Getting out of the Religion Business

My whole life has been spent in the religion business.  Almost every dime I ever earned came from pastoring, teaching, or writing about God or the church.  Organized religion still puts meat on my table. When I retire, my social security and pension will still come through my work in organized religion. I’m a professional pastor and teacher, and not ashamed to say it.

But even so, I still get a queasy feeling about the work of the church as I have seen it all my life from an insider’s perspective.  The way the church functions seems backwards from the way God intended.

People who are down on “organized religion” and see it as some terrible evil frankly don’t know what they are talking about. Organized churches and professional church workers are a necessity, and if it were not for people like us, there would be no church today. Jesus was a professional, full time minister.  He did not work as a carpenter when he was traveling around with his disciples. He was a full time Rabbi.  The same was true of his disciples who followed him.  They left their nets to follow Him. Paul worked as a tentmaker only when money was not available to support him in full time preaching.  It takes time and effort to prepare messages, pastor the hurting, and to do the administrative work required to keep the church going.  Study, preparation, and education are necessary to fulfill Christ’s calling to the church, and there must be money, structure and personnel to get it done. I do not question my personal calling to church work, or the calling of others to a full time service of the church.

What’s wrong is not that the church is organized.  It’s what we do with the organization.  Organized religion exists for a purpose, and that purpose has been turned in the wrong direction. We have approached religion as if people have been called to build the church. This is backwards--the church has been called to build the people.

In Ephesians 4:11-13 Paul writes “He (God) gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” The Bible does not say that God gave the people the responsibility of equipping church leaders, but that He gave church leaders the responsibility of equipping the people.  We exist to make the people great.  They do not exist to make us great.  Yet church leaders in our pride and insecurity have sought for millennia to build organizational structures us that make us look and feel important.  Our ambitions are based on our egos, not our call.  We think that the calling of the church is all about us and our organizations.    

This has always been true and in all churches, but since I’m more familiar with the Protestant Evangelical church in modern America, I’ll confine myself to talking about it.  Our modern churches act like fast-food restaurants for the soul.  We have franchises, like McDonald’s or Burger King, which are in constant competition with each other for a shrinking religious market. Some churches are very successful and start branches everywhere. They even have their own logos and branding. Some even have marketing director and graphic designers to make sure their brand is well known.  They talk about market shares, revenue streams, focus groups, and target audiences—just like any other large business. They seek to crush the competition by offering more dynamic ministries, relevant preaching, and more professional praise bands than the church down the street. They hire professional musicians and video guys to make sure their religious shows (which they call “worship”) is better than the next church.  Those who do not fit their demographic are ignored in favor of those who bring a better revenue of prospect and gifts.

Please do not think I’m picking on the megachurches, that is not my intention. The only difference between what they are doing and what most smaller churches do is that they are better at it. Most of the criticism of megachurches comes with more than a little tinge of jealousy.  But, these criticisms of marketing are only a question of style.  The real problem with the church goes much deeper. The real issue is the hearts of church leaders and the message that they preach because of their hearts.  All pastors (myself included) are tempted to put ourselves first, to see the church we pastor as existing to support us, not us to support our church.

The church is our business—our living, our pride, and our security.  We want to be comfortable, just like everyone else. Our pride is wrapped up in the numbers of attenders, the size and condition of our buildings, and our reputation in society.

This leads us to spin the message in certain ways. Stewardship and financial giving is important, but not holiness or love.  Bringing new members to church is important, but not private prayer or personal disciplines.  Programs of instruction and discipleship go only as far as learning how to use our spiritual gifts for the sake of the organized church, and witnessing to people to get them in to church.  Controversial subjects are talked about, but only when they provoke people to get more active in our church, and to separate them from others.  Patience and tolerance are ignored as being unprofitable.  Spiritual disciplines such as regular prayer and fasting are not given high priorities.  Being a Christian in our families and jobs is mentioned, but only in passing.  People are told they need to serve Christ, but they don’t have to act like Him.  As long as they know they are saved, they can keep on being the stinkers that they always were. 

