Belfast, Part 2: Hook, Line and Sinker

(Happy 4th of July!!) In Belfast, I also got to see "LittleLea", the grounds of C.S. Lewis' stomping grounds. Everyone thinks he was an Englisman, but he was actually Irish - er, well, British and Irish...so, sort of English. Anyway, the actual house he lived in was torn down and rebuilt (can you believe that? All in the name of progress I guess...), but it is said that most of his inspiration for the Chronicles of Narnia came from the view out his bedroom window of those singing-green Irish hills. They are, I've found, called "Drumlands" - it's the English-ized Irish word for "mountain." Actually, I can understand this inspiration; we've got some laughing drumlands are where I'm staying, too (written 6-30-09):

“The Ministry of Rolling Hills”

Since I was a youth…ashes to ashes…
flesh clasped by flesh…we all fall down.

Singsong innocence veneers
a deep shadow of realness underneath…
we all – this all – does fall down
and out of life eventually:

All kinds of posies pocketed in hopes of delaying
the future which bears all of us away,
in our smallness we realize not
the limit to our days.

And so in my youth…ashes to ashes…
hands in tight hands…we all fall down…

The current current of creation
is, by boundlessly misunderstood grace,
toward a thing whose only side
we know from our side is death.

Even yet as all decays
still what it offers for the seeing
is missed by our growing up,
and before that in our whirring.

With my failing youth…ashes to ashes…
Hands in loosening hands…we all fall down.

Our spinning circle of kids
a micro circle of life…
if only we’d realize just how
rosey our ring really is:

Mountains blue with laughter,
rippling under babbling sunlight,
splashes of birdsong and wing,
persistent cicadas dot the night.
Even as such particulars wither, wilt and lie:
that they’re part of a larger dancing
means they’ll never fully die.

We also got to see Queen's University (built around 1800 or so) and the Stormont, government buildings of Northern Ireland (the equivalent of a state capitol in the US). I love how everything is so old here - they've probably got park benches older than my country! We also breifly drove by the place where the Titanic was built, but I couldn't get a picture. It's probably just as well - for you Seattlites, it looks pretty much like the stuff around the West Seattle bridge - cranes, piles of dirt and all - only, well...European - so, instead of dirt, bricks, and instead of normal cranes, only two REALLY BIG cranes.
Belfast, to me, felt culturally heavy, and really in need of break-free healing. I'm glad I got to see it, though - this is the kind of stuff I wanted to see. Not people's pain, but people's story, and the process of finding their own. (And it didn't hurt to see my favorite writer's (EVER) home). God seems to know what He's doing, aye? (Around here, they say 'aye' for 'yes', 'yeah','sure', 'of course' and any derivative of affirmative.).