PassionistsGlasgow
  • Welcome To Saint Mungo's
  • Parish Newsletter
  • Parish Office / Visiting Saint Mungo's
  • Passionists Young Team
  • Universalis Mass Readings for Today
  • Website Links
  • St.Paul of the Cross
  • St. Paul of the Cross for Children
  • St.Charles of Mount Argus
  • St Mungo Patron Saint of Glasgow
  • St. Mungo's Parish
  • Photo Album
  • Safeguarding (Updated Oct 2022)
  • Archdiocese Privacy Notice
  • Father Franks Log
  • Fr Thomas Berry CP and the Environment
  • Synodal Path
  • Welcome To Saint Mungo's
  • Parish Newsletter
  • Parish Office / Visiting Saint Mungo's
  • Passionists Young Team
  • Universalis Mass Readings for Today
  • Website Links
  • St.Paul of the Cross
  • St. Paul of the Cross for Children
  • St.Charles of Mount Argus
  • St Mungo Patron Saint of Glasgow
  • St. Mungo's Parish
  • Photo Album
  • Safeguarding (Updated Oct 2022)
  • Archdiocese Privacy Notice
  • Father Franks Log
  • Fr Thomas Berry CP and the Environment
  • Synodal Path
  PassionistsGlasgow

Father Frank's Log...

26/4/2018

0 Comments

 
FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 22nd – 29th APRIL

As you know, I’m always looking out for what’s on at Kelvingrove, and I notice that this week there is a Let Glasgow Flourish Exhibition celebrating 30 years since the National Garden Festival took place in Glasgow in 1988. I was based in Mount Argus in Dublin at the time as Director of Passionist Postulants, but I came home for my annual holiday in July of that year and still retain two memories from the festival.
 
The first was that 1988 was the centenary of the founding of Glasgow Celtic Football Club, and that there was a huge floral display representing the original Celtic Crest. Given that the festival was taking place on the Clyde at Govan it was a brave and ambitious project. Earlier in the year I had brought the postulants over to St. Mungo’s for a break after Easter, and at the end of Easter Week two of them joined me at Hampden Park to watch Celtic in the
Scottish Cup Semi-Final against Hearts, when Celtic came back from a goal down to win 2-1, both goals being scored in the last two minutes of the match. Celtic went on to win the cup, again coming back from a goal down to beat Dundee United 2-1 in the final, adding the cup to the league title, in the centenary year, under the stewardship of Caesar, Billy McNeill.
 
My second memory of the Garden Festival is of meeting up with my niece, Lisa, a young teenager at the time, for the sole purpose of going for a ride on the giant Coca-Cola roller coaster. I was 37 years of age and utterly terrified, and I can still feel my stomach lurch at the initial drop at the start of the ride. My feeling of relief when the roller coaster came to a stop was short lived as Lisa, whooping with delight, insisted on doing it all over again.
 
Thinking of the roller coaster takes me back once again to my childhood years, when I was an altar server at St. Simon’s in Partick. We had three great priests, each very different, Father Robertson; Father MacFadden and Father Kelly; and I loved being an altar server. Whenever there was a wedding in the church, any donation given by the couple to the servers had to be handed in, as did the little stipend we used to get for cleaning the church brasses, which we did regularly in a room in the chapel house. This money was then pooled together for an altar-servers outing to the circus and carnival at the Kelvin Hall around Christmas time. We would go to the circus first, and I can still remember, before we became educated about animal rights, the roar of the lions, the bareback horse riders, and even an elephant walking a tightrope; I can also still picture the clowns, and marvel at the acrobats and the trapeze artists.
 