In the school where I teach, I asked my students what discipleship looks like, and what we need to teach Christians about being disciples. They list several things, but their list usually ends with either knowing and using their spiritual gifts or with telling others about Jesus.  When I ask them what comes next in discipleship after we have taught people to work in the church and invite others to Jesus, they seem to have no idea. There seems to be a consensus that this is the place where discipleship ends, at exactly the place it stops building the organizational church. 

The New Testament picture of discipleship is bigger than that.  It involves a lifetime of becoming transformed into Christ’s image.

This misconception is not my students’ fault--it is largely the fault churches that emphasize building bigger ministries, not members.  As long as people contribute financially or as volunteers, it is assumed they are not in need of greater maturity.  They are good enough to get by, but not strong enough to shine with the light of Christ wherever they go.

  It’s time we start telling the organization to serve the people, instead of telling the people to serve the organization.

The word “pastor” means “shepherd.”  A shepherd knows his sheep by name. Not every sheep has the same needs, but he makes sure that they get individual attention. If the sheep are not healthy, he gets no benefit.

Religion—organized religion—is a wonderful thing when it works right. Don’t let anyone deceive you in thinking that organized religion is somehow intrinsically bad.  But organized Christianity, if it wants to survive in these troubled times, must get out of the business of building religious institutions that are an end in themselves.  Churches exist to bring God’s love, comfort, judgment, and concern to people, so they can shine with the light of Christ as fully realized models of Christ.  If we who claim to be in Christ don’t look or act like Him, then the world has every valid reason to think that Christianity is a lie.

The church exists to build people, not the other way around. If we are not doing that, we are all in the wrong business.

Dungaire Castle, the Dolmen, The Cliffs of Moher

On Wednesday Joy and I left Connemara and drove down the  coast to see the Cliffs of Moher, one of Ireland's most popular tourist attraction.

By this day I was convinced I was getting the hang of this left-sided driving, at least until I came to a place called "Corkscrew Hill".  Even so,  after finding our first Irish four lane road and enduring a half dozen roundabouts, we made it town to County Clare in about three hours

Our first stop was Dunguaire Castle, in the town of Kimvara. 

 The castle was at one time  a dwelling place for the High King of Ireland.  (You may notice a pattern here. Almost every doggone castle was saw at some time has a "high king of Ireland")  One of the legends of this castle, though was the the king of the castle looked out of his window one day and saw a hundred and fifty bards, or poets, standing at his gate. He gave him hospitality, and from that time this castle became a center for poetry and art.  W. B. Yeats visited there often, as dis Oscar Wild and Singh.  It was a place of celebration and learning. 

One side note on this town.  Joy and I ate at a restaurant on the docks that evening. Three old men were celebrating at the bar,  and had been celebrating for some time.  We overheard their conversation, what we could understand of it. They would occasionally burst into song, and carry on in an inebriated fashion.  One of them regaled the restaurant with an impromptu rendition of "The Parting Glass." From his overall condition, I thought he should have sung it about an hour earlier.  Anyway they were colorful!

We went south from there, though the Burrens.  We stopped along the way to see the Dolmen, a picture of which is included here.

The Dolmen is a tomb over six thousand years old.  It is the oldest relic of anything in Ireland,  an Irish equivalent of Stonehenge. The only person around was a costumed Druid selling charms and trinkets, even though the Dolmen predated the Druids by thousands of years.  He was talking on his cell phone while manning his little table.

Finally, we made it to the Cliffs of Moher. It was a crowded place. There were fleets of tour busses and a huge parking lot surrounded by open fields.  We walked up a little path, and there were the cliffs of Moher, dropping seven hundred feet down into the Atlantic. The cliffs show up on a lot of inspirational calendars for good reason. It is a place to remind us of the smallness of humans and the greatness of God's creation.  We stayed there a long time, taking in the majesty of it. 

Innishbofin

On Tuesday, Joy and I took a forty-minute boat ride to the Island of Innishbofin, which is Gaelic for the Island of the White Cow.  It is a small fishing village about five miles across, but covered with some of the most spectacular sights we saw on the trip. 

