#Saint Brigid at the Market Square

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed. The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…

[kevinclerk11-blog]

The fight to keep Church of the Nativity from becoming luxury housing

[Photo from yesterday]

ICYMI from Thursday ... Elizabeth Kim at Gothamist has a feature on the Cooper Square Community Land Trust's efforts to buy the Church of the Nativity on Second Avenue for use as low-income housing.

An excerpt:

The land trust proposed a price of $18.5 million. Of that amount, $5 million would be paid to the archdiocese upon closing. The remainder, which would use a combination of federal tax credits and state and local funding, would be paid in installments over a 20-year period.

David Brown, the church’s director of real estate, told Val Orselli [a project director with Cooper Square Community Land Trust] he would get back to him.

Several months later, Orselli returned to Brown's office. In a show of support, representatives of city councilmembers Carlina Rivera and Margaret Chin, as well as the Manhattan regional representative from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office, accompanied him.

But Brown was unmoved. The offer was insufficient, he told them. Among the sticking points was the land trust’s inability to pay upfront.

“He told me, ‘A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow,'” Orselli recalled.

Orselli took the rejection as a sign that the church, a tax-exempt institution, was more interested in getting top dollar for its property, which has been estimated as being worth as much as $50 million.

“I was a bit naive,” he said. Referring to the land trust’s pitch to do something with the property that was aligned with papal doctrines, he added, “They couldn’t care less.”

The Church closed after a service on July 31, 2015, merging with Most Holy Redeemer on Third Street. In the summer of 2017, the archdiocese desacralized the former church, clearing the way for a potential sale of the desirable property.

The Cooper Square Community Land Trust is currently organizing a town hall this May with Community Board 3 to discuss "how decommissioned churches can be best utilized by the Archdiocese and the communities they once served." Something other than demolishing them to make way for ultra-luxury condos.

View this post on Instagram

We came across this note someone left at Nativity Church/44 Second Ave. It says, “Buyer Beware: God Still Lives Here.” . . . . . . . #nycchurch #churchforsale #nativitynyc #churchofthenativity #catholicchurch #eastvillagechurch #churchnyc #nativitychurch

A post shared by Friends of Nativity Church (@nativitynyc) on Mar 12, 2019 at 4:53pm PDT

Meanwhile, as Curbed reported in February, the Archdiocese of New York is considering a proposal to turn the 300,000-square-foot property that housed Saint Emeric on 13th Street, which includes a former school, over to a land trust for 400 units of below-market-rate housing.

Previously on EV Grieve: Looking at the Church of Saint Emeric on East 13th Street

From St. Emeric's to St. Brigid's

Educator: Turning the former Church of the Nativity into luxury housing would be a 'sordid use' of the property

Source: http://evgrieve.com/2019/03/the-fight-to-keep-church-of-nativity.html

[evolutiontopeacefulmystic]

Saint Bridget of Ireland

SAINT BRIGID LOVED HER FEMALE SOULMATE DARLUGHDACH GAY SAINTS - FEAST DAY FEBRUARY 1ST

St. Brigid and her soulmate St. Darlughdach were sixth-century Irish nuns who brought art, education and spirituality to early medieval Ireland. Brigid (c.451-525) shares her name and feast day (Feb. 1) with a Celtic goddess -- and she may have been the last high priestess of the goddess Brigid.

Raised by Druids, Brigid seems to have made a smooth transition from being a pagan priestess to a Christian abbess. Today she is Ireland’s most famous female saint. Legend says that when she made her final vows as a nun, the bishop in charge was so overcome by the Holy Spirit that he administered the rite for ordaining a (male) bishop instead.

A younger nun named Darlughdach served as Brigid’s ambassador and her “anam cara” or soul friend. The two women were so close that they slept in the same bed. Like many Celtic saints, Brigid believed that each person needs a soul friend to discover together that God speaks most powerfully in the seemingly mundane details of shared daily life. The love between these two women speaks to today’s lesbians and their allies. Some say that Brigid and Darlughdach are lesbian saints.

Brigid started convents all over Ireland and became the abbess of the “double monastery” (housing both men and women) at Kildare. Built on land that was previously sacred to her divine namesake, the monastery included an art school for creating illuminated manuscripts.

After turning 70, Brigid warned Darlughdach that she expected to die soon. Her younger soulmate begged to die at the same time. Brigid wanted her to live another year so she could succeed her as abbess. Brigid died of natural causes on Feb. 1, 525. The bond between the women was so close that Darlughdach followed her soulmate in death exactly one year later on Feb. 1, 526.

Both Christians and pagans celebrate St. Brigid’s Day on Feb. 1. It is also known as Imbolc, a spring festival when the goddess Brigid returns as the bride of spring in a role similar to the Greek Persephone.

Brigid’s main symbol was fire, representing wisdom, poetry, healing and metallurgy. The nuns at the Kildare monastery kept a perpetual fire burning in Brigid’s memory for more than a thousand years -- until 1540 when it was extinguished in Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Order of St. Brigid was reestablished in 1807. Two Brigidine sisters returned to Kildare and relit the fire in the market square for the first time in more than 400 years on Feb. 1, 1993. The perpetual flame is now kept at the Solas Bhride (Brigid’s Light) Celtic Spirituality Center that they founded there.

Brigid and Darlughdach are shown with their arms around each other in the above icon by Brother Robert Lentz. He is a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his progressive icons. The two women are dressed in the white gowns worn by Druid priestesses and Celtic nuns. Flames burn above them and on the mandala of Christ that they carry. It is one of 40 icons featured in his book “Christ in the Margins.”

The icon was commissioned by the Living Circle, a Chicago-based interfaith spirituality center for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community and their friends. Four Living Circle members took the original icon to Kildare with them in 2000 for the flame-lighting ceremony at the recently excavated site of Brigid’s ancient fire temple.

Dennis O’Neill, the priest who founded the Living Circle, includes the icon and an excellent biography of Brigid and Darlughdach in his book “Passionate Holiness: Marginalized Christian Devotions for Distinctive People.”

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed. The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed. The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion | Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed.

The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Massacre at Gibbet Rath, between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in Co Kildare.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed.

The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Massacre at Gibbet Rath.

#OTD in 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Massacre at Gibbet Rath.

The United Irishmen’s rebellion in 1798 was strongly supported in the Kildare area, and it was on the Curragh of Kildare that the worst atrocities and suppression of the rising were witnessed. The rebels took over a number of towns in the Kildare area and having held the government forces at bay for over a week they negotiated favourable surrender terms with Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Dundas,…