italy to see all the sights in Rome, with a child-like excitement.

How many people have a favourite city? Lots of people, I'm sure, but I'm guessing many people don't. Do you have a favourite city? I'm not even particularly attached to Dublin. I can't imagine loving any city, although I like the idea.

I also love this line from Groundhog Day, where Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is telling Rita why vermouth (sweet vermouth on the rocks, actually) is his favourite drink: "It makes me think of Rome, the way the sunlight hits the buildings in the afternoon." True, he's just trying to seduce Rita, but it's still a nice line. I can't imagine ever hearing anybody saying anything like this in real life. I've never known anyone who says things like this.

Still, it's a fact of life that people do love all sorts of things-- and that's what this blog post is about.

Not only that people love different things, but that they love different sorts of things.

Here's an example, that I've probably mentioned before. I have a model of a US Airways plane on my desk. (It's lost various parts and others are blue-tacked on.) I developed an affection for US Airways after several transatlantic flights. I liked their whole aesthetic, both visually and aurally (even coming down to things like announcements).

US Airways merged with another airline in 2013. The thing is, nobody except me seems to be nostalgic about them. People don't really seem to get attached to airlines. Why not? They get attached to other consumer goods and services.

People love different sorts of things.

The Irish statesman Eamon De Valera had such a powerful attachment to his old school, Blackrock College, that there's a whole book about it. I've mentioned this before. How many people have this kind of attachment?

I've mentioned in a previous post that I don't feel drawn to any particular "spirituality", at least in terms of specific religious orders. And yet some Catholics are so drawn to a particular spirituality that they join the tertiary order of the Carmelites, or Franciscans, or Dominicans.

People get attached to historical periods, and particular types of animals, and foods, and diets, and places-- all different sorts of places, from nations to streets-- and particular gadgets, and alcoholic drinks, and activities like survivalism, and...all sorts of things.

A world where most people had different interests, but the same sort of categories of interest, would be a world brimming over with diversity and variety.

But the fact that even the categories are different-- that one person can be passionate about something that the other person would never even think about-- that really gives life its glory of variety.

(I'm inclined to ask if anybody reading has any unusual sorts of interests. But asking seems to be the kiss of death to ever actually getting a response-- at least that has been my experience-- so I won't.)

The Inexplicability of Nostalgia

Today is obviously a "feelings" day, between this post and my last one.

I just had a surge of nostalgia, sparked by a memory from more than thirty years ago.

It was from religion class in secondary school. We were watching some film or TV version of the Gospels around Easter time. Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps, or The Greatest Story Ever Told, or something like that. I remember we watched it in several instalments.

The weird thing is that I wasn't happy in that school, I didn't like religion class (which rarely had anything to do with actual religion), and I've never liked screen versions of the life of our Lord. It's not that I'm opposed to them, I've just never felt they add anything. They seem banal and corny.

I can even remember feeling especially bored while watching that particular one.

Why should I feel a warm current of nostalgia when this memory comes to mind? Not for the first time, either.

I don't know.

Maybe it has something to do with my love of "liminal" experiences. (This isn't unique to me-- I think many or maybe even most people have it.)

Easter was barely a "thing" in my childhood and my youth. It seemed like nobody really knew what to do with it. All of my Easter memories have the strange atmosphere of non-event, which isn't quite the same thing as "not an event".

Added to that, my school wasn't particularly evangelical. The nineties were a very weird time for Catholicism in Ireland, for reasons I hardly have to explain. There was still a lot of cultural and institutional Catholicism but there was an enormous loss of confidence and conviction. In Catholic schools (or at least in mine), this led to a bizarre atmosphere of mixed messaging. We had prayers before every class (which I liked even back then), religious pictures and statues all around us (which I also liked), the very occasional assertion of Catholic teaching (for instance, before a divorce referendum in which some of my class-mates were old enough to vote)....but then, quite frequently, a heavy dose of liberalism on top of it. 

I remember one French teacher telling us (very offhandedly, and incidentally to the lesson) that contraception had emancipated women. This was not a trendy young substitute teacher but a rather old-fashioned middle-aged lady. 

Religion class was mostly "Inspiring" feature films and pop psychology. (Actually I'm quite grateful for some of the inspiring films.) One year we had to buy the gospel of Luke as a schoolbook, but we never once used it. (Unless I missed that day, which is very possible.)

So the memory of watching a film about Jesus over Easter was doubly liminal. That Easter was marked in any way, was most atypical, and that it was used to evangelize us in some way was even more so. It felt strange, and perhaps a bit wonderful-- at least in retrospect.

Does that explain the nostalgia? Possibly, I think. I've come to think that nostalgia is often less about how things were, but how they might have been. At least for me.