Songs of My Father: A Travelogue

Songs of My Father

A Travelogue

 A church for 1,000 years, a mosque for 600 years, a museum now for nearly 100 years, the Hagia Sophia seemed to embody the impersonal nature of Truth; an individual standing in this vast space in the flickering glow of oil lamps was both paramount and inconsequential. As I stood spellbound in the dimly lit interior, I found myself increasingly aware of the cold draft of the vastness of time, the vulnerability of being a tiny speck in the universe.

As I looked up at the face of Christ Pantocrator I realized that the Byzantine image in the shimmering gold mosaics was the same image that had admonished me for so many years from the golden dome of Holy Name Church in Boston. Istanbul is of course famous for such collisions of worlds; east and west, religious and secular, old and new, but I was surprised that it now seemed so personal.

But the most surprising thing about being here was that I found myself almost constantly being reminded of my father, and the realization that in just two years he would have been one hundred years old.

           

Why this should come as such a startling revelation, I’m not sure, but somehow this thought seemed to make the years between Justinian’s conception of this remarkable structure and my standing in the middle of it seem not so distant, perhaps because fewer lifetimes spanned the centuries than I’d previously imagined or maybe now my thoughts, my appreciation of history, or my sense of place seemed closer to what I thought my father’s to be. A classics scholar and student of history, my father would often spontaneously quote from Homer, Dante, or Cicero, and launch into elaborately embroidered stories of Greek and Roman mythology. Whatever the reason, the entire trip I could not shake this sense of Dad looking over my shoulder.

Awakened each morning by the call to prayers, the voices reverberating from the minarets first from one mosque then another until the entire city echoed with the chanting of the Qur’an, I was surprised to realize what an extraordinary sense of comfort this daily rhythm provides; a serene sense of permanence, stability, and community. There is a common purpose and meaning to life here, it is different from our own, it is affirmed five times each day, and it impacts every aspect of life every day. These centuries’ old bonds to the community and a shared sense of values and beliefs seem somehow at odds with our focus on the individual, but there is a great strength in this unity.

Istanbul is today, as it has been for millennia, at the intersection of many worlds, and the economic and political tensions with Europe and the West, the cultural divides with Asia and the East, and the secular and  fundamentalist tensions with Islam and the Arab world are palpable. This is still a city of legends that conjures images and echos memories that are both distant and exotic.

We sailed one morning up the Bosporus; crossing the Golden Horn, then sailing past the caravan crossings of the old Silk Roads, past the old yahlis and palaces, past the fortress where Mehmed II and the Ottoman Empire lay siege to Constantinople and conquered an empire that had flourished for a thousand years, past the place where Prometheus guided Io across the waters as she fled Hera’s jealous wrath, to a tiny fishing village where the Black Sea emerges from the fog and the memories of Jason and the Argonauts trail to the horizon. It is a long day’s journey through five thousand years of western history, philosophy and mythology.

Exiting the Sea of Marmara in the opposite direction, the Dardanelle Straits lead south, narrowing to where Xerxes led the Persians to victory over the Greeks crossing from East to West on their fated journey toward Thermopylie, and where Alexander the Great extracted his revenge a century later, crossing in the same place but from West to East, and of course lead still farther south to the plains of Troy and the never too distant voice of Homer. This place seemed the embodiment of the stories and narratives, the history and mythology that so greatly influenced my father’s perception of life and the world, and of course my perception of him.

But there is another church in Istanbul that was built in what was at the time a sheep pasture just outside the Theodosian walls of the city, that has somehow survived the onslaught of the tremendous upheavals of the next sixteen hundred years; the great plagues, the crusades, the Ottoman invasion, the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Byzantine world, the Crimean War, and two World Wars.

The Church of the Chora, its astonishing mosaics and frescoes still largely intact, is everything that the Hagia Sophia is not. If the monumental scale and astonishing space and light of the Hagia Sophia draws men to heaven, the intimate Church of the Chora brings heaven to earth.  This is a place conceived and built in the extraordinary struggles and tumult of the years following Emperor Constantine’s great council at Nicea; that first ecumenical council that cast out the false prophets and the gnostic gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and others, defined the one and true faith of Christianity, and proclaimed what would become known as the Nicene Creed; “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth...”.  It is again from this place, a thousand years later, in a final moment of panic and despair as the city of Constantinople fell to the invading Ottoman Empire, that a sacred icon was rushed to the place where the city walls had been breeched in a failed attempt to turn back the invading armies. This is still a place of extraordinary faith.

