Top Ten Reasons Not to Adopt the Belhar as a Fourth Confession

I was recently asked my opinion on the proposal by the Christian Reformed Church in North America to adopt the Belhar Confession as a fourth confession alongside the Three Forms of Unity (The Belgic Confession, The Heidelberg Catechism, and The Canons of Dordt). I am not in favor of that proposal, though I could live with adopting it as a testimony, along the lines of our Contemporary Testimony. The problem with opposing Belhar is that people will inevitably accuse you of being racist; it’s like asking someone the question: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” But I oppose the adoption of Belhar as a binding confession primarily for theological reasons and concerns about confessional integrity. I have a few reasons, which I put in the form of a David Lettermanesque Top Ten List.

10. Belhar is specifically South African and not North American in its context and application. It does not reflect the experiences of the North American Church and its own issues regarding race.

9. The multiplication of confessions waters down the significance of the confessions, as witnessed by the PC(USA). The more confessions you have, the less meaningful each one of them becomes.

8. The Christian Reformed Church has already been moving toward weakening its subscription to the confessions, and so this attempt to adopt another one is ironic.

7. The primary author of the Belhar confession (Allan Boesak) has insisted that one implication of Belhar is that the church embrace and affirm homosexuality (homosexual behavior), and even resigned his church offices over the matter. If the primary author of the confession declares that the implication of Belhar is the embrace of homosexuality, then there is good reason to doubt the “theological adequacy” of this confession, as Richard Mouw and others have argued. (http://www.netbloghost.com/mouw/?p=108 ) The statement of the committee (or the denomination or the synod)  that the Belhar Confession does not imply the embrace and affirmation of homosexual behavior is an inadequate safeguard against future use of this confession to justify the normalization of homosexual partnerships or otherwise subvert biblical teachings regarding morality in the name of justice.

6. The Belhar Confession is not a confession in the sense that the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession are (and the Canons of Dort as an explanation of Belgic Confession art. 16); that is, it Is not a comprehensive summary of Christian faith; it is a statement on one particular sin, and if adopted, should be adopted as such at the same level as the Contemporary Testimony.

5.  Neglect of our foundational confessions in the CRC necessitates that we dedicate more study and attention to those confessions, rather than diverting our attention to one that lacks “theological adequacy.”

4. Adopting a confession will do little or nothing to change people’s behaviour and attitudes with regard to race relations; clear teaching from the pulpit and church members holding each other accountable does have the potential to do so.

3. The suspect, Marxist-based liberation theology behind Belhar, politicizes the gospel and tends to identify that gospel with left-wing politics.

2. There will a number of pastors and other officebearers in the CRC who will have difficulty subscribing to this confession, not because they are racist, but because of its theological inadequacy, and because it directly contradicts the teaching of scripture in Leviticus 19:15 (Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly). As a result, adoption of this document as a confession rather than as a testimony has real potential to create division, if not schism, in the churches.

…And the number one reason for not adopting the Belhar as a fourth confession along with the Three Forms Of Unity…
( ♪ ♫ drumroll ♪ ♫ )

1. Adopting the Belhar confession is a copout. It’s easy to confess the past sins of Pro-Apartheid Boers far away in South Africa. It’s much more difficult to confess our own sins of racism, most glaringly our racial segregation of a Christian school in the Chicago area in the 1960’s, and the everyday prejudices we encounter among among our fellow church members and within ourselves.  The CRC should instead be composing a profound confesson (of sin) for its own past and current racism and prejudice, and a clear statement about racial prejudice and reconciliation–one that cannot be easily coopted to support any and all left-wing causes, and one which those who hold confessional orthodoxy dear can wholeheartedly and robustly endorse without scruple or qualms of conscience. [Update: John Bolt reminds me that we already did all that confessing back in 1997. Why we need to constantly confess our sins over and over again is beyond me. We really need to do is concentrate on being the church]. 

