At the Edge of Ireland (23 page)

Guilt pursued me for months, maybe years. But finally I thought the matter had been put to rest—until this particular evening with Michael. Now I knew it could truly rest—that Dad and I had finally forgiven each other, reaffirmed Spirit and Soul, and reconciled love and loss.

I thanked Michael for his being there and for guiding me. “Listen, you might as well come back to the cottage and join us for dinner. One good turn, etc., etc.”

“Well, that's a lovely idea. And of course one good turn also deserves one good tale. Y'wanna hear one—it's actually part of something that's going on right now…?”

“I love your tales, Michael, but hold it till we get back so Anne can enjoy it.”

 

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER
with cocktails rampant on the patio and a soft, milky twilight descending, Michael began his tale.

“Okay—well, this is about a guy who actually…as we speak…is thinking about making a movie on these workshops I do and got in touch with me just a few weeks ago from New York. It's years since he came to one of them. But it must have moved him, and he's sort of kept in touch…He's one of the great people I've met…young fellow who lived in New York State and he had very little of what you might call ‘goods and chattels.' Now he said he wanted to repeat the workshop, so I sent him all the preinstructions and one new thing I was trying was a gifting process whereby each participant brings something of significant material or personal value and then, in a sort of chance situation game, gifts it to another participant and eventually receives a reciprocal gift. And each gift comes with a story so that the recipient will understand the value of the item being given…

“So…he got the instruction that said ‘Please bring something of personal value to the workshop.' He told me he'd spent days thinking about this and decided he'd only got one real possession of any true value and he brought it with him. And…it was a penknife. A very swanky penknife with every kind of gadget—like one of those Swiss Army knives. Very expensive. Very desirable. And the story he told about the penknife when he gifted it to another one of the workshop participants moved everyone. Apparently, when he went to college, he arrived at his dorm the first day and walked past somebody's door, and on this somebody's door was a pasted note saying: ‘Only sailing and mountain climbing spoken here.' And it just so happened that sailing and mountain climbing were two of this guy's favorite hobbies. So he knocked at the door, and they became fast friends. And eventually they climbed everywhere—in South America, the Himalayas, in Alaska…this other fellow came from Alaska—and it was a very firm friendship. At one time they were in Alaska (the father was wealthy and had plenty of ranch acreage up there), they cut down some trees and prepared the wood and put it aside, saying that ‘one day we're going to build a boat.' And they had the capacity to do this…they both knew how. ‘And all that either one of us has to do is to write to the other and say, It's time to build that boat…' and when that time came, they agreed they'd drop everything and build the boat and sail around the world together.

“So this was the guy who came to my workshop. He was in New York at the time…He was quite a well-known photographer, and he was also starting to make movies. Anyway, he'd been working in the city for three or four years and decided he needed a change. So he wrote to his friend and told him he thought it was time to build that boat for their world-sail odyssey. And he told me that it was just ten days later that he got a call, and he was certain that it was his friend speaking. But it was actually his friend's father. And his friend's father said, ‘On the very day you wrote that letter, we had word that our son was killed in Nicaragua…in the troubles out there…' and he said they were going to have a private funeral. But then he said, ‘As one of his closest friends, we'd like you to come.'

“So—they had the funeral, and it was a very moving affair. And the father then said to the photographer, ‘You and I have got to do a memorial sail for my son.' They weren't going to go around the world, but they were going to go to the Aleutian Islands. The father had his own boat all ready. So they were vittling the boat for the trip and they went to get final supplies and whatnot, and when they were on the father's boat, he saw this knife—this beautiful, multifunction knife. And he must have made some kind of remark…what a wonderful knife it was or something like that…Anyway, they moved on, got the stuff, got on the boat, and left the harbor. Pretty soon…it was totally amazing, actually…they soon got into a heavy swell on the sea. The boat really was moving around a whole lot. And what he told me happened was a bottle of champagne that they'd brought with them to drink a toast to his friend who was killed…it opened all by itself. They didn't open it. He said it was very eerie. The two of them just stood and stared…The bottle was there open and the cork was on the other side of the galley. And they both sensed that he was there with them in that boat. So they drank the toast to him and the father wanted to give my friend a memorial gift. He'd seen how much he'd admired the knife, so he said, ‘You were my son's best friend and this was his favorite knife…' So the father gave him the knife—and that was the very knife he gave away at my workshop.”

