MMM Blog
Words are like Coins
by unknown MMM writer undated Ireland 13.08.2022
Words like coins are good currency. But like currency they can suffer devaluation. Some words even wear thin with usage. Jargon I’d say is counterfeit currency. It goes from being shorthand to short change. The English word ‘listen’ is short changed. In fact in the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the word it means ‘to wait in suspense’, to be on the alert to ourselves and for others.
The prophet Isaiah realised this, he said, “Each morning, He wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple”. To wait in suspense with another, flows and follows from listening. It is with a receptive morning heart that we’re prompted to hear the movement of God and the needs of others.
Lily Murphy
By Monica Shaw U.S.A. 11.08.2022Lily Murphy was my great aunt. In 1950, Lily went with the Medical Missionaries of Mary to Ogoja, Nigeria to teach the leper children. At the time, she was 57 years young, and stayed in Ogoja for over 20 years establishing schools in each village.
Telephones
by Sr. Cecily Bourdillion MMM Ireland 09.08.2022
My last mission was in rural Malawi, ministering at Kasina Health Centre. Though the people of Kasina are subsistence farmers and live from hand to mouth it was wonderful and amazing to witness patients using a cell phone to contact family to report their admission or to give other information. In the villages solar panels charging the phones was a common sight. Near the Health Centre was a pylon to ensure availability of telecommunication.
It was there that someone predicted that one day we would be able to see the person speaking to us over the seas. I expressed my certitude that this was an absolute impossibility!
What's in a Name?
by Mary Coffey AMMM Ireland 07.08.2022
My Da used to call me Moll and, years later, my brother Paddy used it also as a term of endearment, connecting us both back to the well-spring of Da’s gentle love. My Auntie Mary sometimes called me Mollie. My brother–in–law, Damien, when he got to know me first, started to call me Maisie. Their children took it up and now that they are young adults they still use it occasionally. There is something very intimate in a pet name that is used just within the family.
Unworked Racism
by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 05.08.2022Yesterday I was talking with one of our Sisters about racism. She was an Irish Sister, talking about the anti-English behaviour of her father during her formative years, but we all know the prejudices and stereotypes that can exist amongst us. When I hear my Dutch sister-in-law talk about Germans, it reminded me of the prejudices that Brazilian have against Argentinians, the English have against the French.
Be not Afraid
by Vera Grant AMMM Ireland 03.08.2022How many times have we heard or read these words? It is said that they appear 365 times in the bible – one for every day. I don’t know. I haven’t counted.
Our celebrated poet, Seamus Heaney, before he died he sent a text message, written in Latin telling his wife, not to be afraid.
What is it about dying that we fear and want to reassure our loved ones not to be afraid. Is it to mask our own fear?
Sounds of Summer
by Nadia Ramoutar Communications Coordinator Ireland 01.08.2022
It is summer here in our part of the world, though in Ireland that is a vague term. While it is certainly warmer, the sky today looks more like October. Someone recently asked me when I felt most free. I am reminded of being a little girl growing up in Dublin and my grandfather driving me to the beach to see my aunt. She lived directly across from the sea in a place called Skerries, not far from where my office is now.
Anybody want a Doctor?
Editor: The following article was first published in an early MMM magazine. I enjoyed it so much I thought our blog readers would enjoy it too
by Medicus, an unnamed Volunteer Doctor 1957 30.07.2022
You never know what kind of a job you will be asked to do out here – outside of your regular work, I mean. It may be trying to get that bundle of capriciousness which goes by the name of “Hospital Transport” back into working order. In which case I’m usually the one supplying the sweat and the groans at the back, when the mechanical genius up the front can think of nothing else to do and blithely climbs into the car, lights a cigarette, and tosses out the careless words “All right now – try her with a bit of a push!” While he vainly clashes gears and pumps clutches with a warped and almost diabolical pleasure, you, with the shirt sticking to your back, think what you would really like to do with that push.
Barcodes
by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 28.07.2022
Sometimes God comes to tickle you with joy. At least that is the way I thought about it after I had seen this scene. The other morning, I walked into our chapel for morning prayer and there it was. The sunlight was streaming through the French windows, through the folds of the net curtains, creating a pattern on the carpet. “Barcodes”, I thought, almost immediately. That is when I was tickled pink. Isn’t it great that even God has a barcode!
Precious Stones
by Mary Coffey AMMM Ireland 26.07.2022
Below is the text of an email that I sent to Colette Morris, head of Migration in the Irish Red Cross, in 2019, less than a month after our Community Sponsorship Group, called 'New Beginnings Kells' welcomed a Syrian family who had been living as refugees in Lebanon. Colette has been my mentor and my friend on this journey.
Colette, as we move out of the pilot phase of Community Sponsorship I just want to share with you a story about stones. A few weeks before the family arrived a woman stopped me on the street and asked me for the individual names of the family. She wanted to go to Bettystown beach with her nephew Michael to collect nice roundy stones on which to paint their names, and to place them in the garden.
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