Welcome to my small portion …reflecting on the big things in my small part of the world. This is my web site and blog page where I share my life long search for God and His guiding hand on me, leading me home.

  One of the three previous titles for this site was “Mea Portiunula” (my small portion). The Portiuncula was a small portion of land in a wooden area outside of Asissi that had a church dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels. The ancient church had been given to St. Benedict and lay abandoned when St. Francis heard the call of God to ‘go repair my church which has fallen into ruin.’ He made it the mother house and centre of his new order, the ‘lesser brothers.’ We are all called to discover our “small portion,” that place where we can grow in God’s love and share it with others.

  I first encountered the living presence of Jesus during a reluctant pilgrimage to Medjugorje in August 1986. He revealed his living presence to me in the Eucharist on the Feast of the Assumption, 15^th August 1986. I was baptised and received into the Roman Catholic Church on 18th April 1987 at the Easter Vigil. It has been a long and fascinating journey since, filled with pain, wonder, an extraordinary joy and a change in outlook and living which would not have been possible without God’s Grace and unconditional love. I offer in my blog my reflections on current issues of faith, from my own experiences, from my faith community and the wider world. Peace starts with a change of heart and then is gifted to the world.

  Coming to live in Ireland in 1998, I spent over 20 years in Kerry. I was involved in the parishes of Killorglin, Milltown, Ardfert and the churches of Tralee. I was involved in various prayer groups in Kerry and Cork, often leading praise & worship and collaborating with others involved in music ministry. Most of my professional life has been spent as a primary school teacher working with children with special needs. Over the last number of years the Lord’s hand on my life has been drawing me into silence and contemplation. After the solitude of the 2020-21 pandemic, and two God inspired meetings and conversations, I found myself at Mount St Joseph Abbey. At the beginning of 2023 I was received into the Cistercian Community as a postulant. So began the new adventure…

Br Alberic (Ben)

one of my favourite quotes…

‘All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.’

GK Chesterton ‘Orthodoxy’