The Long Twisting Journey to Iona of the Heart / Danny Boy

Today, here in the United States of America we are celebrating Memorial Day, remembering all those who died in service of our country, in wars foreign and domestic.  It is a sad day, even while we are proud of those men and women.


When I was growing up, we all were marched off to Church by my father on Memorial Day, as if it were a holy day of obligation for us. It was, morally. The rest of the day was celebrated in our Queens, NY neighborhood much as the other civic holidays were, with BBQs in Sunnyside park, baseball games, races, etc., and surrounded by family and friends, many of whom were also vets. Without some reminder, it is too easy to forget the unique meaning of Memorial Day.  



In a way, every surviving vet has suffered a certain kind of death/loss just by having been through and witnessed war and loss so close and personally, living through and watching horror, friends die, and sadly sometimes having to kill as well, etc. I mourn their loss today too--a kind of death of innocence for our young women and men. My cousin Danny returned alive from the Viet Nam war but suffered until the day he died (prematurely) with the horror of the faces of the men he killed personally.  He suffered more from that than from his own physical wounds.  As he put it to me not long before he died, "I was a good Catholic kid like you, with the same Irish grandmother and family life, a kid like you, taught to love people, but I had to kill them..." It was a kind of death in him too.   He called me one night and talked about only wanting to die, because he could not sleep because of the faces of those he killed haunting him.   "Each of those soldiers was somebody's son or grandson, like me..." he cried.  "I killed them up front and personally, or I called in the bombers to kill them by the hundreds.  I just want to tell them how sorry I am."   He asked me if I knew any priest who'd been in Viet Nam--someone he could talk with, someone who was familiar with the ghosts too.  I did.  One of our deacons in Brooklyn rushed to Danny's side.  Another, a bishop I knew in Virginia was on the phone with Danny daily.   They could relate.  Part of Danny died in Viet Nam.  We all knew his ghost here for the years that followed.  No deacon or bishop, not even those in his family closest to him could vanquish those deadly memories.  Danny's heart gave out years before it should have. 


We are an Irish family.  Danny was our own Danny Boy.  I grew up with him, cousins, who like many NYC Irish-American families, were as close as brothers and sisters in the old neighborhoods.  We come from that race that sometimes prides itself on its fierce Celtic warrior ancestors.  That blood runs through our veins, and we don't deny it, although some of us are happier not to be warriors.  Yet, that trait, redefined and refocused, like dogs learning to refocus their prey instinct into guarding or shepherding animals,  is what can help us be brave enough to face the troubles of life, the pain and challenges, the self-centered preoccupations and give us the courage to go beyond ourselves to love, protect, instruct, guide others.  The early Celtic Christians did just this--they took that warrior spirit and did battle against evil within themselves.  It's a great transformation when possible.  It helps us discover that Iona of the Heart...that place of personal resurrection, our center, our Christ, and gives deeper meaning to our lives.


We all watched our Danny try to do this in his own way after Viet Nam.  He tried to refocus.  He was shooting at humans one minute, and being shot at, heard his name called out in the air, grabbed the ladder rope from a helicopter, still shooting as it whisked him away from war, and the next day he was back on Long Island. He tried to refocus as best he could, given that history and exit from war.   He was gifted and highly intelligent.  He tried to overcome his ghosts, and all that haunted him from war, and he was a magnificent cousin and friend.  He just didn't see it in himself.  I trust in that Communion of Saints we cling to as Christians, and that Danny Boy is now at peace with himself and those whose life paths crossed unhappily with his in Viet Nam.


May God grant peace--that peace that passes our understanding to all who have died serving their countries, their neighbors, or total strangers, those who have died either directly in the wars, or from the wounds received in action.   May God give us all the wisdom to put an end to war.  Amen.

Cait

Date of Arrival at Iona of the Heart or The Second Coming

Iona of the Heart!  That holy place in each of us, that "place of resurrection", that solitary place St. Columba's rule tells us to find is our place of transformation, and it is not a one-time event, but continuously calls to us to be renewed, reformed so as to live the life of Love we are called to live.

This rapture thing, so filled with fear rather than the "rapture of love," is getting sadder and sicker as it becomes more evident that so many are going to be hurt.  The "second coming" happens every time a life is transformed by the FIRST coming of Jesus and all He taught!  THAT's the lesson--a mystical lesson about inner transformation of our consciousness, our awareness of our spiritual being choosing in freedom to love--but some would rather focus on taking the words literally than do the work of changing their priorities and values.  It's easier to deal with a Boogieman God than a God of Love Who obliges us to live a life of love!

