We had a special visitor yesterday: John Calcutt, one of the founding board members of the House of Brigid, was in Europe on business and made a side trip to Wexford. He came to Mass in Clonard (although later than he’d planned, thanks to a flat tire), and then joined us at the house for lunch. We conversed with him throughout the afternoon, and then were hosted at Fr. Denis’s home for dinner and conversation with some of the key players in the parish. It was great to see John…we only wish it could have been a longer trip!
This week is what I like to call “Crafts are finally my job week.” As we prepare for the celebration of St. Brigid on Sunday night, the four of us will weave somewhere around 200 St. Brigid’s crosses. Kurt spent parts of his weekend finding us the rushes that are used in the weaving, and we have a couple of good bundles of them waiting to become this:
Brigid crosses
I just started on these this morning, and got 3 done. We’ve got a tutorial session in our living room scheduled for later this afternoon, and after that our house will become a Brigid cross workshop for the week.
In addition, this week has ended up becoming a crazy convergence of lots of other things we’ve been working on. Tomorrow, Clonard parish hosts the Eucharistic Congress bell, which has been traveling around the country calling people to prayer and preparation for the Congress in June. We’ve worked up a brief prayer service for the primary school kids to welcome the bell to the church, and that evening’s Mass will be replaced by another, more adult-oriented, prayer service.
We won’t make it to the Tuesday evening service, though, as we’ll be traveling to the parish of Ferns to give an evening retreat for Confirmation students and their parents. This side-along retreat model is one we’ve never tried before, and I’m very excited to see how it works to offer some of our material to parents as well as their children.
Thursday was the only day any of us could take off this week, so we decided to take it off together and make a communal pilgrimage to Kildare, homeplace of our patroness. We’ll spend a few hours walking in the footsteps of St. Brigid and really coming to understand the stories that we’ll be helping present to the parish on Sunday.
So lots of good things on the horizon this week….tune back in on Friday to see how it all went!
