I have always loved the cool interior of a church on a warm day. Wherever I am in the world, there is a relief to be found there in among the shadows and age-old flagstones and the marble. In materials built to last, there is a nice chill that adds to the sense of weightlessness you find in places of solitude and reflection.
And in such an environment as you adapt to the surroundings, you become aware of the juxtaposition of the calm within and the crowd outside. I was strolling through town on Tuesday when I took a few minutes for myself in the Augustinian Church on Middle Street.
I remember back in the days of longing, with nothing in my pocket but a bundle of dog-eared dreams, I used to escape from the invisibility of the bustling city of the 1980s and take some time in there, marvelling in the proximity of the darkness and the daylight, the shadows and the screaming city. In here, in the surroundings which bring relief to even the most fevered brow, I used to sit and bargain with the deity for some future fulfilment.
As I sat there on Tuesday in that solitude for a few moments, 4000 kilometres away, a man sat among the rubble of his destroyed home. He sat at the end of his 15-year-old daughter’s bed, and held her lifeless hand hours after an earthquake had devastated his life, his family and his homeland.
The occasional silence in which he sat was brought on not by solitude, but the need to listen out for the cries for help for any survivors of the most devastating natural disaster we have seen for some time.
How moved we are for Mesut Hancer, pictured here on his lonely vigil, holding the hand of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak, who died in the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, close to its epicentre.
At that moment, he was every one of us. Love and grief are universal.
We live a world away from the chaos of Turkey and Syria where families had been destroyed by the horrific power of nature and unrepentant geology.
Here we were on this part of the world in the main, unaffected by the great travesties of nature; here in a place untouched by the excesses of the world when it turns on us.
How is it that we are here and others are there? And vice versa. What stroke of fortune determined where we get to live our lives, and others theirs?
Sheer non-proximity alone does not divest us of the duty to do everything we can to help ease the pain and suffering that has numbed Turkey and Syria.
Our city is home to many Turkish and Syrian people. Our heart breaks for them and for their families. Our hearts bleed for Mesut Hancer and the tens of thousands of families left grieving, homeless and possession-less after the events of this week.
Irish humanitarian aid organisations are scaling up their emergency response in Southern Turkey and North west Syria as the death toll from the devastating earthquake continues to grow. The World Health Organisation (WHO ) are expecting the number of fatalities to increase substantially in the coming days.
Dóchas, the Irish network for international development and humanitarian organisations, is gravely concerned about those who remain trapped, and whose homes and communities have been destroyed.
Irish Aid organisations are particularly concerned about the most vulnerable - the elderly, children and people with disabilities - who are facing stormy and snowy weather conditions and cold temperatures.
The Irish aid organisations that have launched emergency appeals to support the relief effort are Christian Aid Ireland; Concern Worldwide; Irish Red Cross; Oxfam Ireland; Trócaire; UNICEF and World Vision Ireland
Further information can be found on the Dóchas website, www.dochas.ie
Please do what you can.
