Tag Archives: Ireland

Under the Napkin Tent

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While living in Ireland in 1998, Catherine was surprised to find herself one summer working as a waitress in a little café in the popular destination town of Kinvara. Nestled in a crook of Galway Bay in the West of Ireland, Kinvara is a place of megalithic tombs, holy wells, a 14th century castle, ancient cairns, Irish music, and weekly set-dancing. Out of her experience, Catherine wrote the book “God is in Rosaleen’s Restaurant.” This blog comes from her book.

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Artwork by Roseleen Tanham, http://kava.ie/rosaleen-tanham/

I found it curious who ate what and how much. The Burren lamb bones gnawed clean of meat. The barbecued chicken wings, once garnished on a bed of lettuce, reduced to tiny sticks. Baked cod picked apart and left under a napkin tent.

Was it the food, its taste and appearance, that mattered or the hunger, its degree and duration? Was it the conversation shared or the person listening? When we are given the food of life, what and how much do we eat?

Jennys spiral

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Where lemons are sliced thin…

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While living in Ireland in 1998, Catherine was surprised to find herself one summer working as a waitress in a little café in the popular destination town of Kinvara. Nestled in a crook of Galway Bay in the West of Ireland, Kinvara is a place of megalithic tombs, holy wells, a 14th century castle, ancient cairns, Irish music, and weekly set-dancing. Out of her experience, Catherine wrote the book “God is in Rosaleen’s Restaurant.” This blog comes from her book.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Artwork by Roseleen Tanham, owner of Roseleen’s Restaurant (http://kava.ie/rosaleen-tanham/)

I realised the first day that my challenge was to stay centered. During the five-hour shift I found myself scattered between Table 3 wanting more bread; the blinds needing to be pulled; the empty roll of toilet paper in the ladies’ room; Table 6’s demand for a receipt; and the three hungry people who just walked through the door.

Where was I? How quickly I no longer existed, no longer felt my own thirst and tired feet.

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God likes small places…

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Line Drawing of Restaurant by Jenny Beale

Roseleen’s Restaurant’s entrance, by Jenny Beale

Twenty years ago I published God is in Roseleen’s Restaurant, a small book of reflective meditations about my time working as a waitress in Ireland. Can two decades go by just like that? Twenty years ago I was 44 years old, living in a round wooden house in Kinvara, a small village on the West Coast of Ireland. I had just met and fallen in love with my Dutch husband. We would marry in May the next year and have our wedding feast at Roseleen’s.

When I got the job as a waitress, I was an unemployed technical writer with little knowledge of either psychosynthesis or Assagioli. But (as always) I was searching… Continue reading →

The Vivid Color of Ixoras

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freedom to pollute with bronze statue of refugee

Statue of Liberty carrying the declaration “Freedom to Pollute” next to a bronze statue of climate change refugee, at the Bonn Climate Change Conference.

It’s been a week since the closing of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. A small victory occurred with the passing of a global insurance plan that by 2020 will help protect 400 million poor and vulnerable people around the world. The project, called the InsuResilience Global Partnership, aims to provide insurance against damage caused by global warming.

Naturally, this project is fraught with controversy. Instead of having the richer nations, who are generally the bigger polluters, pay for climate disaster relief, this initiative actually pushes poor people in poor countries to pay an insurance premium.

016705 Dante on greed

Assagioli’s note on greed from his Archives,

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Stones and Seaweed (Part II of II)

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Paidraich and his wall

Padriach with a bucket of seaweed standing in front of the stone wall he built with his two hands.

Summer is here again, and so I thought I would dig out a story from fifteen years ago, something I wrote while my husband and I spent six weeks on the island of Inishere, Ireland, helping Anita and Paraic with their new B&B and café not to mention their farm and four kids. I will always be grateful to them for their hospitality during the summer of 2001.

This is long story for a blog and comes in two parts. I hope you enjoy it and your summer!

Inishere has one shop, three pubs, and a chipper (a place to buy fried foods), an art center displaying the resident artist’s work, a hotel, and a new library. Groceries were ordered by phone and delivered three times a week. This naturally altered our attitude to shopping and nothing was taken for granted. Still Kees and I had no desire to leave.

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Stones and Seaweed (Part I of II)

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Inishere beach

Seal ag buain duilisg do charraig, seal ag aclaidh, seal ag tabhairt bhídh do bhoctaibh, seal i gcaracair.

(A while gathering dillisk from the rock, a while fishing, a while giving food to the poor, a while in my cell.)   – Irish monk (12th century?)

Summer is here again, and so I thought I would dig out a story from fifteen years ago, something I wrote while my husband and I spent six weeks on the island of Inishere, Ireland, helping Anita and Paraic with their new B&B and café not to mention their farm and four kids. I will always be grateful to them for their hospitality during the summer of 2001.

This is long story for a blog and comes in two parts. I hope you enjoy it and your summer!

An hour by ferryboat from the city of Galway, Inishere (also known as Inis Oírr) means Eastern Island as it is the closest Aran Island to the mainland and the furthest east. This tiny island (2-1/2 by 1-1/2 miles) has been inhabited for 3500 years and Gaelic is the spoken language of the islanders. It has a population of about 300 people, and nearly everyone is related to someone else. Approximately 30,000 visitors descend on the island every year.

Anita, Paraic, and their children were there to meet us in their tractor when we disembarked from the boat. We greeted each other with hugs and kisses, loaded our bags onto the back of their tractor and climbed aboard. Tightly crunched inside the small cab and cushioned by children on our laps, we sighed with relief as the noisy engine pulled us up the hill to their spacious home.

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