Sticky Toffee Pudding: Time Out!

Okay.  I don't usually post stuff about food.  What I eat (and especially what's for dessert) is my own %&$#!  business.  On most days.

But today we left Kylemore Abbey, and headed way, way north to County Donegal, staying at a "Country Manor" wisely chosen by my wife.  It's a good thing, too, because the closest town (Letterkenny) was busy being invaded by car enthusiasts, which meant that if you owned a car you could go absolutely nowhere.  

So tonight we stayed at this beautiful manor, that served award-winning food (one of the specialities, believe it or not, was their homemade brown bread).  Over dinner, my wife and I had a chance to review the last ten days – friends in Carlow, Dublin, Spideál, and Kylemore (our first day seemed like a month ago!).  

And then, in the midst of our reverie, came dessert.  

It is called "sticky toffee pudding," and the first time we ever tasted it was outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2012 (yeah, it's kind of scary that I can report when this happened).  

Since then, this particular dessert has been rather like a holy grail of delicacies following a wonderful meal.  So the combination of wine, reverie, successful driving (on Ireland's N-59, which I must say is a real accomplishment when you live to tell the tale), and dessert at the end of the day – it made for a perfect set of memories for our first ten days on the road.

Tomorrow we head into Northern Ireland.  Beautiful places abound there as well!  More to follow; but for tonight, for all you wanderers who have never explored the gastronomical landscape of sticky toffee pudding – it's time to get out and explore!  Get beyond that cheesecake and apple pie, broaden those horizons, and make every calorie count....

Here, and Back Again

Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, County Galway

"Kylemore" is the Anglicized word for "Coill Mór" – the "Big Woods."  And if there was ever a place in Ireland that screamed "photo op!", it would be Kylemore Abbey, home to the Benedictine nuns since 1920.  

I first visited Kylemore in 1987, following an engaging encounter with one of their nuns at the Irish Church Music Association's annual gathering.  Her name was Sr. Noreen Peter Gallagher (that's pronounced "GAL-a-her" for all us Americans, I am reminded).  Noreen, herself a creative photographer and musician, welcomed me heartily into the joy of this remarkable women's community of faith.

Back then, there were no tour buses, no amazing craft shop or refectory, no restored walled gardens, no hiking paths through the woods.  The nuns supported themselves by running a boarding school, and it was an educational facility mostly for young girls whose parents were either significantly powerful heads of state or financial magnates.  It made sense – the place is so out of the way that no one knew where the kids went off to.  The boarding school closed down about a generation ago, but by then, the Abbey had become a significant tourist destination point.  And the rest, as they might say, is history.  Both spiritual and fiscal as well.

I stayed in the gardener's cottage with a priest from Glenstal Abbey, Fr. Bonaventure, who was on loan to celebrate the Eucharistic celebrations here.  In addition to being in the presence of an Irish scholar of folklore, I also received nightly instruction (following Vespers, of course) on the game of hurling.  (See?  It's not just the Americans that combine sports and spiritual journeys, you Notre Dame people....)

Kylemore is now not only one of the top-rated touring destinations in Ireland.  It is also the home of yet another center for overseas studies – the Notre Dame Kylemore Centre, under the wonderful leadership of Lisa Caulfield.  It's actually quite astounding to have witnessed the growth of all these programs through the years: first the Keough Centre, then expanded into the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies in Dublin; the Teach Bhríde (House of Brigid) program of volunteer ministerial service, the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason.  All of these have come into being over the past two generations, bringing a depth and richness to the tradition we call the "Notre Dame Irish."

I am here, back again, tracing former steps of years gone by, with friends and colleagues who are walking an incredible journey of reinventing spirituality for a modern age....

It began with a "Yes"

What are the consequences of an open door, a gesture of hospitality, so many years ago?  What follows is a very short story of such a Yes.

In the spring of 1987, this weary traveler washed up on the shores of Edenmore Crescent, Raheny, Dublin 5, to the household of one Tony Murphy and Anne Marie Horan.  I had met Tony the year before, at the University of Notre Dame; he was part of a contingent of Irish Catholic Youth Conference representatives, on a fact-finding mission for his own programs.

Tony and I hit it off right away (it might've been because of my slightly irreverent, unabridged tour I gave of our campus). We stayed in touch for a year, and foolishly he offered the hospitality of his home the following spring, when I was slated to begin my first exploratory journey through Ireland.  

The welcome given by him and his wife, in many ways, changed the trajectory of my life.  The two of them agreed to let this American stranger use their home as a base of operations.  I traveled to see the Benedictines at Kylemore and Glenstal Abbeys; participated in a weeklong conference of Irish church musicians; visited with liturgical and parochial centres throughout the land.  But always I had the open door of Tony and Anne Marie, making sure that I had a place to lay my head.

Their "Yes" led to years and years of touring Ireland, England and Scotland by the Notre Dame Folk Choir, which exposed hundreds of students to the richness of Irish life, which led to our bringing Irish repertoire back to the United States, which led to the publication of said repertoire by World Library Publications/GIA over the years, which led to the founding of Teach Bhríde, the House of Brigid lay community in 2008....

....Which led to my wife and I moving to Dublin, Ireland, in 2016, well prepared after more than a generation's worth of travel with college students to many corners of this compelling land.  

