Day Twenty-one

21st May 2009 IRELAND

A kitchen table caught up in the meaning of life 

The first half of the night it rained… ah but what did that matter… I had a bed of straw and a roof over my head, tonight I was a king in my own palace… did it rain the second half of the night… I don’t know I was zzz... A little before seven, Mark came over to the barn with a mug of tea. “Breakfast will be ready in twenty minutes back at the house” … and by seven I’m sat at the kitchen table a full breakfast in front of me and again the kettle sat on the stove.

There is something special about a kitchen table… it is for many where the day starts… we break our fast… the family comes together… some still in jammies… another with their shirt buttoned up wrong (that’ll be me) … the smell of burning toast… hair sticking up from the night before (no chance of that being me) … good mornings are spoken, sometimes grunted… maybe Frankie the cat or Charlie the dog is looking up at the table in the hope of a treat… yeah, a kitchen table in the morning can be (should be) a special place… I think it would be the place God would also choose to start the day… I know God created the mountains, the oceans, the woodlands and all the stars we see above… but I still think God (a God of love) would choose to start the day sat at a kitchen table… Why… because it is within the family, we see all the different aspects of love manifested… in the love that the parents have for each other… in the love the parents have for their children… in the love children have for their brothers and sisters… and in the love children have for their parents… not forgetting the love the family have for Frankie and Charlie… I have memories of being at my mum and dad’s home, my two girls sat at the table (feet still not reaching the floor), my dad, their grandad would chop off the top of their boiled eggs with an almighty AAAHH! … the girls would laugh… more so when grandad made a mess of it… yeah, we need to add the love of grandparents to that kitchen table.

Hmm… maybe in this busy world… not as many people as I think do start the day around the hustle and bustle of a kitchen table… there are those who don’t have a home and some live alone… many grabbing a coffee on the way out of the front door… my own home, the kitchen is too small for a table, dad (that is me) is a truck driver many times away overnight… mum on early shifts… it’s not always easy. All the more reason, when we are sat around a breakfast table with family and with those we care about, we should value those times… look at the faces sat around the table and say a good morning… look down at what’s on the table, and say a thank you… and just in case God is there at the table with us… maybe it would be a good idea to take the ‘Good morning’ in one hand and the ‘Thank you’ in the other hand and bring them together in the shape of a small prayer... just a thought.

Time is moving on… its eight o’clock, my bag is on my back and I’m standing at the same door I was knocking on yesterday evening… only Mark and Emer are no longer strangers… and again I wish I knew better how to say thank you. It was a privilege to have been given the chance to share their kitchen table and to break-fast with Mark and his family.

Well, that’s me again kicking stones along a country road… a quick weather report… Drizzle. The plan today is to reach a town called Balbriggan, about twenty-one miles away… sorry, I should say, a little over thirty-four kilometres away (or in my scale… a thumbprint). The good news is I have a bed tonight, Omar and Sumie (the couple I stayed with on my first night in Northern Ireland in the town of Carrickfergus) knew a couple in Balbriggan. Omer had given them a call… and the outcome, they were more than happy for me to stay a night… how good is that… to them I am a stranger… a raggedy stranger… a hobbling, raggedy stranger and yet this couple, at the end of today’s walk are ready to welcome me into their home…I have not yet met them, and I am already saying thank you.

The walking this morning was pretty easy going… today I stay away from the main roads... the hum of traffic has been replaced by the quieter sounds of an arable landscape, sparrows bobbing in and out of hedgerows, beyond the hedges I see fields of what I think is Winter barley, I also see fields of yellow… Oilseed rape in full bloom… Mr Honeybee looks to be a happy bunny… there is more pollen than you can throw a stick at in these fields of yellow (I say Mr Honeybee… I should say Miss Honeybee… it is the female bees (the Worker bees) that you see collecting the pollen from the flowers… not the guys (the Drone bees) they spend most of their time in the hive… I’m guessing watching football and drinking a little too much mead… maybe sounds good, the downside is, in autumn the guys (drones) are kicked out of the hive. The honey supplies will be needed to see the colony through the cold and damp days of winter… the girls will not waste their stores of precious food on guys that didn’t lift a wing to help bring in the harvest.

I reached the town of Drogheda close to midday. I find a café called the Moorland, and again made welcome… given a pot of tea and a cake… every tea, coffee and cake given on this walk has been so much appreciated… it is hard to express the gratitude felt… people could easily say no, turn me around and send me back out of the café, and they would be in their right to do just that… but they don’t… they give… more than that, they give with a heart of wanting to give. To experience that time after time is very humbling.

I sit again for a while, never one to rush a pot of tea… a little lost in thought… I wonder at what came first, the honeybee or the flower… they have a symbiotic relationship… both needing each other… a little like the chicken and egg question. What I do know is the humble bee was here millions of years before we ever came along… doing pretty much the same as they always have. To my knowledge I don’t think any bee after a hard day’s foraging, has ever sat at the entrance of her hive with a pot of mead and a mug in hand, watching the sun go down whilst pondering the meaning of life… How is it… why is it we are different. For six thousand years of civilization, we have been asking that very question ‘What is the meaning of life?’… of course, maybe there is no rhyme or reason to why it is we are here… maybe a long time ago (a very long time ago) by chance and nothing more, we crawled out of a primeval swamp and over time, figured out how to stand up on two legs… we stood a little taller, allowing us to see knew horizons, new possibilities… a different future … with standing up, we suddenly had two hands that were free to do other things… we started to make tools… stone axes and the like, and with those tools we made other things… better clothes to keep ourselves warm… cooking pots… the plough… skip many thousands of years and a few thousand more… and we were making steam engines and machines that could fly us to the moon and back… and still I wonder if we are any closer to answering that question… ‘What is the meaning of life?’ … The fact that we (…and no other creatures) are capable of asking such a question, must tell us something... I close my eyes for a moment… I guess looking for an answer… I see nothing… as I open my eyes, somebody walks into the café… a breeze from the outside world follows him in… hmm… maybe the answer really is out there blowing in the wind.