Joy in a Bike

 We rented bikes to tour the island. I have to say something about my wife's bike riding. I'm an avid cyclist, and love riding, but Joy hasn't been on a bike in twenty years. She was frightened the whole time, but she did well and managed to go from one end of the Island to another.  I salute her willingness to do it. She was a real trooper.

Cromwellian Fort

There's the ruins of a fort there, built by Oliver Cromwell which is more than four hundred and fifty years old.  It still stands prominently overlooking the harbor like something out of a gothic movie. Black rocks stand stacked one upon another,  dark and foreboding, covered with moss and lichen.  Cromwell used the fort to imprison fifty Catholic clergy of Galway when he took over the town in 1651.  The Irish were strongly Catholic, but Cromwell tried to force them into Protestantism by force.  He confiscated the estates of the Catholic noblemen and tore down many monasteries and churches.  This fort stands as a silent reminder of those days.   No wonder the Irish still hate Cromwell.

Innishbofin is a gentle place today.  Dogs, sheep and children run freely.   There is limited vehicular traffic on the single paved road.  Around every hill is another spectacular vista of ocean, stone and grassy meadow.  Seeing places like this,  it is on wonder that the Irish are a nation that produced some of the greatest poets on earth. You would have to be a poet even inadequately explain what you see.

We left and returned to the island via ferry from the fishing village of Cleggen.  There's a monument in this village dedicated to about two dozen fishermen who lost their lives in a storm in 1927. When the storm began to blow they refused to abandon their nets until it was too late. They died with their nets in the water.  Whether it is a monument to the bravery of the rescuers who saved some, the stubbornness of the fishermen, or to their foolishness for not abandoning their nets in a hopeless situations is I suppose a matter of interpretation.   Any way you look at it, it was a great tragedy.

Innishbofin though is such a peaceful place today, it is hard to imagine the hardship the place has endured.  But time heals all wounds, and the place is a monument to peaceful living, and a true reminder of the beauty of God's creation.

Further Reflections on Croegh Patrick

Croegh Patrick is a high mountain outside of Westport, Ireland. It is a stark majestic mountain,  stunning in beauty and majesty. Though we climbed only a few feet up the hill,  the view from the mountainside is breathtaking. 

But as beautiful as the location is, the human grandeur of the place is even greater. According to legend this was the place where St. Patrick imitated Jesus by fasting for forty days and nights. Today thousands of people come there either as an adventure or a spiritual pilgrimage to climb it--old and young, crippled and healthy.  To some it's a holiday while others view it as a spiritual quest. Many of the latter group climb it barefoot.

There's a mystery here that neither the hikers nor the devout nor the even we critical Protestants understand.  Why did Patrick do it? Why did our Lord Jesus,  whom Patrick was copying, go up on the Mount of Temptation in Israel? Even further, why have people come here for over a thousand years to copy Patrick's journey?

None of the usual explanations seem to me to explain it.  We Protestants often criticize it, seeing it as  Catholics  trying to atone for their own sins through penitential suffering.  There is some truth in this. There's a plaque at the bottom that declares any Catholic who climbs this hill  receives a plenary indulgence from the Pope.  We Protestants point correctly  that we don't need to climb a mountain to find forgiveness--Jesus has already give us forgiveness.  All we have to do is ask. 

But let's not be so quick to dismiss these pilgrims as guilty people who don't understand forgiveness.  Many of them walk it joyfully, not guiltily. If it were just for penance, then why did St. Patrick do it in the first place?  Moreover, why did Jesus (who knew no sin) climb a similar mountain and fast for forty days in the New Testament? If' it is just for penance, how do we explain our Lord fasting on a mountain? 

It may be true for some that they do it to attain forgiveness for sin and entrance into heaven. If that were the reason, it would be pointless to atone for our own sins. If someone paid the mortgage on the house, it would be foolish to spend the rest of our lives continuing to pay for it.  I no longer have to pay for what is already bought. But I am convinced that most intelligent Catholics understand this as much as Protestants do--and I am certainly convinced that St. Patrick understood this, too. He didn't go up the mountain to pay for what was already bought.

