IRISH REGION’S ANNUAL CELEBRATION DAY, May 12, 2018
About 80 Sisters and Associates gathered at 11:00 am in the Crown Plaza Hotel in Dundalk to remember and thank, to be energised and nourished. The programme certainly fulfilled these hopes with its simple and meaningful elements. We gathered with the usual cup of tea or coffee, to greet each other especially those we hadn’t met during the year and then assembled in the spacious conference room before the beautiful centrepiece created by Maureen McShane.
The Animation and Spirituality group had devised
a programme to meet all our needs.
This had three main elements:
input and reflection by Una Agnew and her brother Art,
followed by a beautiful Prayer of Celebration and an expression of thanks to each of the four members
of our Regional Leadership Team.
Margaret Mary also thanked Deirdre O’Connor
for her years of service and commitment
as Archivist. She wished her well
in her retirement and presented her with
a gift on behalf of all of us in the Region.
We then moved to the Dining Room for the usual delicious lunch and were on our way home by 3.00 pm.
Our prayer was introduced by Ann Concannon, leader of the Animation and Spirituality group. We gave thanks for the road we have walked this year and are also aware of the often difficult path that has brought us to this moment in the story of the Irish Region. Readings from Deuteronomy, Rumi, Celtic Spirituality, Patrick Kavanagh, Mary Oliver and Joyce Rupp were included. We paused for a moment of gratitude for our Leadership Team, Ann, Margaret Mary, Mary and Noreen and we presented them with flowers and gifts, in recognition for their wholehearted contribution to the life of the Region over the past three years. Music and movement brought the celebration together for us and we ended with the quotation from Doris Klein“ But always, both in our knowing and unknowing, we are escorted into tomorrow by Love, who gives us everything we need”.
Anne Kavanagh
They quoted many other poems from memory, such as “My room”, “Anti-natal dream”, “To a Child”, “Beyond the headlines”, “October”, “Thank you”. I could go on and on and you might be encouraged to read one of these in a book or on the net. To quote Kavanagh again, “On the stem of memory, imagination blossoms”.
Other Photographic Memories of the Day
About 80 Sisters and Associates gathered at 11:00 am in the Crown Plaza Hotel in Dundalk to remember and thank, to be energised and nourished.
Una and Art are steeped in the culture and landscape of Kavanagh, while being scholarly experts on his life in the Oriel hinterland of Louth, South Armagh and Monaghan. They invited us into glimpses of the glory and presence of God in the ordinary and mundane with excerpts from such poems as “Innocence”:
They said that I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.
But I knew that love’s doorway to life
Is the same doorway everywhere. (1951)
Maire Cannon began the day by inviting us on a “magical and mystical journey” through the life and poetry of the poet Patrick Kavanagh.
