So after we finally departed from New York City and spend the night time hours over the Atlantic, we finally caught a view of my favorite site on this planet. As we descended slowly beneath the cloud cover, the quilted patchwork divided by ancient rock walls, filled in like a stained glass window of varying shades of green, only to be dotted by tiny homes, farms, and trees. For me...there is nothing like it.We arrived at the airport and after quickly getting our bags, went down into Dublin to spend a few hours exploring. Dublin is a great town in many ways, but in some...well it's a big city, so it doesn't quite have that Irish charm, as it's such a hub for industry, tourism, and metropolitan living that it sometimes doesn't seem all that terribly Irish. Nonetheless, it does offer quite a bit of great sights, such as the River Liffey, the Guinness Storehouse, the Jameson Whiskey Distillery, Trinity College...the list really goes on and on.
We passed by the General Post Office and even went inside for a minute. This is where the Easter Rising of 1916 took place, when a group of Irish Republicans holed themselves up in and took hold of their country and declared independence from the Brits. Picture this is as their Boston Tea Party in many ways.
We walked in the courtyard of Trinity College, where we visited before and admired the Book of Kells, and also walked through the courtyard of Dublin Castle, which funny enough, is where I stole my design for the front door cabinet of my TV stand.
After a couple hours in Dublin and a long night in the air, we were ready to grab our car and make our way to Northern Ireland where our first accommodations were. As we jumped in the rental car, the adventure began. You have to understand, driving in Ireland is a feat in itself for us Americans. The roads are tiny, mostly "shared lane" roads, so if you come upon someone in coming in the other direction, it can be a chore to find a spot wide enough to let them pass. It usually entails cramming into the shrubbery on the side of the road.
Additionally, the cars themselves are tiny. No SUV's here, folks. No mini-vans, not even a whole lot of pick-up trucks. Mostly little guys, like Mini Coopers, Fiats, VW's (no bugs though), Prius, Ford Focus...many of which are the 2 door hatchbacks. Also, I'm sure you are aware that they drive on the left side of the road. And oh yeah, did I mention that 95% of all cars in Ireland are manual shift? This wouldn't be so bad if you also weren't on the right side of the car and SHIFTING with your LEFT hand! Thankfully, however, the clutch is still on the left on the floor. :o)
So like I said...the adventure begins. It took a good half day for me to start feeling comfortable driving, but you would be surprised how quickly you adapt. I have to say, it was in many ways sort of a highlight for me. I love to drive, I love road trips...it's just all fun for me. Driving on these little roads with hairpin turns, no visibility due to 10 foot tall shrubbery and trees on both sides with 100 km/h speed limits with a little zippy stick shift car makes for, well...a really good time. It makes you feel like you are in the Monaco Grand Prix or something. Imagine coming upon a little 30 foot long one lane bridge (originally built for horse carriages and carts) with a very high arch so that you can't see what oncoming traffic is coming from the other side. You're doing a scant 80 km/h, crossing your fingers and JUST as you make your approach a car FLIES over the summit of the bridge. You swerve off to the left, he squeezes out the mouth of the bridge to his left and you barely miss a head on collision.Yeah, that happened a couple times.
Anyway...as we made our way north, we were heading towards our first stop, and a very important stop for us: the Hill of Slane.
Slane has a lot of importance, both for the Irish and for Katie and I. You see, St. Patrick wasn't exactly Irish. As a matter of fact, he wasn't at all Irish. He was from Great Britain, and was kidnapped by Irish pirates when he was about 14 years old and taken to Ireland as a slave in the 4th century. Here, he tended sheep near the north of Ireland. One night in a dream, the Lord told Patrick to flee to the shore and that there would be a boat there waiting to take him back to his home. The next morning he awoke, went to the shore, and there was the boat, ready to take him home.
Upon arriving home (this is a couple years after his capture, the poor kid), he decides to commit his life to the work of the Lord. He had met God in a powerful way on that hillside, and it consummated in this dream and his escape. He became a priest and eventually a bishop of the fairly newly formed Roman Catholic Church.