More discussion and critiques of the Belhar can be found here:

• Viola Larson, The Belhar Confession: The Wrong Time, The Wrong Place, The Wrong Confession Larson argues that the Barmen Declaration is more of a real comprehensive confession, but that is also quite debatable.
• Richard Mouw, Allan Boesak: Earlier versus Later
• Kevin DeYoung, The Belhar Confession: Yea or Nay or even better: Why Not Belhar? Note the final paragraph: The Belhar Confession, for all its good words and noble intentions, creates more problems in the RCA than it solves. A “no” on Belhar is not a “no” to multiculturalism, learning from the global South, or racial reconciliation. It is a “no” to an ambiguous, open-ended document that, despite the relentless and one-sided efforts of the RCA leadership, is better left as a statement of South African courage than a binding confession that defines us a denomination for years, decades, and possibly centuries to come.” Despite the relentless efforts of the CRC leadership, the same applies to us.

Sensory Sacraments

I’m preaching on Ephesians 4:1-16 on Sunday, and we are celebrating both sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We’ve been discussing the sacraments quite a bit lately in our CrossTraining services, particularly the issue of admitting baptized children to the Lord’s Table; and on Sunday we will discuss in greater depth the role of Profession of Faith, and some of the challenges we as a church face in terms of young adults who are less enthusiastic about taking that step. While I was doing research for my lesson and sermon, I ran across a book by William Willimon, an author whose writings have been invaluable to me in my preaching and teaching. It’s called A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship, and it turned up on Google Books, which generously showed me some very interesting pages about how the sacraments connect to our senses, and by doing so, connect heaven and earth, the new creation with the old, the “sacred” and the “mundane.” Publishers shouldn’t complain too much about Google Books, because after reading these few pages, I immediately ordered the book.

Here are some excerpts from pages 40-43:

“Sacraments…are everyday objects, like bread and water, and everyday actions, like eating and bathing, that when done among God’s people in worship convey both God’s love for them and their love for God. God uses everyday things we can understand—bread, wine, water—to show us a love that defies understanding.”

Willimon talks about baptism as a communal activity. There is no such thing as private baptism, nor could there be. Willimon says, “Baptism is a sign that Christianity is not a home correspondence course in salvation; it is a sign of a social, ecclesial, familial, gracious, communal way of life.”

“What do these sacraments mean? The Lord’s Supper means everything that any meal means: love, fellowship, hunger, nourishment. These meanings are given added significance because, in this meal, we commune with the risen Christ, who joins us at the Table. People may not know what redemption, atonement, reconciliation, sanctification, and all our other big words mean—but everybody, from the youngest to the oldest, knows what a meal means. …

“Baptism means everything that water means: cleansing, birth, power, refreshment, life, death. These natural, everyday meanings of water are given added power because the water is administered ‘in the name of Jesus.’ When we baptize, the congregation ought to see, hear, and feel water. Once again, some people may not know what justification, redemption, and prevenient grace mean—but everybody knows what it means to be thirsty, to be born, to drown, or to be dirty.

“…When we worship through wine, water, and bread, when we point to human events like a meal or a bath, we are linking our faith with daily life, spirit with flesh, the heavenly with the mundane. …Therefore we do a great injustice to the sacraments when we transform them into some ethereal, detached, ‘spiritual,’ exercise that has no support in everyday experience. Specifically when we celebrate these rites, we must use wine that tastes like wine and bread that looks and tastes like the bread we had for breakfast this morning. When we baptize, we must use water in sufficient amounts so that everyone sees, hears, and feels the experience of water.” 

I hope this Sunday we see and hear and smell and taste and feel the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

On Religion, to its Uncultured Pomo Despisers

Some people are wondering why I wrote that article in the January 2k10 issue of The Banner. Well, I wrote it because they asked me to write something, and they didn’t tell me what to write, which is a pain, because then I have to think of something.

So what I came up with was a defense and exposition of the term “religion.” Why? Because religious people who think they’re not religious say silly things about not being religious. And not only in popular stuff like The Shack, or in too-hip-for-my-haircut Emergent communities, but even among learned and respected persons. The one I have in mind is one of my favorite authors and pastors, Tim Keller. Love the guy. Wish I could have gone to his church when Sandy and I were in Manhattan. Love his book/DVD The Prodigal God, and used it for a teaching series in our church. Love his The Reason for God, and his YouTube defense of the Christian faith to the employees of Google. Love his new books that have come out that I haven’t read yet.

