Michael McFarland Campbell, is an Irish writer, hymnographer and parish musician based in the midlands. His practice delves into that which is sacred in the ordinary—where landscape, memory and small acts of care show something of grace.

In keeping with the rhythms of Irish life, his writing draws on place, community and lived experience to discover the holiness that often goes unnoticed: in fields and rivers, in hospital rooms, in prayer and in the quiet endurance of daily life.

What I Write.

His writing straddles three linked strands:

Hymns & Liturgical Texts.
Contemporary sacred writing shaped for congregational use and personal devotion. These texts draw deeply from scripture, Celtic spirituality, and the textures of Irish landscape, offering language for prayer, praise, and reflection.

Fiction & Story Cycles.
A growing body of fiction exploring care, belonging, and the hidden structures of everyday life. This includes The Church is Open and The Circuit of Care, where moments of grace and encounter emerge within familiar settings.

Reflective Writing.
Through NeuroDivine and related work, he writes about faith, health, and lived experience—particularly the intersections of illness, neurodivergence, and spirituality. This writing seeks to hold together honesty and hope, grounded in the realities of care.

Rowan Q. Lorne

He also writes fiction under the pen name Rowan Q. Lorne.

This work inhabits a more regulated and uncertain world. Beginning with The Quiet Proximity, the first volume in The Proximity Cycle, it explores distance, memory, and the systems that shape human connection.

Where his other writing is rooted in landscape, healthcare, and presence, this fiction turns toward control, absence, and the fragile boundaries between people.

His work as Rowan Q. Lorne can be found at rowanqlorne.com.

The Shape of the Work

One common thread runs through all of the strands of his work: the architecture of care, the way systems, communities, and relationships hold the people in their care.

Whether it is a hymn, a reflection, a poem, a short story, or a longer work of fiction, he always returns to the same simple questions:

Where is the grace in this world?
What does it mean to be held within our spheres?
How do we live true to our beliefs within the world around us?

Liturgy and Music

As well as his writing, Michael works as a parish musician for the Dioceses of Meath & Kildare, supporting worship through organ, hymnody, and collaborative liturgical planning. His hymn writing and liturgical texts are shaped by musicality, clarity, and an interest in the communities who will sing and pray them.

He is a member of the Irish Writers Centre (2025–2026), with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and part of the creative team at the Order of St John and St John Ambulance Ireland.

A Perspective on Grace

Whether writing fiction, hymnody, or reflective prose, Michael’s work is grounded in a simple conviction: that grace is found in the ordinary, in the places where people gather and carry their stories with quiet courage.

Through neurodivine.blog, he specifically celebrates the intersections of neurodivergence and spirituality, offering a portrait of a world that is open-hearted, grounded, and alive to the sacred.

Michael lives in Monasterevin, Co. Kildare, with his husband Andrew and their two cats.