Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

My Favourite Place in the World to Wander: Ireland

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I love travelling, and have travelled in well over 30 countries, and in every continent but Africa.

However, my favourite country to travel in, hands down, is Ireland.

It is beautiful and green. It is full of history, mythic, magic and mysticism. It has a poetic pagan past, those wonderful Druids, and an equally poetic early Christian history. It is tragic. It has wonderful place names, full of poetry in themselves. It has nurtured wonderful poets like Yeats and Heaney.

However, it is the people who make a place, and I love the Irish. I love their accents, their use of English, their gentleness, their good humour, and their helpfulness.

I think whenever I need a break, I will escape to Ireland if I can.

However, I would not like to live there permanently. It is too homogenous a society. What on earth would I do among all those O’Leary’s and McLoughlins? I still think England is the best place for a citizen of the world,  with a reasonably diverse population, and a fairly open-minded, tolerant and accepting indigenous population.

Wicklow Mountains National Park

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We are now in Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains National Park. Going on another hike around a lake or two, and then heading for the Rosslare Beaches. We have had splendid weather, it’s never rained when we’ve wanted to hike, and it’s warm, but not hot. No need for jumpers or coats.

A lovely lake. The sound of water lapping on the shores is a natural tranquillizer. I love the ducks, just a few months old, already so tourist-friendly. Fantastic hiking, not so difficult that it takes all your concentration, but strenuous enough to feel invigorated!
We had a super refreshing morning at “Monastic City” in Wicklow Mountains National Park.
St Kevin’s monastic settlement, including a Rapunzel-like long, very high doorless tower in which they sheltered from Viking raids. Apparently, they climbed in through a window, and then pulled the ladder in. There were numerous beautiful and intricate Celtic crosses in the graveyard.
Everything was tranquil, lush and emerald green, with sheep grazing peacefully in the background. Truly an idyllic view!!

 

The Dingle Way. The Gallarus Oratory and Beehive Huts

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We spent a few days on the Dingle Peninsula.
The Irish are amusing in that they drive their cars and camper vans straight onto the beach, disregarding the beware of soft sand signs.
Not being Irish, we got our car stuck, and asked some freckly youngsters for help. Six or seven of them pushed us out of the sand, saying, ” Don’t worry. We are good strong lads.” An older Irishman told them, “Do you know, in England you could get arrested for driving onto the beach?” “You don’t say,” they answered, eyes widened.
Walked by the beach. It exhilarates me and restores my soul, puts me together again. Lovely!!
Slept on Inch Beach, soundly, lulled by the sound of lapping waves, and the air apparently charged with negative ions.
We went on the Dingle Way today. Full of early Christian sites. When we asked the way, an Irish lady crossed herself and said, “These are Holy Mary Roads.” “What’s a Holy Mary Road?” the girls asked. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us, sinners, Now and at the hour of our death.” “Amen” we replied.The Gallarus Oratory was truly a marvel of the “Dark Ages,” 1300 years old, a drystone construction, entirely built without mortar, bell-shaped, like a stranded stone ark, an intricate construction of stones, carefully placed one on top of the other. Claustrophobic and dark inside, the bright and glorious sea outside.
Interesting that the early Irish monks felt they had to shut out the lovely natural world to focus on God. I suppose we do that when we close our eyes, and bow our heads to pray.

Fascinated by the tiny early Christian beehive hermitages, intricate, drystone mortarless constructions, in which their hermits lived year round, and which were provided as accommodation for travellers.. So claustrophobic and dark for us, but probably welcoming with a fire inside, and snow outside.

Also, saw some inpregnable ancient stone forts, with claustrophobic tiny rooms, but certainly enemy-proof, also a dry stone, mortarless construction.The Irish were sure shorter than us in the prehistoric times.

The Dingle Peninsula has scarlet and purple hedges!!–fuschia imported from Chile in the last century, and now naturalized! And delicate sprays of orange cocosmia, also naturalized in every hedge and ditch, a veritable palette of purple heathers and yellow gorse, colour gone mad!
Roy said our family was ruined, so we took a break and had a beach morning. Got caught out tidepooling by high tide. Oh, but to see the magical world of once inert sea anemones opening their myriad red arms like happy underwater flowers; sea stars swirling, mussels opening for plankton, barnacles and their feathery, food-gathering feet, all coming to life with high tide, was well worth it.

The Lake Isle of Innisfallen, Ireland

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I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfallen.
We are in Killarney National Park, camped (well, in our motor home) on the shores of Lough Leanne. Perfect stillness. Saw a swan and 7 grey cygnets. Enjoyed a walk through lush rain forest, thick with ferns, bracket fungi, massive oaks and strawberry bushes, to a perfect view, the lake with gentle sound of water lapping at its shores, and a 180 degree view of a mountain range, MacGillicuddy’s Reeks.
We rowed today to the Lake Isle of Innishfallen,  incredibly peaceful and well-maintained with the ruins of a 7th century monastery established by Finian the Leper. Lovely trails around the Island. Wonderful rowing though a flock of swans, which we appeared to be herding. Nothing more relaxing than mucking around in boats.
The Monks of Innisfallen painstakingly wrote The Annals of Innisfallen, a chonicle of Irish Church history between 433 and 1450 AD. It is now in the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, which ironically, we toured last week.
One day, perhaps all expropriated artefacts will be returned to their countries of origin? Though probably not in my lifetime!

The Prayer of Relinquishment and Utter Exhaustion

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One of the first books I read when I became a Christian, aged 17, was Catherine Marshall’s “Something More,” and I remain very fond of it.

She describes a very powerful form of prayer, ” The Prayer of Relinquishment” she calls it. It’s essentially saying, “Have thine own way. It’s okay if you grant me this desire I want so desperately. And okay if you do not.” A Gethsemane prayer.

Odd thing, in my own life, praying like that has been the precursor to getting the thing I wanted so badly. However, there are no short-cuts to it. You do have to tortuously and painfully get to the stage at which you want God, his blessing, and his wise choice for you in the circumstances more than you want your heart’s desire.

One thing that, of late, gets me to the prayer of relinquishment is occasional exhaustion. Roy and I have reached middle-age throughly unprepared for it. For one, we have not been good about exercise, so are not as physically strong as we should be (though we are now trying to rectify that). For another, we still live as fully and intensely as we did when we were first married, with several interesting balls in the air at any given time. Until exhaustion strikes. As it has now.

And then, how easy it seems to surrender your life once more. ” Have thine own way, Lord. Take it, oh Lord, take this life of mine. It’s really not of the greatest interest to me. Work in it and with it. Create something beautiful with it.”