But he said something surprising on his website promoting The Prodigal God. And I quote:

“Religion operates on the principle: I obey, therefore I’m accepted. But the gospel operates on the principle: I’m accepted through what Jesus Christ has done, therefore I obey. So religion isn’t just a little bit different than the gospel; they are diametrically opposed. And unless you actually invite people into the gospel, in distinction from religion, if you just call them to give their lives to Christ in some general way, they’ll think you’re calling them into being a good person; they’ll think you’re calling them into being an elder brother. So you have to always distinguish the gospel from religion and irreligion and as you preach, because our churches are filled with elder brothers, and they don’t know they are. All they know is God isn’t very real to them, and their faith is a kind of a drudgery to them, and unless you preach to them the difference between religion and the gospel, they aren’t going to get renewed by the Holy Spirit; they’re not going to find the gospel beginning to transform their lives. One of the best ways to do that is by preaching the parable of the prodigal son. This parable will help us live out the implications of what it means to be gospel-transformed people. Not elder brothers, not younger brothers, but people living as images of our true elder brother, Jesus Christ.”
http://www.theprodigalgod.com/video.html accessed September 10, 2009, under the “Message for Pastors” link.

Surely, Tim knows better than that, since he must be pretty well acquainted with John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, and the concepts therein like the semen religionis and the sensus divinitatis. But I presume he uses this language for strategic purposes. I just don’t think it was a good strategic choice, because it’s not entirely honest, and it creates problems when one tries to explain Paul’s arguments in Romans 1 about how all people are religious, and his own evangelistic strategy in Acts 17:16ff., and the fact that religion pertains to the fact that humanity is created to relate to its Creator. I just wish he had specified that what he’s talking about is “works-centered religion”or “human-centered religion,” otherwise the statement can sound potentially shallow or misleading.

That’s why I love it that there’s a Facebook group called “I am religious but not spiritual.” And yes, I’m a fan.

Children at Communion Resources

The Christian Reformed Church’s Faith Formation Committee website has additional resources for studying the topic of including covenant children at the Lord’s Table, including a Bible study on I Cor. 11, and a document called Affirming Baptism and Forming Faith.

Maybe I’ll start blogging again

I think it’s good for me to write on a regular basis. Unfortunately, people sometimes read what I write, which means I have to be careful not to say whatever darn-fool thing comes into my head.

Right now the Christian Reformed Church is considering the issue of including young children in communion. I think it’s a fascinating topic, and one that can raise passions, which means that it’s also a dangerous topic. Many bloggers who are opposed to the practice have attacked its proponents in ways that are neither honest nor civil, neither open-minded nor charitable (note: I will not allow any of that kind of attack on my blog). As a Reformation scholar, and someone duly catechized in the Dutch Reformed tradition, I was adamantly opposed to allowing children to the table apart from a profession of faith. I held that position for many reasons: my understanding of I Cor. 11:17-34, the fact that the Reformers were unanimously opposed to it (or so I thought–I didn’t know about Wolfgang Musculus’ view), my veneration for Louis Berkhof and John Calvin, and my emphasis on the importance of learning the faith and professing the faith. Then one of my fellow church historians, who shall remain nameless (Dr. David Rylaarsdam), barged in uninvited and urged me to consider a different exegesis of I Cor. 11, and informed me about the baptism and communion practices of the early church. As a result of this uninvited and unaskedfor nagging, I reluctantly and totally against my will changed my mind. I hate changing my mind. Anyway, we have been studying the issue in our teaching services at Neerlandia Christian Reformed Church, and having very good and fruitful discussions about it. I am proud to be the pastor of a congregation that can agree and disagree and discuss without falling into incivility and nastiness (or very rarely doing so).