Every inch of the vaulted vestibules, walls and domes are embellished with frescoes and bejeweled with shimmering mosaics. The painted figures are life size. They stand next to me, staring stern faced, passing judgment as I pass down the narrow halls. Hosts of golden Seraphim swarm like starlings high along the ribs of the narthex, keeping constant vigil on all who enter. There are no barriers here. I could pick the thousand year old golden tiles from the mosaics of Mary’s cloak if I chose, as many have done for centuries before me. I could reach up and grasp the keys to the Kingdom from the hand of St. Peter.  I could stand face to face, eye to eye, with the austere ascetic, John the Baptist, and I do. This place is a personal communion with God, an intimate camaraderie with angels and saints, a house of prayer in its most profound sense; it brings the awful vulnerability of mortality into stark and immediate focus. My father told me once that when he went to church he didn’t go to participate in the mass, he went to have a conversation with God. This is such a place.

My father died when I was in my twenties, a year before my own son was born and I struggle at times to understand who he truly was, apart from being a father, to somehow fathom his hopes and dreams, to understand who he was as a scholar, educator, mathematician, historian, a Major in the US Army Corp of Engineers. I find my father in my thoughts more and more with each passing year.  I never had those occasional long philosophical discussions that I sometimes find myself having with my own son, the ones I imagine Dad had with his father on those long, lazy Sunday afternoons in my grandfather’s kitchen in Dorchester. This trip makes me feel a connection somehow, a sense that I have come to appreciate some of what he valued, and realize that maybe we were not so far apart after all.

There is a wonderful poem written nearly eight centuries ago by Rumi; mystic, poet, founder of the Sufi order of Islam, the whirling dervishes known as the Mevlani, as he searched for meaning in his life:

            “Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined.

            He was not on the cross.

            I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda.

            In neither was there any sign.

            To the heights of Herat I went, and Kandahar.

            I looked. He was not on height or lowland.

            Resolutely I went to the Mountain of Kaf.

            There only was the place of the ‘Anqa bird.

            I went to the Kaaba. He was not there...

            I looked then into my own heart. In that place I saw him.

            He was in no other place.”

If I sometimes feel as though I never knew my father well, I also sometimes look at myself, and I look at my son, and I see him there.

There is an age-old axiom that says that a person dies three times: first at the time of their demise, second upon their disposition (burial, cremation...), and third the last time their name is spoken. I talked a lot about my father on this trip, more than I have in many years. I hope that my son will find inspiration and great strength in his thoughts of his grandfather and that he speaks his name fondly, and often.

Istanbul is a city of extraordinary monuments, some designed to rival the temples of Solomon, others simple, even austere, but all are preserved with the same purpose. Here in this ancient city and Muslim world, remembrance is paramount and there is great respect for history, and for age, and all that it brings.

Or perhaps it’s just that ancestor worship seems more appropriate the older I get. I’ll have to remember to tell my son.

Postales del Paraíso: Celebrating San Francisco

Postcard from Paradise

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Celebrating San Francisco

We’re celebrating the life of San Francisco, the patron saint of Chapala here this week so don’t try calling me this weekend, I’m completely booked.

Better known to most gringos as the statue of the guy standing in the concrete bird feeder, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, brings out all the faithful, along with troupes of costumed dancers, marching bands, necromancers, parade floats, and most of the farm animals for miles around, for nine straight days of eccentricities, festivities, and questionable behavior.

The skyrockets start blasting you from your bed at 5:00 AM each morning so that you’re sure to be on time for the 6:00 AM departure of the procession carrying the statue of San Francisco through town for the 7:00 AM rosary at the church. While this is believed by some to be an inexpensive method of providing annual early- morning coronary screening for an entire neighborhood, rather than being followed by the sound of ambulance sirens, the next sound you hear is the cacophony of what seems like dozens of marching brass bands banging up and down every street in the village, sort of like a snooze alarm for those who missed the first wakeup call.

