When invited recently to share some memories of Tom Hamill, the only thing I was actually sure of was, that others would write much more eloquently than I of his genius, his theology, his Biblical understanding, his love of people, his delight in music, his creativity in Liturgies, his love of poetry, and so much more. Yes, he was that gifted.

Many lines that he often quoted, in Mount Oliver, and come to mind are “Incarnation is an intense enigma”, or “The  profound is always within our reach, masquerading as the ordinary”, or “The gulf  between the sacred and the mundane is a false one”, or “The places where people break bread together, or share jokes over a work desk, are as sacred as any altar “, or “The heart sees the truth that the head misses, we must open our imagination”. All of the above tell me much about Tom Hamill and his creative mind.

Yet, I felt that some of my strongest memories are of the man himself. Who was Tom Hamill? His humanity, his frailty, his strengths, his humour, his compassion, his shyness, his insights into human nature, his vulnerability, his weaknesses, his diffidence, his struggles with the Church and those who were blinkered, his deep appreciation of nature and especially the Cooley mountains, his care for all who walked those mountains with him, in all weathers, his love of poetry, his honesty and courage in the face of illness, his passion for the power of the story, in the best tradition of his Celtic ancestors, his commitment to unmask the clericalist culture of the Church, his immense wonder at the gift of life, and he loved life. He risked pushing boundaries, but always from within, and always with deep discernment, he had all those traits and more. During my time in Mount Oliver, I felt that he opened us up to new possibilities, helping us discover gifts, we never thought we had. He encouraged us, and invited us to write and tell him our stories of break through or illumination, because he believed we all were “already imbued with the Divine”.

As he grew older, and his health declined, he accepted the necessary paradox of pain and suffering, and knew it,”in the deep hearts core”. I remember he quoted Albert Camus a few times with… ”In the midst of Winter, I found there was within me an invincible Summer”. He was to know in those later years, from his lived experience, that in our darkest moments, when life seems at its lowest ebb, that in fact can be the most precious time of all, carrying within it the possibility of being the most transforming.

by Méabh Ní Uallacháin SSL