The Synod of the Christian Reformed Church invited baptized children to communion in 2006; in 2007 they got chicken and took it back (well, really, they needed to do it more decently and in good order, I suppose; and they probably did need to provide more solid biblical exegesis, etc., which is a good thing). But that also left many members (me included) disappointed and frustrated. For myself, I went through all that trouble of changing my stubborn and intransigent mind on the issue, and then we all had to go back to the drawing board. For our congregation, and maybe for others too, the issue was just dropped.

Now a new report has come out and it’s good, particularly it’s main point, a guiding principle that it proposes. But it’s not fully satisfying to me because (at least as I understand it) it does not open the door to any changes in our practices in the churches, at least not for a period of years at the least. It emphasizes that we have to wait for a revision of the church order (art. 59a) before we change our practices. But that will likely take years. The change has to be proposed, then approved by a following Synod. For some reason, the “welcome to the table” process that appears to be recommended by the report authors is not judged by those same authors to fulfill the spirit of Church Order article 59a, though it may be a far cry from the letter.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a confessional, law-and-order lover of the church order and of our Reformed polity and practices and processes. But in this case, I’m conflicted, because if what the report says is true about covenant children being part of the body, then the exclusion of children can become a matter of conscience…and that’s a serious thing. In other words, I don’t blame people who aren’t convinced for wanting more time to reflect on it. The problem is, if and when we are convinced, can we in good conscience prevent covenant children who express a desire to partake in communion from coming to the table if, in fact, Jesus invites them? Or do we have to force them into a process that is not age- or developmentally appropriate. I mean, what 7 year old wants to meet with the elders? Unless they have candy. Or maybe a Wii. 

I’m still musing on this matter, but I think we can have diversity of practice even on the congregational level without creating serious division. (And of course, unity was Paul’s main point in I Cor. 11). I don’t think it’s a sin for parents who aren’t convinced to prevent their young children from participating apart from a profession of faith. But for those who are convinced, it may be approaching a sin to uninvite those whom Jesus invites. In fact, it may be a variation on the very sin that Paul rebuked the Corinthians for in the first place…failing to discern the littlest members of the Body. It’s a difficult issue for me. Another matter the report didn’t really take up is the role of the parents in discerning their children’s readiness for communing (I think previous Synod reports may have). If we’re thinking covenantally, that should also come into play.

I did a teaching service on this last Sunday, and some people thought I was overly pushy or forceful on the subject. Some thought I might be creating division, or trying to go too fast, or might force people to accept a practice that they are not or not yet convinced of. That was not my intention, and I apologize to any who though my intentions otherwise, or judged my enthusiasm to be over the top, because I agree that I didn’t take adequate account of those who were really struggling with the issue. I struggled with it mightily. On the other hand, I remind my members that we began talking about this as a congregation in November and December, 2006, with two CrossTraining lessons; and the denomination has been dealing with the issue for 25 years. So there is reason to want the church to move on this issue. Moreover, I reserve the right to get passionate about some random topic every even-numbered year. I did intend to challenge people; and I don’t apologize for creating a great discussion among the members of my congregation, and I know and love them enough to know they will forgive me if I get overly passionate on rare occasions, as I have done. I respect the church process; but I am also part of the process, and I reserve the right to speak as a pastor and theologian, and as such I have not only a right but a responsiblity to challenge the church to continue to reform itself according to the Word of God. And finally, it is the elders of the church who will make any final decisions about this matter for our congregation, no matter what the short guy in the dress says; and they certainly won’t be forcing anyone to do anything that they are not at peace with. But the fact is that the Christian Reformed Church is moving to full inclusion of baptized members in the sacrament; and because of this growing consensus many churches are ignoring the church order altogether on this matter; I never advocated that, though I was unclear enough to lead people to think that. What I suggested was that the Report’s “welcome to the table” process fulfills the spirit if not the letter of the Church Order. And finally, there were some comments in the discussion that sounded just a bit dismissive of the feelings of those who really have difficulty with the exclusion of covenant children from the Table, and who feel that they have waited long enough.

In any case, at the Blacketer household we’re starting to discuss what the Lord’s Supper means with our own children, and enquiring about their desire to take their place at the Table.