I've done a lot of joking about this May 21st date.  The "predicted" earthquake, the craziness of millions of dead bodies being raised from their physical graves or wherever they ended up at the bottom of the sea or the bellies of fish, being tossed around (those not glorified) and five months of us all stepping over them waiting for our final destruction on October 21st!   I think it's all nuts, but more seriously, I believe it is such an ignorant deception distracting people of good will (mostly) from the meat of Faith, and encouraging them by fear to depend only upon the milk of Faith to sustain themselves.  Depending upon the milk means we remain as children, thinking as children, reasoning as children.  When we put away childish things we reason as mature beings, and it's far easier to see clearly that it is only by Love that we are "saved."

Depending upon "the milk" means we go no deeper than the words of the story.  We look not to the lesson or the intended meaning (personal transformation from being self-centered animals to loving caring creatures), but remain content with the story that feeds our own agenda, anger, fears, and our need to be in control of others and especially those who differ religiously.  We understand God in our image.

Being fed by "the meat" of Faith (the mystical reality) nourishes us spiritually so that we no longer see reality only as through a mirror dimly, but with the clarity that comes from unselfish love.  Life becomes so much more than a "veil of tears" but a promised land of contemplative union with the Creator...and one another.

We can't stop with the words.  We need to progress on toward the Word, the true meaning.  We can study, we can consider and learn from theologians, we can look to the endless world stories telling about the beginning and end of the world, but unless we go within, meet God there, we learn little of the lessons all are intended to teach us.  When we go within, open our minds and hearts to the living God, we will surely be caught up in the rapture of endless Love, with that God Who IS Love.  The rest of life then flows from that...

The picture here is of the remains of two people discovered under the remains of volcanic ash.  They knew the meaning of eternal love, by the looks of them.  I don't believe God's idea is much different, frankly.  Care for one another to the end!

Enjoy May 21st and give God thanks for knocking at the door your heart each day.

Cait

Treading Water to Iona

There were times in my journey were my conscious desires seemed to be secondary to my basic instinct for survival.  Survival seemed to be foremost, and even overshadow my focus on my ultimate destination, Iona.  A good bit of the journey was spent treading water, particularly when my curragh was capsized by the horrendous monster lurking in the depths around me.

Out of my safe curragh I swam for years, often fending off sharks.  Being a tiny child, I did not yet know how to swim well.  I floated very still and discovered I did not sink.  Then, at sudden moments the monsters that tossed me from the safety of my curragh, and hid my parents and family from me, would pull me under the water, sometimes very deep into the depths of those dark cold places where I could hardly see the sun above the surface of the water.  I could not breathe.  My mind grew confused so that even survival instincts seemed to be drowning like personal friends who until then were faithful to me, always there to defend and save me and keep me afloat or treading water, even if violently at times.

Then something would swim by in the darkness of the deep sea, and I’d feel myself nudged, or at times even slammed into by what seemed to be a creature a thousand times larger and more powerful than the sharks who attacked or the monsters that deliberately tried to frighten me—as if trying to convince me to abandon all hope of being saved, or of ever seeing my beloved family again.

Each nudge or slam from this Giant of the Deep startled me into consciousness so that I again began to fight for my life, even flailing, then deliberately swimming upward back to the surface where I’d catch sight of my family in the curragh or swimming in the water, sometimes worried that they could not see me, sometimes not even aware I had nearly drowned quietly right beside them or with in reach.  Had they only known I could not yet swim well!

This part of the journey went on like this for years with the storms beginning when I was but three years old but gaining such force when I was fifteen that I think part of me actually did die in that sea storm and was consumed by a particularly crafty shark whom I did not see. What gently approached me as a dolphin—those creatures who are known for saving drowning humans—was in fact the most ferocious coy shark of all who, once it had my confidence, proceeded to consume me a piece at a time until it reached my heart and my brain which was taken in one violent bit.

I floated nearly dead beneath the surface slowly sinking toward the floor of the sea.  Vague feelings of remorse, shame and guilt that I had not yet learned to swim or that I’d been so stupid that I could not see the shark disguised as a dolphin.  For ten years I remained under sea with only tides sweeping my nearly dead body toward the distant shore of Iona.  Any thought of arriving long since gone from me.  You may wonder why it was impossible to distinguish this shark disguised as a dolphin.  I wondered that myself for many years.

