A weekend on the shores of Lough Ramor near Virginia

The sandy shoreline of the Blessington Lakes ... almost like taking a walk on a beach (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)
Patrick Comerford

It was a pleasure to see my photograph of the Blessington Lakes being used by Ryan Turbidy in a quiz on the Late Late Show last night ... even if it was in connection with the launch of a new boy band being promoted by Louis Walsh.

The photograph was taken four years ago. This weekend, I am by another lake, staying for the weekend with friends at the Lakeside Manor Hotel on the shores of Lough Ramor, on the outskirts of Virginia, Co Cavan, close to the borders of Co Meath and Co Cavan.

A view of Lough Ramor at the Lakeside Manor Hotel, Virginia, Co Cavan (Photograph: Jim Brady/Cavan Living, June 2013)
We are just an hour north from Dublin, on the borders of the provinces of Leinster and Ulster, and the Lakeside Manor Hotel is in a wonderful setting, with panoramic views of and shore-side access to Lough Ramor.

Lough Ramor is five miles long and two miles wide, and has a surface area of 800 hectares. The lake is fed by the Murmod river, which rises near Bailieborough and flows under the bridge beside Virginia, and is drained by the River Blackwater. It is quite shallow at its southern end but depths in excess of 15 metres have been recorded around the northern end of the lake.

The lake is referred to as Loch Muinreamhair in early in Irish history, and the Martyrology of Donegal, dating from the 5th century perhaps, refers on 6 February to the festival of Saint Brandubh and Saint Coluim of “Loch Muinreamhair.”

In the early 1800s, a beautiful brooch, now known as the Virginia Brooch, was discovered along the shores of Lough Ramor. It is said to have been a Viking brooch, and dates from 850 to 1000. It belongs to the same period as the high crosses in Kells and the Book of Kells.

In 1826, Thomas Tayor, 1st Marquess of Headfort and 2nd Earl of Bective, claimed the rights and royalties of the lake, the islands and its water. The Taylour or Headfort family built a shooting lodge in Virginia which is now the Park Hotel, and I have fond memories of staying there in my teens in 1967, learning to row on the lake.

Lough Ramor has huge stocks of coarse fish. This is an excellent coarse fishery and it regularly produces large catches of bream, roach, roach-bream hybrids and some perch.

The lake has 30 to 40 islands, some of them inhabited in the past. The islands have interesting names such as Great Island, Crane Island, Scabby Island, Sloo Island Woodward or Tighe’s Island, George’s Islands, Corronagh Islands, Porter’s Islands, Crossafehin Islands and Stoney Islands.

Hopefully, there will be time to enjoy the lakes of Co Cavan and some of the islands, and perhaps even spend a little time on a boat on the water, without being too entusiastic about long-forgotten rowing skills.

A visit that seems to fall out of sequence in this in-between time

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Saint Elizabeth … a panel from the triptych in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford

We are in a strange in-between time in the calendar of the Church this weekend.

On Thursday evening [29 May 2014], I was in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, for the Cathedral Eucharist, celebrating the Ascension. On Sunday week [8 June 2014], I am celebrating the Eucharist in Saint Michan’s Church in the city centre and All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, marking the Day of Pentecost.

In the meantime, what happens to the Disciples in Jerusalem?

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostle on Thursday [Acts 1: 1-11], two angels in white robes ask the disciples after the Ascension why they are standing around looking up into heaven.

In the Gospel reading [Luke 24: 44-53], they return to “Jerusalem with great joy,” and seem to spend the following days in the Temple. As the story unfolds in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples, as well as Mary and other women (see verse 14), spend their time in prayer, choosing a successor to Judas, and praying, as we read in the Revised Common Lectionary [Acts 1: 6-14] tomorrow [1 June 2014, the Seventh Sunday of Easter].

Then, ten days after, they are filled with Holy Spirit, who comes as a gift not only to the 12 but to all who are gathered with them, including Mary and the other women, the brothers of Jesus (verse 14), and other followers in Jerusalem – in all, about 120 people (see verse 15).

But for these few days we are in that in-between time, between the Ascension and Pentecost. It is still the season of Easter, which lasts for 50 days from Easter Day until the Day of Pentecost.

So, it may seem a little out of sequence that in the Calendar of the Church, today [31 May] is the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Luke 1: 39-56).

This feast, which is of mediaeval origin, was kept by the Franciscans before 1263, when the Franciscans adopted it on the recommendation of Saint Bonaventure.

