Hey readers! Sorry I’ve gotten behind on blogging. We’ve been so busy, and there is only wifi in one area at Corrymeela. For the sake of clarity, I’ve gone back through my previous posts and added the day of the week and date to the top.
The morning started with porridge once again and then some worship time spent meditating on the story of Prodigal Son. Then our group had a session with some Corrymeela staff learning about conflict and discussing our thoughts on conflict and reconciliation.
Once again we were blessed with a beautiful day; the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and it was the perfect temperature! I spent a significant amount of my day frolicking on Corrymeela's campus and then taking some person arts and crafts time. It was perfection.
After crafting for a while, we had a delicious (and very Texan!) lunch of baked potatoes, baked beans, and cole slaw. But get this... they put the bans ON the potatoes. What?? I'm all about it.
When we'd finished eating, a group of us walked along the beach to the town of Ballycastle. The walk was incredible. To my left were miles of rolling green hills (and a golf course, dad!), to my right was an infinity of blue ocean, and in the distance were dots of beautiful homes along the coast. My pictures don’t even come close to capturing it. I was with a great group of girls, and we even made friends with a local old man and his dog, Tilly. Old man and Tilly are my new best friends.
But the best session of all-- out of all the fascinating conversations and workshops we’d had at Corrymeela-- was the session after dinner with a man named Padraig (or “Patrick” if you’re American). Patrick, with his thick pull-over sweater, round glasses, and curly hair, introduced himself as a poet, theologian, and group worker. I was instantly fascinated. His interest is in words and people, “how words shape our encounters with each other”. Really interesting guy! He started out by reading some of his poetry to us. Most of the poetry he read is about the conflict in Northern Ireland, and nearly all of it was influenced by something personal to him or by a story someone had shared with him. I felt more a part of the Northern Ireland conflict as I listened to his poetry than I had when actually touching the dividing walls. Once again, I was struck by this idea of creating healing and community through storytelling, art, personal narratives, words... It’s become a theme of this trip!
Listening to and discussing Patrick’s poetry, and discussing religion and society with Patrick and the group, felt like acts of worship. But, after our session was finished, we had another worship time with the Corrymeela community, reflecting on the anniversary of the Ghandi salt march and the heroes in our own lives.
Once all of this was finished, I decided that I’d behaved enough for one day, and I spent the rest of the night (and a little into the morning too) just being goofy with my friends: telling stories, singing a little bit of showtunes, and generally just bonding and laughing with this great group of students who I feel so blessed to know.
*Note: The title of today’s blog really has nothing to do with the day. In fact, it was said on Tuesday, but it is quite possibly the best thing I’ve heard on the trip. We (myself, some students, and Naill, one of our Corrymeela volunteers from London/Dublin) were playing a game similar to Catch Phrase. The word we were trying to get was “Ferret”. I was crawling on the floor trying to pantomime a ferret. Someone was shouting “Like a long, skinny rat!” Someone else was yelling “Sounds like ‘carrot!” In the midsts of it all we hear Naill shout “Very popular pet in America!” We all started cracking up. Try and imagine the following exchange with a Texan accent on one end and a heavy British one on the other:
“Naill! Who told you ferrets are very popular in America? I mean, we have them, sure. But they aren't very popular!”
“Sure they are! They’re the third most popular pet in the U.S!”
(Let’s think about that for a second. Think of all the pets we have: dogs, cats, fish, birds, hamsters.... and Europeans think we chose the ferret to be in the top three.)
“No, Naill. No, they are not the third most popular pet in the U.S. Who told you that?”
“Google it! Everyone knows it. Americans have loads of ferrets!”
I think everyone in the group was in tears at this point. So, of course, I had to include it somewhere on the blog! I thought it was pretty worthy of today’s title.
This pic of you sitting on the ledge is AMAZING
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