Penultimate Ponderings

As I come to the last two weeks of my sabbatical, I feel a bit rushed to get lots of renewing/refreshing activities in…and of course that’s totally the opposite of how I’m supposed to be using this time. I feel a fair amount of good Calvinist guilt about not having updated this blog in so long…which again is not the point.

So, I am resolved that whatever I get done I get done. And the blog is only here for me to reflect and ponder what God may be saying to me during this time, and allow whoever may be reading to eavesdrop on those ponderings.

Last week I presented my paper on Calvin’s view of deception again at the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, where I have a little office and where I’ve been doing occasional research, in between helping with childcare and other domestic duties. I now have to get it into proper shape for publication, and I plan to submit to a British journal called Reformation & Renaissance Review. [Update: It will be coming out in next issue of that journal.] I’m also working on an article on Henry Ainsworth, who was a teacher and Bible scholar in the early 1600′s who was a leader in the study of Jewish interpreters of the Bible. He was also part of a somewhat extreme, radical separatist group that rejected the Church of England and eventually went into exile in Holland. These people later emigrated to the British Colonies; Americans know them as the Pilgrim Fathers, or just the Pilgrims.

I’m also doing a couple of “churchy” things, but with less pressure and more time to think and reflect. I’m writing an article for The Banner, for the “Reformed Matters” column, on God’s sovereignty. I was motivated by what I considered the less-than-adequate and rather misleading piece on “The New Calvinism” in the last issue, which portrayed the Reformed teachings on predestination and election in an unfair and distorted light. (I also wrote a letter to the editor; we’ll see if it gets in or not [Update: not surprisingly, it did not. There's a definite bias against that kind of robust Calvinism among the old boys network in the CRC]).

The other churchy thing I’m doing is writing up a description of our CrossTraining service for the journal Reformed Worship. Whenever I describe our teaching service I get a lot of interested queries, and requests to write a wee article on the subject, and so I’m trying to use the opportunity to do that.

On the back burner at the moment is my work on the Reformation Commentary on Scripture. But you can’t do it all. Or at least I can’t!

The Seed of Religion, The Christian Religion, and Religion as a Ruse

I’m reading Calvin’s Institutes, a new translation of the 1541 French edition, for a book review for Calvin Theological Journal. It’s a good opportunity to re-read the Institutes in a different form than the one I read in college a few decades ago. I just came across Calvin’s discussion, in the early pages of the first chapter, of the “seed of religion,” that sense of the divine that is in all people, no matter what their culture or civilization may be. All people are religious, Calvin says. And it’s a good reminder that “religion” is not a bad word, contrary to what we hear from many Christian writers, as well as many non-Christian writers. Religion really means: a person’s sense or perspective on the big picture. Religion has to do with what’s ultimately important in life, and in your life. Religion has to do with what drives you in life, what life is about, what life is for, what life means. For many, religion is about having a good life, avoiding pain, and trying to be as prosperous as possible, and trying not to hurt anyone in the process. For some, religion is about pretending you’re not religious, and claiming, instead, to be “spiritual.” For others, their religion is a profound faith in science and technology, together with the hope that humanity will evolve and progress and just get better and better. (It’s a good idea for those whose religion is scientific progress to avoid the reading of history, otherwise they might have a crisis of faith). I heard recently of a new science cult which adamantly denies that it is a religious movement, even as its followers zealously promote its utopian view of the future where humans and machines will merge. Sounds like evangelism to me. Sounds like a vision of heaven…or hell.

The Christian Religion, as Calvin rightly and boldly calls our faith, finds the meaning of human life in the story of God the Creator, who is also God the Savior in Jesus Christ, and God the Healer and Restorer, the Holy Spirit. This is the story of God who draws his broken and rebellious people, his runaway sons and daughters, back into relationship with him. “Religion” should never be contrasted with “relationship,” as popular Christian authors constantly do, pretending that they’ve actually solved some kind of problem, or said something profound. The catchphrase “personal relationship with Jesus” is too vague, too individualistic, to small to sustain the weight of what God is really doing in the world. He is transforming the whole creation in Christ. He is reconciling the world to himself. Of course he does this by transforming individual hearts and souls and lives, but he always does this in community. Richard Mouw of Fuller Seminary recently wrote an article for Christianity Today about the proper balance between the individual and the community in Christian consciousness. While liberal churches ignore individual conversion and transformation, Evangelical churches focus far too exclusively on the individual. He writes, “We evangelicals never downplay the importance of individuals—as individuals—coming to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. We never say that an individual’s very personal relationship to God is not important. What we do say is that individual salvation is not enough.”