Talking of the outside I need to make a move… I take my dishes back up to the counter and say a big thank you… back on the streets… the breeze, I don’t really feel… the drizzle is a little heavier (almost rain)… perhaps the answer is not blowing in the wind, but instead falling with the rain… maybe it’s both… As I walk out of Drogheda I’m thinking what would be good, is to have both Mother Nature and Mother Mary walking alongside me… speaking words of wisdom… I guess that’s not going to happen… maybe I should just let it be.

Walking in the rain is something I don’t mind at all… kicking both puddles and stones, running my hand through the wet long grass by the side of country lanes, the smell of fields, hedges and the air made fresh… we shouldn’t grumble at the rain… it is what gives us this green and pleasant land…

Looking back at what I have written since the start of this little adventure… I worry that I give the impression that all I ever do while walking is to think about stuff… not at all… much of the time my head is empty just watching clouds, kicking stones, and wishing I knew better how to read the landscape and also wanting to know the different names of the trees and flowers that I see around me. College is a few months down the road (the course ‘Countryside Management’)… I guess it would have been better to have done the walk after college… only maybe after three years, the chance to take time out would not be there… you don’t always get what you want.

The drizzle I think is going nowhere, jacket on, hands in pockets and head down… I notice the stitching on the top of my right boot is slowly coming undone… hmm. About half an hour the other side of a small place called Julianstown I come across an Apple Green garage… I step inside and again explain myself… a moment later I’m sat on a high stool next to the window and on the bar like table, a mug of tea, a chicken and mushroom pastie and a chocolate bar… there are many good people in this green and pleasant land. Sat at the window, both belly and head start to fill…

…If there really was no meaning to life… I don’t think nothing would make any sense at all… Take away meaning and you no longer have direction or a purpose…nothing would really have any value… we would have complete freedom to do, or not do whatever it is we pleased… the idea of good and evil would not exist… a world where the strong would survive and the weak would be pushed aside… the kids would be divided, without meaning in the world what would that matter... If we take away purpose, there is no future … why not strip the earth of its natural resources and watch it crumble… a fitting end to a story that had no meaning…

…Yeah, I know, pick up a Newspaper today and it sometimes feels that that is the world we are living in… in the deepest part of who I am, I know that this is not the world we were made for…

Give life meaning… and suddenly we have a direction of travel … a purpose … the things we do (and the stuff we create) would have value… freedom would still exist, only it would be linked with responsibility (…to the care and betterment of others). The nobility (… there’s a word that is not used very often these days)… the nobility within us would desire to do the good, to be the best we can be… a world where we would stand up for the dignity of others… our work would be to build a world of unity, not one of division… imagine if the kids were united, then they would never be divided… and what of this fragile planet we all live on, we would not watch it crumble … sure we would still take the resources needed… but our hearts would be to give back more than what it is we took… to create not just a sustainable planet but a world made more beautiful, because of who it is we are.

A story (a vision) of two worlds… I think I understand better the sentiment… the heart behind the words spoken by the son of Mother Mary… “I am in this world… but I am not of it” … living in the world as it is with all the nonsense, the unnecessary suffering, children caught up in the middle of stupid conflicts… and then knowing that there is a far better world to be had… I don’t think that is an easy thing to live with… it is heart breaking.
 

I’m sorry… sometimes I get the bit between my teeth, and I don’t want to let go… I don’t know how many times I’ve been driving a truck, be it rumbling up through the Highlands in the middle of the night or stuck in rush hour traffic in some city or other, listening to (heart) breaking News reports… a refugee boat capsizing… another school shooting in the States… a stray bomb hitting a different school in the Middle East… reports of famine in a faraway land. You want to help but you don’t know how… tears run down your cheek… but I guess that’s ok because in the cab of a truck nobody sees… Hey, don’t go telling anybody I said any of this… I’m supposed to be a rugged truck driver… I have an image to uphold.

Back to the walk… from the Apple Green garage to the town of Balbriggan takes a few hours of walking through puddles and the kicking of stones… a day of walking in the rain… I arrive in the town just after five. I give John a call… I am told to make my way to the train station, his son Kotoku would meet me there… and an hour later I’m in the shower… Tae has told me to bring all that needs washing down and a little later I am back at where I started the day… sat around a kitchen table, a hot meal in front of me and sharing stories. The incredible welcome given by John and Tae again knocks me for six… I do not feel like a hobbling raggedy stranger… I am made to feel like family.

The day is done and again I have a bed and a roof over my head… I lay half awake…and half asleep… I let my thoughts unwind, they jump around a little… that square peg and round hole (the world of conflict and a good God conundrum) is still floating around… honeybees and fields of gold… pots of tea and welcoming smiles… a little white dog called Charlie looking up at the breakfast table… and how it is a kitchen table (a place where family, friends and sometimes stranger, sit and share stories over a hot meal) can be caught up in the meaning of life.