Some of my Pentecostal friends suggest that the reason for this kind of fasting journey is to attain spiritual power.  They point to passage where Jesus says that the some miracles come by much prayer and fasting.  They see this kind of experience as charging up our  spiritual batteries to do miraculous works. 

This explanation is also troublesome.  The Holy Spirit is not a force like electricity. I don't have to "recharge my batteries" to serve God.  His power in me is infinite.  My cell phone or computer has a finite amount of charge,  so I have to keep charging them up. Only a small amount of charge will go into my batteries at one time.  Isn't God in me capable of unlimited power?  The Holy Spirit lives and works inside every Christian. I don't have to charge my faith like I charge up my cell phone.  Besides, this view doesn't explain why Jesus, who was God and had infinite power, climbed a mountain before He began His ministry, nor why Patrick who had already demonstrated great Spiritual power in confronting the pagans of Ireland go and up the mountain, interrupting a work that was already successfully begun.

Here's what I think Patrick was doing up on Croegh Patrick.  He was imitating Jesus.  Modern believers do it in imitation of Jesus and Patrick.  When we want to know someone we imitate what they do.  We don't practice prayer, fasting, or any other good work because of the results it brings in others, but because of the changes it brings in ourselves.  It wasn't to be forgiven, or to get the power to do anything. It was be something--a simple imitator of Christ.

Part of the thrill Ireland for me was walking in the steps of my  ancestors. To walk on their soil was way of getting in touch with them.

Fasting, prayer, feeding the poor,  and even Spiritual journeys are to me a means of imitating Christ. I don't always know what I will get out of them. I don't know why Jesus did what He did fully. But when I imitate Him, I learn about Him. If Jesus found it helpful to go up a mountain without food or comfort to serve the Father, who's to say it isn't helpful for me?  Jesus saw it as necessary to regularly deny Himself comforts and pleasures of this life so He could focus on the Father.  His place in God was secure. He didn't do it to earn the next life, but so as not to become too entangled in this one.  Patrick didn't climb that mountain for the view, but for a place to encounter the Father.

As important as the central Protestant doctrine of justification by faith is, it must also be understood in balance. Jesus did everything for us--but does that mean we should make no sacrifices for Him in return?  Merely sitting and looking up and admiring a mountain peak is great, but not as great as climbing it.  Looking up at Christ on the Cross is awesome, but taking up our own cross and following Him is greater.  Those who climb that mountain on sincere pilgrimage may or may do it for the wrong reasons but I'm convinced that Patrick did it for better reasons.  He did it because Jesus told him to follow, and Jesus went up a mountain to fast, pray, and commune with the Father.

Near the base of Croegh Patrick stand another kind of monument. It's a sculpture of a ship made of human skeletons. It is a commemoration one of the "coffin ships" that left Ireland due to the famine of 1847-1849.   Millions of Irishmen died of starvation, and millions more fled to America. One tenth of the Irishmen who left  died in transit 

What would have happened if the Christians of Europe, those in England in particular, had not looked for reasons but simply imitated Christ by practicing the Spiritual discipline of charity? Many did, but not enough.  More than a million people, located a few miles off the coast of what was then the most prosperous Christian nation on earth,  died of starvation.  It was, at the time, part of their own commonwealth, yet the Christians of England could not find it in their heart or power to launch more serious relief efforts. 

I'm sure they had their motivations. But this may have been the problem We look for reasons when instead we should be engaging in simple imitation. What would have happened if the Christians of England and Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, had simply practiced the spiritual discipline of fasting,  and sent some of what they saved to Ireland?  How much might have changed in Irish history if they had? 

It may have been hard to do it,  to climb a mountain of such incredible need.  Many Christians worked hard to feed them, especially those who ladled out life from the "soup kettles" in the churches. But the imitation of Christ in all things is an essential part of Christian spirituality.  Christians sat back in their comfort and let the people of Ireland starve. 

It isn't an accident that the sculpture of the coffin ship was placed near the base of Croegh Patrick. The imitation of Christ is not just a personal journey. It involved imitating Him in His love as well as in his purity.  Maybe, instead of rejoicing in personal salvation, they could have done more to imitate Christ  their treatment of each other.  I don't know the history of Ireland well enough to know if this were true, but maybe it was.  If they had imitated Christ more then, the history of this country might have been very different.   