Then Calvin says something that suprised me. I’m sure I read it many years ago, but I had forgotten. Calvin speaks of the universal sense of divinity, the awareness that there is a God in all people. Then he writes, “That is why it is false to say (as some do) that religion was long ago contrived by the art and clever ruse of a few people, in order to control the naive populace in decency even though the ones who were urging others to honor God had no idea of the divine. I certainly admit that some delicate and deceitful people among the pagans have forged many things in religion to make naive people afraid and  cause them scruples, so that they would be more obedient and easier to order around; but they would not have succeeded in this if people’s spirits had not first been fixed on the firm persuasion that there is a God. From that source came the whole inclination to believe what was said about religion.” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1541 French Edition, tr. Elsie McKee, p. 26). Calvin wrote this 300 years before Karl Marx claimed that religion was just a tool used by the powerful to control the weak. Calvin, by contrast, says that while religion might be misused in this way, such abuse of religion does not explain the universal prevalence of religion. Marxism itself was a secularized religion, complete with its own world-view, values, and vision of a utopian socialist future. Its interesting that 500 years after Calvin’s birth, the same issues are being debated. Today we have Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins touting a new atheism, and a return to “reason,” without the slightest clue that their “new” atheism is really quite old, and–even more embarrasing–it is itself a religion, a view of how things should be, an argument about the meaning of life (or lack thereof). Not only that, but their arguments against belief in God can’t even hold enough water to spawn a newly-evolved life form. Disbelief takes just as much faith as belief; the atheist is just as religious as the believer.

Imaginative Reading

I have not updated this blog for several weeks. Instead, I have been reconnecting with my family after nine weeks of separation. But I have also been participating in a class at Calvin Theological Seminary called “Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching.” It is led by Calvin Seminary President Dr. Cornelius (Neal) Plantinga and Truett Theological Seminary Professor Hulitt Gloer. (Truett is connected with Baylor University,  a Baptist institution in Waco, Texas). This course is producing profound enjoyment, and hopefully, stirring up my brain to creatively and effectively tell the story of God’s love from the pulpit.

In the first week we read an American classic, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. This is a story that many young American students are assigned to read in highs school or college, long before they are able to appreciate it. One enduring image is that of Ma Joad, who is the bulwark of strength, a citadel of endurance during times of extreme scarcity and trouble; she holds the family, including the menfolk, together when they are at the breaking point. It is a story of hope, and how persons can only thrive when they work together. The (ex-) preacher in the story, Jim Casey, is also very interesting, because he only truly discovers his calling after he gives up preaching in the conventional sense (in this case, whipping up the faithful into a frenzy of emotion and glossalalia). He begins to find the holy everywhere, and in everyday things. And ultimately he gives his life defending the rights of the poor Okie immigrant farmers. It’s no coincidence that he shares his initials with Jesus Christ.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

“The world turns and the world spins, the tide runs in and the tide runs out, and there is nothing in the world more beautiful and more wonderful in all its evolved forms than two souls who look at each other straight on. And there is nothing more woeful and soul-saddening than when they are parted. Turner knew that everything in the world rejoices in the touch, and everything in the world laments in the losing.”
Gary D. Schmidt, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, 215-216.

