On our first day back in Ireland we took Abby’s family to Dublin airport to fly to Spain on their holidays.
On our way back to Belfast we decided to stop off at Monasterboice, one of the cradle sites of the early Celtic church. We had driven past it many times on that route, but had never stopped to visit.
Our interest was heightened by the story told by our friend Jack, an Episcopal priest from Colorado I had first met at the launch of the order of St. Aidan and St.Hilda in England just prior to our moving to the US.
Jack had returned to the British Isles a few years later to do a pilgrimage taking in various cradle sites. He later reported to me that this had proven to be a real disappointment……up until the last moment on his last stop, that is, at Monasterboice.
It was a dull wet Irish day. A bus load of German tourists irritatingly disturbed the peace of the place. About to get back into his car, he turned around gloomily to take one last look……. and that was when he had the vision!…..
He saw the Celtic monks rise up out of the earth. Their chains were falling off as they lifted their hands in triumphant praise to heaven!
I had mailed a copy of our newly pressed ‘O Ireland’ CD to Jack’s home in Colorado. It was a few days later he contacted me.
‘That is what I saw!’ He said excitedly. ‘What you described in ‘The Giant’s Song!’ That was the open vision I had at Monasterboice!’
The second reason we felt drawn to Monasterboice on our way home from the airport was our friend Maurice’s comment when we’d mentioned it a while back. ‘Best steak I ever had was at The Monasterboice Inn.’ He’d said.
Hilary was getting quite peckish, so even though evening was closing in we decided to do the Inn first.
(We were seated at table 24 a number that Johnny Enlow deals with at some length on Unfiltered# 76 in the wake of Novak Djokovic equaling Margaret Court’s record 24 grand slam wins. 24 A and B also happened to be the seats we had been allocated on the transatlantic flight.)
There was an error in the Inn’s processing of our payment. Of course nothing is ‘an error’ so I saw another wink from heaven, that we were on track, when the new sum was double grace – 55 euros.
We settled up and then set off for the Abbey. By this time daylight was nearly gone, however undeterred, just a couple of miles away, we found the abbey ruins, it’s crosses and round tower, now silhouetted against the night sky.
As we droped down into our spirits, once again the chorus rose up that we have adapted and sung dozens of times at many appointed times and places across the globe.
‘Arise and shine O mighty one
Arise and shine your sleep is done
Arise and shine your light has come.
Your light is Christ
Ireland’s true Son.’
As we made our way back to the car I noticed these candles lit on a relatively new grave ………in the hope of that resurrection moment Jack had a foretaste of in this graveyard years before when the chains of our final captivity to death will be broken!
It was during the night Father made the Abbey-Inn connection for me.
In ordering our meal at the Inn we had enquired, ‘Do you cook with seed oil or beef oil?’
‘Let me check.’ the waiter said and returned a few minutes later with the answer, ‘Everything is cooked in seed oil.’
We skipped the steak and ordered a grilled burger. It wasn’t the best we’d ever had, but it was pretty good. The food however had not been the focus of my attention, but the other people in the restaurant.
They were typical Irish folk, friendly and kind as ever, but the scripture that came to mind was when Jesus looked out over the crowd and described them as ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ Thinking back to the restaurant scene I felt that compassion of Jesus for these ‘ordinary people’.
The SID (standard Irish diet)like the SAD (standard American diet) had taken its toll. The girls across from us just looked unwell. The man next to us got up to don his coat. ‘They tell us we can’t afford to heat the place now.’
The next day a good friend from Belfast sent me a recent video of eminent cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough addressing the EU parliament. It was a clear fact based’ presentation highlighting the catastrophic leadership failure of the last years, particularly in regard to the disastrous vaccine role out. My friend had like most everyone here, taken the jab. The shocking excess sickness and deaths in the counties that participated in the program must now be attributed to the shots until proved otherwise, McCullough asserted. Ireland has been one of those hardest hit.
Nobel prize winner John Clauson is one of the 1600 scientists recently challenging the false ‘man made climate crisis’ narrative holding the world to ransom, and having Pat put on his coat again.
Ireland’s own Ivor Cummins is a leading voice seeking to put the record straight regarding the false mainstream ‘cholesterol’ narrative, while Mary and her friends eat their way to obesity, diabetes and early death on a seed oil diet.
The censoring and shaming of truth seekers such as these (and honorary mention of Neil Oliver🙂) must be one of the greatest evils abroad.
They are a few examples of the many brave souls who have in recent years chosen to speak out fearlessly….. on behalf of ‘the sheep’
They are rising up, not as their Abbey forbearers dressed in monk’s attire living the life of a ‘Religious’, remote from the world. Rather on the seven mountains of society they are echoing the voice of ‘the good shepherd’ in their quest for truth, in love for His sheep
Next. Following ‘the good shepherd’ to Donegal.