Ireland – unabashedly female

December 10, 2010February 21, 2012

Wiser and Softer

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. ~ Rumi

Reverb10 Day 10 Prompt:
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

My wisest decision this year was to travel to Ireland. My decision to go was based solely on intuition and trust. I trusted something felt, something unseen. Something deep inside called me there.

Jeff wanted to go to Maui. We’d had a very foggy summer and he was ready for warm sun and water. I went there last year and loved it. And, even though the moist land of Hana called to me, Ireland called to me in way I couldn’t analyze or understand. I just knew I had to go, and Jeff willingly agreed.

We saw much of the Republic of Ireland during the two weeks we were there. The land was enchanting. The people were some of the friendliest I have ever encountered in my travels. We saw many sites of the Sacred Feminine and soaked up the Land of the Goddess.

There, in this lush, wild land, the earth welcomed me home.

It is wise land. It felt as if it held a wisdom ripened over thousands of years. It affected me in countless ways – some seen and obvious, and some unseen and mystical.

The land of the Goddess seeped into my cells. That’s the only way I can describe it. Even now, months later, sitting in my home in California, I can feel her in me: the peat of Connemara, the rockiness of the Burren, and the wild heather of Glendalough.

Ireland was a great teacher. She polished my heart and taught me to trust in that which can’t be seen. She taught me to trust in that which is felt and known, yet can’t be explained in any logical way. She taught me to know that her wildness is my wildness, her beauty is my beauty, her sensuality is my sensuality.

I became wiser and softer in her care.

September 18, 2010September 18, 2010

Magic, Music and a Woman’s Heart

The two weeks I spent in Ireland were magical. It’s a magical land.

This picture was taken on the beach of Strandhill, a small area near the city of Sligo, and very close to Queen Medb’s (Maeve) cairn (tomb) on the top of Knocknarea Mountain. Maeve was the warrior Queen of Connacht in Celtic mythology.

On Knocknarea, at the foot of Medb's Cairn

We climbed to the top of the mountain to see the cairn. The feeling at the top at the foot of this tomb is ancient, powerful and quite mystical.

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One of the things I most enjoyed was hearing live traditional Irish music. My paternal grandfather, Thomas McDonnell Sr. was Irish-American. His two grandfathers came from Ireland in the mid-1860’s. One, Bryan McDonnell, embarked from Dublin and the other, Timothy Driscoll, from Cobh.

My grandfather and grandmother raised a musical family. I remember one time we visited them when I was very young. My father’s brothers and sister were there, too, and the whole family came together to sing and play a variety of instruments: guitar, ukelele, banjo, piano. I loved it. It’s one of my strongest and fondest memories of that side of my family.

So when I was in Ireland, I was particularly taken with the live traditional music in places like Dublin, Dingle, Cobh and Glendalouch. In Dingle, we just happened into a pub on a Sunday afternoon as this group of musicians were playing the kind of music I hoped I would hear in Ireland. Listening to this music brought back the wonderful memories of my father’s family, the ‘Irish side’.

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The next day, we ducked into a Dingle music shop to find some good Irish music to take home with us. We found the most recent CD by Lumiere, a musical group consisting of two women, Pauline Scanlon and Eilis Kennedy. One song in particular, Fair and Tender Ladies, is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Lo and behold, that night Pauline Scanlon was performing in a Dingle pub. We were lucky to sit and listen to her ethereal voice just fifteen feet away from her.

When I returned home, I found this video of Pauline and Eilis singing Fair and Tender Ladies. Please stop, become still, drop into your heart and listen with your whole being.

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I love hearing these two women harmonize and sing of women taking care of their hearts.

The inner realm of a woman’s heart is sacred and wise. I have come to know just how tender and vulnerable this woman’s heart is. I know the pain of trampling through this heart, allowing the dictates of the mind to override the heart’s needs.

During my time in Ireland, over and over again, my heart opened to the beauty, magic and music of this place. Something woke up in my cells. Something ancient. Something earthly. Something I’ve known, yet pushed away. Over time, this new awareness is deepening within. When the time is right, I’ll share what I can put into words, here with you.

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And, you?

What might it take to sit down with your heart, to hear what it’s needing, to tenderly begin to inquire?

September 7, 2010

Voluptuous and Delicious

â€œGod is voluptuous and delicious.” Meister Eckhart

On my recent trip to Ireland, this understanding became more and more clear…that God is indeed voluptuous, delicious, fertile, fecund, and oh so full.

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The beauty of Connemara brought me to tears. The skies are wide open. The colors of the land entranced me. The sheer magnitude of the spirit of creation seeped into my cells, showing me the sheer magnitude of what I really am.

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The Burren is stark land, and yet in its own way, also delicious. God and Goddess do not discriminate in their fullness.

The ephemeral grows alongside the enduring.

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Look at these ancient symbols of the Goddess we saw at the Celtic and Prehistoric Museum on the Dingle Peninsula. This museum was amazing in the artifacts it houses, as well as the sheer humor and delight of the owner, Harris Moore. He dated these artifacts at around 6,000 years old.

The Goddess, according to some, was the way for ancient people to have some kind of understanding of this fecund, voluptuous nature of the creation they lived in.

Many of us learned of God as something more severe, judging and stern. Open your eyes to the voluptuousness of God and Goddess. You don’t have to be in the wild western land of Ireland to experience this aspect of the Divine.

You are this voluptuousness, this deliciousness, this divinity, living and breathing in your female body.