I’m in Ireland!

Sunday, the 30^th of Jan.

The church Seth, Jessica and family attend, Youghal Baptist Church, is really great.  I met people from Ireland, Romania, Hungary, Canada and the US.  This particular Sunday was “kids church” where the children stay in the service instead of leaving for children’s church but Pastor Mervyn did a great job of making it accessible to the kids while still keeping some meat in there for the adults.  He preached from 2 Kings 7:3-20, especially verse 9:  “We are not doing right.  This day is a day of good news!”  The basic tenet of his message was that should be our response to the Gospel.  It is such good news that we should feel guilty and fear punishment if we keep it to ourselves.  It’s not very cool to right now in the church to talk about guilt and punishment but studying law has given me a good perspective on both.  They are both necessary evils.  No one would want to live in a society where people felt no guilt for doing wrong or where that wrong went unpunished. They key is feeling guilty for the proper reasons and I think Pastor Mervyn nailed it.

The church meets in a traditional Irish dance school overlooking the bay.  It’s a gorgeous setting.  The name of the school, Bru na Si (pronounced “she”) means house of the dancing fairies.  I thought of my friend Mary Martha and how she used to do Irish dancing.  Made me really want to take lessons.

After church the whole congregation had a pot-luck lunch.  Yum!  Then we took the kids home for nap-time.  While they slept, Seth and I went out and explored the town.  The whole town is really kind of quaint and very pretty.  The outskirts of the town have a suburban feel that Americans would recognize but the downtown is where the action’s at.  It’s a lot of narrow roads, houses all in a row, and cool shops with living quarters above them, surrounded by beautiful countrysides. 

Look!  I found a lawyer!

The old church, the first one in the village is the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary, Youghal.  In a territorial feud between the Anglican and Catholic churches the Catholics built a new Saint Mary which is called simply “Saint Mary.”  (To make it more confusing, Collegiate was Catholic when built.)

The church had a fortress nearby to keep intruders at bay since the church at the time controlled almost all the money and land marauders would often head straight to the church.

The church itself was inspiring.  It was built in 1220!  Can you believe that?  That’s around 800 years ago!  And it’s still standing!  It has towering wooden-beamed ceilings, beautiful stain-glass windows and magnificent stone floors. 

I could not get over the fact that I was walking under a ceiling erected eight centuries ago.

The wings had some creepy grave sites.

The cemetery behind the church was really fascinating as well.  There were gravesites that were centuries old, as well as a mass grave for all the victims of the Potato Famine.  There was even a coffin-shaped hole in the old city walls which ran behind the church.  Seth explained that they used to keep a coffin there for anyone who couldn’t afford a proper burial.  They would put the person in the coffin take them to a paupers grave and dump them out before returning the coffin to the wall, but at least this way the person got the appearances of a decent burial.

Sir Walter Raleigh lived here for a while, back when Youghal was one of the largest ports in the region, bigger even than London.  Seth showed me his old house, which was in a sad state of disrepair because the old lady who owns it won’t let the village maintain it.  What a shame.

The whole town was full of really short doorways and some of the tombs in the church were less than four feet in length leading both of us to surmise that people did not used to be as tall.

Yep, that’s the towering giant that I am.  All 5’9” of me.

After touring we went home, ate a traditional dinner of fish and chips, played DDR on the Wii (Viki and Jessica are UNREAL at that game) and then watched Waking Ned Devine, which was a great movie about Irish culture that was really funny.  Apparently every Sunday night the Lewis family plays DDR and watches a movie while eating popcorn covered in Ranch powder.  Sounds like a great tradition to me.  I was delighted to be invited to join the tradition.