Beasley's Ireland Adventure

March 24-28, A Lightning Tour of a Diocese

On Thursday, March 24, Kirk and I left Dublin and traveled to one of the other dioceses in the Church of Ireland.  Bishop Bob had contacted the Bishop of the diocese and asked if I could meet some people there and see some churches.  As it turns out, the Bishop here arranged quite a tour, which was very valuable in helping me understand some of the things that I came here to learn.  He and his family were also very hospitable, even to the point of putting us up in their home.

I started off by joining the monthly meeting of the Diocesan Lay Readers.  These are laypeople who undergo an extensive training in how to lead Morning Prayer in not only their own churches, but also in other churches in the diocese.  This is a relatively common practice here in Ireland, stronger in some dioceses than in others.  For us in Hawai'i, the comparable role is that of Worship Leader, but in Ireland, the training and responsibilities are more demanding.  I was in a meeting with the priest in charge of the group and 15 Lay Readers.  I was impressed by their knowledge and their enthusiasm for their ministry.

Over the next two days, I met with both the Director of Ordinands for the Church of Ireland as a whole and then with the Director of Ordinands for the diocese.  This second position is a role similar to what I do in the Diocese of Hawai'i as the staff liaison to the Commission on Ministry, helping to oversee the ordination process, so I wanted to compare notes.  The process here is a little different, but has a number of similarities also.  I was also able to meet with a curate (a newly ordained assistant priest) in one of the churches.

Through all of these visits, we were traveling around the diocese and seeing some interesting sights.  We had not planned to rent (or "hire", as they say here) a car on our travels, but changed our plans in order to take advantage of this opoprtunity-- and also because there are some places that are extremely difficult to get to without a car.  We rented the car in Dublin, and then had the exciting task of driving out of the city on the left-hand side of the road.  Fortunately, the road out of town was near the car rental office.

We divided tasks so that I was the driver and Kirk was the navigator.  I eventually became more or less used to driving on the left.  When I lived here before, I didn't drive, but having cars being on the "wrong side of the road" is something I am used to at some level of my being.  It still is a little hair-raising to drive on the left, however.  In addition, virtually all cars in Ireland are stickshift, so I was becoming reacquainted with driving a manual transmission-- but shifting with my left hand!  The hardest part of the driving, however, is that many of the country roads are very narrow and are bordered by stone walls right up against the road.  Fortunately, traffic on the country roads is usually light-- at least what we encountered.  I've attached a picture of me on the driver's side of the car of our Renault Megane.

The last day of this diocesan visit, on Sunday, Kirk and I followed the Bishop as he drove to a far corner of his diocese (this is a Bishop with a large diocese) for a Sunday visitation.  This was an exciting drive, through an early-morning fog, on narrow country roads, which the Bishop knew quite well and of course I did not.  It was made easier by being able to follow him.  We went first to a small country church where he conducted the service.  Next he went on to another church, and we followed the Rector into the main town for the service there, where I was the preacher.  This particular priest is in charge of nine different congregations, and the Bishop was visiting three of them that day.

So over the course of the four days, I was able to drive through a good portion of this diocese and meet with people with significant roles in its life.  Several things struck me:

The buildings: They are beautiful and impressive.  However, they are also massive and hundreds of years old.  If we in Hawai'i think we have problems maintaining buildings, we have nothing like what I saw here.  I'll attach a photo of one of the Cathedrals of the diocese (this bishop has six Cathedrals!).  I also attach a photo of the "Bishop's Chair" in this particular Cathedral.  Remember that a church is a cathedral because it is the "Bishop's seat"; this is quite a seat!

The priests whom we met were faithful and sincere.  They loved their people.  They struck me as very good parish priests.  I also noted the meshing of personal and professional lives that takes place here.  Clergy in Ireland (and England) are given a house to live in.  I was told that some priests (at least the curates) in Dublin might just get an apartment, but all the houses I saw were large--and often old, like the churches.  Clergy typically have their office in their house and meet with people there also.  I think that is a model that we used to have in Hawai'i, but not so much anymore.  I am still pondering what implications it has, if any, for parish ministry.

In summary, it was a very good and educational weekend.  I have lots of material on which to ruminate as I venture on to the rest of my sabbatical!

