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  It so happened that in our parish, just as we were finally about to get moving on church restoration, we got a new parish priest. We knew nothing about him so he had that advantage. He had rubbed nobody up the wrong way by forgetting to call out an anniversary or by not agreeing a time for a baptism. He was starting with a clean sheet. How it would be when the restoration was over would depend on his tact, his delegation skills and his ability to suffer us all gladly. It would also depend on how he handled our funerals. The bereaved are vulnerable and a priest who is sensitive and caring around death will be forgiven many other flaws. But as yet our new PP was an unopened package, so I rang my friend Noeleen who had worked with him in his previous parish and asked, “What kind is the new fella?” I could sense her smiling over the phone as she told me: “He won’t put a foot wrong.” Well, I thought to myself, that will be some achievement.

  A small building committee had been set up by the previous priest. We were just five in number because he believed that small is beautiful. I was on this committee with no commendation other than a deep love of and attachment to this old church that was built in 1829. The plot had been given by the local landlord, which was a very generous gesture for the time and had caused certain ripples of disquiet amongst the landed gentry who would not be attending that church. The wily parish priest of that time, fearing a change of mind that could lead to a claw-back of his plot, buried the first four coffins at its four corners. At that time nobody moved the dead.

  I was not baptised here and had not received my first holy communion here, so I was a blow-in. But the chances were that I would be carried in here for my grand finale because many years previously Aunty Peg, in her wisdom, had bought a family grave by the main pathway, commenting: “If I’m there beside the path someone will see me and say a prayer.” One day I will join Aunty Peg and Uncle Jacky in their sunny patch. So I had a vested interest.

  We had meetings with architects, lighting designers, heating experts, sound experts, stone experts and endless other experts and people who were no experts at all. But it was good for me to have a demanding project on hand because Con’s death had rocked the ground beneath our feet. The meetings went on for months and months and we had meetings about meetings. And in the meanwhile parishioners asked, “What are ye doing? When is it ever going to start? How much will it cost?”

  The day the quantity surveyor finally came up with the cost was the day I nearly fell off the chair with shock. For some reason I had got it into my head that we could be talking about £500,000 and I had thought that even that was a very sizeable sum. So when the quantity surveyor calmly threw out a figure of a million I realised that we had one big problem.

  Now, this was a few years before millions began to be thrown around like snuff at a wake, and it remained a million even after we had pared the cost back to the bone. In the original plan there had been extra details that we had cut out. I repeated a million to myself a few times just to get used to the sound of it: a million … a million … a million. The parish would have to raise a million. There is nothing that concentrates the mind of a parish like a million. Once the figure had sunk into my mind, I concluded that it was a case of getting the money and getting the job done, but it soon became apparent that there would be more to it than that.

  At one of our endless meetings, Fr Tom Hayes from the bishop’s office came to discuss matters. He was pleasant, enthusiastic and full of good ideas. He pointed out that the money would restore the building but that the actual fundraising itself could revitalise our parish. That possibility had never dawned on me, but I could see his logic. After all, what good was a beautiful building with no sense of community? To me his was a whole new concept that turned on a light in my head. But a week later, when on a wet dismal night a group of us came together around the altar in St Mary’s to form a finance committee, that light flickered. We seemed to be a disorganised, ill-assorted collection, all wondering where to begin, and the gloomy church added to our sense of depression. The prospect of trying to transform this damp old building into a place of warmth and comfort was a daunting one. Like many old churches around the country, it was cold, bleak and miserable, and certainly not serving the purpose for which it was intended.

  I was at this finance meeting to represent the building committee. Members of the building committee had decided at a previous meeting that we should not be on the two committees. If you were on too many committees in any parish, the people who did nothing might decide very quickly that you were trying to run the parish. So one committee was enough. When a determined man decided that I should be PRO, I protested and informed him that as I was already on the building committee, I could not be on the finance committee. “Says who?” he demanded. My protestations were swept aside and I was told that if I was helping to spend the money, then I should be helping to make it as well. There was no arguing with that logic. Gabriel, who had served here as an altar boy, was also on both committees, and the restoration of this church was one of his life-long ambitions.

  So, with stops and starts, the finance committee was gradually formed and the most prevalent feeling that night around the altar was a huge sense of responsibility. At last we had our committee, and though we were all unsure of what lay ahead, we were determined to give it our best. If motivation was needed, it was all around in the dismal peeling walls and leaking steeple of St Mary’s. Would our little army be up to the challenge? We would need to pull in all the parish troops.

  The structure of a parish is good scaffolding for holding together a community. The station areas within our parish comprise a small number of townlands, and within these station areas the houses rotate the hosting of mass for the neighbouring houses. Apart from the religious aspect, it is the ideal conduit for new people in an area to get to know their neighbours and also to keep the old neighbours in touch with each other.