In 1389 Pope Urban VI, it would help to end the Great Western Schism, placed this feast in the Calendar of the Western Church on 2 July, the day after the end of the octave following the feast (24 June) of the birth of Saint John the Baptist, who was still in the womb of his mother, Saint Elizabeth, womb at the time of the Visitation.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI moved it to 31 May, a date that might continue to seem out of sequence but for the fact that it falls between the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March) and that of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist (24 June).

In the Book of Common Prayer (2004) of the Church of Ireland, the Visitation is celebrated as a Festival today [31 May]. However, Anglicans who use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer continue to celebrate the Visitation on 2 July, and in some Anglican traditions it is a commemoration rather than a feast day.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the celebration of a feast day marking the Visitation is of relatively recent origin, dating only from the 19th century. The Gorneye Convent in Jerusalem, built on the traditional site of the Visitation, celebrates this Feast on 30 March, but the Feast has not yet been accepted by all Orthodox jurisdictions.

In recent months, I have written for both the Lichfield Gazette and for the Annual Report of the Friends of Lichfield Cathedral about the triptych in the Lady Chapel, which includes a beautiful 19th century interpretation of the Visitation.

This carved wooden reredos or altarpiece dates from 1895. The high relief scenes, carved in from Oberammergau, the Bavarian town that is better known for its Passion Play, were designed in England by the Tractarian artist Charles Eamer Kempe (1837-1907), best known in the late Victorian period for his stained-glass windows.

‘Mary meets Elizabeth’ (1996), by Dinah Roe Kendall, from ‘Allegories of Heaven: an artist explores the greatest story ever told’ (Carlisle: Piquant, 2002)
However, another of my favourite depictions of the Visitation is Dinah Roe Kendall’s painting, Mary meets Elizabeth (1996), which is in acrylic on canvas.

Dinah Roe Kendall was born in Bakewell, Derbyshire, in 1923 into a family of professional artists. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were both well-known artists. Her great-grandmother was the daughter of the Victorian sculptor whose statue of Lord Nelson stands in Trafalgar Square, London.

Her father planned for her to proceed to full-time training, but World War II and his early death occurred before these hopes could be realised. After her wartime nursing, she attended Sheffield Art School and was then received an ex-service grant to enable her to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London (1948 to 1952).

There Lucien Freud asked her to sit for him, Stanley Spencer’s daughter Unity was a fellow-student, and Dinah learned from Jacob Epstein, Stanley Spencer and many other artists.

The nostalgic world of primitive painting is far removed from her vibrant Biblical scenes, placed in modern contexts and painted in modern materials. Although the influence of her teachers can be seen in her work, she has moved on from them, developing a style that is distinctly her own.

Her paintings are drenched in colour, reflecting five years of living in Cyprus and the influence of modern artists she has admired, including Peter Howson and Ana Maria Pacheco.

She usually paints in acrylic on board or canvas, mixing the paint with thickening media. Her angels wear robes built up of thick knife and brush strokes flecked with gold. She paints the cross as a visual sermon: no mere philosophical concept, but a hunk of wood along which, as Francis Schaeffer used to remark, one could have run a finger and got a splinter.

Despite changing fashions and much pressure to explore abstract art, she has always remained a figurative painter. Her biblical scenes are cast in modern contexts: Christ visits a school in Sheffield; Lazarus is raised from the dead in an alcove in a wall borrowed from Chatsworth House; Jairus’s daughter wakes up upstairs in a modern home, surrounded by modern neighbours as an abandoned teddy-bear on a chair in by the window watches on in amazement; the infant Christ presented in the Temple is looking right at the viewer; in the case of the Woman taken in Adultery, Christ’s finger writing in the dust points out of the canvas and at the viewer.

Her ‘Entry into Jerusalem’ is set in the playground of the Porter Croft School in Sheffield, where the painting now hangs, and the Baptism of Christ takes place in a swimming pool.

Her paintings constantly engage the viewer, but show intimacy too. At the ‘Supper at Emmaus,’ Christ sits at the head of a table, with two disciples whose hands reach out towards his. He is holding a loaf of bread; wine and glasses stand ready. His pose recalls Stanley Spencer’s 1939 painting of a lonely Christ in the Wilderness, cradling in his hands a scorpion.

There is social comment and humour too in her work: the Good Samaritan is a black man; ‘The Marriage at Cana in Galilee’ is a witty footnote to a famous painting by Breughel; and ‘Jesus visits Bethany’ is a delightful depiction of an off-duty Christ, even though the crowds are pressing in at the door. Inside the house in Bethany, Lazarus sits apart from the others in a curtained alcove as if the shadow of the tomb has not quite left him. His eyes are fixed not upon Christ but upon some faraway place, as if contemplating a landscape that only he has seen.

