ACCLAIMED SPIRITUAL singer Nóirín Ní Riain launched her autobiography, Listen with the Ear of the Heart, in Limerick last night.
The 58-year-old theologian was accompanied by family and friends as chairman of the American Ireland Fund Dr Loretta Brennan Glucksman launched her story in St John’s Church.
Dr Glucksman spoke warmly of her longstanding friendship with the Irish musicologist and described the autobiography as “a valuable and accessible book”.
“Nóirín has used the power of her gift to teach us how to listen with the ear of the heart. Who else could tell you that the sound of the cosmos is in B flat,” joked Dr Glucksman.
Also in attendance at last night’s launch were a number of monks from Glenstal Abbey, where Ní Riain lives and with whom she has recorded a number of albums.
“I think it’s very important that people read this book because it is actually giving us a new way of hearing in the universe,” said the Abbot of Glenstal, Patrick Hederman OBS. “We haven’t our ears open at all and Nóirín is able to show you if you listen you can hear God everywhere, so it’s magnificent in that way.”
Speaking about her book, the author, who completed a doctorate on the theology of listening at Mary Immaculate College in 2003, described it as being as much about her “memories of sound” as her life story.
“My parents always said I sang before I spoke and that’s one of the reasons they took me into Limerick city for singing lessons when I was a child,” recalled the mother of two, who grew up six miles from Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick.
After attending boarding school in Drogheda. she went on to study music at University College Cork, which she remembered as the “happiest time of my life”.
It was there she met and later married well-known Irish musician and composer Micheál Ó Súilleabháin, and though now divorced they remain friends.
The couple’s two sons, Eoin and Micheal, or “Moley” as he better known, perform regularly with their mother in the group Amen, and are also enjoying success with their own group, Size2 Shoes.
Despite her faith and passion for religious songs, Ní Riain was critical of the church’s attitude towards separated couples.
“We bless a marriage for ever and ever but there is no blessing for separation or divorce which is also created by God and that’s certainly what I believe,” she said. “I believe that a blessing would help an awful lot of couples.”