I am deeply, happily at home here on the California coast where I was born, but my soul has a second home in Ireland, the land of my ancestors, and it is calling me. When I say Ireland, I’m not thinking of a country with borders but of a place like Yeats’s Lake Isle of Innifree
… where peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
Ireland is more than a mythical, poetic place with an ancient name though. Tom and I traveled there for the first time in 2019; he has Irish heritage too, and both of us felt a surprising sense of homecoming. Was it a cellular memory of the geography or simply comfort among warm and welcoming people with good humor and a heart-lifting accent? I’m not sure, but I remember it vividly, and when I say that Ireland is calling, I mean that my lungs want to fill with the air rising from that mossy, rain-soaked island, air that has its own moist texture my cheeks want to be bathed in and a scent my nose is longing to smell. My eyes hunger for forty shades of green; my legs are eager to stride down a country lane between rock walls and across grassy fields. I can almost hear sheep bleating, waves crashing against sandstone cliffs, the silence that soaks ancient standing stones.
Ireland is calling, and I am answering. For many years my beloved teacher Carolyn Brigit Flynn has led writing retreats in Ireland she calls Landscape of Soul and Story, and for years I’ve heard rapturous reviews from returning travelers of beautiful country and ancient Celtic sites that inspired deep feeling and luscious writing. The 2016 group actually filled a gorgeous book titled Sacred Stone, Sacred Water with poems, essays, and art. I dreamed of going myself, but the tours were always scheduled in September to catch the best weather — just when I was always returning to Foothill College for the beginning of the academic year. Now, a year into my retirement my dream is about to come true.
Soon I will be in that place where my great grandmother prayed Ave Maria, where perhaps a longer ago grandmother tended a flame to the goddess Brigit, and an even longer ago grandfather helped raise one of those standing stones. All are waiting for me: lilting voices and gentle rain, ancestors and stones.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
It has been a hard season of injury, illness, and grief in my family, and I will carry that weight with me, knowing that Irish earth and stone can hold it. Travel is an art, Carolyn reports her tour-guide father saying. Along with extensive packing and travel details (Bring comfortable, waterproof shoes!) she offers suggestions to prepare our spirits for this journey: “make sure to have unencumbered time to allow your meandering/dreaming/writing self to emerge.” My bags aren’t packed yet, but I have the notebook I will write in. In my deep heart’s core I am ready for this pilgrimage to the land of soul and story.
The Kingdom of Enough 