Category Archives: Humanist Celebrant

Humanist musings

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I’m loving being a Humanist celebrant. There’s something wonderful about it for me, doing something I love, something that has meaning, something I’m good at, something that each day, for each ceremony, for each couple or family or individual, is different.

It helps me to live in the here and now. Celebrating this particular couple’s marriage, or this unique family’s new baby, or this distinctive person’s life.

It’s working and living in the real. It’s inclusive of everyone. Being with people crying with joy – what a privilege that is! Crafting ceremonies appropriate to each couple or family or person. And then from planning to execution, celebrating the moment, conducting the words and the readings and the music and the rituals. Yes, living in the now.

Humanists ask questions. That is where we start. We never shy, or should never shy, from asking our questions. We endeavour to think for ourselves, trying never to let others think for us. We choose. We decide. We act. We create. We are responsible. That’s what we try to do anyway. Fail, of course; and probably often. But we keep trying, keep asking.

The couple whose wedding I conducted today chose wonderful readings. Stimulating. Different. Thoughtful. Reflective. Moving. Dramatic. There were lots of moist eyes in the room. The hairs were standing on the back of my neck during one of the readings, the poem ‘It Is Here’ by Harold Pinter, which ends:

What did we hear?

It was the breath we took when we first met.

Listen. It is here.

Humanist Naming Ceremonies

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Naming ceremonies are becoming more popular for people who choose not to have their children baptized. Such parents tend to be commendable adults of integrity, conscious as they are that it is more important to teach their children to be authentic and true to themselves than to jump a queue for a school place merely because their child is baptized. And until the Irish people  and an Irish Government changes the discrimination that exists against unbaptized children, these parents should be applauded for their courage, integrity and leadership.

Demand for naming ceremonies is increasing as parents realize that they can formally welcome their child into their families, circles of friends and the wider human community without having to initiate their baby into ill-founded beliefs about deities and gods.

You can read some feedback from a recent baby naming ceremony that I conducted here.

And I’ve started a new Pinterest board on Humanist Naming Ceremonies here.

Marriage equality in Ireland achieved

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A picture tells the story better than 1,000 words.

Blanchardstown Hospital Memorial Event

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I was honoured to be invited to represent the Humanist Association of Ireland at a commemorative event held at Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, on 30 November 2015.

A psychotherapist spoke of the process of coping with grief and loss, how we can feel lost and that our very identities have changed when someone close to us has died. She spoke of the value of talking about the deceased, taking time out during the day to sit perhaps with a cuppa and a photo of the loved one. Letting memories surface and remembering even their foibles. Often, she said, people can feel distracted and feel that they’re going mad. That certainly echoed in me: I was so absent-minded after the deaths of my mother and brother earlier this year. My mind was elsewhere, as it needed to be.

There were two separate 90-minute commemoration services held. At each there was a choir from nearby primary schools. The kids were great and they contributed a lot to the ceremonies. In the second of the two sessions a Roman Catholic priest, chaplain Tony O’Riordan, spoke from a religious faith perspective; followed by a guitarist playing the Ave Maria. Then Rev Ken Lynsey, a Methodist minister spoke, structuring his contribution around the four words trauma, tears, talk and time. In short, bereavement is a trauma, it’s good to cry and talk, and grief takes time. A Muslim woman spoke and then the choir sang and then a nurse manager read ‘For Grief’ by John O’Donohue. Then the guitarist played the Beatles’ ‘In My Life’, followed by Church of Ireland chaplain Hilda Plant, who chose an apt quotation from anti-Nazi dissident and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The choir then sang the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ and then I spoke. I was conscious that much of the contributions had been from a religious faith perspective and I thanked and commended the organisers for inviting voices inter-faith “and none” and I was happy to be a representative of people who do not believe in any deity or an afterlife.

I shared ‘We Are Leaves’ which I had written this time last year for the Humanist Association of Ireland’s annual commemoration to support the bereaved. A month after reciting it last January, my mother had died, and a month after that, my brother died. And a dear friend, Marist priest Denis Green, died more recently still.

People seemed to get some comfort from it and I enjoyed delivering it, and I was very happy to be there representing people who do not feel the need to believe in a deity or an afterlife in order to find their meaning in life, even in the face of death.

Denis Green, Marist priest, RIP

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DenisGlendalough A man whom I loved, Denis Green, Marist priest, died on Wednesday night 6 October 2015. He will be buried today. He was the priest whose distinctive, lovely voice forms the backbone of my RTE Radio One Documentary, From Belief to Unbelief. He was with me when my father died in 1981. He helped me break the psychological umbilical cord with my mother. Aged 94, he was, to the end, the youngest man I have ever known. He was open. He was himself. He was engaging. He was genuinely interested in people and ideas and books. He was devout. He was, every inch of him, an actor. From the first moment he lectured us in novitiate back in 1980 he stood before us as one who might have leaped from a Shakespearean stage. He loved life. He loved people.

He was one of the worst singers known to human history, but that never stopped him singing! A memory: some 40 seminarians doubled over with uncontrollable laughter in the chapel at Mount St  Mary’s, Milltown, as Denis attempted with abject ineptitude to sing the Eucharistic Prayer.

His infamy as a singer was very closely matched by his reputation as a driver. On one occasion after I was astonished still to be alive I felt something needed to be said.

‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re a good driver, Denis?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I don’t believe anyone ever did.’

‘Think about it.’

And he was the kind of guy you could say something like that to – i.e., be entirely honest with – and nothing would harm the relationship.

