Sitting at the bar in Mullaghmore, a town on the Western edge of Ireland with the bluest water you've ever seen, I finally made the connection! Randy and I had been in Ireland for a week and a half, working with the imagery from the recently completed song, Feels Like Home, (among other amazing activities!)
You can listen to Feels Like Home on Spotify here.
It is story that weaves the rough and dry "wind swept plains" of Oklahoma with the lush "stain of grass" of the emerald isle of Ireland. Since Randy's heritage is Irish, and he was born in Oklahoma, I was well aware of the thread of family and DNA that runs through this song.
There was this other story that had been flitting in and out of conversations, though, that my consciousness finally grasped. Something that Feels Like Home was inviting me to pay attention to. Go a little deeper with!
In Feels Like Home, I hear a story of unresolved loss, grief, and disconnection,
and the separation this pain creates in current relationships.
I may not have all the historical details exactly...during the 1840's, Ireland went through what some of us call the "potato famine." Those in the United States with Irish ancestors, likely have this trauma in their DNA. The Irish call it the "Great Hunger." A bit more visceral of a description!
The British were occupying Ireland at the time. They were known to have been just brutal. Cruel. Just watch The Winds of Barley for an example - (I confess - I haven't been able to get through it...). They were choking the food supply, stealing cows and sheep, destroying gardens. It's likely there would have been no famine without their interference.
Sound familiar to anything we are currently witnessing???
But there was.
Meanwhile, back in the US, the Indian Removal Act of 1930 had become law. The Choctaw Nation of Mississippi was one of the first tribes to be forced off their land and moved westward to what is now Oklahoma. By 1847, the height of the Great Hunger, the Choctaw had surely not recovered from the horror, loss, and trauma of the Trail of Tears - our own North American genocide. Yet, when the Choctaw Nation learned of the Irish plight, they gathered up their resources to share. Feeling a resonance with the suffering of the Irish, even as they had only recently experienced their own, they sent over $170, the equivalent of over $5000 today, to Cork, Ireland.
There is a sculpture in Cork, Ireland, commemorating the Choctaw Nation and their kindness and generosity. It's called "Kindred Spirits." Read the whole story here...
During our first week of travel, this monument came into my awareness. But I was yet to really connect with the story. Several synchronicities involving Kindred Spirits began revealing themselves - a bit of fairie activity! Suddenly, over my smooth half Guinness and half Smithwick's, the pieces started clicking into place. Feels Like Home. Oklahoma and Ireland.
Listen to Feels Like Home on the Shamanacana website here...
The Irish never forgot the generosity of their North American Indigenous friends, the Choctaw. When the world was in the throes of the pandemic, the Irish learned that the Indigenous tribes, especially the Navajo and Hopi, were hit especially hard - as is common for groups of people colonized and oppressed by a white supremacist culture! They raised and shared over $2 million! Just last year, a sculpture named Eternal Heart was commissioned and erected in a collaborative effort by Ireland and the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. Listen to the story here...
Oklahoma and Ireland! A story of friendship across the Atlantic. Friends who respond to crises. Friends who feed each other and provide resources, even when a dominant culture is oppressing and starving them.
Gaza and the Palestinians need our help! I have begun to research which organizations I can connect with and share resources with to do a little something. The starvation of those in Gaza is a result of another nation - Israel - choking out all the resources. Like the English did in Ireland. Like the Colonizers did to the Choctaw Nation and other Indigenous tribes. Let us allow the history of generosity and kindness that Ireland and the Choctaw exhibited, and these sacred pieces of art which signify that, inspire us and the world to do the same!
Here are some organizations that came with some recommendations, plus one I discovered and felt guided to...
The Sanabel Team - www.thesanabelteam.com
World Central Kitchen - wck.org
UNHCR, a UN Refugee Agency - www.unhcr.org
Doctors without Borders -www.doctorswithoutborders.org
Oxfam - www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/emergencies/gaza-and-israel-emergency-appeal/what-is-happening-gaza-and-israel/
Even as I write this I am aware of the references to beauty and abundance, luxury and privilege, that I include here. Contrasted with horror and devastation going on across the world, and in these past stories. They are both real. Both true. May we somehow draw on the nourishment to soothe the suffering.