The big event is tomorrow, beginning of course with the procession and rosary, but continuing all day with endless celebrations, blessings and prayers. All the streets in town are closed to traffic and parking, booths hawking traditional foods, trinkets, prayer candles, and Milagros line the boulevards and alleyways, Mariachis roam the streets and play a kind of call and response that echoes back and forth across the neighborhood. Balloon vendors, veterinarians, organic pet food sellers and taco stands set up shop next to games of chance and mechanical rides for the kids. There’s a ride that’s sort of like a carousel or merry-go-round, but the horses have all been replaced with goats, perhaps because in this culture riding a horse is not a novelty, or perhaps it’s a nod to this frequent symbol of Saint Francis.

At noon is the traditional Blessing of the Animals and in addition to the armloads of lapdogs and petrified cats the streets are knee deep in goats, pigs, donkeys, and sheep. After blessing the personal pets presented to him at the top of the church steps, the priest wades out into this urban barnyard and with prayers, laughter, and roars of approval from the crowd, sprinkles holy water on all the animals in sight. Only the cats seem to be ignoring the festivities, or perhaps plotting their revenge. There is of course the traditional evening mass and devotions followed by a massive glittering Castillo fireworks display on the plaza just outside the church.

I don’t remember religious celebrations being like this in the Catholic parish where I grew up in Boston. I don’t ever remember saying a rosary on St Francis Day, much less going to church. I do remember Monsignor Finn lecturing from his perch above the congregation each Sunday about Saint Jerome or some other obscure saint while everyone in the congregation snored back at him, but the only other saints I remember are Saint Patrick, and St Nicholas. Memory is of course a selective and faulty thing, but I’m sure I’d have remembered the part where everyone carried their pet goats up to the altar to be blessed, or the part where the Monsignor rolled up his sleeves (and his pant legs) and led the procession of goats through the city of Boston sprinkling holy water on all the beasts he could find; but I don’t. Going to church as I recall was a penance, not a celebration. 

In contrast to what’s happening here, slaughtering animals as surrogates for the rest of us seems to be a time honored tradition in many of the world’s religious celebrations this weekend. In Pakistan alone 7.5 million goats, according to the Washington Post, will be slaughtered tomorrow on Eid al-Adha marking the end of the Hajj and in remembrance of Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram in place of his son. In other communities around the world, Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement and repentance begins at sundown tonight. In ancient times Jewish communities, according to tradition, selected a goat from the herd and ritually made it the bearer of all their sins and then cast it into the wilderness, chasing after it and taking the obvious measures necessary to ensure that it would never return to the herd. In Christian communities tomorrow, on the feast of San Francisco whose pastoral image is inevitably pictured with an adoring goat curled up at his feet, no goats will be slaughtered, eaten, or cast away; a small step perhaps for the Catholic church, but one welcomed and celebrated here.

I wonder none-the-less just exactly what they’re serving in all those empanadas and tamales at all these taco stands that have blossomed here this weekend. Is San Francisco also the patron saint of vegans?

Genealogy: East of Eden

East of Eden

I’ve come to the belated conclusion that my previous speculation on the parents of our great grandmother, Mary Donoghue was incorrect.

The certified copy of Jeremiah Sheahan and Mary Donoghue’s marriage registration that we acquired in Ireland lists the marriage location as the Chapel at Killaha, and the place of residence for Mary Donoghue as “Barnadune”. Killaha is an area about 5 1/2 kilometers south of Maulykeavane, about  11 kilometers east of Killarney but it’s bothered me that I’ve never been able to find a place named Barnadune, near Killaha or anywhere else.

Backing up a little, in my search for Mary Meara I’ve found more than a few Meara families from the congregation of Glenflesk.  A quick search indicates Glenflesk as an area about 11 kilometers east of Killarney so I wrote off most of these Meara families as not being anywhere near The Gap of Dunloe and therefore not immediately connected to our family. 

But somewhere in my search of the Meara families in Glenflesk I came across a reference for the Chapel at Killaha and a place referred to as “Barraduff”. Why this place name stuck with me I have no idea.

