Happy New Year from Dublin, friends! I'm excited about celebrating the new year in a foreign country. This week has been a week of firsts for me: first international flight, first stamp in my Passport, first time in an official pub, and now my first New Year's Eve party. While I'm not really into parties (and by "not really" I mean I'm worse than Mr. Darcy at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice), I'm looking forward to getting to people watch. Besides, when in Dublin...right? Right. But enough about our plans for tonight (which involves a ticketed party at a place called Fitzsimmons). Today we toured Newgrange and the Hills of Tara, and I finally got my first glimpse at the Irish countryside. Just in case you were wondering, if I wasn't with a group, I probably wouldn't have left.
Our first destination this morning was breakfast before we got on the tour bus that would take us to Tara and Newgrange. Kristen, Sam, Luke, and I stopped in at Trinity Bar (which advertised the liturgical symbol for the trinity everywhere) for a traditional Irish breakfast, which was huge and delicious. I'm not a huge fan of breakfast food (and by "not a huge fan" I mean I eat Greek yogurt), but this was literally the best breakfast that I've ever had. I even got a half portion and couldn't finish it. The breakfast consisted of bacon (which was the texture of bacon but tasted more like Canadian bacon), a sausage link that wasn't greasy yet still had amazing flavor, a perfectly poached egg, black and white pudding (which was like a combination of a spicy hash brown and a fried bread pudding... it tastes better than it sounds), toast, and coffee. Every other breakfast food is now disgusting in comparison.
After the amazing breakfast (sorry for the rant about how much I love breakfast here), we joined a day tour that took us first to the Hills of Tara and then to Newgrange. If you ever get the chance to go to Ireland, these are must-see places, simply for their aesthetic beauty. The Hills of Tara are basically large barrows and tombs that are 2,000(+) years old. It is on this site as well that many a medieval king was crowned. Ironically, Margaret Mitchell named Scarlett O'Hara's home in Gone with the Wind after this location. There is a stone at the top of one of the hills called the Stone of Destiny (basically it's a five foot tall phallic symbol) where medieval princes became kings. The legend goes that if you presented the prince to the stone and the stone screamed, he was destined to be a king. If the stone didn't scream, then you'd made the wrong choice, and you would have to cut off an appendage of said prince (toe, leg, arm, pinkie finger, head... totally your call). Situated adjacent to the Hills of Tara is a beautiful empty Anglican Church that is receiving extensive repairs.
My favorite part about The Hills of Tara (and also Newgrange) was the view of the parishes from the top of the hills. Like looking out of a plane window when it's flying over land, you can see the patchwork makeup of the countryside--the different greens and browns, the hedgerows, the tops of houses, a cow or a sheep here and there--for miles, and once again you are overwhelmed, not only with God's grandeur but the expanse of God's creation. Windell Berry says, "I come into the peace of wild things…. /…For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” This is how I felt when I was looking at the view from The Hills of Tara. In our textbook, Thomas Cahill ties this feeling of the immensity of nature to the Irish tradition when he says, "In this tradition, there is a trust in the objects of sensory perception, which are seen as signposts from God. But there is also a sensuous reveling in the splendors of the created world..." I understand this now.
After we left the Hills of Tara we went to Newgrange where we had lunch in the visitors' center before taking a bus over to the actual site. My initial impression of Newgrange was a Neolithic Hobbit hole, but it's a little different than that. Not only was Newgrange a shelter for the people of the Stone Age, but it was also a burial site and a place of worship (or so historians speculate). Made completely out of stone, some weighing over five tons, this structure was built by hand over 5,000 years ago. The implications of this are immense. Not only is it astonishing that the people who built Newgrange would spend so much time and energy collecting large rocks and stones from miles away, but it is also incredible to think that this cave has been in existence for 5,000 years. Just to give you further context, that's before the pyramids were built. Understanding this, I think it's interesting (and really, allegorical) that no matter what has happened in the last 5,000 years, Newgrange still stands. The constancy of this building is not unlike the constancy of God's love for us, and while that love is not always tangible, it manifests itself in unique and surprising ways like at Newgrange. Another spiritual connection to Newgrange is the spiral drawings carved on the inside and the outside of the building. While no one knows what these spiral images mean, the three connected spirals are said to represent birth, life, and death, making it similar to the trinity.
Jordan.
With the new year around the corner, I am constantly reminded of God's blessings to me this year. Newgrange and the Hills of Tara were just two of many reminders that God's love is unfailing and that God's grace abounds. Like Emerson, I truly believe that one does not have to be in a church to feel the Holy Spirit or to see God at work in the world, and at the cusp of the new year, I am reminded of this once again.
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