NeuroDivine

Another early morning comes;
the wren keeps Lauds in song.
From Antrim’s fields my footsteps learned
the paths that held me long.

Now at the northern station stand
the buses painted blue;
the wren chants first, and robin’s flame
breaks warm and steady too.

A southbound train will take me on
to where my days proceed —
my adult home, my healing place,
the clinic where I’m freed.

Dad’s jacket rests upon my back;
where he has gone, no need.
His Harris Tweed, once worn by him,
now serves as habit’s creed.

Reflection

In many monasteries, a monk receives two habits at profession: one new, and one handed down from a brother who has died. The new habit marks the beginning; the old one carries the weight of continuity — the quiet truth that we do not walk this path alone, and that holiness is always inherited as much as chosen.

Yesterday, three months after my father died, I was given his Harris Tweed jacket. It is perfectly good, perfectly serviceable, and perfectly him. He wore it through autumns and winters I can still remember, the kind of garment that grows familiar with weather and years. Now it rests on my shoulders, not as a relic, but as a kind of habit — a daily garment that carries his presence in a way no photograph or memory can.

There is something monastic in this exchange. He no longer needs it where he has gone, and I do. The jacket becomes a sign of the quiet continuity between his life and mine: the north of my boyhood, the south of my adulthood, the journeys between the two, the healing work that anchors my days. It is a reminder that love does not vanish; it simply changes form, becoming something we wear, something that warms us, something that accompanies us into the seasons ahead.

As the wren calls Lauds in the early morning, and the robin’s small flame glows in the urban dawn, I feel the weight of the Tweed on my back — not heavy, but steady. A hand‑me‑down habit from a man whose life shaped mine. A garment for the autumn and winter to come. A quiet blessing I did not expect, but now carry with me.