Dear Friend,
A few months ago I wrote about my greenhouse. I wrote about my vision for resurrecting its glassless frame as a structure for climbing flowers. I wrote about sipping my coffee with a rose-scented breeze wafting around me. I wrote about transforming what would have been a failed project into something different, something that wasn’t its original purpose but was valuable in a whole new way.
A few days later, we had one of the worst storms I’ve experienced while living on the north coast - roof tiles flew off our house and smashed to the ground, branches broke and trees were uprooted, and when things calmed enough for me to venture out into the garden again, I saw that the greenhouse frame had become dangerously warped.
And this was only the first of three winter storms, the last of which made international news and caused the entire island of Ireland to shut down due to high winds.
So I look back at my New Year post a little sheepishly. My optimism proved to be misplaced. My dreams wishful. My vision for that greenhouse frame wiped away.
“It needs to be dismantled,” said my husband, who was never as hopeful about the greenhouse as I had been. Reluctantly, I finally agreed. It was time to put that project to rest.
So he folded the frame down, as if tucking it into bed. He cleared the broken glass from the one remaining window that had smashed in the last storm. I snapped a few pictures.
For me, the folding up of the greenhouse symbolized something, though I’m still trying to figure out what. I’m so much better at beginnings, possibilities, new ideas, dreaming about the future.
But sometimes ideas and plans and projects don’t go as we’d hoped. I find that hard, and something in me resists accepting that things don’t always work out.
Some things must come to an end. Some things can’t, and won’t, last forever.
But even so, there’s a pop of color around the old greenhouse as the bulbs spring up. Even so, the scent of spring wafts through the air. Even so, birds flit around the garden and the bunnies hop.
Even so.
Some things don’t last forever. But other things do.
Kiran
This Month’s Highlights
Celtic Psalms Concerts in Belfast and Northeast/Midwest US during St Patrick’s week - see our concert schedule on the Celtic Psalms website here
Lenten Psalms and Practices - stay tuned for a Lenten series combining Psalms and spiritual practices and subscribe to the podcast here
Resilient Spirit 6-Day Retreat at Corrymeela - find out more and book your place here
Bless My Feet Book coming soon
Celtic Psalms Concerts for St. Patrick’s Week
We have lots and lots of concerts coming up during St. Patrick’s Week! We are delighted to be a part of the stunning lineup of concerts for Belfast TradFest St. Patrick’s Music Festival. Our concert on the 14th of March will feature Ursula Burns, the incredible harpist who is also a comedian (!). Please, please come if you’re in the area, say hello and support this concert! It would mean a lot to us.
The very next day, we depart for our American tour, beginning in New Jersey and making our way across through Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Iowa. All our stops are listed in the flyer below. I would dearly love to see you at one of these concerts if you’re nearby!
Find out more on the Celtic Psalms website here
Corrymeela Retreat
Resilient Spirit Retreat (6 Days) 29th April-4th May 2025
What keeps our spirits resilient, even in times of stress and challenge? This retreat offers space for reflection and sharing, music and silence, as we explore what helps us build resilience in our daily lives. Through workshops on wellness skills, reflective practice, and poetry, set within the spacious rhythms of retreat, we learn more about what gives us life, energy, joy, and hope. This retreat is open to people of a variety of religious or spiritual backgrounds.
For pricing and itinerary, click here
Lenten Psalms and Practices
During Lent I plan to offer a series on Psalms and Practices for the season leading up to Easter. Also check out the Psalms for the Spirit podcast for recent episodes of the Psalms Journey, which features one Psalm per week with an accompanying journal.
Bless My Feet BOOK!
The Bless My Feet BOOK is coming out soon! It’s a compilation of three years of Bless My Feet writing, questions to ponder, and blessings for your journey. The artwork is inspired by my daughter’s painting (back when she was about 11) and the stunning scenery on the north coast of Ireland, which you will have seen in the images I include in my posts.
Paid subscribers will receive a free ebook in their inbox, and a paperback version will be available for purchase. I’m still working on bringing this project to completion, but you’ll be the first to know when I do :)
Kiran, your words and photograph brought to mind Gerard Manly Hopkins’ “God’s Grandeur”:
“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
B
I’m thinking about Job.