A Farewell to Ireland

When I arrived here at the beginning of September, it was very much still summer. Now, some three weeks later, it is most definitely autumn. It’s not just that the temperature is falling, which it has, especially at night, but the quality of the light has changed. At times, there is a clarity now that was not present before. I feel like every day, I see hills, which I had not seen before. We are so much farther north here. We are essentially on the same latitude as Newfoundland, Canada. The colors have changed, too. Not as dramatically as in the Northeast, but it is noticeable. When I arrived, everything was a different shade of green, now there is much more yellow and brown. I will intersperse this posting with photos of autumn here at Glenstal.

Crabapples in the
Abbey garden

So tomorrow, I will leave Glenstal and head for the airport in Dublin, my last stop in Ireland. I’ll spend the night at an airport hotel so that I can catch an early (6:20 am) flight to Rome. While I am excited about returning to Italy, I am more wistful than I thought about leaving here. It is not that I

have done so much, but maybe that’s just the point. I did schedule the three weeks here at Glenstal intentionally. I knew that I needed to decompress and slow down after all the frenetic activity that preceded this time. Initially, it was hard. I was bored out of my mind by the lack of activity, but slowly I adapted to the rhythm.

The "back lane"

Then my days began to take on a pattern. I’d sleep until I awoke naturally, usually around 8:00 am. I would pray Morning Prayer in my room. Then I’d  go downstairs for breakfast. After breakfast, I would check email, though the time difference had a huge impact. Because we were 5 hours ahead of the East Coast, there was not usually anything significant in my inbox. I’d check a few news sites and make sure the world was still there. Then I would go for a walk (weather permitting). I started out doing the easy 2 mile walk down the abbey’s “back lane”. Gradually I began to lengthen that by walking on the streets. Eventually I got up to over a 3 mile loop that I did regularly. Upon returning, I’d do my stretching exercises and take a shower. At this point, it was time for Mass at 12:10 followed by the main meal of the day. 

Afternoons were often the more difficult part of the day. By the time I returned to my room after lunch, the East Coast had begun to wake up. That’s when the emails would begin. Most I could just delete, but occasionally there were actually messages from people I wanted to hear from. There were

The upper garden at Glenstal

also many plans that still needed to be worked out for the Italy trip, so I would work on that. I often spent time pursuing my genealogical research. That generally meant reviewing the dozens of “hints’ from Ancestry.com that would appear on my homepage. I never did much “searching” myself. In the case of our family, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. If conditions were conducive (and they often were), I might take a nap. At other times, I just might go outside again for a while, often to the abbey garden. Then, before I knew it, it was time for Vespers.

Vespers were my favorite moment of the day. Here at Glenstal, they still use the traditional monastic office in Latin. This was not a problem for me, because I knew it from my many years at Sant’Anselmo in Rome. I loved allowing the beautiful melodies and sonorous words just wash over me. In those twenty minutes, all the stress or cares of the day would just seem to dissipate. 

An interval between Vespers and supper provided time do some spiritual reading. Then it was on to supper, which, I have to say, became my least favorite part of the day. The monks here have some arcane method for determining who sits where at supper. As a guest, the secret was never fully revealed to me, so I was never quite sure whether I was in the right place. Additionally, the evening meal is taken in silence and is accompanied by reading. As a result, the monks eat very quickly and I always felt that I was the last one finished. The only bright spot was the book they were reading. It was a biography of Benjamin Franklin and it was quite interesting. I had to                                                       come to Ireland to learn about U.S. history.

On the way to supper

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I regularly joined a group of monks for Scrabble after supper. That was always an enjoyable experience. I loved the banter and the good repartee, not to mention the game itself. We rarely finished a game, because the bell would ring for Compline. In this regard, “saved by the bell” was not just a figure of speech. I did not join the monks for compline, but generally went back to my room. I used this time of day to work on the blog. This also helped deal with the absence of TV! Most nights I would quit around 10:30. A few nights however, it was closer to 11:30. By that time, it was usually pretty chilly in the room, so it was great to crawl under the duvet, read a few pages of a book and then turn out the light.

Like the gentle hills and gentle rain, I have had a gentle time here in Ireland. The days have been soft and easy, with time for prayer and rest. It has been a most restorative three weeks and I will always be grateful to the monks for opening up their home to me.