HOLDING COURT: What's In a Story? (Part 2)
HOLDING COURT, is a series by FoG Legal Counsel, Dave Courtney (get it?), where he plays both defense and prosecution, making airtight cases for the media he’s consuming; be it horrific, holy, or somewhere in the middle. Friends and FoGgers, all rise, because HOLDING COURT is now in session…
What’s In a Story: From Ukraine to Ireland With The Biblical Narrative in Tow (Part 2)
In Brooklyn, John Crowley’s much celebrated 2015 film about an Irish woman who emigrates to America, we find a recognizable and common distinctive of Irish film; an examination of the tension that exists between the ongoing Diaspora and a continued longing for home. Given Ireland’s complicated history, what makes the Diaspora an interesting study is the way this tension reveals a modern Ireland that has been formed largely by those living abroad. In Fintan O’Toole’s comprehensive history of modern Ireland (We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland) he paints a picture of a country where the most readily identifiable resource is not its natural resources or economic power, but its people. Throughout its history, Ireland has been defined by those who have left, which begs the question; what exactly does it mean to be Irish today, or in a broader sense what makes Ireland “Ireland”.
The Diaspora and the Exile: Locating The Internal Struggle
There are many reasons for people leaving, ranging from internal conflicts (the troubles), famine, colonization, oppression, economic uncertainty, global unrest, and a lack of education (or the lack of an educational system). From this emerges a conflict between the need to modernize and a desire to preserve its distinct spiritual and national identity. Out of this we get these dual concerns for home and identity. One visible characteristic of Irelands past, for example, is the rampant oppression of women that arises from the colonizing of their land, something O’Toole spends a lot of time exploring. Women played a key role both at home and abroad in paving the way towards a more liberated society, often under the direct pressures of religious, political and social oppression. They learned how to move freely between two worlds, holding the valued Traditions of their homeland and a desire for change in both hands, often with this lingering sense of never fully belonging in either space.
Another unique aspect of Ireland’s Diaspora was the ongoing debate about geographical identity, which struggled to define the positioning of Ireland within a larger political and continental divide. This external debate spills over into its relationship to modernity, constantly shifting between rejection and embrace by Europe on one side and America on the other. Or as I heard one person say it, the struggle between empire on one side and capitalism on the other, with the idea of Ireland caught in-between. It became an island to its own, largely neglected, forgotten, ignored, and isolated save for one simple thing- the determination of its people to understand what it means to be Irish amidst the need for change..
If the conflict in Ukraine is largely defined in an external sense, it could be said that the conflict that we find in Ireland’s history is defined more so in an internal sense. These are the struggles of an independent people attempting to uphold a picture of a unified Ireland while subsequently allowing the existing struggles to erode their sense of identity from the inside out. Like the story of Israel, which moves us from the Exodus to the Exile, Ireland’s history holds important lessons for how established independence can lead us inwards rather than outwards, reminding us that liberation frees us in the story of Israel, and subsequently in the story of Christ, to be a light to a hurting world. This is precisely where those dual concerns for home and identity come into view.
To ask the question, “What is Ireland?” is to ask what is Ireland to the world. Or better yet, what is Ireland within the world? Rooted deep in the soil of this small, isolated island is the symbol of Ireland’s persistent longing for re-enchantment, a characteristic of the Irish people that has secured itself in the consciousness of others around the world. Here, the need for change and the value for Tradition need not stand in conflict.
Recovering The Thin Places
As I am writing this I am staring at our yearly calendar for 2022, a storied walk through Ireland’s magical landscapes. This month is taking me through the enchanted seaside towns of Antrim and Cork, spaces where belief in Fairy Hills and wee folk make up the cultural reality alongside quaint Irish architecture, the natural beauty, a penchant for crack (banter), community pubs, and the otherworldly music. As I reflected on in Part One, it was the experience of tracking down my wife Jen’s family village in Ukraine that sparked a desire to someday connect with my own roots. I know that my history travels out of Ireland with a group of itinerant Pastors serving the suffering and oppressed alongside John Wesley, likely after one of his many visits to the Country. I also know there are threads of my family who stayed and continue to occupy space in an ever evolving Ireland. To one day be able to visit and establish these connections and make better sense of that story in relationship to the Diaspora is something I think I would find meaningful. It also might help me make sense of what I can only describe as a hidden and desperate longing for re-enchantment in my own life. This might sound crazy, but sometimes I wonder if my own restlessness when it comes to reclaiming wonder in a largely cynical world, be it through experience or art, could be rooted somehow in that Irish soil. Certainly these are longings that have a long and storied history in Ireland itself, particularly where it escaped the destructive path of Rome and was left free to develop and prosper strong literary and storytelling traditions. This seeded a war torn world with the call towards re-enchantment (see: How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill).
To speak of Ireland then is to begin to recover (or uncover) a freedom to begin (re)imagining a world, a cosmos even, that exists underneath the troubles. I think this is why you hear Irish people speak of their land as inhabiting these “thin places”, defined as spaces where the “veil between this world and the other is porous”. Where mystery can once again come alive in uncertain times. The beauty of Ireland as an idea is that it reminds us that these thin places can be found anywhere we (and they) reside. It is simply that these spaces tend to been forgotten and neglected, especially here in the West.