Late in his life, he got another dream, this time he saw the Irish crying out, and the Lord spoke to him to tell him to go back to the land of his captors and preach salvation to them. He obliged, and when most men were ready to retire, Patrick was just starting his legacy.
Upon arrival with a few other missionaries, he climbed to the top of the Hill of Slane. The day was the vernal equinox, when the pagan high priest of the land would light a fire on the Hill of Tara (visible from Slane) as worship to their pagan god. It was the law of the land that on this day NO ONE was to light ANY fire, not even a stove fire. Well Patrick, wanting to make a grand entrance, decided to light his own fire to declare to the island that he was back. He lit a HUGE bonfire, which of course caught the attention of the high priest as well as the King of Ireland.Instead of instant death, however, they were so intrigued by his tenacity, that they interrogated him upon his arrest. He told them of Christ, and they were so enamored, that very day the declared it legal to preach only their pagan religion, and now Christianity as well.
From that point, faith in Christ spread like wildfire. And so the Hill of Slane received its name, which in Irish means "salvation." The Irish have a term they use in place of "cheers" when clinking glasses that is "slainte," pronounced "slawn-chah," which is more or less "to your salvation" or "to your health."
So fast forward to July 2004, my second trip to Ireland. Katie and I are pregnant with our first, Micah (who happened to be "made in Ireland" on our first trip in February, hee hee), and we were trying to think of names. We liked "Micah," because it was the Hebrew version of Michael, which is my middle name, Jeremy's middle name, my dad's first name, and my grandpa's name. We just couldn't settle on a middle name. We liked the sound of "Micah Zane," but it bore no meaning for us...and if you couldn't tell already, I get waaaaay into the details, and I'm quite a bit a hopeless romantic, nostalgic kind of a guy. Anyway, on the last day of my July 2004 trip, I told my friend G, who lives in the North, that I wanted to stop at Slane before going to the airport, because I never had been there and I thought it would be really cool to visit the place where Christianity started in Ireland. Well, we ran out of time, so we had to skip it, which was a bummer.
Then, on the airplane, I thought I would at least read about it in my tour book. As I was flying over Ireland, getting in my last view of the country before heading into the vast expanse of the ocean, I was reading the book, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: "Micah Slane." It bore the "sound" we liked of "Micah Zane," but with infinitely more meaning to it. To top it off, the meaning of Micah's name, combining Hebrew and Irish, would be "Who is like the Lord of Salvation?" Pretty cool.
Subsequently, upon the birth of our second son, Liam, we decided to continue a family tradition (the fact that Jeremy and I have the same middle name as brothers) and also middle name Liam with "Slane." Liam (of course a good old fashioned Irish name) means "helmet" or "protector" in Irish, and so together his name in Irish means "Helmet of Salvation" or "Protector of Salvation." This, of course, is a reference to Ephesians 6.17 speaking of the armor of God.
It was then became a dream for me, since I missed out on visiting Slane myself, to make my next trip to Ireland with my wife so we could visit Slane for the first time together.And so here we were, driving there. It was so awesome. You enter into the village through a cool little one lane bridge (which I photographed because my dad wanted bridge photos for painting ideas). We drove past Slane Castle (home to many great concerts), and approached the Hill of Slane and what is the leftovers of Slane Abbey.
The abbey itself is from the late 1100's, there was never a church Patrick started here, but all the past churches were built here to commemorate. This one had been defunct since the 1600's. The architecture is amazing. The courtyard, the tower, the spiral staircase that would never fly under any American building code. The surrounding environs were beautiful, a view stretching to the Irish Sea and across the Boyne Valley, which was the site of Battle of the Boyne, where the British, led by William of Orange, defeated the Irish in the 1600's and effectively then subjecting the Irish to essential slavery in their own country for the next 300 years, until the aforementioned Easter Uprising of 1916. A very historical place, Slane is, on many Irish levels.This was a great start to the trip, something I am so glad to have been able to do with my wife. And here we were...it was just Day One!
NEXT POST: Northern Ireland