Certified Marriage Certificate for Jeremiah Sheahan and Mary Donoghue

So at some point I got bored, or overwhelmed, with my search for Mearas and decided to switch gears and go Donoghue hunting for a while. When I went back to our copy of the original document rather than the certified transcription of Jeremiah and Mary’s marriage registration (see attached) I saw something that I did not previously. Rather than “Barnadune”, the place name in the original document I now believe should be read as “Barraduve” which seems to be an acceptable alternate spelling of “Barraduff” (The spelling in various Irish records seems interchangeable).  A search for Donoghue families in Barraduff in the Catholic Church records indicates a Mary Donoghue of Barraduff born Sept. 1, 1858. This would seem to fit well with Jeremiah and Mary’s marriage record indicating that Mary was 17 y/o in 1876, and the place name now makes a lot more sense.

Marriage Registration for Jeremiah Sheahan and Mary Donoghue, Feb. 8, 1876

Mary’s parents are listed as John Donoghue and Catherine Murphy. There is a marriage certificate for John Donoghue and Catherine Murphy, both of Kilquane, dated Feb. 1, 1842. Other children born to John and Catherine include Patrick (3-17-1847), Florence (9-16-1849), John (3-29-1852) Denis (5-24-1854), Jeremiah (5-22-1856) and Timothy (10-26-1860). 

The original documents obtained in Ireland mention nothing about the congregation of Glenflesk. The Catholic Church records available on-line mention nothing about the Chapel at Killaha, but the principal names, the date of marriage, and the names of witnesses on all documents are identical. Glenflesk (the congregation), Killaha (the chapel), and Barraduff (the Townland) are all located in the same place.

The Glenflesk/Killaha/Barraduve issue may be best understood though information from the Casey Collection in County Kerry. These records indicate that the modern parish called Glenflesk includes townlands that were once part of the parishes of Killaha, Killarney, and Aghadoe. The pre-formation RC parish at Glenflesk was called the parish of Killaha and consisted of 64 townlands, all of which were incorporated into the modern parish. In addition three townlands from the pre-formation parish of Killarney were incorporated, one of which is Carrigeenacullig (sic), and ten townlands from the parish of Aghadoe one of which is Barraduff. “An old church, with a slate roof, probably built towards the end of the Penal days, stood in a place called "Old Chapel", its walls still stand in the old Killaha graveyard”. Kilquane is currently listed in the adjacent parish of Killaha.

I’m now inclined to believe that our great-great grandparents on our father’s side may have been John Donoghue and Catherine Murphy. 

We’ll see how all this plays out in the coming months, or maybe I’ll send another corrective e-mail when I come up with yet another theory!

The Lost Books of The Odyssey

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

I began reading Homer last November, prompted by a nagging sense of obligation, and encouraged by the delusion that I would actually finish at least the Iliad before our trip to Turkey last December. It’s now April, and I have just turned the final page.

I hesitate however to say that I have actually read the books. Easily bored and possessing the attention span of a humming bird, I found that large sections were simply beyond my reach. So each time my nodding head banged against the table, I’d simply move on to the next chapter.

But I soon came to realize that this is a very different book from the one that I didn’t actually read 40 years ago. The words are the same but everything else about it has changed. I soon found myself reading and re-reading chapter after chapter, verse after verse, even going back to those sections that I’d skipped. It took almost six months, the entire living room and half the dining area to accomplish this. Flurries of pink and yellow sticky notes covered cabinets and furniture and the dog-eared and book-marked pages of Ovid’s Metamorphosis and Bullfinch’s Mythology in an attempt to sort out and understand the extraordinary perceptions on human existence that Homer uncannily elucidates as well as what Homer’s audience knew and took for granted everyday about the forces that shaped their lives and the world in which they lived.

I think we’re missing something - this intimate familiarity with gods and heroes. Their place in the lives of mortals provides structure and guidance, perspective and strength to our daily existence. We no longer walk with gods, nor they with us (with the exception of a few Republicans of course), nor do we engage in public discourse with them.  But we ignore them at our own peril.

As children of Abraham we’ve turned our backs, discarded and collectively scoffed at this pantheon of gods, fashioning instead the notion of monotheism. But once these multiple divinities are discarded along with their rivalries, their jealousies, fears, and petty schemes we separate ourselves from the divine and we fail to recognize the divine within our daily lives and the divine within ourselves. We are reduced to just Heaven and Earth - eternally separate. I think sometimes we are simply inadequate to the task of understanding the divine. By our nature we can barely understand ourselves.