Michael paused to let the images sink in. There was a thoughtful silence. Then Anne smiled. “Lovely story,” she said.

Michael nodded: “Yeah…yeah, it is. But it's not quite over yet. Y'see—what happened at the workshop was equally wonderful. Because, who should receive the knife, but a woman. My friend had told his tale, and there was hardly a dry eye in the room. And they passed by chance…we do this kind of musical chairs chance ritual when it comes to who gets which of the gifts. Anyway, this woman, a striking, mature but troubled lady, got the knife, and she held it for a long time, stroking it. And then she spoke. Quietly but with a strength she'd not shown before at the workshop, she said: ‘I couldn't have had anything more appropriate for me at this moment in my life than this knife. I'm in a shitty relationship and I need to cut my way out of it. And this knife is going to give me the courage to do what I have to do—and I shall always be grateful. Your generosity will help me release myself…'”

More silence. We sat with Michael, not saying anything. Then: “It's always a magical process,” said Michael. “The spirit of releasing something you value and seeing it bring meaning and value to someone else…the true gift that keeps on giving…yeah, I know that's some inane advertising jingle for…something or other…”

“Diamonds, I think,” said Anne.

“Right. Quite possibly.” Michael nodded. “But in these sessions, these exchanges, it really means something…What's the point of accumulating stuff, especially when others can benefit. David—what was that zany country song you were singing the other day?”

“Oh, that…,” I said, not quite able to remember the words. “How's it go? Something like:
‘La dee da, la dee da, la dee da…/ Where I'm going, I won't be comin' back/And I've never seen a hearse/With a luggage rack
,' or at least I think that's the gist of it.”

“Yeah, I guess that just about sums it all up!” Michael laughed. “No luggage racks. So—share yourself and give away as much as you can before someone else ends up doing it for you when you're gone!”

 

O
UR FRIENDSHIP WITH
M
ICHAEL
continued to grow over the months on Beara, culminating one amazing evening when he invited Anne and me and some of our friends, newly arrived from America, to celebrate the finale of one of his week-long workshops…as will be revealed later…

Michael also told us of other healers and therapists and counselors living on Beara. Some had attended his workshops, others he'd met socially. Their range of practices varied enormously, from massage therapy, homeopathy, and reflexology to art therapy, craniosacral, color, crystal, and aroma therapies and various forms of meditation including the more “down-to-earth,” nonmystical Vipassana and Metta traditions. Yet despite all these different approaches, the purpose of these “healing” techniques seemed to be to help enhance sound holistic foundations for our poor confused human spirits—spirits often broken, distorted, or abandoned in the welter of worries and stresses and traumas in the world beyond Beara. Souls distorted in a solipsistic confusion of endless consumption of things not needed and virtual reality living that eliminates the true, the tangible, the “now” of a simple existence. People in despair and suffering, even in the most idyllic of places and circumstances, thinking themselves unworthy of true happiness. Others fluttering around the edges of their own lives, unable to see how all the apparently unrelated coincidences dotted along the path of their existences were actually benevolent stepping-stones to a potentially joyous future.

 

M
ARJÓ
O
OSTERHOFF SUMMED UP
her purpose in offering various meditation instructions at her small Passaddhi Center high on the Caha flanks between Hungry Hill and Sugar Loaf Mountain and overlooking Bere Island and Bantry Bay. “
Vipassana
means ‘clear seeing,'” she told me with a beguiling smile and a slight Dutch accent. Her silver hair moved slightly in breezes that rolled up through the hedge-bound pastures below and wafted through the huge open windows into the main meditation room. A plump, furry, three-legged cat came and sat itself on my knee. Marjó laughed—a youthful laugh, full of honesty, and a furrowless face bathed in what I can only call a “giving” spirit. She was one of those rare individuals you know you're going to like almost before anything is said.