As it turned out the smaller sharks that attacked in the early years did damage to my ability to see well enough to notice the dolphin costume worn by this killer shark.  There was no way I could prepare myself or protect myself.  It was that simple truth, scars from prior attacks blinded me.

As the years passed my close encounter with the Great Giant Whale became more frequent and each one seemed to leave me feeling stronger in some part of me.  Sometimes my heart—which had been consumed by the dolphin/shark seemed to be beating once again, pumping life through me.  How could that be, it was gone?  Yet gradually as if it were some ghost pain felt in a missing limb, I could feel my heart stir again and each time the fruit of that close encounter was a unique experience of love for this Great Whale, this Gentle Giant who now circled around me everyday and night keeping all sharks and monsters at an extreme distance as if they knew this giant, and had previous experience of its Power.

Quickly this became my Giant Whale—MINE, whom I grew to trust even more than my parents and family still safe in the curragh totally unaware of my years trying to survive the depths of this sea we travelled to Iona.  How far along toward Iona were they, I sometimes wondered.  I sensed my Giant was protecting them in some way, but didn’t know how because it now never left me, even for a minute.

My brain and mind, also attacked by the dolphin/shark, was also healing and I found that I allowed myself to respond when the Giant nudged me, sometimes playing now.   I’d lean into it almost sinking into this Great Creature whose power and size drew me close, comfortably and rocked me to serenity as the buoying effect did its work.

 

Thoughts were returning, no longer as unfocused as I had been, I could give my full attention—at least for short times to the life and beauty that I finally notice in these deep waters.  I remember a line I’d been taught that we need to be born again of water and the Spirit to be saved.  It was happening.  I knew it.  My giant was saving me on so many levels of my being.

Some look to a calm surface on the water and think of peace.  What my giant showed me was that the real peace was actually that discovered in the dark depths with my Giant.  It was the peace no longer affected by surface storms which can toss one overboard from the security of one’s curragh.   Here no storms affected me.  No monsters dared ever again to launch their foolish attacks against the Giant of the Deep for now they had to go through It to get to me.

Once strong again I played more with my Giant Whale and swam with It, or held It and was pulled for what seemed like ages.  I knew we were heading toward Iona.  Up to the surface, breaking through to jump toward the sun it would take me—back down in a happy splash and we’d swim like children together, always toward our destination.  Finally one day I caught sight of Iona rising from that same sea!  I asked my Giant “will I make it?”  The gentle eyes gazed at me and I knew we’d both make it.

Often now I dream—that we are able to somehow swim beneath that sacred place and Giant brings me right up through the center of Iona to place me on a hill from where I get an entirely different view of the deep dark sea.  From where Giant places me I can see the waters reflecting heaven.

I awake from my dream and Giant and I continue to linger around, floating, playing and splashing in the waters encircling Iona.   This is our life together now!

Iona By The Lake

The triangle dinner bell rang out in the air.  Normally used to call the family from the beach into meals, my father stood on the small cement door step ringing it over and over to let people know we were preparing for our Saturday night liturgy—Mass. 

My parents bought a small log cabin with lakefront property in Sussex County, NJ somewhere back in 1966 or  67.  It had been a dream of my father’s to have such a place to take us from the city on weekends, vacations, and perhaps for my parents to use when they retired.  The latter was never to be as my father, himself, was so attached by relationships to the city that the cabin remained a retreat for them as needed or desired.  It was also available for our entire extended family and friends through the years for their enjoyment.  It is still in our family and my nieces and nephews and their children all enjoy it.

After they bought the cabin, my father’s brother also bought one, and then friends from the parish where we lived in Queens, and their friends, and the circle extended  from Sunnyside/Woodside right up to our weekends in Glenwood Lake in NJ.  It was wonderful.  Along with family and friends, our parish priests were included and often came to relax with the families on a day off or for a weekend respite.  We had, I am certain, the greatest parish priests.  I know all the horrors we read about in the Church, and God knows we have learned of far more in our work in Good Tidings, but our priests were priestly priests, as the Irish say, or “priests’ priests.”  It was good  priests like them that made the later recognition of the reality of bad priests so horrifying to us all!  Our priests were part of the community, and truly welcomed among us all.  One in particular, Father Patrick McNelis was beloved by all.

