Gallarus Oratory — Ireland 4
In Gallarus Oratory
You can still feel the community pack
This place: it’s like going into a turfstack,
A core of old dark walled up with stone
A yard thick. When you’re in it alone,
You might have dropped, a reduced creature,
To the heart of the globe. No worshipper
Would leap up to his God off this floor.
Founded there like heroes in a barrow,
They sought themselves in the eye of their King
Under the black weight of their own breathing.
And how he smiled on them as out they came,
The sea a censer and the grass a flame.
- Seamus Heaney
Wonderful picture! Splendid words to accompany it. I am there…breathing in the marvels and old air…thank you.
It makes me think of mystics like Brigid of Kildare and/or Julian of Norwich and others who lived in such places, fed by others and counseling those who asked.
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