And it all began with a Yes, with two people who offered the front room and futon of their home to an inquisitive soul, eager to know more about the unique history of a people who had contributed so much to America's own spiritual landscape.

I wonder, sometimes, if we take the time to think back on such Magnificats in our own lives.  Of how one simple invitation will change who we are and what we do with the rest of our lives. 

Today, hundreds of kilometers from Raheny, we are out in Connemara, just west of An Spidéal, where Tony and Anne Marie now live. From their kitchen table you can look across Galway Bay, and through the mist you can just make out Inis Mór, Inís Meáin, and Inís Oirr – An Oileáin Árann, the Aran Islands.  We drove up to their home, and knocked on the front door.  The door opened, and there was Tony Murphy.  "Ye knock, and then ye just come in," he said. "Because here, family need not wait for the door to be opened."

To these two amazing, generous souls: thank you for the Yes.  Your Yes changed our lives.

Where the Soul Meets the Sea

Indreabhán, County Galway, on the way to Connemara

It is rare that this part of Ireland is without the strong presence of the wind.  Walking out past the stone walls, the brambles, the reeds and marshes, one comes across the meeting place of land and sea.  And even in its quietude, the signature of the wind can be seen in the whitecaps on Galway Bay, by the wisps of fog dancing around the Aran Islands, by the straining wings of gulls as they try to make headway through this mighty breath.

Walking along the shore of Loughaunbeg, there is this overwhelming sense of yearning, of stretching, of solitude, and yet of comfort, too.  "From the sea we came, and to the sea we shall return."  A truer phrase was never spoken by a politician (the man who uttered it was the slain American president, John F. Kennedy).  Looking out upon that vastness heading into the western, sinking sun, you get a sense of how the worldly and the beyond-the-worldly intersect.

Perhaps it is because of this landscaped coexistence of yearning and consolation that memorials have been erected along the shoreline, testimonials to people whose lives were lost in incomprehensible ways.  There is a marker for men and women who were blown up by a leftover mine from World War I; another – surrounded by a sanctuary of beach sand – commemorating all the lives of the men, women and children who died of starvation from the Great Famine.  

And there is also a poignant, now-consecrated site where lie the remains of unwed mothers and their children from the agonies of ages past. 

This long strand of shoreline is where the soul meets the sea, where the infinite continues to beckon, where the restless, relentless search for sacred sanctuary is illustrated before our very eyes.  

Years ago, I was on the Burren (which can be seen from the place of these memorials, beyond the southern shores of Galway Bay).  I was there with a Catholic priest, and dusk was approaching.  The wind was moaning around us.  "Can you hear, Steven," he said, "can you hear the souls of the dead, those that died starving in this land?"  I will never forget that conversation, the notion that the wind carries our sorrows, our lamentations, out to the sea.  

It is not for nothing that the very start of our Scriptures begin with the image of the Spirit hovering above the waters.  It is to that breath of the Author Life, please God, that we shall return.

When Home Is a Nuptial Liturgy

I had been watching this relationship unfold for years: James, a brilliant, talented, thoughtful, God-centered Irishman; and Katherine, equally brilliant and creative, sensitive, deeply committed to the Church.  I'm no Yenta, but back when they met at Newman University Church in Dublin, there was a voice inside my head that said "Surely these two would be an amazing couple, if their paths converged...."

Well.  Yesterday, at the very church where they first met, their individual paths merged and became one, and what an amazing day it was to behold: years of familial ties and friendships remembered and celebrated once more.  Toasts and speeches were made deep into the night.  Colleagues had a chance to compare notes on where life had taken them.  And as the capstone of it all, there took place a breathtaking wedding liturgy, assisted by a choir of fabulously talented voices, including a dear friend (now medical doctor), who was an exceptional Irish fiddle and violin player.

James & Katherine

The church where they met was also my home for years.  When we arrived in 2016 paint was peeling off the walls in footlong swaths; the heating system hadn't worked for more than a year (professional violinists refused to play there in the winter, complaining that the building was too cold for their instruments); the choir gallery hadn't been cleaned in years.  But from the start we knew the old bones of this church would spring back to life once more.

Over the next five years, lighting was improved, surfaces were cleaned, sound systems and video cameras were modernized, and the gallery became a place to store and catalogue precious scores. A much needed library of sacred music began to unfold, one that might befit any cathedral.  

Much more than this, the church had become a beehive of activity, welcoming back wedded couples through the ages, creating a community around prayerful gatherings in the spirit of the Taizé community, and offering both lectures and concerts to inform and inspire Dubliners of all walks of life.

And yesterday, all of it came together to help celebrate the union of two exceptional people.

There is something quite breathtaking when, sitting in the midst of a congregation full of strangers, you become aware of how sacred music washes over every single soul, melding voices and hearts together.  You become cognizant of the power of song as a unifying foundation for communal prayer.  And you see, from your pew, the almost hidden moments of a man or woman, whose name you do not know, wiping tears from their cheeks and eyes, the result of some stony part of their hearts being made sensitive and caring once more.

While we were serving at Newman Church, John Cardinal Newman became Saint John Henry Newman, and we traveled to Rome to celebrate the man who had sacrificed so much of his own life, leaving the land and people he knew, moving from one faith family to another, tasked to build a Catholic University for a people who had been suppressed for three centuries.  I couldn't help but think of how joyful this priest, philosopher, poet, and visionary would've been, seeing what has become of his dream.