At the opening of an exhibition of her paintings in Winchester Cathedral some years ago, Dinah Roe Kendall said that she wants to show that meeting Christ is an unsettling and life-changing experience that could happen at any point in time.

This painting, Mary meets Elizabeth, is among her many paintings included in Allegories of Heaven: an artist explores the greatest story ever told (Carlisle: Piquant, 2002), drawing on texts from The Message text by Eugene Peterson. The Revd Tom Devonshire Jones, Founder and Director Emeritus of ACE (Art and Christianity Enquiry), has commented: “Dinah Roe Kendall’s fresh, sassy and devout paintings are breathing new life into religious art at the start of the third millennium. Already receiving the grateful attention of worshipper and enquirer alike, they are finding a secure place in the world of faith and of art.”

An icon of the Visitation by the Romanian icon writer Mihia Cocu in the Lady Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Readings:

Zephaniah 3: 14-18; Psalm 113; Romans 12: 9-16; Luke 1: 39-39 (50-56).

Collect:

Mighty God,
by whose grace Elizabeth rejoiced with Mary
and greeted her as the mother of the Lord:
Look with favour on your lowly servants
that, with Mary, we may magnify your holy name
and rejoice to acclaim her Son our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Gracious God,
who gave joy to Elizabeth and Mary
as they recognised the signs of redemption at work within them:
Help us, who have shared the joy of this eucharist,
to know the Lord deep within us
and his live shining out in our lives,
that the world may rejoice in your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A double espresso, a suspended coffee in the Happy Pear and a walk on the beach

On the beach in Greystones, Co Wicklow, late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford

After a long week, it was good to finish work early this afternoon, and two of us went to Greystones for a late lunch and double espressos in the Happy Pear, before a walk in the late afternoon sun along the pebbly beach.

The Happy Pear is one of the cafés supporting the idea of Suspended Coffees. It’s a simple idea. When you buy a coffee, you pay for a second one. The barista gives you your coffee, then logs the second coffee as “suspended.” In other words, the transaction has been paused, and is not yet complete – payment is received, but the coffee has not been delivered.

Then, when someone who cannot afford a coffee comes in, they can ask for a suspended coffee. The barista can hand over a pre-paid coffee, and the transaction is complete.

A double espresso in the Happy Pear late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Who benefits from a Suspended Coffee? The idea is that anyone in need can ask for one. It may be a homeless person, a single mother who sees coffee as a luxury she cannot afford … but it may also be that well-dressed man in a business suit who has been job hunting for the past four months without success, or a student struggling with exams or waiting for grants.

This idea is not about judgment but about spreading kindness, by paying for it in the future, and without ever knowing who benefits.

Hundreds of cafes and shops are now signed up to this great idea. So Suspended Coffees is about more than the coffee, and stands alongside so many random acts of kindness that seek to make this world a better place.

This is an idea that helps us to learn to give without judging or expecting anything in return, and to learn not to blame society for its shortcomings since we are society and we can take the initiative to do some good.

The Happy Pear has signed up for the Suspended Coffee ... not about judgment but about spreading kindness (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
So, where does this idea come from?

The tradition of caffè sospeso began in working-class cafés in Naples, where someone who had experienced a blessing would order a sospeso, paying the price of two coffees but receiving and drinking only one. A poor person could then be served a free coffee.

The tradition is said to date back more than a century, but to have declined in popularity after World War II. But in 2004, a giornata nazionale del sospeso at Easter was announced by the Ronde della carità charity on Italy.

The caffè sospeso became a symbol of grassroots social solidarity, prompting its revival in response to the 2008 recession in Italy in 2008 and the ensuing crisis in the Eurozone crisis. That year the sospeso gave the title to Il caffe sospeso: Saggezza quotidiana in piccoli sorsi, a collection of journalism edited by Luciano De Crescenzo from Naples.

A collection of Italian arts festivals emphasising social solidarity came together under the umbrella Rete del Caffè Sospeso in 2010. A year later, a Giornata del Caffè Sospeso was organised to coincide with Human Rights Day in December 2011.

The tradition had now spread throughout Italy, and it was spreading to cafés as far afield as Bulgaria, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, Russia, Spain, Argentina, the US and Costa Rica. Starbucks in Britain signed up for a charity initiative based on the idea of Suspended Coffee in April 2013, and idea has since spread across these islands.

With that inspiration in my heart, my footsteps were lighter along the soft sand in Greystones this evening.

The sun was still strong, the temperature was around 17 or 18, the sky was clear blue, and the waves sounded a little more gentle as they rolled in against the shoreline.

Strolling on the beach in Greystones this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)