Ancestors and Sacred Ambivalence: St. Patrick's Day Reflections

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My ancestors sought the sea as others once sought the desert - that lonely expanse, that drifting horizon, that long voyage to the holy.

I woke up this morning thinking about my ancestors, the Christians who lived in Ireland for hundreds of years before making their way across the ocean to escape famine and disease. They washed up onto these American shores, stumbled their way into the Appalachian Mountains and set to work as coal miners and steelworkers. That is where my father was born and raised, dirt poor, and where much of my family still lives. Every time I travel home to see my parents, I cross those mountains, through the forests and dark valleys and tunnels carved into the rock. The mud and dust of those hills are in my blood, even as the green, soft turf and peat fires of Ireland are in my bones.

Yet there is also deep ambivalence there. The history of coal mining in central Pennsylvania haunts our modern conversations about clean energy and alternative fuels. I see billboards advertising "clean coal" and wince at the lie. And in the same way, I think of the lost history of my pre-Christian ancestors, the stories I will never hear, the art and music I will never know, because of the Christian imperative to evangelize and spread their religion to the ends of the earth.

How are these connected: the abuse of the land, the dangerous work and struggle for livelihood, the dreams and desires of civilization, the silence of the dead, the loneliness of the voyage west across an ocean, unimaginable void dark and churning, dividing the past from the present?

St. Patrick's Day is almost here. Regardless of what others say, I honor the day as a day of sacred ambivalence and the lessons of acceptance and forgiveness. Patrick in the field kneeling on the soft, green turf to pray; Patrick slipping away across the sea to find freedom; Patrick returning to the island where he had been a slave.

If we can't learn these lessons of our ancestors, how can we hope to listen for the stories so much more lost to us than these?

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal

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In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, a bunch of strangers met for the first time in Rostrevor, a small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, nestled below the Mourne Mountains on the edge of Carlingford Lough that opens out into the sea. From all over the world — from Portland to Hong Kong, from Glasgow to Nashville — they gathered together to learn about peacemaking rooted in the Celtic sense of sacred hospitality and the holiness of the land.

It was my first time traveling alone, and my first journey ever beyond the borders of the United States. For me, the week-long retreat became a kind of pilgrimage, back to the land of my ancestors, and beyond the ninth wave into a place of conversation, connection and new friendships forged.

Day Nine — The World Become Small

...then I went back up to my room, kneeled next to my bed to look out the skylight — and felt this overwhelming sense of closure and peace, and a thrill at the thought of going home. I knew things were finally coming to an end.

~*~

The morning was foggy and damp, with low clouds clustering and rolling along over the mountains across the water. Every once in a while, a parting in the clouds would open and the opposite shore would be bathed with a golden misty light in a small area, as if the land were glowing all golden and green among the dark and the mists.

A rainbow. We stood there in silence for a few minutes, watching the broad ribbon of light and color thicken and take on, imperceptibly, a brighter presence among the dim gray clouds, above the dark, choppy waters. J. leaned over to me and quoted again that Bible verse, Isaiah 45:3, "And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, which call you by your name..." When she said this, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and almost began to cry. The rainbow continued to grow brighter and brighter, and I took several photographs hoping at least one would come out. Then J. said how it was funny, from here the land over there looked awash in so many colors, but they couldn't see that themselves — all they knew was that they were standing in the light.

Keeping the Days: Autumn Sepia

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Autumn Sepia
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Leaves After Rain

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Leaves After Rain
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

Keeping the Days: Woods in the Fall

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Golden Woods in the Local Park
Frick Park, Pittsburgh, PA

The Pulse of Samhain

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There must have been an autumn when I was a child... But those days I remember as being full of the smell of sharpened pencils and graphite shavings, the rustle of notebook pages, the glint of bent spiral bindings and — sometimes — at the bus stop, a glimpse of horizon between the houses and the whispering golden pear trees, a full moon setting pale opposite the rising sun.

This morning, I glance out the window between sips of mint tea. The vines cascading down the garage have flushed to copper and rust, fading back into the old red brick. The sky is overcast, but the sun is low and spills in shifting rays over the tall grasses of the backyard, coming and going, light and dim again as it sinks. A neighborhood cat prowls, its black body slipping through the weeds that bend and shift in soft browns almost like wheat. The silent overhanging trees are limp with mottled yellows and golds.

Somewhere, a cloud changes. Suddenly the scene is awash in early morning sunlight, illuminated, every leaf translucent like a moving, living fountain of stained glass against the low, dull sky. The cat pauses, a dark shimmering shape stilled in a shaft of light, its ears and tail twitching. I can almost see the tips of its whiskers shining. Then, it hunches down again, head low, its form one long line of shadow slinking off.

Samhaim slips in. The dead among us rustle like dying leaves, or notebook pages.