I know you are praying for us, readers all over the world...thank you.
Tonight I go to bed very afraid. There have been so many words tossed around in Ireland in the last few weeks...choice, freedom, dignity, rights...but these are only words.
To horrible truth is that, if Ireland votes "Yes" tomorrow, thousands of human beings will be snuffed out of existence before they ever have a chance to live. They will never see the sunlight or the snowfall. They will never contemplate the wonder of existence. They will never laugh, make friends, hear a nursery rhyme, lie awake waiting for Santa, be given a nickname, or have a personal moment of triumph. Nobody will ever know what they looked like or hear their own unique take on the world.
There is a poem I like in which a painter is painting a potrait and suddenly sees:
A very obvious thing; the immense
Thereness of someone else; a man
Once only, since the world began.
Never before, and never again.
The sight of the Lascaux cave paintings always fills me with this same sense of awe, the knowledge that what left those marks is utterly unique and of infinite value-- the same creature as me, the same being with infinite possibilities, a world inside looking out on the world outside. The idea of extinguishing that marvel, when there is any other option, is unthinkable. You may think human beings are made in the image of God. Or you may think every human being is the product of millions of years of incredibly fortunate accidents, conscious beings rising against all odds out of inanimate matter. Or you might think it is both. Whatever the ultimate origin of a human life, it seems an insanely precious gift to throw away.
So I thank everybody for their prayers for Ireland tomorrow, and in case there is ANY chance I can sway anyone at this eleventh hour....please please please vote No, and make the miracle of life happen for so many others in the years to come.
Couldn't help feeling the irony of people reportedly using Knock Airport and Mgr Horan's runway to fly into Ireland and vote against life. Also it being Trinity Sunday weekend,priests around the world often use the example of St Patrick the shamrock on this very day.
ReplyDeleteMy own week has been trying also, partly due to a mature age student friend having some problems which somehow I had to listen to most days this week,on some of which I had to walk home in storms, in the dark, after. The problems are various, but some DO reflect on something you'd know all about- the secular and left-leaning culture of this (catholic and private, but with some government funding) university. You'd,hypothetically, have been a better one to talk to than me, even given the different status of UCD.