Moling in Meditation – A Psalter for an Early Irish Monk

These quiet, surprising, amazing poems deliver to the reader fresh contact with wisdom for life––lessons we should have known had we paused a little more and looked, things we may have known and lost track of, insights we perhaps sense and now can finally grasp with these words of Moling––of Paul Murray––sharing with us his thoughts, his prayers, his stories of struggle and grace. These poems are “the hidden lost language of the soul” revealed.

Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B. Abbot of Mount Angel Abbey

 

Paul Murray’s poetry is always a miracle of compression and economy without ever seeming sparse or austere. These luminous meditative pieces have the richness that comes from an intent focus on the everyday and the material as carrying immeasurable grace.

Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury

The present work contains poems and meditations voiced by Paul Murray for Moling, an Irish monk and poet of the 7th century. In the Irish tradition, Moling is the figure who most resembles St Francis of Assisi. He is a man, a saint, whose presence resists linear history, who yet walks toward us in wonder and myth. In Moling in Meditation, the poems, though quiet in their form and expression, represent nevertheless a fresh and, at times, bold exploration of states of soul and psyche which, in almost every age, accompany the spiritual journey.