March 22, 2011

St. Patrick’s Day has now come and gone. Kirk and I spent it in a rather unusual way: we went to the Eucharist service held here at the Theological Institute in the morning, and then we relaxed for the rest of the day. We decided to skip the parade in downtown Dublin. As Kirk says, we’ve seen parades (I remember watching a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Waikiki). But really, it was the 500,000 people forecast to be in downtown Dublin that made us stay away.

Plus, I have different memories of St. Patrick’s Day from when I lived here in Ireland 30 years ago — memories that make the day an excuse to get plastered drunk seem to me a little odd. Back then, the day really was treated as a holy day. I remember seeing the parade then, and going to a pub, but we also went to church, and the pubs closed early. This is how I have regarded St. Patrick’s Day ever since. Kirk and I had a true Sabbath day, and it was delightful.

This past Sunday, we went to the service at Christ Church Cathedral, a beautiful church in what was originally the center of Dublin hundreds of years ago (the center has since moved east). One of the instructors at the Theological Institute is a Canon of the Cathedral and was preaching that day. He invited me to vest and sit up front; once I was there, I was also invited to read the Epistle. All of those participating in the worship, and the members afterward at the coffee hour (which was held in the crypt), were very welcoming. We experienced the Irish version of aloha.

The worship was also powerful. One tradition in the liturgy here is to observe “The Great Silence”: a period of silence once everyone has received Communion and before the Post-Communion Prayer. I have witnessed it several times since being here. At Christ Church Cathedral, the presence of the Holy Spirit during the Great Silence was palpable.

Today, as Kirk and I sat eating lunch in a restaurant in downtown Dublin, we were talking about how cosmopolitan Dublin is.  Here we were, in a restaurant named Pygmalion, after a Greek myth and the name of a play by George Bernard Shaw, an Irish author. Kirk had ordered a sandwich called “The Dagwood,” obviously named after an American comic strip character. On the dessert menu was key lime pie, a dish supposedly unique to Florida. One waitress was Korean, and a waiter was probably from Eastern Europe. We have seen many service workers from Eastern Europe.

At the same time, the Irish language is ever-present. Thirty years ago I saw that street signs were in Irish as well as English, and my friends told me of having to learn Irish in school. I don’t remember whether what I see now was true then: every sign is in both Irish and English. On the tram that we take from where we’re staying into Dublin, a voice announces the next stop in both languages. As an example, I’m attaching a photo of a sign we saw at Trinity College, a famous Anglican university in Dublin. It’s simply a sign for a café at the university, but you can see it’s in both languages. (One thing about the Irish language: letters are not necessarily pronounced as they are in English. I’ve been attempting to learn some of the language, and it is tough.)

We took a tour of Trinity College. There are many things to see, including the famous Book of Kells, a book of the Gospels, beautifully illustrated, from about 1,200 years ago. I attach a picture that shows the juxtaposition of old and new: one of the many old buildings, with a rather modern sculpture.

On another Irish subject, the weather has been stunningly beautiful: no rain, blue skies, sometimes not a cloud in the sky. Several people have asked if we brought the weather with us.

I’m also attaching several pictures from here at the Theological Institute. One shows the building itself, which is 200–250 years old. The other shows the view from our window toward the Wicklow Mountains in the south. The houses in the foreground aren’t as close as they appear, but we can still see the fields on the mountains as they appear here.
   
On Thursday, we leave here and head off on the next part of our adventure: to visit with some churches in a diocese south of here.

More later!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

First, let me say that Kirk and I give thanks that Hawai‘i emerged relatively unscathed by the recent tsunami. We were praying and keeping tabs on the news last Friday, and I called the office to see how things were once I thought people might be there. We have also been watching with horror and sadness the images from Japan on the news here; it is receiving constant coverage.

We have been in Dublin for almost a week, after a one-day trip to Canterbury Cathedral in England. We observed Ash Wednesday there, attending a service, with Eucharist and imposition of ashes. The words “You are dust and to dust you shall return” rang particularly true to my ears when hearing them in a chapel in the crypt of a 1,000-or-so-year-old Cathedral. To top it off, the ashes were cold on my forehead, simply because of the ambient temperature!

We then took a guided tour, which we had all to ourselves, since no one else showed up for it. It was quite educational. We spent the night in the Canterbury Cathedral Lodge on the grounds. In the picture, you can see the Lodge in the foreground, and the Cathedral in the background. That’s only about half of the Cathedral. It is enormous.

