Blue Eyed Ennis: Happy Birthday Aung San Suu Kyi !

Happy Birthday Aung San Suu Kyi !

Happy Birthday Aung San Suu Kyi !!

OXFORD, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 19: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, a former student of Oxford University, arrives at a reception on June 19, 2012 in Oxford, England. The Pro-democracy, Myanmar opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is on her first overseas trip since 1988. She will receive tomorrow the honorary degree awarded to her in 1993, but was not free to collect then being under house arrest in Myanmar for years. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The daughter of Burmese democracy is being feted like a rock star and treated like a president as she tours Europe.

Today, on her 67th birthday, Aung San Suu Kyi is going “home” to Oxford for what will be a deeply poignant and bittersweet visit.

It was in Oxford that she met her late husband and raised her two sons, with whom she may be reunited today. If that happens, she will probably see her two grandchildren for the first time, as family and friends gather to celebrate her birthday. Powerful stuff.

Click here for this report on her visit to the UK which includes a video interview with Jonathan Miller – who secretly interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon 17 years ago.

Click here for my previous post on Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech last week.

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
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Richard Le Gallienne

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Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
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Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

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Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
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Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

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“And

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Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

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Jeanette Winterson

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- C.S. Lewis

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People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

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Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
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During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
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We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

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Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
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Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
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Dag Hammarskjold

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The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

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One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

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Blue Eyed Ennis

Happy Birthday Aung San Suu Kyi !

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