Cong and Croegh Patrick

Sunday afternoon, we went to Cong,  the location of John Ford's 1951 film The Quiet Man.  By this time, I had begun to adjust to driving on the left side of the road, and only occasionally screamed in terror at seeing cars going in the wrong direction.
Connemara is a beautiful area. To drive through it is like driving through a living painting.  Lazy streams wind though green treeless hills,  dotted with sheep and massive stones.  The effect is at once primitive and genteel,  ancient and young.  When you get close to Cong, the roads takes you by the largest lake in Ireland, Lough Corrib.  I cannot describe it, so I'll have to show it. 

Cong is commerical, but tasteful. There's a Quiet Man Museum there, and a statue of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. But it's not too large and does not destroy the simple, genuine charm of the village.  There is an Abbey there, which has roots going back to the time of St. Patrick.  The Cross of Cong is a national treasure, found in the museum in Dublin, which legend says once contained a sliver of the True Cross.  (When you're in Ireland you run into a lot of legends.  Irishmen regard history more as an art form than a conveyor of reality, and every village has a few legends. One can never be sure how much truth remain in them.)  Cong indisputably was the center of Irish government, when the high king of Ireland lived there.  On remnant of those days is found in Ashford Castle, outside of town.
After visiting the magnificent ruins of the Abbey, Joy and I decided to walk to Ashford Castle,  just five minutes away.  It was raining a bit, and Joy's knee was hurting, so it was not an easy walk for her. But in a short time, we saw it across the river. A beautifully restored manor house.

You may note in the picture, that there are cars in front of the castle. That's because it is now a five star hotel. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, as well as rock stars and statesmen stay there. So when we tried to get closer, we were turned away at the gate.  It seem that there is still a gap between the gentry and we lowly peasants, even today.
The next day, we went to Westport. northeast of where we were staying.  Again--a fantastically beautiful drive.  It took us past the Killary Fjord, the only true fjord in Ireland.  Here's a picture.

From there we went to Croegh Patrick, or "Patrick's Pile"  It is a huge, bare peak, next to the water.
There were two reasons we wanted to go there.  The first was spiritual.  St. Patrick was a true spiritual giant. He was a Roman patrician, captured by Irish slavers, and imprisoned fourteen years in Ireland. When he was released,  he returned to preach the Gospel among them, and is reputed to have converted Ireland to Christianity in the Fifth Century, A. D.  On this mountain, he was said to have fasted for Ireland for forty days,  as well as (according to legend) prayed to rebuke the snakes and serpents.  Probably, this refers to pagan religions, not real snakes. One Sunday in July is called Reek Sunday, when devout Catholics walk barefoot up the mountain as an act of devotion. I wanted to see this place. It is truly a devout and holy place.

The second reason we went was not so spiritual. The owner of the local bike store in my town is from Westport. He gave me a free bike jersey if I would wear it in Ireland. I could think of no better place to wear it than at Croegh Patrick.

