Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EST December 13th 2021

4 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we listened to the song Dickens’ Dublin (The Palace) by Loreena McKennitt, posted below with lyrics.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about a place called home.” 

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

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Please join us for our next session Wednesday December 15th at 12pm EST,  with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Joyful mystery, the birth of our Lord...
This night our Lady and St. Joseph was going up to get registered and, um,
They were going down the road and they met this man and he said,
"Have you any room?" and he said, "No, but there's an old stable over there that I owned, if yous want to go into it."
And they went over and the Lord came down from the heaven at twelve o'clock and loads of beautiful angels was with them, and when they were walkin'...

I walk the streets of Dublin town, it's eighteen forty-two
It's snowing on this Christmas Eve, think I'll beg another bob or two
I'll huddle in this doorway here
'Til someone comes along
If the lamp lighter comes real soon
Maybe I'll go home with him
Maybe I can find a place I can call my home
Maybe I can find a home I can call my own

These three wise kings, um, they were all from different countries.
And they always used to look up at the sky and they looked up this night and saw this beautiful star up in the sky.
And when they were going they all meeted together and they had to pass King Herod's, not that we much care for him.
And they went in and he said, "Where ye goin' with yer best stitches on ye?"

The horses on the cobbled stones go by, think I'll get one, one fine day
And ride into the countryside and very far away
But now as the daylight disappears
I best find a place to sleep
Think I'll slip into the bell tower
In the church just down the street
Maybe I can find a place I can call my home
Maybe I can find a home I can call my own

And they said, "Did you not hear the news?" and say he says, "What news?" He says, "This day the Savior is born."
And he says to them, "When you find him come back and tell me 'cause I want to go and adore him too."
And he was only coddin' them. He wanted to kill him and when they were going, they stopped and they said,
"Surely not this old stable that our King is born in. We were expecting a palace."

Maybe on the way I'll find the dog I saw the other night
And tuck him underneath my jacket
So we'll stay warm through the night
And as we lie in the bell tower high
And dream of days to come
The bells o'er head will call the hours
The day we will find a home
Maybe I can find a place I can call my home
Maybe I can find a home I can call my own
Maybe I can find a place I can call my home
Maybe I can find a home I can call my own

There was these shepherds and shepherds are fellas that mind
The foals and cows and sheeps and little lambs and all and, um,
They hears this beautiful music up in the sky and they were wondering what was so fun.
An angel disappated them and he said, "I was wonderin' what was so fun"
And he said ye, and he said, "The savior is born. If yous want to go see him, follow that star up in the sky, " and it was a beautiful star.

4 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EST December 13th 2021”

  1. michele348

    About a place I call home~~~

    A place nestled among towering mountains,
    drawing its inhabitants together.
    A community where there are no strangers,
    only new friends yet to be made.
    Its residents come from sturdy stock,
    willing to earn the rewards granted in this life.

    It is a place I revisit, if only in my mind.
    A place that gives me a sense of belonging,
    a sense of security,
    a sense of calmness to this disjointed world I find myself in.
    Back to a time of innocence, of simplicity,
    of pausing the spinning top of living.
    Pausing to take a deep breath and exhale slowly.

    Counting my blessings for the memories I store.
    A place I call home, my place of respite.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. slowthunder

    Home

    Irish wakes.
    Irish food.
    Secrets.
    Unspoken stories of horror from the famine times.
    Unspoken stories that yet were passed down
    From generation to generation, perhaps through our genes.
    And the dancing!
    And the singing!
    And the wild parties
    That made us forget
    And ensured that we’d never forget.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. Scarlet Kinney

    I’m posting a second, much longer, and perhaps somewhat provocative version of my response to the writing prompt for the December 13 session, because the music and the text brought up so many things for me that I couldn’t possibly express them all during the writing part of the session due to the time constraints. That text, the child’s voice, the angelic singing, kept working on me, even visiting my dreams, urging me to write more, to edit, to get to the bottom of what I was feeling in response to it. This is the outcome.

    1.

    Irish wakes.
    Irish food.
    Secrets…the unspoken stories
    about the horrors of the famine times.
    Horrors that brought us
    to this place and time
    so far from the green isle
    our ancestors once called home.

    Unspoken stories
    that were yet mysteriously passed down
    through five generations
    in the new land
    perhaps in our blood
    perhaps in our bones
    perhaps in our dreaming.

    Oh, how stubbornly we loved
    the new land to which our ancestors fled
    When the murderous intent of man
    was abroad in the land of their origins
    and the supposed mercy of his god
    was nowhere to be found.

    2.

    High mass Latin mass Midnight mass
    on the Savior’s birthday
    in the dead of winter
    when the stars in the cold deep heavens above
    drew near to the earth
    perhaps for warmth
    perhaps to seek absolution.
    Candles. Incense.
    The choir singing like angels
    on the birthday of Mary’s son,
    Whose heavenly father
    like Herod
    like Pontius Pilate
    like the bloodthirsty crucifixion mob
    wanted him dead.

    Surely the father
    must have wanted his son to die.
    Surely, since being all powerful,
    could he not have saved him?
    Vanquished the mob
    on the bloody hill of Calvary?

    Questions forever imprinted on our genes.
    Questions passed from generation to generation
    in the pagan blood
    that still runs in our veins
    In the pagan memories
    that still resides in our bones.

    3.

    Somewhere deep within our battered psyches,
    We carried ancient knowledge
    that the original sin
    was not that Eve tempted Adam
    with the apple of Wisdom.
    Somewhere deep within our battered psyches
    we still knew that the original sin
    was that man created god in his image.
    and yet…
    and yet…

    High mass Latin mass Midnight mass
    beneath the deep arch of a winter night’s sky
    where that same star still shone,
    for where starvation and flight had failed to do so
    the Church had cowed our ancestors
    and we carried that knowledge in our genes as well.

    4.

    But in the new land, once away from the priests,
    Oh, how we danced!
    Oh, how we sang
    at wild family gatherings
    where the wild blood of our lost ancestors
    thrummed in our veins,
    ensuring we’d never forget,
    for what happened on Calvary
    happened in County Clare
    on the roadsides
    in the fields
    in the dark caverns of the Burren.

    But in the new land,
    once away from the priests,
    The lace curtains drawn,
    The fiddle moaning,
    the bodhrans pounding,
    Oh, how we danced!
    Oh, how we sang!
    For our ancestors survived starvation
    as their homes were burned around them.
    They survived the journey
    over the wild North Atlantic
    in the fetid holds of heaving, groaning ships.
    Because they survived
    in spite of the efforts of man and his god
    We are alive.

    Like

    Reply

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