  With the decline of farming in rural Ireland, occasions for meeting up have disappeared. The creamery had always been a great meeting place where farmers waited in line and discussed world events, national events and local happenings. But the creamery disappeared and with it a social corner of rural Ireland. Then the forge where farmers met on wet days to get their horses shod disappeared and then, like falling dominoes, went the local barracks, school and post office. Now the local shop is under threat and the shopkeepers’ slogan could be “use us or lose us”, and the loss can have a cumulative effect on the community. Some say that big is best, but we are discovering that big is also impersonal and lonely.

  So, the stations are one of the networks that thread our parish life together. After the station mass, people sit, chat and eat, and how elaborate the eats are depends solely on each householder, but the usual is tea and cake. Within each station area are people who are interested in maintaining a community structure, and these are the men and women who the people in each station area like to represent them. So, the townland representatives were called to the first collectors’ meeting. But would the troops come?

  That night, as I walked up the hill to the meeting room in the school, I thought that this was the test. Would we have a good turnout, or would we get off to a dispiriting start? As I rounded the corner, the answer was laid out before me. The road up to the church, the school car park and the church car park were packed with cars. I felt my heart rise. It was good to know that there was life blood pulsing through the veins of our parish.

  It was a vibrant meeting with the usual ups and downs, and the people who thought that it was asking too much of the parish, and the people who thought that it was only a question of forging ahead. But meetings are strange events and one negative thinker can turn a whole meeting upside down. When this appeared to be happening, my heart sank. But then a young man whom I did not know stood up at the back of the hall and said with quiet determination: “Let’s get one thing clear here right now: we must stop apologising for looking for money for our church. We need the church for baptisms, for communions, weddings and when we di
e. We’re only looking for five pounds a week or whatever people want to give. It’s their church and it’s up to the people.” There was no arguing with such common sense. With his positive statement, he turned the meeting right around. We concluded on a positive note. The parish collection was about to take off. We were on our way!

  CHAPTER 5

  More than the Money

  The backbone of any church fundraising has to be the parish collection. Each parish does it differently but we did ours by townlands. It would be collected in envelopes distributed by the collectors and could be contributed to weekly, monthly or yearly. While guidelines were given regarding the amount, it was totally at the discretion of the contributor. The collectors who lived in each townland would distribute the special envelopes to their neighbours and then collect them about a week later. Some people could choose a direct debit system. Each year there would be a collectors’ meeting to bring people together for discussion, to iron out any problems and hand out the collectors’ envelopes already sorted into the different townlands. These envelopes could have been delivered by post but this would have taken away the connectedness that is an essential part of a living parish. In today’s rural Ireland neighbours can live in total isolation from each other and any exercise that keeps us in touch with each other helps to ease that sense of loneliness that is now part of the rural landscape.

  The finance committee felt that special fundraising events could spread the financial burden more evenly across the parish, as well as bringing people together and also enticing in outside support. It would also give people something in return for their money. At the first collectors’ meeting it was decided to have a Festival of Flowers. We sent out letters to local flower shops, flower clubs and flower enthusiasts, inviting them to be part of the festival. The response was immediate and generous. Everyone interested in gardening and flowers came together in a common bond. A flower festival is celebratory and uplifting and brings out the best in a parish.

  The venue was to be the lovely little chapel of St Patrick’s Upton, which lies in the centre of the parish. St Patrick’s was the monastery of the Rosminian order which had originally been an orphanage and is now a home for mentally handicapped adults. The chapel here had escaped the rigours of post-Vatican II enthusiasm and had retained its original features so was the ideal place for a flower festival, the theme of which was to be the Joy of Creation, and what better month in which to celebrate this than the month of May.

  At the first of many meetings, two groups were formed: the catering group and the flower-arranging group. As with any such undertaking, much discussion, difference of opinion and decision-making followed but one piece of advice carried the day. Kay, who owns a flower shop and had been part of many such fundraising events, sat quietly and listened to the discussions but when we appeared to be going around in all directions and getting nowhere she said quietly: “There are only two things we need to remember: people cannot come if they do not know about it, and when they do come we must make sure that it is worth their while.” She put it in a nutshell.

  So the wheels began to turn and Margaret took on the organisation of the catering, and Hazel and John the flower show. There was a lot of work in the preparation of the church but a small crew of men brought in sheets of timber and placed them across the seats to provide bases for the floral displays, and they were also at the beck and call of the flower arrangers to haul in large pieces of driftwood and lift sizeable statues. Preparing for a flower festival, we soon learned, is not for the faint-hearted or the argumentative!

  The evening before the opening, it was difficult to imagine that out of the surrounding chaos would emerge a flower festival ready to be opened the following night. Mountains of greenery blocked the aisle, ivy was draped over seats, water nymphs that were supposed to peer into water fountains fell headlong into them, and irate ladies searched under seats for pruners intent on getting lost. The birthing of a flower festival is a site strewn with unexploded missiles. But on the Friday it all gradually came together and, ten minutes before the official opening, order was restored. Flower-arrangers are a great crew. While their creative juices are flowing, they can work in total disorder, and then slowly out of the chaos comes a beautiful creation and within a short time the surrounding debris disappears. But while the creative juices are coming to the surface, it is best not to intervene.

