The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are NgÄti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Åtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tÅ«puna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire. Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon...
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Be well.
IRISH BLESSING
May the road rise to meet you,
And the sun stand at your shoulder,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rain fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
The Irish always say things better than I ever could.
I hope your journey is wonderful, and everything you want it to be. I will be praying for you. God speed!
There is a sameness about airports - and hotels - the whole world over. They are places where noone lives; they are bardos. There is a particular flavour of spiritual deadness that clings to them.