Prods and Pride Posts

6-7-2018

Turning South Toward Tennessee

Nothing had prepared me for Ireland.  I have been to Europe, seen the great cathedrals, walked in walled cities and seen castles on hills but I have never been to a land that was so set against its taming nor a people so persistent in their efforts.  This land is scarred with the lives of its ancestors, as if the earth had to be wounded to force it to give up sustenance, to push back against its refusal to bear with the humans who came here.  Each wound they bound up with crisscrossing stone and green pasture.  They are hard up against it and each human must bear up.  But the beauty of the land, the sea, the stone makes artists of them all forcing them to match their survival efforts with the beauty of the earth they are wounding and they are up to it.  And what does the earth give up as material?  Stone.  Stone is not easy on the body nor easily formed so it is with great effort and physical sacrifice that these people have built beauty to match the beauty they are building on. Eon after eon these beautiful wounds stand as prods and pride posts to those coming after.  Sacred markers establishing a way to live, a spirit to be kept, and a way to walk in peace with the land that is so difficult to live with.  I leave my admiration here on this island, an island made and being made more by the gentle eternal persistence of its inhabitants.  God knew what He was doing when He made humans and the Irish are testaments to that truth.