Father Pat came to our parish newly ordained, a baby priest.  The parish taught him how to be a priest—our school of hard knocks, baptizing our young, marrying our lovers, praying with our sick and burying our dead, and walking with us through each event, rather than simply stepping in for a ritual.  When I was 12, after my Confirmation, I approached Father Pat and asked him to be my spiritual director.  I was not sure what that meant, but I’d read that holy people had them, and I wanted to be a saint—so he was selected to help me!  He patiently and graciously agreed, knowing that I was 12 and totally innocent of all I was saying, he remained available to me for the rest of his life…  He was also available to the rest of our parish and was part of our extended community at Glenwood Lake.  Fr Pat would come to the lake and on Saturday evening after our day of swimming, using my parents huge living room, he would offer Mass for us all around the table my parents set for it.  Family and friends, answering the triangle bell calling them for the Eucharistic Supper came, from beaches, from canoes, and homes, and gathered for worship together.  After praying together we shared a common supper and, being Irish, the night went on to dawn as the ceili continued.  Without ever naming who were were, or what we were doing, the Finnegans and Hourigans, and friends gathered in that little Irish house, a cell community and worshiped as our ancestors did for centuries. 

Years later, when we were living in our home in Pennsylvania, my elderly widowed mother finally moved from NYC and lived her old age with us and our daughter.  She read anything she found in our house, which is like library of theological resources.  One morning she walked from her room to the kitchen, leaning on her cane, with a paperback book in her hand.  She’d just finished reading it.  She tossed the book on the table and looked at me with those beautiful blue eyes and stated, “Well, now we have a name for what we’ve always been!”  The book, LIVING BETWEEN WORLDS, by Philip Sheldrake was an introduction and explanation of Celtic Christian spirituality.  She, as I had earlier, recognized ourselves in the book.  We had preserved and had lived by many of the “old ways” without naming it or discussing it as distinctively Celtic.  We simply were who we were, who we always were.  We remain who we are!

Mom

My mother, at the age of 80, stood with me by the sliding door of our dining room, on November 2, 1997, All Souls Day, looking out into the woods where we live.  All Souls Day, continuing the Feast of Samhain, the Feast of the Dead was always a sacred time in our family.  I chose that day deliberately so my ancestors, easily passing through the thin veil, would celebrate with me.   We were preparing to leave for the Church for me to be ordained a Catholic priest by consecrated Old Catholic and Independent Catholic bishops.  She held my hand while looking into the woods, and said, this is the day God has been leading you to all your life.  This is what you’ve been searching for all these years, into the convent and out of it, into community life and out of it, in your ministry with priests and now finally doing what it is that God has wanted all along—becoming a priest.  This is what God wants.  I love you, and am so happy to be part of this in your life.”

Ordained

My mother was a happy, good-natured old woman who grew old gracefully enjoying her life with us.  She easily shared laughter, but was never one for talking emotionally or wasting precious words.  Those words were saved for the moments that were sacred, and I will never, as long as I live forget receiving her blessing that morning, as I stepped beyond the restrictions of the Roman Catholic theology stating that women cannot be priests.  My mother recognized my priesthood.  My mother blessed my priesthood, even as she had dedicated my life to Mary the Mother of God at my baptism, and deliberately named me after our patroness, Catherine of Siena, raising me to be a strong woman in her like.  A couple of hours after that, she walked with me to the altar, faced the three bishops at my ordination and presented me to be ordained a Catholic priest in the

Celtic Christian Church.  We had found our Celtic home.  We never rejected Rome and all the beauty it preserved for us.  We simply re-embraced our Celtic heritage, our Celtic expression of that treasure which is our Faith.  On her deathbed she blessed my husband Joe telling him that he was “a good husband, a good father, a good son-in-law, a good priest, and a good bishop!”  On her deathbed she asked me to say her funeral Mass.  This old Irish-American woman, daughter of immigrants who themselves had been profoundly affected by their ethnic and spiritual history in Ireland, had preserved and passed to me my greatest heritage.  Her legacy to me was love.

I was not able to celebrate her funeral as a priest.  I was so struck with grief when she passed that I hardly remember the entire event beyond her actual death, a beautiful and peaceful death in our living room as she gazed upon the twinkling lights of our Christmas tree.  I also knew that if I had done so, many in my extended family would have been confused and felt guilt-ridden to receive Communion because most were still practicing Roman Catholics.  Charity demanded I allow them their Faith expression at such a time.  Nothing diminished my own.

Looking back, knowing Church history, and my ethnic history as I do, and knowing my family history, I recognize that our cell community, both at home in our apartment in Queens NY, and in our little log cabin on Lake Glenwood, was truly our preservation of our Celtic center of Faith, our Iona located by the little lake in Northern New Jersey.