He told me years ago that he wanted ‘How Great Thou Art’ sung at his funeral. Yesterday, before his coffin was brought from the chapel at Mount St Mary’s – the same chapel in which his gorgeous voice reverberates in my documentary – I told the congregation gathered there that Denis had told me that he wanted it sung at his funeral. And I, atheist and Humanist celebrant, appealed to those present to sing it with gusto and I led the singing and everyone joined in and we did him proud. The place came alive again, Denis’s final farewell to Mount St Mary’s.

Born on 11 June, 1921, in Clontarf, Dublin, he was a pupil at Catholic University School (CUS), Leeson Street, and he worked there as a chaplain until very recently. CUS is closed today as a mark of respect to him. He entered the Marist novitiate in 1940 and was ordained on 23 March 1947. In 1952 he was offered a place at the Sorbonne but he accepted a place in Cambridge! He worked in England from 1955 to 1975, as a teacher, headmaster and as Provincial of the then English Province of the Society of Mary (Marist Fathers). He came back to Ireland in 1975 and he was one of four priests in charge of us in my novitiate 1980-1981. He also taught at Chanel College, Coolock;  was associated with the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in Wicklow; with St Killian’s German School, Dublin; and he was for a while Secretary General of the Marist Fathers in Rome.

Denis, I loved you. You were a human being! You lived a good life! You were open and thoughtful, creative and caring, affectionate and loving. Goodbye my friend.


Article in The Irish Times about an outdoor Humanist wedding I conducted

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Click here to see an article in The Irish Times about a Humanist wedding I recently conducted outdoors at The Millhouse Slane

Still loving conducting Humanist weddings

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I still love conducting Humanist wedding ceremonies. Each one is different. Each couple is different. Every gathering of relatives and friends is different.

Ironically, it’s great when something goes wrong! Everyone relaxes and realizes the burden of it having to be ‘perfect’ is a myth. It’s always great once that first thing happens that puts people at their ease. A baby cries. A song goes wrong. A little ring bearer runs off with the rings. The parents can’t light a candle because the air conditioning keeps blowing the candles out. Someone has a fit of the giggles.

Once, at the very end of a ceremony, the bride was trying to say something to me but the music was loud and she was on the far side of a table and it was hard to catch what she was saying.

Eventually I heard her, ‘He didn’t kiss me!’

‘Stop the music!’ I cried. ‘The groom didn’t kiss the bride!’

And the music stopped and the audience watched and the groom kissed his bride and everyone cheered and clapped and roared with glee and the music resumed and the couple processed down the aisle and there was great merriment, excitement and fun.

And yes there was a little lad who blew out the candles and ran off with the wedding rings just before the exchange of rings. He was rugby tackled by his dad – well, OK, not rugby tackled – but brought back into the ceremony room, and the rings restored to the Best Man just in time.

And yes once a guest dropped the wedding rings early in a ceremony and they were a hair’s breadth from dropping down a gap between floor boards in an ancient stately home.

It’s great when the couple, especially the bride, relaxes and enjoys every moment; realizing that it isn’t about external things at all. It’s about living the moment, cherishing the important things, celebrating the love the couple share for each other and the commitment that they are making publicly to their partner. I think of the bride who decided, when I met her outside the chapel, that she’d be far more comfortable in her boots than her wedding shoes and decided to go up the aisle in the boots instead. She asked my view. I suggested comfort first. ‘I like your style,’ she said.

And once the bride is chilled out and relaxed and living the moment it’s much more likely that everyone else will enjoy themselves too.

Happily, I’ve encountered very, very, very few bridezillas! But, unlike the deities, they do exist – perhaps just one per hundred brides. You can spot them by the state of panic of the unfortunate groom, who might remove something beautiful a florist or decorator did because ‘she’ would see red. Or I’m told confidentially by the venue manager that they’re all on tenterhooks because of the unreasonable demands of the bride. Or the musicians might agree with a small last minute amendment I propose but they wouldn’t make the change because they’re terrified of Zilla, lest the improvement incur her displeasure. Or I spot something that I know won’t work for the ceremony, fix it and come back moments later only to see that someone playing watchman for the bride has changed it back to the way that I know won’t work.

The exceptions might make the good stories but the greatest stories are the ordinary, lovely, gorgeous, hopeful, committed couples who just want a personal ceremony that is about them and who want to show their families and friends their loving commitment to one another. They want to feel relaxed and they want their guests to enjoy their wedding. I think of all the couples that I have met, wonderful people, who have found love and hope and joy, and whose lives have joined together in a union of trust and encouraging mutual acceptance. And they want to celebrate that love by getting married.

Often they may have their children there and we include the children in the ceremony. Often the kids make the ceremony. We might have planned to stand for the vows but junior decides he’s crawling up on his mother’s lap and we adjust and do the vows sitting down. Or up come the kids to pour sand or tie ribbons or have candles lit for them.

I love my work – being with people at such important turning points in their lives.

Pictures of Humanist Wedding conducted by Joe Armstrong

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For lovely pictures of a Humanist wedding I recently conducted for Lisa and Ciaran in Dundalk, County Louth, click here.

That’s Humanism: Four animated videos about Humanism narrated by Stephen Fry

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The British Humanist Association has broadcast four excellent and very short videos narrated by Stephen Fry which answer commonly asked questions. You can watch all four here

How do we know what is true?

What should we think about death?

What makes something right or wrong?

How can I be happy?

For more details about Humanism and lots of links to find out more, click here.