Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This may surprise you, especially if you live in Boston or Chicago, but it's not as easy to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Northern Ireland as you may think it would be. Like so many other things here, whether you celebrate it or have the day off of work or school has religious/political overtones. It is seen as a mostly Catholic Nationalist holiday, and schools and businesses have the choice to remain open or not. Coleraine, being a Plantation town, is still primarily Protestant, and there were no city-wide, city-sponsored events, although some community organizations and schools had programs.

I had thought of going to [London]Derry (another religious/political distinction), which has a much larger Catholic population and a big outdoor festival with music and a parade – but I got a late start because it was rainy this morning, only to learn that the buses and trains were on holiday schedules, which ended up making it unfeasible for me to get there in time for the festivities.

So instead I went to Portstewart, wandered the cold and windy Promenade, and sat in on the last hour of a community music and dance concert at the town hall, which was filled with families and little noisy kids running around. That was followed by some coffee and a chocolate-filled croissant in a cafe on the Promenade, reading my book, and walking along the shore a bit more. By this time, the sky had cleared, the sun had come out, and the evening was calm and beautiful, and I got to watch the sun set over the water. At 6:15 I hopped on the bus to Portrush, wandered the [very quiet] streets a bit, and then headed back to Coleraine and Kilcranny.

I bought some Guinness on the way home to share with Mike, since he'd decided not to go out, and we celebrated in style with our cans of Guinness and some freshly baked Irish soda bread...because if you're going to be in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, you have to do something Irish!

Tomorrow - planting potatoes? That seems to be the farmers' Paddy's Day tradition!

flight

i watch the birds – crows and gulls, mostly, but also that striking black and white one whose name i do not know – i watch them in the air on these windy days; how the gusts and gales push them about faster, slower, up, down, sideways, even backwards, wreaking havoc on their usually graceful flight. i imagine what it might feel like, this experience of surrendering to the powerful, unpredictable wind.

Do they find it frustrating because it only serves to make their hunt for food more difficult? Or do they choose to take wing just for the fun of it? Do they fly only because they have to, or also because they want to?

Do birds feel joy?

Flying on a day like this seems like it would be so much more exciting than on a calm day...more exhilarating, requiring more skill and awareness. It's hard to believe they do it purely out of necessity, because they make such graceful patterns in the sky, rarely seeming to have a destination. Do they know that they are beautiful?

seeing them soar always makes me wish i could fly, but instead i just watch and imagine...can i live my earth-bound life with the same kind of grace, joy, and dependency on god's wind-spirit? time to practice being a bird...

happy international women's day!

in honor of international women's day, I thought I would share this reflection that I wrote last week:

I just watched “Stardust” - a whimsical, funny, sweet, fairy-tale. (Robert deNiro's gay pirate captain was the best character of the movie, but that's not what prompted me to write this...)

The self-proclaimed theme of the movie is that it's the story of how a young man grew up from a boy into a man. That's all fine and good, but later on I got to thinking...

I'm a young woman, and I'm at the stage of my life right now where I'm trying to grow up from a girl into a woman. The movie inspired that line of thought, but that's where it ended – I couldn't follow it any further, because unlike the premise of the movie, I'm not trying to become a man...

So where are the movies about young women growing up, and if they exist, what do they look like? Because they certainly don't look anything like this one or the other hundreds of coming-of-age movies about boys learning how to be men, finding themselves, becoming chivalrous and honorable... And Hollywood can make romantic comedies out of these stories. But how does the story change if the main character is female? It doesn't work to just switch the roles. If anything, the movies that do exist about women facing reality and growing up are generally not presented as comedies or fun, inspiring tales. Usually they're serious, if not depressing.

Any thoughts or movie recommendations?

on finding, settling, sorting, and being happy

i have been in northern ireland for exactly one month, so i figure it's about time for a progress report from me... i will frame it with four questions that have been echoing in my ears these past four weeks.

(*pronunciation guide: how = a mix between who/hue/hie; to = tie/toy; you = yu/yi)

"how are you findin' things?"

As Mike likes to quip, "we just look, and there they are." (however, it's difficult to find tofu, molasses, caraway, or cornmeal...)

It's a good way to avoid answering the question when you have a less than glowing review, and I think both he and I found things a little less...favourable than we anticipated. That is to say, when the reality of what our lives and work would be like here sunk in, it was rather disenchanting - which simply means, not as enchanting as the description looks in print or in the expectations you've build up in your head. It's just, well, kind of normal...a very small, somewhat disorganized, financially strained non-profit organization in a period of transition, with all the blessings and curses that that brings...

To give an example: I wasn't aware until I arrived that the whole accommodation block - which is where we host groups for residential reconciliation programs - was out of commission, having been flooded due to burst pipes in December - and will be until late April, which means no residential groups until then.

"how are you settlin'?"

you don't settle in here, you just settle. It's a slow process. Especially when Mike and I are pretty much left completely to our own devices as far as figuring out how to work and live together and be a community (or not) is concerned. and that's made even more challenging by the fact that we both have very similar quiet, introverted personalities. but after four weeks, we're beginning to settle into the schedule, the expectations, our roles, our surroundings. i've been enjoying exploring the local vicinity from Castlerock to Coleraine to Portstewart, getting a feel for my geographic place on this planet and a bit of a taste for the local culture.
Northern Ireland being a "first-world" English-speaking country, I haven't experienced too much in the way of culture shock, so the adjustment has been much faster and easier than, say, if I'd gone to...well, almost anywhere else that doesn't speak English. Of course, it also makes me very aware of the few things that are quite different, because they stand out more (like the vocabulary or the almost tabloidesque newspapers, or the funny-looking street signs, or the lack of a farmer's/local food market...).

"we'll need to get yous guys sorted"

and you don't get sorted out, just sorted. Sorted for food money, background checks, and trainings (and laundry, banking, health care, driving lessons and a car, tv antenna, keys...none of which are sorted yet). The washing machine is broken, the tv guy hasn't shown up yet, the car has been fixed but can't be picked up for inspection yet because the repair shop wants to get paid first and Kilcranny doesn't have the money to pay for it until a few more checks come through...

we've gone through a child protection training course, a 1st aid course, and a food safety & hygiene course, so we're all sorted for those, although they're not very useful yet, since we don't really have groups coming in...

"are you happy enough with that?"

(this was the question continually posed to us by our 1st aid trainer and our food safety instructor. you just showed me a picture of a laceration and i'm supposed to be happy? now i'm responsible for making sure myself and others follow a bunch of procedures that i think are ridiculous or unnecessary, and you're asking if i'm happy?)

i am. i am happy enough. i am happy enough for now.

it's a matter of finding a way to take things as they come, let them be what they are, and figure out how to create happiness within that framework, rather than dwelling on how things are not and wishing the circumstances were different. and so i will make do with what i've been given, take what life has presented me with, and make the most of it. be independent, make my own decisions, make friends, ask questions, do my best, give thanks for the blessings, pray, and laugh as much as possible.