Better late than never! We never knew about so many things. I don't know that it's been all that great to have the eyes opened now that I think about it. It's never the good stuff that's been hidden, is it? Like one never discovers that there was this really kind, generous soul going around doing good works. It's always the other way around---in the news---secret sins revealed for the titillation of the jaded. Dagnabit! (That didn't sound Irish at all, did it. Sorry.)
It is true, though, what my Irish-born parents told us about how they were raised. Mom always had the habit of flattening out the colored foil off Christmas candies because when she was little, they used to save them to bring them into school and they were sent off for the benefit of the missions. Whatever recycling effort was going on there, *everybody* did it. The silvered paper was collected and somehow benefitted the missions. (As an aside: I rolled it into a ball when I was 5 and stuck it up my nose. A very unfortunate thing to do. It was a _really_ long time...the weather was warm...before I was taken to the doctor, who removed the silvered grossness from my upper nasal cavity with a forceps. Painful and embarrassing.)
I know so many Irish people though, relatives and family friends, who went into missionary work, not just clergy, but nurses, teachers, and social workers, into Africa and the Far East, some for their whole lives. I don't know anyone of my contemporaries here who would do that. Yes, when I was younger, people would go into the Peace Corps for a while, but I get a sense that that dried up here, maybe because it's especially dangerous for Americans to be seen doing "good works" in third world countries while the gov't. does what it does? Ireland was a third world country herself for so long that the aid it sent seemed to be more from a fellow-sufferer than from "on high." Not a rant, just some memories revisited.
Mary Ellen