The sword and the Kettle

Sunday in Connemara, Joy and I went to the only Protestant church we could find--the Church of Ireland, just around the corner from the house we were staying.  It was an old stone building, not large, but impressive, which seemed to have fallen into disrepair. There were only four members of the church there along with the priest and one other couple, making nine in all.  The other couple were also a Presbyterian minister and his wife from northern Ireland.  The priest was so glad to see us that he asked me to read the Old Testament reading. Afterward we went out with the other Presbyterian minister and his wife--Joe and Sheila. He was an Ulster man, and gave me the rundown on the church in Northern Ireland.
Before we left the church,  Joe pointed to a large cauldron sitting in the foyer of the church. It was the size of a bathtub, and would make a fine cannibal jacuzzi.  "That's a famine kettle," he explained.  It was a sacred piece of remembrance in western Ireland.
From 1847 to 1849,  a potato blight destroyed the potato crop in Ireland.  The potato was one of the few crops that would grow in the poor soil. In those years, more than a million people starved to death.  More than a million more left for America in ships, called "coffin ships" because of the many travelers who starved to death in transit.  These troubles left an indelible mark on the people of Ireland that remains till this day.
In that time, the Protestant church,which had mainly been associated with the hated English landlords,  attempted to make inroads among the people.  They set up "famine kettles" and brought in food to feed the people. As a result, they made many converts to Protestantism.
But the priests and preachers were so set against the Catholics, and preached so vehemently against them, that the Catholic church reciprocated.  Catholic priests encouraged their people to discriminate against Protestant converts. Fistfights and sword fights broke out between Catholic and Protestant clergymen at funerals.  The Catholic Church began to send in relief themselves, and eventually outdid the Protestants.  As a result the Protestant churches was nearly exterminated.  What few remain are the remnants of the old landed gentry, or new transplants.
My friend Joe explained that when you become a Protestant or Catholic in Ireland, you are assumed to take a certain political position as well.  You don't just take on a new faith, you join a new team. As a result, honest religion based on faith and belief became secondary to political affiliation.  In both Scotland and Ireland, faith became an extension of politics. It became more about fighting than praying.
Today, both Catholics and Protestants are in trouble in Ireland.  Religion is seen as a relic of the past. Many churches are empty or have become historical monuments. It is not uncommon for old churches to have become houses, night clubs, or stores.
When they had their famine kettles and their worship services,  they served the people for God's sake. But then the English Lords and the revolutionaries both began to see the church as a tool to fight for political ends. As a result, the church began to be seen more for its swords than for its kettles.
Today, of course, it is very different. Catholic and Protestant churches both go out of their way to cooperate. They have to, since both are becoming minorities in an increasingly secular place.
Maybe they should have spent more time feeding people with the famine kettle and less time sharpening swords. 

On the Road to Connemara

We rented a car in Galway and headed up to Connemara.  

The scariest thing about this trip so far has been driving on the left side of the road.  My initial reaction was to panic every time I passed an oncoming car who seemed to be driving in my lane. It doesn't help that they have no idea of shoulders on the roads. They plant hedgerows and build stone walls so close that they nearly scrape the paint off the car.  I told myself that I wouldn't get confused, that I was intelligent enough to figure this out, but five minutes after getting behind the wheel I was trying to get in the wrong lane.  After a couple of hours, though I started to get the hang of it.

When drove north from Galway into the district of Connemara,  headed for a town called Clifden. The farther we drove, the more we were taken by the stunning landscape.  Ireland has been like an onion  with layers of beauty and discovery, each mile a fresh vista of greater beauty.

A half hour up the road we stopped to visit the ruins of Aughnanure Castle (Pronounced to rhyme with "hog manure)'.  It is an ancient fortress of the O'Flaherty clan.  On the gates of old Galway was a written an ancient prayer "God protect this city from the plague and from the Ferocious O'Flaherties"  Visiting the castle, you can understand why they wrote it.  It must have bristled with armaments. Arrow slits and murder holes are still there among the granite slabs.  You can still see the high keep, and the ruins of the great feasting hall.  Now, though, the only feasters as sheep, and the only besieging hordes are milk cows.   After  imagining ourselves as lord and lady of the castle and taking pictures of it all, we traveled up the road.

A few miles later, we came upon a road sign marked the "Quiet Man Bridge." It was a bridge that was used as a location for the 1951 movie "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maurine O'Hara.  It's just a stone bridge on a farm path over a gurgling stream.  It looks to be hundreds of years old.  Typical of the beauty of this place, though, there was nothing to mark or celebrate it except a small plaque with John Wayne's picture on it.  No one else was around.

If the first half of the journey was pretty, the second half was beyond spectacular.  Words are inadequate, pictures even more so.  Out of a barren wasteland of grass and stone, hills rose up like ancient giants, bare as bald men, out of rugged stone.  There are few houses here. The only inhabitants were the cars which went by, a few hikers and cyclists, and of course the sheep, which seemed oblivious to us.  They slept in places by the road and occasionally on the road.  In Ireland they don't have road kill--but they should have road mutton.  Streams meandered over the plains.  Never rushing,  always seeming to take their time. 

