ring, ring — mrs d picks up the phone, it’s the 7:15 wake-up call and, as expected, nobody answers back. time to get up. ring, ring — mrs d picks up the phone yet again, this time round it’s the bloke from reception asking whether “madame is ok?”, madame affirms and receives a rather charming “ok, baby”. this somewhat incongruous start into our first day as pilgrims in ireland kind of forms the fabric of the day: it stays incongruous, constantly changing between dry and rather wet.

breakfast at the stand house hotel is, compared to dinner, a bit of a let down: the orange and cranberry juice suffers from a rather high concentration of water and introduces the gnawing suspicion that the breakfast staff have not yet grasped the concept that orange juice concentrate should not be used to dilute water but rather the other way round. the cooked breakfast is on the ok side of cooked breakfasts (we’ve had worse, but we’ve also had better), the waitress a charm that would work quite well inside a wood workshop, taking rough edges off…

while the sun is still shining we leave by bus for the first part of our pilgrimage: the eurospar at kilcullen (food always played an important role on pilgrimages through the ages).

next, through narrow, winding roads we aim for hollywood — and miss on the first attempt. after some tapping of local knowledge1 we make it with take 2 and, a few miles outside of hollywood, start our walking part: we are following part of kevin’s way in the direction of glendalough.

the weather has turned sour on us, and alternatively treats us to dry and wet spells while we are still on the hard road part of the walk. once we reach the footpath along the river, however, it’s found its stride and just pours it out all the way to pass road for wicklow pass. d’oh.

the landscape is rather nice though and it’s kind of fun walking through the drenched scenery regardless of the rain. after about 2.5 hours we reach the pass road to wicklow pass and are rescued by our bus. next stop: glendalough.

at glendalough are the rather interesting remains of the old monasteric city. it was originally founded by kevin who intended to lead a solitary life as a hermit — that plan didn’t work out too well and kevin had to scupper it quite quickly as other folks like that idea of leading a solitary life in that spot of ireland, and…joined him.2 a thriving community evolved around the monasteric buildings and quickly turned from a mere dwelling into a town.

what is interesting about glendalough is the way they lived a life that did not differentiate between worldly matters and spiritual matters but instead practised a holistic spirituality, the celtic spirituality: god is among us, around us, above us and below us and with us in everything we do and live — in contrast to the continental european theology which is mostly a kind of dualistic theology (god above in heaven, we down below on earth). there are parallels to dietrich bonhoeffer’s view that god is not a god of the boundaries or gaps3 but instead a god in our midst (and only makes sense as such) — a view that i’ve made my own ever since i encountered it and, thus, am pleasantly surprised to encounter it here again and also to learn that there is a long tradition supporting that view.

after we had made our way through the (heavily visited) ruins of the monasteric city we spent about an hour with dominican sister genevieve who explained to us the history behind and nature of celtic spirituality — a very fascinating hour!

dinner was a bit less organized than yesterday (the notion of drinks along with food was a novelty to the two waitresses this evening, but they quickly realized that it might indeed be a good idea), the quality of the food was good.

1. luckily, those two old men did know their way around, unlike me sometime in the early 1990s in the north of jeresey when i unintentionally mis-directed a bus full of tourists looking for jersey airport (of which they were as far away as they could possibly get on that island). ↩
2. some folks really don’t get even simple ideas… ↩
3. that is, god as our explanation for all those things we do not understand — and as a consequence, a god that we keep pushing further and further away from us the more we manage to explain ourselves. ↩