Fr Alan Hilliard

What was previously relegated to the realm of fairy tale became something different.

I could see that legends and myths were more than mere classroom distractions.

They had a relationship with truth and possibility.

Thus began the journey of seeking to look beyond dismissive comments and throw away opinion, of holding thoughts in a deeper place.

St.

Brendan's feast day falls in May and most years I make the journey up Brendan's Mountain on the Dingle Peninsula.

On the top of that mountain where Brendan reputedly prayed, sometimes I can see forever.

Other times, no further than my hand held up in front of me.

Some years the wind can blow me over.

Other years I see ice weigh heavily on the cross at the summit.

Sometimes there's nothing but a gentle breath as the sun warms all of us who reach the 953 metre summit.

Brendan navigates me through all the crises of everyday life.

where often I bob like his boat on an open, turbulent and heaving ocean of uncertainty and have to believe and trust that there is a newfound land waiting for me.

I imagine sitting with Brendan in his vessel of pitch, wattle and leather.

I'm helped in this meditation with the deep, varied chords and notes of Sean Davies' Brendan Voyage.

The tune lifts me from the belly of a wave to a crest of another, where I can glimpse a welcome shore beyond.

I think of how the arrogant hull of the Titanic was cracked open by ice mountains.

And yet the little wattle boat withstood it all.

Indeed, it was this humble vulnerability that was key to Brendan's successful accomplishment.

Severin discovered this truth.