Thought for the Week: An ocean of love
Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on a moving experience
County Donegal, located in the northwest of the island of Ireland, is in the province of Ulster. It is not, however, part of Northern Ireland. Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland. Remote, and far from the centre of power in Dublin, the county has suffered economically over the years. There is little money around. Most of the farms have seen better days.
Some years ago I was sitting in the simple kitchen of a cottage in south Donegal. It was on land my ancestors had farmed for several centuries. A distant relative, Aunt Lily, had died. The memory of visits to her family, over the years, flooded back to me as I sat, where I always had, at the small table in the corner. Her daughter, Phyllis, came over and spoke to me. ‘Ian, you’ll have a wee cup of tea, won’t you. You’ve come a long way.’ ‘Surely, thank you.’ ‘Only, you’ll want to see Lily first. Come now.’ Phyllis seemed in another place. In shock.
Aunt Lily was lying, as was the tradition, in an open coffin in a back room. The cottage was filled with friends and neighbours. Country people. No graduates here. The hands of the men gave that one away. It was another world from the one I had come from. Over the years many had emigrated, like my grandfather, and others, like Lily and her family, stayed, eking out a perilous existence on the land.
Phyllis and her brothers, William and Edwin, were filled with grief. The death of their mother seemed to have overwhelmed them. Grief had consumed them. It was natural. When Uncle Daniel had died some years earlier Aunt Lily became the centre of family life.
Later, all the visitors gathered outside the cottage. We waited. Inside, the family said goodbye. The coffin was closed. William and Edwin came out with four neighbours carrying it on their shoulders. Then they walked, followed by everyone, down the road to the Church of Ireland a few hundred yards away.
Inside the small rural church Phyllis, William and Edwin sat on a pew at the front. Edwin’s wife and children, and Phyllis’s husband and children, were with them – the last of the family still living in the area. The whole community had turned out. The church was filled with Catholics, some Methodists and Presbyterians, and most of the small Church of Ireland congregation. Every seat was taken.
Across the border, in my part of the world, at that time some Catholics and some Protestants were killing each other. In this sleepy, remote country church, in one of the poorest parts of Ireland, a community had come together to support a family. It seemed to me, living and working in Belfast, another world altogether – almost another century. Towards the end of the service I remember looking around the church and, then, to my relations at the front. A thought came. This is the best of us. This is true religion. I realised that my relations were not drowning in a sea of grief. They were floating on an ocean of love. They were sustained, at that moment, by a society of friends and they would continue to be so in the future.
As Quakers we are part of a community. George Fox urged early Friends to ‘Keep all your Meetings in the name of the Lord Jesus.’ It is important to remember, also, that our Meetings keep us.
A few months later it was Christmas. On the morning of Christmas Day most of the people at the funeral of Aunt Lily would be in their own church – Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian or Church of Ireland – celebrating, in their own way, the birth of Christ.
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