Now that I’ve read this stuff of course, my view of the world is forever tainted. Has the Washington Press Corp misreported the facts or has Eris (Discord) once again appeared uninvited at a State Dinner at the White House? Are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi actually running out of meaningless gestures to parade endlessly across the Capitol and in serious danger of actually having to accomplish something, or are Apollo and Athena once again squabbling and using the pair as playthings in yet another Olympian version of ‘As the World Turns’? Might we be less rancorous in our public discourse if the antics of Sarah Palin and Glen Beck were accepted more as immutable destiny (fate) and the convoluted alliances of the gods rather than purely as ill intent?  Or on a more intimate note; Have I personally done something to fall from the good graces of Mnemosyne? Would I remember if I had?

Homer’s stories are of course extraordinary. More so the older I get. But if I expected these pages to somehow provide a key to my understanding of my father, a classics scholar who would quote Homer at breakfast, Cicero at dinner, and Dante Alighieri each evening, what I found was something else. I did seem to stumble occasionally upon dusty bits and pieces of the road on which he must have traveled; I seemed to recognize a few signposts, places that he’d been, places that he’d talked about, the literary equivalent perhaps of his wonderful yet grainy, discolored, and faded 16mm movies of the Appian Way. It’s interesting that his words, spoken so many years ago have in the end guided me to extraordinary places that I would never have found on my own. What I found, as I should have expected, was a clearer picture of myself, rather than of him.

Varanasi

Delhi is endlessly fascinating; squalor and splendor are inseparable companions. But there is another place, a night’s train ride to the east, that is fascinating beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

The city of Varanasi as seen from the river in the golden light of dawn is the most wondrous, spiritual, revolting, inspiring, filthy, and above all the most sensuous experience I’ve ever encountered. It is a place of ageless temples and endless prayers. Its shrines are heaped with exotic flowers, the air filled with billowing clouds of sweet incense and the overwhelmingly pungent smell of humanity. The ancient stonewalls echo the constant chanting of prayers and ringing of bells. Each morning from the unceasing earthly drama of life and death in this warren of impossibly old and narrow lanes, long flights of steps or “ghats” lead thousands of worshipers down to the river to pray and to bathe in the holy waters of the Ganges. It is like the great migrations on the plains of the Serengeti and quite probably as old.

Varanasi, or Benares; this place that Hindus call Kashi, the City of Light,

this place of endless temples and ashrams, this place of transcendence and liberation, as Mark Twain once observed “is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend”. Varanasi is said to be the earthly city of Shiva, founded at the dawn of creation. To die here, and to have your earthly remains cremated on one of the many funeral pyres and your ashes scattered on the Mother Ganges is said to bring an end to the otherwise endless cycle of suffering and life.

But this is also a place of renewal, a pilgrimage of rebirth. Bathing in the Ganges washes away a lifetime of sins. This city is a passage, a threshold, a place of crossing over, the river Styx of the Eastern philosophy. It is appropriate I suppose that in the Hindu religion the place of the dead is also the place of being reborn. They are the same.

There are other cities that, like this one, have existed since long before the tenth century BC, but their reason for being seems to have evolved over the millennia; changed as societies changed, agriculture developed and economies grew, populations expanded and religious and cultural beliefs evolved. Here, the flames of the funeral pyres crackle day and night as they have for thousands of years, the old and the frail still journey here to live out their final days, thousands of candles still light the stone steps and float endless prayers each evening down the sacred river. Naked, ash covered Sadhus still murmur prayers and whisper visions of the future, incense still burns day and night in the countless temples, and thousands come every day to bathe and be reborn in the sacred waters. It truly seems that nothing has changed here for thousands of years.

I can’t quite escape the feeling of being a spectator here; a voyeur. One must be born to the Hindu faith. The Hindu tradition seems to have imagined and re-imagined god in a thousand different ways. It is adept at discovering the divine everywhere and integrating that spirituality into every aspect of everyday life. It is a tradition that understands life and death as an integrated whole. Life and death exist here, together.

We hired a small, wooden boat late one evening and rowed our way out onto the Ganges. We lit four candles wrapped in lotus leaves and surrounded by marigolds and incense, whispered a prayer, and floated them down this holy river; one for Dad, one for Mom, one for Noelle, and one for the rest of us. Life and death exist here, together.