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Gerard Neary

Gerard Neary

About

Gearóid O’Neary is a genealogist and writer.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Gearóid is a writer, and the nom de plume and the alter-ego of Gerard Neary, the genealogist.

Gearóid would prefer to while away his days writing stories about all manner of things he observes, some daft and some with serious overtones. On the other hand, Gerard gets emotionally engrossed in researching our ancestors, and then compassionately distributes his findings in private. Gearóid gives him a break now and again, usually dragging him off to the village inn to partake in parish gossip, or to put the world to rights in mildly-heated political debates. Both of them have a sense of humour.

Gearóid is a dreamer. Gerard pays the bills.

Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God

Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God

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<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other.  The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>

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<p>http://wheresmerrill.com/2014/03/08/editorial-book-review/</p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(187,187,187);line-height:24.375px;background-color:rgb(15,15,15);">By <a href="http://www.authoralliance.net/category/readers-lounge/author-alliance-reviews/joseph-spuckler" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(39,167,22);"><strong style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">Joseph Spuckler</strong></a> of <a href="http://www.authoralliance.net/" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(39,167,22);">Author Alliance</a>:</p> <blockquote style="border:0px;font-family:Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif;font-size:15px;font-style:italic;margin:0px 3em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(187,187,187);line-height:24.375px;background-color:rgb(15,15,15);"> <p style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BMUQN0I" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(39,167,22);"><strong style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">Where’s Merrill? A Genealogical Thriller</strong></a> by Gearoid O’Neary is a cross between a research paper and a mystery. I really did not know what to expect with this book initially, but was won over fairly quickly. Trying to find Merrill in a family history reminded me of my days a history major and searching for minor historical figures. In fact, my classmates and I had done this sort of thing so often in so many Latin American history classes that this research took on its own name. No matter who we were researching, the joke was his name is Juan Obscuro. So reading about someone searching down a person using historical records was not that intriguing to me. The author, as the main character, searching for someone else’s Juan Obscuro really seemed monotonous to me.</p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"><strong style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">But, my initial thoughts were wrong</strong>. Jed, the main character, was a former engineer riding high on the building boom in Ireland when it crashed. Corporate backlash and Jed’s feeling of duty to his people, left him out on the street. He, in turn, turned a hobby into a career: Genealogy. Well, here was something positive I could relate to. I was a project manager riding high on the telecom wave   when it crashed, and likewise, I found myself unemployed. I turned my hobby into a career: Bicycle mechanics. I was surprised that someone could earn a good living researching people’s past as I am sure that people are surprised a bicycle mechanic can earn a good living. Anyway, that sealed my bond with Jed, and his wife Susan. No high-life, but real hard working people and a reasonably good life.</p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">Tim is the American, who asks Jed to help find his past. Tim’s mother, when she was alive, hid her family’s past. Now that she was gone, Tim could discover his past without upsetting his mother or going against her wishes. Here too, I was pleasantly surprised. Jed and Sue had a far more interesting time researching Tim’s family than I ever did researching Juan. The history crosses the American Midwest, from Iowa and up in to Minnesota. It spreads to California and Washington, D.C.. There are several twists and turns in the research too. What is expected and reported is not always what happened. Merrill, is a particularly difficult subject to track and not always by accident. The story jumps back and forth between Jed and Susan and the search for Merrill. The Jed’s and Susan’s story runs chronologically. The genealogy part of the story jumps back and forth as new pieces of information are found and new family members are found and traced, but it does flow very logically.</p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">I was expecting a novelization of a dry research paper when I started this book. I was pleasantly surprised by the actual story. It was far more than I could have expected; interesting is an understatement. The writing is very well done, although at the beginning chapters the conversation seemed a little forced, but that impression also disappeared as I read further in the book. I also found the process of the research interesting too. I never realized that there was that much of an infrastructure for records going that far back. I had expected many records to be lost, destroyed, forgotten, or just simply no longer worth keeping by the local government. A very interesting read whether you are interested in genealogy or not. The story resulting from the search is definitely worth the read as historical fiction — the research is real — the names have been changed and conversations inserted. Very well done. <a href="http://wheresmerrill.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/joe-spuckler1.jpeg" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(39,167,22);"><img alt="Joe Spuckler" class="size-full wp-image-722 alignright" src="http://wheresmerrill.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/joe-spuckler1.jpeg?w=584" style="border:1px solid rgb(44,44,44);margin-top:.4em;float:right;margin-left:1.625em;height:auto;width:auto;margin-bottom:1.625em;padding:6px;" /></a></p> </blockquote> <p style="border:0px;font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(187,187,187);line-height:24.375px;background-color:rgb(15,15,15);"> </p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(187,187,187);line-height:24.375px;background-color:rgb(15,15,15);">Joe awarded “<a href="http://t.co/VZiD7gX6Bw" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(39,167,22);">Where’s Merrill?</a>” four out of five stars – but as he readily admits, the Evil Cyclist does not toss out his review stars willy-nilly.</p> <p style="border:0px;font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;margin:0px 0px 1.625em;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(187,187,187);line-height:24.375px;background-color:rgb(15,15,15);">Joe’s twitter handle: @Evil_Cyclist</p> <div> </div> <div class="wpcnt" style="border:0px;font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:15px;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;text-align:center;line-height:0;color:rgb(187,187,187);background-color:rgb(15,15,15);"> <div class="wpa" style="border:0px;font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;"> </div> </div>