Kilkelly

Sorry for the delay. The end of the semester approaches with the force of an oncoming tide. Making time an even scarcer commodity is my foolish decision to take on a thespian role in this year’s children’s choir Christmas musical. So as is often the case, a lack of blogging is due not to the fact that too little is going on, but rather to the fact that too much is going on.

Longtime readers (both of you) will recall that I’m a sucker for good narrative. One of the better stories I’ve heard in awhile was in a recent song. While listening to the Irish and Celtic podcast a few months ago, I had to slow my run to a walk and listened transfixed to a song called Kilkelly, Ireland. The song was written by Peter Jones, an American who discovered a series of letters that belonged to his great grandfather, an immigrant from Kilkelly, Ireland. His ancestor had left his childhood home of Kilkelly to travel across to the United States. Peter wrote the lines directly from his great grandfather's letters and composed a tune for them.

It is a haunting song, one that reminds the listener of the tremendous sacrifices that emigrants form every generation must undergo. Of course, as Believers, the notion of the immigrant is one of the most common themes in all of Scripture, ranging from Moses’ description of himself as a stranger in a strange land to (a different) Peter’s description of the church as strangers and aliens. It reminds us that our faith has made us landless and looking ahead to the far country, to the one place we can truly call Home.

But it also makes you want to hug your family a little tighter at Christmas.

Here’s the requisite Youtube embed of the song. I suggest you minimize the video and just listen to the music. The song is grand and tender. The video is neither.