I'll always remember one place, after we passed the town of Clifden,  where we climbed a small hill, and the road suddenly opened into the valley below.  Coming round the curb,  we could see the great hills of Connemara National Park in the distance, reflecting the afternoon sunlight.  Down below were the treeless grassland,  dotted with sheep.  Loughs and esters--lakes and gentle sea bays--cut through the plain.  The composition was perfect; the coloration was perfect in the afternoon sunlight,  and it was all I could to keep my eyes on the road. 

Sometimes life is hard and mean. Other times, like today, suddenly surprises us with glimpses of heaven.  I could  stay here forever and stare at these hills.  But then, what other wonders would I miss?

Galway

 We arrived in Dublin at six in the morning. I had been up all night, too excited to sleep.   We took the express bus to Galway on the other side of Ireland.  This took about three hours, and it gave me a chance to look at the countryside. Joy, who can sleep through anything,  dozed most of the time.

My first impression of Ireland was that of having entered a kind of alternate reality.   It really isn't that different from America in most ways--Dublin has Starbucks,  Subways, internet and interstate highways.  People dress like us, and speak English.  Their standard of living is generally comparable to  ours. There are ads for the same television show and products.  The same music was playing on the radio as at home (who knew that Ireland was big into country music and hip-hop?)   But then there are the little differences that tell you immediately that you aren't at home--cars drive on the left, not on the right,  the Irish accent, road signs in English and Gaelic, weird money.  It was a little unnerving for someone who isn't used to it, such as Joy and I. 

But whatever discomfort these changes may have generated, they disappeared once we got to Galway and experienced the cordiality of the people.  Taxi drivers, hotel clerks and shopkeepers went out of their way to help us at every turn.

By the time we got to Galway  I was exhausted. It was still two hours before we could check into our hotel, so we left our bags with the concierge and walked the streets, near the center of town. 

Galway is called the cultural heart of Ireland. It is the center of Galway County and located on Galway Bay, near the lower edge of the Connemara region.  It is the fourth largest city in Ireland and considered the center of Irish culture and language. People speak Gaelic to one another on the streets and on their cell phones. It is, as one news reported described it, the most visited tourist destination in Ireland.  There are pubs on every corner.  The houses are built in rows, with grey and ocher faces, slate roofs and two smokestacks each, like lines of grey and cream colored Lego blocks.  The weather was cool and perfect. 

One memorable sight to me was a church cemetery on a hill between our hotel and town.  The graveyard had two matching chapels on opposite ends, and in between were rows and rows of Celtic crosses.  They were of different ages, sizes and designs.  Some were new, while others were pitted and weathered with age. They were solemn and beautiful, silhouetted against the sky.

Once in our room we both took long naps before venturing out again for dinner.  We walked past the center of town into the ancient part of Galway.  Galway was built as a fortress city in the Fifteenth Century, and had been fought over by tribal cheiftains, Norman conquerors, Henry VII, and Oliver Cromwell.  It became a center of trade, and the fourteen leading merchant families, known as the Tribes, poured their wealth into its architecture and culture.

The whole area had a festival atmosphere. There were shops, pubs, traveling magicians and entertainers--a kind of permanent Renaissance fair. Children were dancing Irish jigs and broom dances for the crowd   Street musicians played everything--acoustic rock, jazz,  traditional Irish music,  harps, violins, and drums.  In one place a juggler on a unicycle performed. In another a drunken leprechaun  sold "magic" matches. All of this played our against a backdrop of genuine historical interest.

I could not possibly tell all we saw that day, but one place I have to mention.  It was a tea shop on a corner near the museum called "Cupan Tae" or "Cup of Tea."  The sign on the door said "Gentlemen, do not be put off by the frills. Our food is worth it." It was!  The inside was straight out of Beatrix Potter or Alice in Wonderland.  The women who ran it were spot-on perfect, with their hair in buns and frilly aprons. It was like stepping out of time into story book.

Come to think of it, the same can be said for the rest of Galway. 

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