Once the cat had snuggled its way into a ball on my lap, Marjó continued. “This kind of ‘clear seeing' helps us touch and understand our mental, physical, and emotional processes. We begin to see patterns and habits more clearly, and we can undertake journeys of pragmatic self-discovery. It's not about getting mystical experiences. We don't do levitation here! Very verboten! It's simply about emerging from living on automatic pilot, from being only half awake, and learning to live life more fully—more open-minded and open-hearted—with a lot less fear and clinging to things. And this process can be reinforced with Metta or ‘loving kindness' meditation. This helps us make friends with our minds and release ourselves from our cunning chronic little critic who's always trying to sabotage our natural ability to wake up and love ourselves and thus truly love others and live fully. We remove unnecessary boundaries that we often create for ourselves, eliminate fears and blocks, and come to see the inherent interconnectedness of things.”

Marjó has been offering many of her short and long (ten-day) retreats for up to ten people on a donation basis since 1999. “It gets harder each year to do things that way, but it still feels right…and somehow we get by. I spend time in Burma most years on retreats and—wow! When you see what those people have to put up with over there, it makes our challenges—our lives here—seem so very easy. I'm constantly amazed by their grace and peace in the midst of so much disease and poverty and hunger—and overt injustice. What I learn from them—which increases each time I'm there—I try to share with others here…and I think it's helped quite a lot of people. At least”—Marjó chuckled—“that's what they tell me…I try to explain how quickly and eerily tragedy can enter our lives and change everything in an instant. I emphasize how vital love is—there's no time to waste on arguing or unloving behavior. A simple message, but you'd be amazed how people react—like sudden transformations!”

 

“Y
ES
, I
DEAL WITH
that quite a lot too,” said Alan Hughes with a strong rugby player's laugh. “Although when most people come here they have no idea at all what the heck my craniosacral therapy is. Do you know?”

“Well, Alan, I must be honest, I suppose I cheated a bit,” I said. “I picked up one of your brochures in the Supervalue supermarket down the street and got a bit of background. I know it's called a ‘gentle, hands-on therapy,' although it started to lose me with all those references to cerebrospinal fluids and craniosacral congestions and restrictions. But what did fascinate me was that one of our friends here said you had ‘magical ghost hands' that applied no pressure on a body at all and merely floated over sensitive points and yet she felt as if they were relaxing, easing, a dozen places at once. She said ‘I could see Alan's hands over my legs but I could swear I was actually feeling them up around my shoulders and my head where he'd been a few minutes before!'”

Alan laughed. He was a lean, good-looking (rugby-playing) man in his late forties with blinkless—almost hypnotic—blue eyes. His office was next to the enormous church in Castletownbere across the road from Jack Patrick's, our favorite local butcher. Alan had spent his youth in South Africa and then zigzagged through a “mé-lange-career” in photography, computer programming, store management, water sports, and more recently “serious gardening” and African drumming with a Beara drumming circle. His fascination with different forms of healing began with a visit to Beara in 1997 and then a series of intensive courses in Indian head massage and Reiki, Thai, and Hawaiian massage, aura-soma color therapy, sound therapy, and craniosacral therapy.

“Why Beara?” I asked.

“Well—I have some ‘Irish roots.' My grandfather was from Limerick. But I discovered the peninsula by accident. I was traveling—‘rooting'—around, trying to avoid the tourist crowds on Dingle and the Ring of Kerry. And I found Beara and I sensed it was one of those unique places—a sort of real genuine power point. You could feel it in the air and the land. I'd seen Deirdre Purcell's
Falling for a Dancer
movie—it was filmed in and around Eyeries here where I live now—and it was like
Wuthering Heights
, you could just sense that vast natural power of the cliffs, the islands, the ocean, the whole wild tone of the place!”