We then made our way to Dublin, where we are staying at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute (CITI). The Church of Ireland is our Anglican counterpart here. It differs from the political structures in that it covers the whole of Ireland, north and south. The Theological Institute is the place that trains people for ordination, in conjunction with Trinity College, a famous university in Dublin. Here at the Institute are classrooms and living quarters. Full-time students are here Monday through Thursday; they then go home or to their church placements over the weekends.

This past weekend we met the part-time students preparing for the priesthood. They have family and/or work commitments that keep them from being able to study full-time, so they are here one weekend each month during the academic year. I sat in on some classes, worshipped with them, and talked with some of the instructors.

Kirk and I have also been taking trips into the center of Dublin. To get there, we walk about 15 minutes to a light-rail stop, and from there it’s about a 10-minute ride on a very nice tram. The bus stop is nearer, but the bus takes about an hour. We went in on Sunday afternoon after the weekend events at CITI were finished. We discovered that Grafton Street, one of the main shopping streets in Dublin, is packed on a Sunday afternoon, especially when the weather is pleasant. I also saw that one of the traditions I remember from living in Dublin 30 years ago is alive and well. That is the tradition of having buskers: people who play music or perform on the street, for whatever change people toss to them. I’m sending a picture of one of the more amusing buskers we saw: a small older man who was dancing to recorded music. He looked like the descendent of a leprechaun, the Irish version of menehune.

Dublin is preparing for St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. It is a major national holiday, and the city will likely be thronged with tourists. Yesterday when we were in town we saw one of the booths that I suspect is being set up for the occasion. I didn’t notice when I took the attached picture that the young woman standing by the booth has on a grass skirt!

Yesterday we also went to the Chester Beatty Library. Chester Beatty was a man who collected ancient manuscripts, among other things. In the collection are some of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament ever found, from about the year 200. They were quite impressive to see.

And I can’t go without mentioning the weather. The weather can be a major topic of conversation here because it’s always changing. We are fortunate to have arrived just as winter is giving way to spring. Flowers and trees are blooming and everything is lovely. On Sunday when we went into Dublin, the sky was blue (not much in the way of clouds), and the air was cool but not cold. On the way back, as we walked from the tram, suddenly the wind picked up and we had a three-minute hailstorm! And then it stopped. Such is the weather in Ireland!

Monday, March 7, 2011

Three days, ten time zones, and about 9,000 airline miles later, Kirk and I arrived in England at 10:00pm Thursday evening. We had flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles, then to Washington DC, then to London. Heathrow Airport, the busiest airport in the world, was the emptiest either of us had ever seen it, and our flight had been only about one-third full to begin with, so the steps required when arriving in a foreign country — immigration and customs — went relatively quickly. After a ride down the M25, the English version of H-1, which ran through an extended industrial corridor, we arrived in the town of Maidstone, where we gave thanks for arriving safely in England. We also gave thanks that we didn’t have to get up early the next morning and get on a plane, as we had done for the previous three days.

Instead, the next day we were collected by a friend of Kirk’s who happens to live in Maidstone and were driven around the countryside of Kent, through villages with 500-year-old houses, down to the sea. One can tell the truly old houses from the modern ones built to look like them by whether they lean or not. The old houses have walls at very interesting angles to one another.

We had lunch at a seafood restaurant by the sea, and then walked along the beach. It was quite a contrast to walking along the beach in Honolulu or Kaaawa, where we live. The wind was brisk, and instead of sand, the beach was covered with pebbles (we actually walked on a paved boardwalk). The day was hazy, or we would have been able to see France (instead of Moloka‘i) across the Channel. The fish in the restaurant was plaice, cod, and halibut, instead of ahi, opah, and mahimahi.

Since then, we have stayed in the small English village of Wye, where my sister and brother-in-law live.  We visited the town of Rye on Saturday (from Wye to Rye), where we went in a 900-year-old church called St. Mary’s, and I climbed incredibly narrow stairs up through the belfry to the tower.  After that, we walked through sheep-filled fields, past a castle (really a fort) built by Henry VIII.

  

Sunday, March 6, we walked to the Wye parish church, founded in the 13^th century. The baptismal and burial registers go back as far as 1538 and the marriage registers date from 1545. We attended the early service, with worship using the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer. The church in Wye is one of eight churches all combined into a single parish. It has three priests (a curate delivered the sermon), and a few more affiliated priests. We spoke to the local parish priest and to a priest who works as a supervisor of chaplains at the area hospitals.

A hui hou kakou,

Liz+

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Getting ready to go!