Our host was Fr. Benny McHale, an eccentric, trendy, upbeat old priest who genuinely did everything in his capacity to give us an "alternative" view on spirituality. This was the first time that we've ever had a religious retreat where I didn't fell "pushed" into any common feeling. That made me happy. One thing that definitely caught my attention, we didn't pray, once!
He started off by asking us, "What do we all need in life?". The answers he got were the usual ghey, nancy, "love, peace, happiness" etc. until Gerard Hanley said, "God". At this, Fr. Benny replied, "Ah feck off, God has no meaning in stuff like that!". If this were any other era he would be excommunicated from the priesthood and hung on the roof of Kilmainham Jail.
We spent the first part of the day talking about general life-related things. Benny made us all laugh hysterically at his bashful ripping of various accents, "Ze Jairmans, zay are gut at ze English, jah?". Almost every conversation ended with a, "did you ever the here the one about...", where he would tell us either a sexist, racist, secretarian or taboo joke.
We were taught the fundamentals on why we should "never hit a girl"; how we should never confide anything overly emotional in a girlfriend due to their natural instinct to share it with the world and much more.
The second part was more based around "why we need spiritualism", to which I found myself pretty lost. He posed the question, "if you knew there was no God, would it makes a difference?", leaving said 'difference' up to the imagination. If I can quote my friend Jason,
There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life
The lunch break was fun. About forty of us sat around playing and listening to guitar playing and singing. I played the only thing that could come into my head, Letters to God by Box Car Racer, which coincidentally seemed to fit the mood. Damn Mr. Doyle for tuning down his e string to D. Gerard never ceases to amaze me with his crowd-leading skills. All he had to do was play three power chords, sing the first verse of Wonderwall and he had most of Claregalway singing with him. If I wasn't so dumbfounded with on-the-spot embarrassment I would have played My Name is Jonas, a song I could have played from start-to-finish, but I'm not bitter about it, it was just some fun we had which nobody will remember after some heavy drinking sessions on Friday night.
The third and final section of the talk was focused around the demonic side of spiritualism. Intense, heated discussions on the Ouija Board and other black magic arts pursued. At this stage, we were all so tired that Fr. Benny assumed we had gone quiet due to the subject matter.
And now, I'm going to bed at 11pm, just like Fr. Benny told us to. But before I go, let me just post this picture of Niall Sweeney wearing a funny hat:
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