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

May 12th, 2018

12/5/2018

0 Comments

 
FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 6th – 13th MAY
​
I was drawn to an item recently on the STV evening news about an event taking place in Clydebank Town Hall called the Singers Stories Festival. It was the first such event to take place and teams of volunteers had gone around to collect personal stories about Singer sewing machines and about life in the Singer factory in Clydebank, from people who had worked in what was once the largest sewing machine factory in the world. It opened in the 1880’s and closed in 1980, employing up to 16,000 people, and the reason I was drawn to this item was that I myself had worked in Singers for a short time after leaving St. Mungo’s Academy. I had at that stage decided to pursue a career in accountancy and I was lucky to get a job as a costing assistant in Singers which permitted me day release to pursue my studies in what was then called the Institute of Cost and Works Accountancy (ICWA). This was in 1969 but then, unfortunately, I was made redundant from Singers in 1970.
 
It was a good job at the time because I could walk to and from work each day from Drumchapel where I lived and save money on bus fares. The department I worked in was called High Volume Cost which had to do with the costing of smaller items that were used in high quantities, like screws, in the making of the machines. I had very long hair at the time because I was playing in a folk band and my boss, a good Orangeman called Archie, would tease me endlessly about my hair, and about my being a Catholic and a Celtic supporter, but in truth I believe he liked me and was never anything but extremely kind and encouraging to me and, when I was made redundant on a last-in, first-out basis, he was very sympathetic.
 
Of course, just because I worked in Singers, doesn’t mean I know the first thing about sewing or about sewing machines, a fact that could sometimes be lost on some very good friends in Dublin who were obsessively into sewing and into textile art, quilt-making, book-making and the like, and who did wonderful and creative work for us in Mount Argus Church. When they would start to talk about these and related things, though, they just couldn’t help themselves until, after regaling me for ages with the intricacies of Mola and Hawaiian Applique, would suddenly notice that my eyes had begun to glaze over and decide it was time to stop.
 
The quilt-making was used to good effect when, occasionally for Good Friday, we would make a blanket of pain. This consisted of people throughout Lent handing in pieces of fabric that represented some difficult experience in their lives, especially in the year gone by, and these pieces of fabric would then be woven together to form a kind of patchwork quilt that was carried up on Good Friday and placed near to the Cross, linking our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ. Whenever we did this it was always very moving, and when this idea was first put to me I was informed that Native American Indians were deemed to be the best quilt makers in the world, and that often the memories of a tribe would be woven into their beautiful and colourful quilts, which were then used in their religious ceremonies. Every quilt however, by design, had to have some flaw. They could easily have produced the perfect quilt, but they went out of their way to introduce a flaw because, since for them the quilt was a representation of human life and the human condition and, since no human life is perfect; every human life is flawed; it was deemed important that the quilt should reflect this. At the time that struck me as very beautiful, very powerful, and very true.
 
By the way, I went on to resume my accountancy studies with Olivetti in Queenslie, and I know absolutely nothing about typing (except with two fingers) or typewriters either. Here is a traditional American Indian Prayer that seems to mirror St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
As I walk, as I walk, the universe is walking with me. In beauty it walks before me. In beauty it walks behind me. In beauty it walks below me. In beauty it walks above me. Beauty is on every side. As I walk, I walk with Beauty.


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    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