Intentional Unknowing and the Problem of Empire
As the final chapter of O’Toole’s book underscores, this is how Ireland finds its way forward, by imagining its strength through the preservation of wonder and re-enchantment rather than through wealth, power, and political positioning. Those who have returned after living abroad are helping to bring change in relationship with those who have stayed. As O’Toole points out though, this sort of imagination can be a double-edged sword. He describes a unique commitment to “fictional truths” which enabled the Irish to imagine the better parts of themselves while remaining willfully ignorant of the bad. He speaks of this as fostering a culture of intentional “unknowing”, which becomes a way of addressing the problems they know are there without actually addressing them. This becomes their own means of forgetting the thin places. A consequence of this becomes the inability then to know who they are and what it means to be Irish. This is what leaves them looking both East and West for answers in the form of illusions to Empire, neglecting the inner turmoil that exists within.
O’Toole suggests that what gives Empire its allure in modern Irish history is the need for certainty in uncertain times. The need to be seen as more than just a forgotten space, the desire to belong somewhere in the wider world not simply as a people but as Ireland, leads to a constant struggle between what they find in the world (images of Empire) and what they find in their past (images of the spirit). And yet this practice of “unknowing” left them vulnerable to the problem of Empire precisely because it allowed them to ignore the challenges that modernity brought; moving from a classless system to a system with class structures, the allure of money, status and power that comes with encroaching capitalism, religious corruption being traded for political corruption, the eroding of communal systems and values, the loss of meaning making systems, the building of a car dependent culture. The countries storied relationship to systemic racism also gets forgotten, be it the racism hidden in their colonized past (see this article from Irish Times) or the racism they experienced in foreign lands where the history of “whiteness” determined both their exclusion and inclusion to different points in time (note this podcast from The Guardian).
This has real implications for a modern Ireland where the narrative of the Diaspora has now shifted. More and more people are now moving back to Ireland, including those facing oppression. This brings with it a new diversity of people and experiences and a new identity. It also brings new challenges. O’Toole links these challenges to their once adopting of the American Western as a means of telling their own story. Ireland faced a crisis point between emerging and contrasting “fictional truths” (the country emerging as an economic power) and a coming to grips with who they really are; a lesser economic power where their prospering was actually coming in ways less visible to the wider world and on a lesser scale than their fictional truths imagined).
This challenged their sense of certainty and left them vulnerable to thoughts of an uncertain future. O’Toole sees in this point of crisis the power of the Traditional Irish Spirit pushing through and calling them back to a distinct awareness of what it means to embrace the art of not knowing and a willingness to live with mystery. Or in other words, the ability to live in the light of an uncertain future by exchanging a need for certainty for a greater agency to live in the here and now. He argues that the unique unifying power of this Irish character cuts through divisions elsewhere in modernity where political, religious and economic powers continue to threaten needed social change. Ireland makes a case that challenging systems and Traditions does not need to mean the abolishing of a sense of home and identity. It can actually enrich them.
The Art of Not Knowing
We can see this in more modern writers such as Maeve Binchy, who underscores this concern for needed re-enchantment in her biography by Piers Dudgeon (Maeve Binchy: A Biography). Being a lapsed Catholic struggling to reconcile her Irish identity with her life as a woman living in an increasingly secularized society plays into her determination to push for necessary change in Ireland. It was that Irish sense of the spirit that ultimately refused to let her go, motivating her to recover those lost spiritual roots. Similar with Maeve Higgins, an Irish comedian/writer/actor writing about Ireland while living in America (the author of Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl From Somewhere Else and Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them). In an interview with Rick Steves, she speaks about what it means to long for those pieces of home that can help her make greater meaning and sense of her life in America. In fact. Rick Steves has recently done a whole series of episodes on Ireland, including one on how the recovery of the Irish language in Ireland is playing a bit role in the reclaiming of that Irish identity.
Perhaps though this can be seen most astutely in Wolfwalkers, an animated film from Cartoon Saloon that depicts the tragic nature of colonization as a way of uncovering the spiritual heart of Ireland. Despite many reviewers I read describing this film purely as a critique of religion and a defence of modernism, this seemed to miss the necessary reconstruction that is evident in the film’s desire to locate that Irish identity in the need to be rooted in magic and wonder.
Belfast and The Promise of New Beginnings
The recent Oscar nominated and winner Belfast functions simultaneously as a love letter to Ireland, captured through its brilliant black and white aesthetic with intentional notes of color, and as a window into the very real challenges of the Country’s storied history. Like Brooklyn, we see this existing tension between the necessary leaving and the longing for home, with home and identity emerging as two central themes within its story. What this helps us as viewers to imagine is how to unite this need for change with the preservation of Tradition. Here I am reminded of Granny’s words to Buddy: “What makes each story different is not how it ends, but rather where it begins.” In the context of Belfast this beginning is imagined similarly as the promise of “new beginnings”, something that Granny believes can emerge from the Diaspora.
This is what informs the subsequent promise given to Buddy that “Belfast will still be here when you get back.” Here change is rooted in preserving the memory of Ireland’s past while freeing of Buddy to embrace that uncertain future from afar. New beginnings come from learning to see the world anew and as it truly is. That is, I think, how wonder is meant to work.
I’m also reminded here of the words Catherine given to Buddy: “Have you gone to the moon yet? Do you want to, with me? It’ll save you getting cold waiting outside your house.” Equally so, the vision of Ireland that has soaked in to the worlds consciousness, whether we’ve stepped on its soil or not, represents the promise of re-enchantment in a world where disenchantment seems to threaten our ability to wonder. As it says in the caption for the wonderful Irish film by John Sayles, The Secret of Roan Inish, “between land and sea there is a place where myths are real.” This is the power of the Irish imagination.
