Colm was thrashing around in the back seat as we sat in the empty car park outside the pub. He was invoking the holy family. Praying to, pleading with them that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe we got the wrong night. Maybe we got the wrong location. Maybe we should just go home. From the driver’s seat Maureen murmured calm yet firm assurances that no, we were just early.

To be accurate the car park wasn’t completely empty. There was one other car with doors open as a woman tried to fold her very elderly and incredibly inebriated father into the back seat. He wasn’t having it and after much kicking and struggling he staggered back to the pub’s front door. She drove away in exasperation. We had been sitting in stupefied silence watching this scene but when the daughter was gone and the father had stumbled back into the pub the thrashing started again. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph be good to us. Maybe they cancelled the party at the last minute. Let’s go home, Maureen.” Continue reading →

I just wrote a check for three more memorial tributes. They’ve been leaving for several years now. My mother was among the first. But the pace has so accelerated in these past months and now three in the space of two weeks. The village is disappearing.

This was an extraordinary place, this rural university town where at one time the students outnumbered the towns people. A place where couples came to start and finish their academic careers. A place where their children went through school together. Where the twelve-year club was almost as big as the high school graduating class. Where for better or worse everyone knew everyone else and everyone else’s business. Where in the summer time the twenty six kids in our neighborhood roamed the streets, building forts in empty lots, scavenging parts for our go carts, and playing kick-the-can until long after dark. Where we never locked our doors.

It’s a nostalgic reality I step into every time I go home, most recently to settle my dad’s estate. The woman selling Dad’s house is a long time family friend, her parents and my parents used to go on Jazz cruises together, her younger brother and I were in the same high school graduating class. I remember her sister was a high school cheerleader. Such is the way of this village.

Walking into the retirement place to pick up Dad for lunch my sister and I encountered a man taking his mother grocery shopping. After a double take it was discovered this man and my sister were in the same class in high school. Such is the way of this village.

The couple buying Dad’s house are moving to town because he has accepted a position in the same department where my dad began his career. He was one of dad’s students. Such is the way of this village.

But I wonder if they will stay sixty years as Dad has, as so many did. To become truly part of this village, to be this village. Because most don’t anymore. They come and go, staying only a few years until the next career move.

And now, one by one, the village is vanishing.

I stopped by to pick up Henry yesterday. He’s been gone almost two weeks and with our long-hair dogs and cat we are getting desperate for his return. Henry is our vacuum cleaner. But he wasn’t ready.

It’s a small independent repair shop and Don, his eyes brimming with tears, told me he was behind on orders. His dad died yesterday. I don’t know Don beyond our sporadic vacuum cleaner encounters but as I hugged him he cried and and apologized that he was having trouble focusing on work. I suggested perhaps he should close the shop for a few days. But no, business must go on. He would call me when Henry was repaired, maybe even Saturday as he planned to work through the weekend to catch up. Business must go on. Such a common response in a culture where bereavement days are measured in single digits, counted on one hand.

Some years ago friends and I were visiting the small Irish village of Adara, birthplace of Donegal tweed. Our plans were to spend one night, wander the shops the next day and then head south to Sligo Town. But our plans changed when, at breakfast, our B&B host told us that a young man of the village, driving home after working a night shift, had fallen asleep and drifted over the center line. He was hit by a truck and killed instantly.

The entire village shut down. Schools and businesses closed for the day as everyone gathered at the church. We would have slipped quietly out of town but we had clothes to collect at the local laundry which would now not be open until the following morning.

This came back to me as I left the repair shop. Open. Business as usual. I had encouraged Don to take some time, told him that Henry can wait. Although I believe his heart heard the message I knew he would stay at work.

In long ago Ireland the homes were small. There were no spare bedrooms. Guests and travelers of all rank were offered lodging in a large house built expressly for hospitality. It was considered a privilege to be designated as the innkeeper and strong codes applied. One must be ready to receive guests at all times with a fire in the hearth, food for the table, and a lantern lit outside to guide travelers to the door. Breaking with any of these, or several other, codes would result in losing the innkeeper designation.

Placing a lighted candle in the window on Christmas eve is a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph as they travel looking for shelter, an Irish tradition still practiced today. During the Penal Times, when practicing the Catholic religion was punishable by death, a window candle also indicated a safe place for priests to conduct mass.

Guiding lights. On this Christmas eve may the light we hold within us guide our way to peace and love. For ourselves, our families and all people of the world.

For the Irish, winter has always been a time of gathering with family and friends around the hearth fire. Through Joe Neilan’s recollections, included in Joe McGowan’s book, Inishmurray; Island Voices, we can almost feel the heat of the fire and hear the music.

On a winters night we used to have a thundering big roaring fire. All the neighbors would gather into a different house every night and the’d start telling stories, singing songs, an’ reciting poems. The flute players’d be there an’ the fiddle. There’d be lilting and dancing. Someone would bring in the half door and the’d leave it down on the floor. You’d see an old woman coming in or an old man up to 70 or 80 years of age. The women in their bare feet, an’ they’d start step dancing an’ more of them lilting tunes along the fire, and singing, and the fiddle an’ the flute.

Then, after all the playin’ an’ dancin’, eveyone’d have a wee respite to draw their wind and the bottle’d go round till they all got a drink. Out of the drinking then they’d all start again. Everyone had to sing, and it was all the rale old Irish songs. Mostly in Irish the songs were sung. Out of the singing of the songs then they’d start storytelling. … One word used to borrow from another, one entertainment used to join another an it’d be two o’clock in the morning before the company’d break up, to make home for their own house.

Imagine. They had no money and no tradition of frenzied shopping or frantic holiday preparations. Their wealth was in community – and night after night after night of music and singing and dancing in bare feet.

Interesting. After writing yesterday about the gathering in Atlanta I received an email today from the folks who put on the event.

A few weeks ago, several elders from around the world gathered at Ancient Wisdom Rising in Atlanta. It was not business as usual. There was more urgency in how they spoke. Two main messages rang out loud and clear: only the heart will be able to guide us in the time that is coming…the mind will not have a clue. And the need for community. If you don’t have one, get one. If you have one, go deeper. We are going to need each other.

The email went on to ask for money, but this first paragraph caught my attention.

Yes, the elders did speak with urgency and concern about the state of our planet and people. And they spoke about the importance of community. But not from a perspective of needing to gear up for pending disaster. Water, check. Flashlights, check. Dried food, check. Community, check. It’s not that we are going to need community but that we have always needed community. Desmond Tutu and others have reminded us that for as long as memory the concept of I am because we are, has been embedded in the African people.

Being in right relationship with community is one of the three fundamental messages from Ireland’s indigenous spiritual ancestors. A message that is thousands of years old. A message that echoes through the rituals and traditions of this holiday season. Gathering with family and friends. Sharing stories around the fire. Celebrating. This is the light of community that feeds the soul. And for our Irish ancestors, hospitality wasn’t just a good idea, it was the law. Breaking the code of hospitality was as serious as stealing cattle.

Yes, community can be a messy business. Yet, as the elders and ancestors have always known, it is only through community that we thrive. Perhaps it’s less about community saving us than us saving community.