When the circus was over we were given some money to spend on the rest of the shows. We would go on the Waltzers; the Cyclone; and the Wall of Death. We would ride the Dodgems and the Carousel; we would laugh ourselves silly in the Hall of Mirrors; and scare ourselves silly on the Ghost Train; we would stuff our faces with candy-floss, and try our hand at the stalls, ending up with the inevitable goldfish, that didn’t delight our parents one bit. We were very innocent and it was just a wonderful night – always! We couldn’t wait for the following Christmas to come around so as to do it all again. Nowadays we take the altar servers to the panto and eat ice-cream, which is also very enjoyable, but not quite as exciting.
 
Getting back to the Garden Festival, there was a sense of regret for a time when the massive area was dismantled and let go to ruin, but now we can be proud to see the Banks of the Clyde alive again with the likes of the Science Centre; the Riverside Museum; the Tall Ship; the headquarters of STV and BBC Scotland, the marvellous bridges, especially the Squinty Bridge; the SECC; the Armadillo and the Hydro – but where’s the roller-coaster?
 
As 1st of May is very close it seems appropriate to end with these few lines: Bring flowers of the rarest; bring blossoms the fairest, from garden and woodland and hillside and dale; our full hearts are swelling, our glad voices telling, the praise of the loveliest flower of the vale!


0 Comments

Father frank's log

21/4/2018

2 Comments

 
FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 15th – 22nd APRIL
 
After the evening Mass last Sunday someone said to me, “I love reading your Log, especially when it’s about Father Gareth.” I don’t know what it is about Father Gareth that so many people love, but certainly he is a unique individual and it’s great to have him on the team. So, to keep at least one reader happy. I am going to begin by thanking Father Gareth for keeping going throughout most of Lent and into Easter when, clearly, he wasn’t feeling all that well.
What seemed to be a long-lingering cold turned out in fact to be the flu. For much of the time he had no energy and no voice but, apart from the odd day, when he knew he just had to go to bed, he continued to celebrate Masses; hear Confessions, take part in our Lenten Taize,
Tenebrae and Reconciliation Services; represent us at the Chrism Mass in the Cathedral on Holy Thursday; and make his inimitable contribution to the Easter Triduum Services.
 
Most mornings during that time, when we were having breakfast together in the Passionist Community out at Bishopbriggs, Father Gareth would appear down for Morning Prayer and we would all ask, “Well, how are you today?” Invariably his answer was, “Great lads, great, never felt better in my life”, when obviously he wasn’t well at all, seeing as how he croaked, rather than spoke his response. He even had to endure a few weeks of not being able to go swimming, which is something he loves to do every day. Father Gareth is a great man for
recommending all kinds of remedies for various ailments and conditions to other people, sure fire cures; he would have made a great medicine man in the Wild West, touring around in a covered wagon peddling miracle remedies in a broad Welsh accent; so he took a bit of teasing as to why all these cures weren’t working for him.
 
And of course, given the fondness in which he is held, other people, wanting to care for him, were giving him certain cures as well. Just last week someone gave him menthol crystals to clear his sinuses. This resulted in a community exercise as we all took it in turn to pull the towel over our heads and breath in the solution. Father Gareth had, of course, put in far too many crystals, thereby nearly blowing all our heads off, and the smell of the menthol, like the costly nard used by Mary to anoint the feet of Jesus, filled the whole house.
 
I remembered as a child often pulling the towel over my head and breathing in menthol as I was prone to whooping cough, and I have to confess that I always enjoyed the experience, just as now I can enjoy the feeling of putting too much hot mustard on a sandwich, or too much horseradish sauce on beef, and getting that burning sensation passing through my nose to the top of my head. This led to a discussion on other childhood remedies which, for me, were the regular spoonful of malt; rosehip syrup; cod liver oil; and syrup of figs. I’m not quite sure what all of these things were curing or preventing but they were, I think, a
continuance of war time practices making up for what was lacking in people’s diets.
 
