REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE “HARMONY IN THE HOME” CONFERENCE CROKE PARK, DUBLIN
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE “HARMONY IN THE HOME” CONFERENCE CROKE PARK, DUBLIN SATURDAY, 11TH NOVEMBER 2006
Tá gliondar croí orm bheith anseo libh inniu ag an ócáid seo agus ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl díbh as bhur gcaoin-chuireadh.
Good afternoon everybody,
I am delighted to be part of this conference on Harmony in the Home. I thank, Sr Kathleen Maguire and Fr Tony Byrne for their kind invitation and each of you for making time to be here today to help each other figure out ways in which we can make home life happier and healthier, and our country stronger as a result.
After the womb comes the home. The womb is the place nature custom designed for growing babies. The home is the place human beings custom designed for growing people. They are both starting places and like the old Irish sean-fhocail says “Tus maith is leath na hoibre – a good start is half the work. It was Confucius who observed that “ The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home” and we find in our own 1937 constitution strong echoes of that belief in Articles 41 and 42 which acknowledge the family as a moral institution which is the natural and primary fundamental unit group of Society, and which sees the home as the centre of family life.
Our homes, more often than not, are also houses, places that we decorate and take pride in and there is a whole industry built around Home Improvements which keep us all busy with paint brushes and drills. But the quality of home life is determined by the quality of relationships, not the quality of the furnishings, and when it comes to enhancing those relationships we are left to our own devices and keep our own counsel to a considerable extent.
An Ideal Home is one where we are held tight enough for comfort and support and loosely enough to grow strong and independent. It is a place held together by love and compassion, by generosity to one another and respect for one another. It is a place where a value system, good or bad, is lived out and imparted day in and day out. It is a place where no matter how much we look alike, we get our first introduction to real, in your face, diversity. Home is quite simply a testing and training ground for our future lives as citizens, colleagues, friends, neighbours, partners and parents. It is a place where what we hear, is as important as what we eat, what we say, is as influential as the word of any charismatic leader, what we do, is as significant to each other as any front page news.
The intimacy and everyday familiarity of home life should not blind us to its vulnerability, or to the opportunity we have to build up and strengthen its core relationships and our skills as relationship builders. Virtually each day brings us situations in which things we do or say can make our homes happier or more miserable. And just as happy homes are healthy places, so unhappy homes are very unhealthy places. What is more, the sickness of heart and mind which unhappy homes generate have a nasty habit of infecting a much wider orbit than the home itself. It manifests its baleful self in all sorts of ways that damage individuals, damage families, communities and our society, and while many human beings have a resilience that helps them transcend homes without harmony, few emerge unscathed and all would prefer if things had been different. For some that absence of harmony will propel then into mental ill health, underachievement, unemployment or poor employability, wasted talents, alcohol and drug abuse, street crime – that cacophony of wretchedness so graphically described in recent years by victims of family abuse, and which reveals, time and time again, just how profoundly critical it is to the human person to have a home life that is nurturing and not neglecting.
My own grandmother, who had eleven children and sixty grandchildren, used to remark that what is learnt in childhood is engraved on stone. When my grandfather’s granite headstone was erected it had a small spelling mistake and small though it was the eye was always drawn to it and irritated by it. When we asked if it could be fixed we were told the engraving on the stone was too deep to be changed – better to replace the headstone with a new one. We don’t get such an option with our children. We get one go around. If we, who are the most crucial engravers on their little lives, get it right, then the child generally blossoms. If we get it wrong the flaw can last a lifetime and cast long shadows. There are other important engravers too of course – schools, peers, the work place and the street, all can teach and have significant influences, but the founding social, moral and cultural values are first forged and moulded within the home. It is the garden within which the first seeds of ethical standards and role models are planted and it is where the growing child hears and sees, watches and learns. Among the things we can teach is how to live in harmony with others, how to respect, how to forgive, how to love. It is even more than a simple option to teach – it is an imperative. Every human being is entitled to live without fear of violence from those with whom he shares that most sacred of places, his home. The privacy of the home is an important part of its strength, but it was never meant to be a protective cover for the bully, or the dictator, or the abuser. Nor should it be. Our civic life is utterly diminished by those who corrupt home life, and the more we publicly debate and research, and practice what it takes to heal and strengthen home life, the more we narrow the scope of those who make homes places of hell.
The work of creating harmony is a work for all those who share the home and not just parents. Children, teenagers, young adults have all a huge role to play in making home what it should be, to quote Charles Pankhurst “Heaven for Beginners”. That might be putting it a bit too strongly, for even the best of homes are places of ups and downs, sorrows and joys. They are places where we cope with the best and worst that life presents us with, places where we grow humanly, and where we grow best if there is harmony.
The work of Sr. Kathleen Maguire, and Rev Dr, Tony Byrne, through their courses and seminars, and through the new book by Justin Brophy and Anne Dunne, is designed to help us become much more active and dynamic creators and sustainers of harmony in our homes. It is a skill like any other, and one that repays the learning a thousand fold.
I congratulate Sr Kathleen Maguire and Fr Tony Byrne, who, together with Justin Brophy and Anne Dunne have done so much to promote Harmony in the Home. I wish you all every success in your endeavours.
Go n-éirí go geal libh go léir. Go raibh maith agaibh.