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.