I took this photo last evening on the farm of Jim and John Griffin. It was part of the summer farm walk organised by Carrigaline IFA.  Nearly 100 people attended and the weather of course helped enormously. We were taken on a tour of a field of barley, a field of beans, beef cattle and a tour of Griffins Potatoes.

(Due to the summer break the website is currently running on a daily photo update and an updated Thought For The Week. All the other bits and pieces will return as normal at the start of September)

Thought For The Week

‘By nature we fear and we horde. Because of this, whether we are poor or not, we tend to work out of a sense of scarcity, always fearing that we don’t have enough, that there isn’t enough and that we need to be careful in what we give away. It’s as if we can’t afford to be too generous’ ~Ronald Rolheiser

The sun is extraordinarily generous giving away huge parts of itself every second. Atoms of hydrogen combine to form helium producing vast amounts of light and heat. Scientists tell us that every second, inside the sun, the equivalent in size of 4 million elephants are being changed into light. If this generosity stopped, all energy as we know it would lose its source and everything we know would die including ourselves. We live because of the generosity of the sun.

But we tend to horde, fear the worst and hold onto as much as we can, including negative stuff. We are much slower in allowing ourselves to be generous with good news and especially our good news.

God’s generosity can become our inspiration. From a spiritual point of view we say that God is so rich in love and generous beyond measure with blessings. In the Gospels one story stands out, about the man who went off and hid the talent he was given. He could not believe that God could be so generous and so he grew fearful and afraid. All he could do was hide, instead of sharing the talent and gaining so much more without even asking. During these summer days we are enjoying whatever sunshine comes our way. May it always be a reminder of God’s incredible generosity towards each of us.

Thought For The Week is updated each Monday