IDMA Conference in Ireland 2008
EXILE AND THE LONGING TO RETURN:
Welcoming Our Ancestors Back Home
Give me one whose heart is torn by exile
And I will tell him of the sorrow of longing
- Rumi
Conference 2008
By Brenda Blair
I never understood why I found myself in tears when I saw people arriving off of transatlantic flights, or why during the bad times in the 1980s I choked up when I saw the banner at Dublin Airport welcoming our young people home for Christmas.I did understand that somehow I was touched by stories of emigration and return but couldn’t really see how it affected me – having ancestors who emigrated wasn’t in my consciousness.
When it was proposed to have the 2008 IDMA Conference in Ireland, I was delighted. Here was an opportunity to welcome the people I consider my community to my country. When Roger suggested that the topic should be Exile & Return I began to see that some powerful forces were at work here – an opportunity to heal the wound of emigration in the Irish psyche. Me, I didn’t have any personal experience of emigration. Oh, wait: what about my uncle and aunt who spent most of their life in England? Oh, and there’s my cousin, Pat, who emigrated to Canada and never came home. That’s it, isn’t it? Hold on, my great grandmother was French. What’s this - my mother’s birth certificate – it says her father, Patrick Kelly, was born in New York. Okay, so emigration is as much a part of my family history as that of any person in Ireland. Suddenly the conference was no longer a conference, an annual get-together, but a real opportunity to heal family, ancestral, and collective wounds. And so we made our preparations, listening to the advice of spirit guides, connecting deeply with the land through visits to ancient ancestral sites, and being shown the importance of fire for the healing space we wished to create. “Nil aon tintawn mar do tintawn fein” ("There is no hearth like your own hearth") - generations of emigrants left Ireland with a piece of turf in their pockets!
Finally, 48 people from ten different nations gathered at beautiful Dunderry Park in the Boyne Valley, home to the ancient megalithic sites of Newgrange, Knowth, Dowth and Tara. We were privileged to have Noírín Ní Rian join us as our guest presenter. Ireland being matriarchal we had wanted to have a presenter who would represent this energy and Noirin proved to be the perfect representative. Her presence, her spontaneity, her deep connection to all things Irish,and her deep wisdom, added a very special magical dimension to our time together.
Our first evening was a very powerful and moving coming together, the creation of a safe space for the ancestors to join us. On Friday, Roger led us in connecting with an ancestor who was still around and to help them resolve what it is that is keeping them here. This was an incredibly powerful experience . I had expected to find an ancestor who had emigrated but instead discovered that the ancestor wanting voice was my mother’s great grandmother – thrown out of her family for becoming pregnant outside of wedlock – an exile of sorts, I guess. Left after the death of her sweetheart, to bring up her daughter, her role had been to ensure that her women descendants didn’t step outside the box but behaved themselves and were “good” girls, who didn’t get into “trouble”, and certainly didn’t step into their power. Seems it’s me who has been given the task of letting all that go! Wowee! Way to go!
The depth, power, and possibilities of this work became apparent, as did Roger’s skill, when he worked with a participant to help an attachment (the spirit of a young girl who, having either been born brain-damaged or abused, had no power of thought or ability to speak) move on. The sense of urgency that spirits wanting help can feel became apparent that evening during our feedback session when spirits who had been with Juanita all day as she assisted Roger clamoured to be heard and released.
Mark and Patty led us on Saturday morning in a socio-drama on the theme of emigration. I was clearly one of those who left – but that group was divided between those didn’t want to come home, and those who go did. My longing to return was intense and yet when I looked at the groups that were at home, it seemed there was no group I could join – the land and people I left was no longer the land I knew. There was so much anger and enmity there. And I could feel myself being sucked into the immense anger being expressed towards the landlords. But it was the grief which was overwhelming, and the longing for connection to the land of Ireland went so deep it seemed my heart might split in two. It felt as though the grief and longing of centuries was pouring through my body. When the Nomad spoke, his words seemed to by-pass my brain and resonated deep in my core. With it came a profound understanding that the land, the earth, belongs to no one. I could see the immense damage done down through the centuries as we humans, we Irish, try to hold on to land. See how it is loss of connection to the earth which can leave us feeling homeless, leave us feeling exiled. But connection to the earth doesn’t require to own it. And whether I am on my native soil, or on some foreign soil, the earth is my home. With this deep knowing, the ancestral pain, the collective pain, which I had been carrying, dissipated.
After such an intense morning, Noírín’s music was like balm to the soul, mind, and body. The healing power of sound and music became apparent as she both sang for us and led us in singing and in our moving closing ritual in the Cairn. And the soul of the Irish feminine stood revealed to us. What a privilege to receive this blessing.
Coming home
by Juanita Puddifoot
This was my second IDMA convention and arriving in Ireland gave me an inner sense of ‘coming home’. Truly, for the ancestors on my mother’s side, this was the heart of the matter. The opening circle and ritual to remember the ancestors was intense and extremely moving for me. One by one each member of the group stepped forward to the altar and added their items to the circle of lighted candles.