  The staircase up to the choir gallery at the back of the church was intertwined with floral garlands and the gallery itself was transformed into a woodland of streams, trees, wild flowers and little animals. It was a scene from The Wind in the Willows. Up along the church each stand had a different theme and its story was told in flowers with all kinds of imaginative interpretations. The journey around the church needed to be made slowly to absorb the depth and subtle undertones of each display: a scented voyage of delightful discovery. The sanctuary area, being the focal point at the top of the church, brought the voyage to a brilliant finale of intermingling tones waltzing in harmony with the wonderful colour of the overhead stained-glass window. In contrast to the richly colourful story told around the church, the little prayer room off the sanctuary was a tranquil pool of white flowers and lighted candles. People, on entering, immediately fell silent and smiled in appreciation as they were embraced by candlelight, scent and peace. When one woman who could talk for the parish came in and fell silent, I knew that a miracle had happened.

  The official opening on the Friday night was performed by Charlie Wilkins, the gardening correspondent of the Irish Examiner. Charlie was the ideal choice because tempered with his love of gardening is an irreverent sense of fun, so the opening was both enlightening and entertaining. He was probably the reason why many present were gardeners because his weekly column is addictive and brainwashes you into thinking that time spent other than in the garden is wasted. He is encouraging and dispenses no-nonsense information that turns gardening into a delightful pastime. After the opening, people wandered around the church, viewing and discussing the arrangements. Later, they filed out the back door and drifted across the yard to where the catering team served teas and home-made eats.

  Saturday was bright and sunny and all day a steady stream of people walked around the church and afterwards went for tea in a sunlit conservatory where they basked in sunshine. Some people moved at a very slow pace from arrangement to arrangement and studied every last detail with great concentration, and for them a festival of flowers was an occasion to be savoured. For others, however, it was all about the chat, the tea and home-made goodies. But for all it was a leisurely day out, a time to celebrate doing nothing and to meet the neighbours.

  During Saturday there was the space and time to enjoy the entire experience but on Sunday crowds poured in and we had to appoint marshals to direct people in an ongoing flow up the church, along a side corridor, out the back door and across the yard for teas. I happened to be at the foot of the altar directing people into the prayer room when I noticed a man coming up the aisle. I have no idea why he stood out but probably it was the intensity of his expression. When he reached me, he said, “This is a strange day for me because my father was reared in the orphanage here and we grew up hearing about Upton, but I have never been here until today.” Because I was surrounded by milling people and my job was to prevent a bottleneck, not create one, there was no chance to talk with him. He hurriedly wrote his telephone number on the only thing that I had in my pocket, which was a matchbox. Later that day, somebody came along in a panic looking for matches to light candles, and I parted with my box. Despite trying to trace it later, I never again saw the box of matches. It was something that I deeply regretted because I felt that that man had a story that needed to be told. I wished that I could have gone into the prayer room and, sitting in that quiet place, listened to his story. It is probably one of the greatest problems of today’s Ireland that we have no time to listen to each other, and as a result counselling services have had to replace supportive neighbours all around
the country.

  The flower festival was a great financial success and set the fundraising off to a good start. There is nothing more uplifting than flowers, and a festival of flowers imbues a whole parish with a sense of well-being. As I wrote in a poem called “Fresh Flowers”:

  Give me a bunch

  Of dew-fresh flowers,

  What if they will not last:

  I cannot live in the future

  The present is all I ask.

  After celebrating the Joys of Creation in the flower festival we decided to celebrate the past by taking the village back in time. We had a Folk Day in the Bleach and brought the whole village on a walk into the past. Our GAA pitch is known as the Bleach because in 1760 the then landlord, Adderley, brought in a colony of French Huguenots to start a linen and silk industry and the riverside field was used to bleach the linen.

  In the windows along the village, householders put out old photographs, oil lamps, butter spades and wash boards. Items on display ranged from decorative chamber pots to ancient hat-pins and studs; studs, in the 1930s, were used to keep your shirt on. Viewers walked along, looking at the old photographs, and had great fun remembering the uses for all the old tools. As they came up the village towards the Bleach, they heard the nostalgic hum of the threshing machine, and when they arrived at the Bleach gate, they were met by ladies in Victorian dress.

  Inside the gate, the thresher pumped out golden straw while men in studded shirts, caps and braces fed it with corn. Along the field, women in gingham dresses made brown bread and baked it in the old-style bastable, while others made butter. The children were delighted with the animal corner of hens, chickens and donkeys. On the back of a lorry, a group of traditional musicians played Irish sets and old time waltzes for people who danced on a wooden platform which was the dance floor of an earlier time. Along by the river, rows of vintage cars and tractors brought great enjoyment to the farmers who remembered the way it used to be. A large army tent was the shop counter for the entire Folk Day and from it cakes, jams and all kinds of home produce were dished out by ladies in floppy hats and starched white aprons.