Themes for Our Days
Together
on the Wild Edge of
Ireland
by Martha Louise Harkness
Hospitality ---
cells at the “Bed and Breakfast”
wombs of gratitude.
Community dance
promising life together
taken by the hand.
Work and service now?
What was it like to build then?
Deep, strong commitment.
Silence, solitude
Come away from the crowd, pray
just as Jesus did.
Sunday Sabbath time
What will I do with my day?
Hours just to Be.
Kinship with nature ---
What kind of creature am I?
Sister to the Earth.
Conversion is hope
processing all of life's gifts
again and again.
Creative joy – Dance!
Put your hand and heart to work ---
See what comes of it!
This day was to be a day that all of us had anticipated maybe a small sense of tripadition. The pilgrimage group previous, who went in March, had a really wild-edge experience on the ferry boat that day, much like those disciples who crossed the sea with Jesus. The day was stormy and the waves were huge, and a number of pilgrims had gotten sea sick, so we were strongly advised to take some sort of remedy for motion sickness.
Bouncing on the waves
I am a waterfowl
Jesus meets me there
by Martha Louise Harkness
The day dawned cloudy and cold, but no rain, and we all walked to the bus station almost giggly in anticipation of "will I be the one to get sick?" We boarded the ferry in Rossaveel, scouting out the belly of the boat (the most stable place) and the bathrooms. We were all relieved when we arrived at our destination with no incident of any sickness. In fact, it was a rather enjoyable hour's voyage.
Our destination was Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands. Our guide for the day was Dara Malloy, an ex-Roman Catholic priest, who is now a Celtic/Druid priest, a monk, and a guide for pilgrimages or tour groups. He blessed us with so many precious rituals and stories. Our time with him at the holy well not too far from his home was one of the highlights of this trip for me personally.
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| Dara Malloy, Celtic pries and guide for the day |
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| Where we started our visit with Dara - a little village on Inishmore. I found the "perfect" little necklace there, but had left my wallet at the BnB. Never saw another one like it. Still wish I had gotten it, a simple little "slab" with a small cross and a spiral coming off the bottom of the cross, to me, a perfect of blend of Christianity and Celtic (the Divine Feminine) spirituality |
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| The first of a number of sites we visited on the island of Inishmore |
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Monastery crags
stone upon stone built by hands
sanctuary time
by Martha Louise Harkness (the monk in the blue jacket)
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A couple of the sites we toured were Teampall Mhi Dhauch, a pre-Romanesque church with an early cross, a holy well, and the remains of an enclosing castle. And Teampall Bheanain, the ruins of perhaps the smallest ancient church ever.
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| Dara and some of our monks, from back to front, Alix and Polly, Lisa and Barbara, and I think the red jacket in the middle with the feet near the rocks is Maura. |
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| Time fades memory of all the brain had a trouble grasping, but I believe these thee stone are three dated headstones, with I think the smallest being the oldest, but I will probably never know for sure. |
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| Archways, thresholds, liminal spaces, windows - all sacred pictures of the life of a soul. |
But the most enduring time for me was when we visited the holy well near Dara's home. It was in a beautiful spot, with Atlantic Ocean in view, and tiny wildflowers everywhere. There are no trees so to speak on Inishmore, only a few small trees, like this hawthorn tree. There are usually hawthorn trees near holy wells in Ireland, and there all kinds of stories connecting hawthorns to fairies and witches and it "standing at the threshold of the Otherworld". Near this "rag tree", with its colorful prayer ribbons waving in the breeze, is a small hole in the ground, and there is the freshest water, a holy spot. The druids or the monks (who knows which) built a small enclosure around it shaped like a fish (if you look hard enough). Dara told us the story of the salmon of knowledge. As we listened to the story, one of the pilgrim monks near me whispered to me that it's obvious that the Celctic monks knew without a doubt that nature held a kind of wisdom that books never would be able to give us. I listened and took that into my heart. So many of us have lost that connection - our first connection to God and the holy was the world around, above and below us. It gave me a whole different perspective on the "Christian" image of the fish, and all the stories in Scripture of Jesus and the fish. Maybe he knew what Polly knows. Perhaps we are finding our way "home" to what Mother Earth has to tell us.
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| The hawthorn "rag tree" with it's ribbons flying - how many have come to this sacred site to pray? |
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| Zohra ties a ribbon to the tree representing our group of pilgrims. |
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| The holy well |
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| Making the rounds - we did 7. Notice the wall - what's left of a "fish-shaped" wall around the well site marking the path that hundreds have walked before us. |
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| Leaving that special place and moving to another - it's all sacred ground, but then, the whole earth is sacred if we only have eyes to see and hearts to know and believe. |
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| Maybe this is Teampall Mhic Dhauch? I do remember Dara pointing out to us three different phases of history at one site, but I'm not sure which anymore. |
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| We had a lovely ritual here; we passed a scarf through the hole, remembering our prayers, all who've come before us, all who will come after, and for me, my own "passing through". |
And Dara talked about Mother Earth and the well being her womb. And I felt the presence of my own mother - how she nourished me before I was born, in my childhood, and over the past 12 years, here near me. I miss her still, but I felt her there, even as I feel her all around me so often. Because of that sacred moment, holy wells hold so much more significance for me than before. And the story of Jesus and the woman at the well takes on another depth of meaning to me - inside of us, our of our own deep dark places, our wombs, is living water. The sweetest most refreshing "water" we have to offer others comes from our own holy wells.
Dara also talked about baptism at this font at Teampall Mhic Dhauch. He compared it to a pilgrim's journey: a monk would travel in solitude, no knowing where he was going, but listening and learning all along the way until he felt a call to "stay". "Perhaps THIS is it?" he might think, so he'd settle down, thinking he might not need to journey anymore, but then one day, the call would rise up from deep inside, and he would know that he was not yet "there", so he'd get up and leave that spot and travel on, until finally he reached his "place of resurrection". That's where the monk would finally stay, perhaps in a hermitage still living a solitary life, or maybe near a community, serving others.
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| Dara explaining a pilgrim's journey to her "place of resurrection", through the ritual of baptism. |
That's been my story now for nearly 25 years. I have been a pilgrim on an inner journey now for a very long time. And I thought I had "arrived" a number of times, only to find that the call to "get up and move on" stirred deep inside again. Today? I think maybe I've found my "place of resurrection". I have made a spiritual pilgrimage that has taken me far from my roots of the fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity of my father's house. I've pondered leaving Christianity all together. By my own definition at the age of 40, I'm no longer a Christian, but that definition is far too small. And for this time and space, I have finally found a spiritual tradition big enough to hold nature, women, myths and stories, science, and God all in the same space. I have found a spirituality that is full bodied, inclusive, exciting, tender, compassionate, and much more like Jesus than what I knew at forty. Maybe I'm home? or will I hear another call from deep within to "get up and move"? That door is always open, and if I hear that call, I will answer. But at the moment, I think my place is here, and my call now is to work and serve this community around me.
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| Me, sitting between the cross and another threshold - have I found my place of resurrection? or will I be once more called to "get up and move on"? |
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| A monk's favorite view - the wild edges, a liminal space, the shore and the great sea. |
A special thank you to Martha Louise Harkness for giving me permission to use her haiku's in my blog.
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