Several weeks before the convention I had been visited by a group of spirits who said that they wanted to help. They wanted to be heard and that they had heard the ‘call’. In discussion, I discovered that the ‘call’ was to them a ‘felt’ vibration and they had somehow turned up in my bedroom. They called themselves ‘rebellious spirits’ and the image they gave me was of workers/peasants, women, men and children carrying farming blades, scythes, rakes, spades or if empty handed, shaking their fists. As I need my sleep I reassured them that if they came to the IDMA conference that they would get the help they needed!
During the conference the rebellious group kept coming and going around me, waiting to be ‘helped’. Then one night, they became so agitated that they wanted to be worked with as they were concerned that their stories would not be heard. With expert and loving support from members of the group, and Roger to facilitate the ‘work’ I took the role to ‘embody’ the spirit group.
Immediately my body felt completely different and my legs were no longer mine. I seemed to be reliving hundreds of people’s tired legs that had been walking such a long time. Their total exhaustion was almost overwhelming to feel, the group seemed to just be walking, walking, on and on. People then dropped by the wayside, some dying, some having to get up again to carry on, helped by others in the spirit group. I was aware at different times of my body posture in the circle with Roger. I would change position and my voice changed when the spirits of women, men and children come into my body and spoke through me.
I experienced the huge anguish, emotional pain and dilemma of the spirit group, knowing that they were dying of starvation, having no food- blights and disease had crippled them - that they had less and less land to live on, that they were dying if they did nothing and they knew that even by walking that they might die. That they had thought they would get help but had then had been mocked, laughed at and had to walk back to where they lived. They then started to fight amongst themselves, some had died on the way and others died when it was plain no help would be coming. The whole group were filled with pain, hurt and anger. The women at their men and the men feeling impotent, failures and lost, not being able to change anything.
Finally Roger brought healing and awareness to this group by helping them to discover that they were themselves being controlled by another small group of completely different spirits. These controlling ones seemed to somehow enjoy manipulating the groups of spirits who were stuck in anger and anguish. The ‘controllers’ were able to convince this spirit group to move to different places around the earth to vent their anger and connect with upset and wars and in this way the controllers gained and enjoyed power. To help free the spirit group from this control Roger was able to call upon the earth spirit of the land that the peasants ‘so longed for and wished to be part of again’.
The image I was given of the earth mother rising was this picture. The vision of the green land and brown earth rising up in long tentacles and at the end of these huge muscle men with painted symbols on their skins with long golden hair rushed towards the spirit goup, which seemed to be in the sky. Then I was physically aware of the need to allow a low rumbling roar out, which then seemed to shoot forward and pierce the cloud of spirits right into where the controlling spirits seemed to be located. The roar then began to break and crumble the place where these spirits enjoyed their power, until there was nothing left and the ‘hold’ over the peasant group was gone. Then the whole group of peasants were able to return to the earth, their hearts and the land of Ireland.
I personally have no knowledge of Irish history other than the potato blight and that a lot of people left Ireland, including my ancestors. But the Irish amongst us immediately made the connection to one of the most famous episodes of the famine - the Death March through Doolough Valley - which really helped us to understand the reason why the ‘rebellious spirits’ needed to have their story told.
“The walk during the Famine which local people made through the Doolough Valley (in Co. Mayo) on the night and morning of 30-31 March 1849. The immediate cause of the death march was the arrival of two ‘commissioners’, who were to inspect the people and certify them as paupers, so entitling them to a ration of three pounds of meal each. For some reason the inspection was not made and the hundreds of people were told they must appear at Delphi Lodge (ten miles away) at 7am the following morning. They set out on foot along the mountain road and pathway in cold, wintry conditions, including snowfall. When they arrived at Delphi Lodge, they were refused either food or tickets of admission to the workhouse and so they began their weary return journey. It was on this journey that maybe hundreds of people died.”
Guest Presen
ter
Nóirín Ní Riain, Ph.D., is an internationally acclaimed Irish singer of spiritual songs from many traditions and has performed worldwide. Over the past year she has performed and given workshops/lectures in India, Poland, Greece, France, Belgium and Holland. A theologian and musicologist, she was awarded the first doctorate in theology from the University of Limerick. Her thesis subject was ‘Towards a theology of Listening’ for which she coined a new word ‘Theosony’ – From Greek ‘Theos’ (God) and Latin ‘sonans’ (sounding). She is currently writing a book on the subject to be published shortly. The Irish television station (RTE) recently broadcast a major documentary on her life and work. She is author of several books, articles and has made numerous recordings, the most recent being A.M.E.N. with her two sons which has been very enthusiastically received.
Picture above shows Nóirín Ní Riain with Brenda Blair, the organiser of the IDMA International Conference 2008.
Grateful thanks to Patty Hall, Liz McNulty and Brenda Blair for the use of photographs for the
2008 Photo Gallery.