Of course, there were childhood treats as well as childhood remedies that wouldn’t have been there in war time. At the bottom of my grannie’s close in Partick Bridge Street there was a shop run by a lady called Madge Cockburn. In Madge’s shop you could experience the joy of a penny-drink which was a big glass of irn-bru; cream soda, or red cola. Also for a penny you could get a selection of things like sticks of liquorice; gobstoppers, humbugs; sherbet lollies, swizzels and the like. I’m sure Father Gareth would have enjoyed all of them, although what they were doing to our teeth and how they would have avoided the sugar tax I don’t know.
Anyway, it’s great to have Father Gareth back to himself; back to swimming, and even last night, back to making truffles which taste sweeter than any of the afore mentioned delights.
 
Thanks to all who had a care for Father Gareth. I am reminded of these words from the
Letter to the Hebrews: “Let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works”.


2 Comments

April 12th, 2018

12/4/2018

2 Comments

 
FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 8th – 15th APRIL

The question on everyone’s lips is not: “When is Father Frank’s Log returning?” but “When are we going to get some decent weather?” I had friends over from Dublin last week and of course when friends come you want some decent weather to show them around. It is, after all, officially summer time, seeing as how the clocks went forward at the end of March. It was, however, during the days that they were here, more like the middle of winter.
 
My great standby for visitors is always the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and this time around they had an exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the wonderful Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I love going to Kelvingrove as I grew up very close to it, and it was so much a part of my childhood to visit the museum and marvel at the sheer scope of the exhibits. I also love the new refurbishment, and if you have ever seen the famous floating heads in the foyer, then you may be interested to know that my friends are convinced that I was the model for them. I do have to admit that one or two of them look quite like me.
 
The Mackintosh exhibition is really interesting and it gives you a real sense of what his influences were, the work of his contemporaries in “The Glasgow Style,” especially the famous four: Charles himself; his future wife Margaret Macdonald, her younger sister Frances Macdonald, and Frances’s future husband, James Herbert McNair; and then those that they influenced themselves. Some of the collection pieces of his own work are brilliant, and I love that so many of them are just ordinary, everyday things that were put to use; coat stands; umbrella stands; fire guards and the like. There’s even a toilet door. As someone who holds with the belief that God is best found in ordinary, everyday things, this kind of art really appeals to me, rather than the more esoteric variety. I still find it hard to believe I attended a Mackintosh designed school for two years at the St. Mungo’s Academy Annexe in Barony Street with absolutely no appreciation of my surroundings whatsoever.
 
Apart from Kelvingrove, another regular part of my childhood was going with my father on a Sunday afternoon to Henderson’s shipyard on the Clyde at Partick, where he worked for the Anchor Line as a timekeeper. Whenever there was a ship in drydock being refurbished he would take myself and Hugh along (Patrick was too young) and we would be able to board the ship and walk all in and around every part of it. I have wonderful memories of those
Sunday jaunts. I only discovered recently that the Anchor Line restaurant on St. Vincent Street is bedecked with memorabilia from the Anchor Line and, thanks to a generous gift from a church patron with nautical connections, I was able to go there with my friends during their visit, steep myself in memories, and bore them to death with reminiscences.
 
On the second day, while searching for a particular shop on the southside (being a north-sider the southside is a foreign country to me), we found ourselves walking through Queen’s Park and visiting the Scottish Poetry Rose Garden with its cairns and dedications to some of Scotland’s best-known bards. It probably wasn’t the wisest time to visit as there were no roses out and, in the driving rain, wind and cold, the place felt and looked a bit bedraggled, as did we. We did, however, find a nice coffee shop with lovely pastries and warmed ourselves up. We also found the shop we were searching for which was near to the monument to the Battle of Langside where, 450 years ago this year, Mary Queen of Scots fought and lost her last encounter with Regent Moray. The rest of the time was spent browsing book shops and the like and, all in all, despite the weather, we had an enjoyable couple of days. There is always something to do in this great city – hail, rain or snow!
 
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. (Julian of Norwich)
God communicates with us by way of all things. They are messages of love.
(Ernesto Cardenal)


2 Comments
    Picture

    FATHER FRANK KEEVINS C.P.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed