5-31-2018 AD
County Macroom Ireland
We are a thousand years up a
country lane, behind a long green hill where white sheep graze. We are behind that hill down an overgrown
hedgerow running under giant trees along a gravel path. Entering a two columned iron gate the lane
runs up a hill lined with old iron lamps to a three story square country
estate, circle stone drive and another green hill running for miles
behind. It is an old white home, filled
with old wooden things and old smells and abides you like an ancient aunt,
tolerating your intrusion but secretly pleased by you, reminding her of her own
youth. We are on the second floor, back,
twelve foot ceiling with great paned windows overlooking the stone walled
garden and the small pasture beyond where two mammoth working horses are
kept. It is what you picture. Betty gave me Ireland for my 60th
birthday. We flew in yesterday; old cool
like you know it’s coming from the ancient ice fields above the north Atlantic
and sunny like it knew Betty was coming.
We high tailed it out of Dublin and got on a country road headed south
where we will begin my gift, slowly moving west from Cork along the coast turning
north where we will end up in Northern Ireland ten days from now. We spent yesterday mostly lost but keeping
the sun along as our guide knowing it and global tracking devices would
eventually lead us here. We picnicked at
a local Catholic church in Limerick, hiked castle ruins and walked an old graveyard
surrounding a primeval church where only the half tumbled walls remained. This is an ancient land marked everywhere
with man made stone makers of worshiper’s desperately building to connect them
to The Most Ancient One. The kind of
people Betty and I are and have tried to raise.
Why on earth would anyone be here if it were not to try with all we can
to connect with All There Is. Such is
Ireland.
Some side notes:
Yesterday evening as we were
leaving the country B&B to find some dinner, at the end of the lane, was a
small field, freshly mowed surrounded by old trees and underbrush. In the field where four large flopped eared
rabbits on their haunches chewing their evening cud. Also in the field were two old dogs, barely
able and I am sure mostly blind. They
were stiffly lopping around stopping every few feet to sniff the ground. For all the world it seemed that they were
all old friends, the rabbits moving about to lay a trail and the old mutts
trying desperately to find it, a game they had all grown to old to be serious
about but playing along anyway.
At the terminal in Newark
where we were waiting for our flight over we happened to be sitting in front of
a young couple. It’s a new arrangement
in airports, one I had never seen before, where they set up stationary chairs
by narrow tables, with Wi-Fi, electricity and small electronic screens where
you can order food and drink from the many restaurants at that end of the airport. It puts you closer to people than your own
dining room table and that is where Betty and I found our self’s yesterday with
the aforementioned young couple. What
first got our attention was that the young man was a big man with bright red
hair and beard and his wife was a tiny thing and Betty and I both thought they
were traveling back home to Ireland. But
why I am writing about them is tying them mostly to my earlier story about
connecting to The Almighty. The couple
had ordered Star Bucks and when their coffee and bagels arrived, they turned to
each other, held both hands, bowed their heads and she made the sign of the
cross and then prayed softly. Now we’re Protestants
and they were obviously Catholic and we were automatically taken up into their
visit in The Throne Room. I was sure
international peace had broke out and was delighted to have been there as my
Spirit was equally glad—always good to be among holiness. Turns out, (you know Betty, she immediately
was gonna be friends…she has never outgrown the playground…why I find her so intriguing)
they were Americans, two kids in love headed not for Dublin but for Dallas, in
the good old USA.
I awoke early this morning,
laying in bed at four thinking of laying in bed at four and listening well for
anything else that might be conscious.
Four things happened. I begin to
think of the old hymn How Great Thou Art, an early morning song bird began to
sing, it was Irish I’m sure because I had never heard the tune, Betty was
deeply involved with sleep (she doesn’t snore but sleeps deeply) and fourthly
it began to be just dawn. I thought
about all these things that were happening and...
O Lord, my God, when I in
awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy
Hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the
rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the
universe displayed
Then sings my soul…(that is
who I want to be my Sculpture Teacher and what I try to teach in my sculpture
classes.)
I wondered at the joy of
knowing that the same birds that sing outside my porch back home in the
pre-dawn hours have cousins in Ireland.
I thought of how good it
always is to hear Betty sleeping, knowing she is sleeping beside me, she is my
bride and lover, she is resting well and most importantly, she sleeps long and
unhindered which makes her the perfect therapist for me—she worries of nothing
and I worry of everything.
The hope of dawn comes even
when you are halfway around the earth and the sun has just set at home.
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| The Holy Water indentions in stone in a Most Holy ruin. Oh The Ancient of Days still was there. |
A sincere thanks for writing this.
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