This is the gist of a book I recently finished, alleged to be a children’s book, but moving to any moveable soul however old. It’s about a boy, Turner Buckminster, the son of a preacher, who moves to cold, hard Maine, and has his life changed in the meeting of a young black girl, Lizzie Bright. His life is transformed in the encounter with unchristian Christians who want to remove Lizzie and “her kind” from the island community in which they live, and who in fact did so (both in the novel and in fact, in 1912). His life is transformed by looking straight into the eye of a whale, and into the eyes of a father who in his last moment finally takes a stand for what is right. And he is transformed by the loss of all that is dear to him, or nearly all. There are important things he does not lose, an understanding parent, an enemy-turned-friend. This is a book that, though profoundly sad in a number of ways, is also hopeful, and definitely worth reading and discussing.

Gary D. Schmidt is also the author of The Wednesday Wars, which, though not quite as sad, moved me deeply as well.

Neerlandia Librarians…take note!

Kylemore Abbey, Connemara

On Wednesday, June 10, I got up (not as early as usual, due to a stomach rebellion which had to be quelled), and started driving north and west of Galway to Kylemore Abbey. It is a 19^th century manor that was converted into an abbey for displaced monks from Ypres, Belgium. The abbey is etched in my mind as an archetypal image of Ireland, because my mother had a jigsaw puzzle of the abbey, which I think I still have. My mother loved the beauty of this place.

On the way, I was listening to Gilead, which is a moving story, and for me, quite sad. It’s the kind of story that has been reminding me that what is important in my life is not what I put most time and effort into. It made me feel melancholy—an emotion that seems to be contagious here in Ireland. There is always pain and loss behind the smiles and laughs of the people here (who, by the way, are very hospitable and a joy to experience.) So when I saw Kylemore Abbey with my own eyes, I thought of my mother—which is something that I don’t often do. I don’t think about things that are painful.

But seeing this place forced me to remember. I walked around the main building (they allow you only a small view of it), then went outside to see the miniature gothic church. There I sat on a pew, surrounded by tourists who had no respect for a place of worship. I shut them out of my head and prayed. I prayed because it occurred to me that my mother’s fears are my own, and her shortcomings, her faults, her loneliness, her insecurities. In that little church I prayed, with German tourists milling around snapping photographs. And I felt the loss of my mother, which I have not allowed myself to feel for the past 14 years since she died.

I walked to the mausoleum of the woman who first lived in Kylemore when it was a manor, a castle of sorts. Her husband had built the miniature church in her memory, because she died young, at 45. Then I went to the walled gardens, which my mother would have loved. And I got in the car and drove to my next destination. And I wept. For the first time in a long time, I wept for my mother. My eyes welled up with tears, and I felt the grief, the loss, the regret.

I drove through the twisty, windy, sheep-strewn ribbons of asphalt they call roads here in the Irish countryside. The tears ebbed and ceased, and I felt that something very important had happened for me. I had honored my mother with my tears.

Murrisk

North of Kylemore Abbey I came across Louisburgh, which was the home base of sixteenth-century pirate queen Grace O’Malley, who could theoretically be a relative of mine. She was married to an O’Flaherty, the name of my ancestors. Down the road is Murrisk, where I saw three important things: Murrisk Abbey, a ruined church on the western Irish shore; Croagh Patrick (the Hill of Patrick), a site of pilgrimage, from which Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland (not a huge challenge as miracles go, since there weren’t any snakes here to begin with); and the National Famine Monument, which depicts a coffin ship, one of the boats on which so many thousands of sick and starving Irish people sought relief and a new start in Ireland during the Great Famine, 1845-49. Many thousands died on those ships, more died soon after arriving in the USA and Canada. The monument depicts a ship of skeletons. It’s ghastly, but a fitting monument to the unspeakable horror of these people, whom the British government allowed to starve.

Kylemore Abbey

Kylemore Abbey

Miniature Gothic Church, Kylemore Abbey

Aasleigh Falls, Connemara, Ireland

Beautiful scene of the sea and mountains in Connemara, western Ireland

Horses grazing by the seaside, Connemara, western Ireland

National Famine Memorial, Murrisk, County Mayo, Ireland

The famine memorial is a “coffin ship,” representing ships on which starving Irish fled the country, many dying on the way

The ship’s rigging is actually human skeletons, representing the famine dead.

Lots of beautiful horses in Connemara