Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :)

Dear Friends of Ours,

Christmas is way past and so is New Year… However, please regard this as our Christmas and New Year’s Greetings, as that is how we intended it… (We are sending it a tiny bit earlier than last year though.) We would like to share with you a moment of our 2010, a moment that was one of the most memorable for us, among the many wonderful ones.

In April 2010 Samu (2,5 that time) and I spent three weeks on the west coast of Ireland, on the island of Inis Mór. Our home was An Charraig, “the Rock”, a thatched cottage, where we shared the athic with a Turkish girl, Hilal, two Arabic guys, Rabii and Abdulhaq, and Mary, the 68 yrs old whoofer from the US. They lived here as volunteers, just as I did when I first came to this house in 1999. Volunteers arrive for a year, or for some weeks, and spend their days in the organic garden of Kilmurvey, surrounded with beautiful old trees and an ancient stone wall. If once you touch this ground, an invisible thread will keep pulling you back here.

The little community of An Charraig is held together by Dara and Tess who live here with their four children. Dara is a Celtic priest and an organic gardener, and a passionate researcher of the Celtic Spiritual Tradition. He recently published his book The Globalisation of God: Celtic Christianity's Nemesis (you can find it here: www.daramolloy.com). Tess is a writer, an artist, teaches her children at home (although she says she does not teach – the children learn…).

During the last 25 years (or so), on this island which preserves the memories of Celtic Tradition in so many of its places and buildings, Dara and Tess became the re-creators of this beautiful, nature- and human-centered spirituality, and around them formed a little community of those having visited their place from all around the world, held together and bound to return by those invisible threads.

After a few days in Dublin which we spent with my brother Gyula, his family, and visiting old friends, we sailed to the island, and spent there two weeks between blue sky and blue sea, wondering timelessly, gathering shells and pebbles, meeting cats, chicken, cows and newborn calves, and making many new friendships. You will see Hilal in many pictures whom Samu especially took in his heart. They drank coffee on the stairs every morning, fed the cats together, visited Markus the donkey, and played hide and seek among the hanging bed linen in the athic. You will see the Arabic boys baking bread and playing guitar, and Dara’s children while jumping, painting and taking music lessons. We had Andrew visiting us for two days, and I met Stephanie, a fellow-volunteer from 1999 again, whose songs used to follow me every evening while walking to the local pub by the seaside.

For the third week we had Sziszi, Dani, my Mum, my friend Orsi (Godmother-to-be), my brother Gyula (Godfather-to-be) with Austeja and 6-yrs-old Elvinas to join us on the island. On the 2^nd of May we held a beautiful Christening ceremony with Dara, Tess, and friends from the island, by the Holy Well near the house.

The ceremony was one that we created together, Christian and Celtic and neither, but it belonged to all of us. You can see the pictures of it while a French song playes which we sang in Hungarian on the ceremony. This is a song of the “Singing Nun”, S. Sourire, an old song that my mother taught us. I find it beautiful.

“There was neither Earth, nor Sky, when He first thought of You,

He guarded your journey and knew you will arrive one day

He wrote your name onto the stars

He has woven your life among the stars”

(It’s a rough translation. And Tess would say “She”. J)

*

If I think about these few weeks, gratitude fills me.

For Samu who was such a wonderful little mate in this adventure. For Sziszi who jumps to the unknown again and again for my only sake. To Orsi with whom this wonderful ceremony could be dreamt. To Dani who made the moment eternal with his pictures. To my Mum who was and is always there in the important moments of our life. To Gyun, Austeja and Elvinas to take this special bond with our family. To Dara and Tess – for just being out there, being who they are. To everyone who could not be with us but was thinking of us. And to You, for being somewhere there, at the other end of invisible threads, to think of, to write to. Thank you.

*

Dara blessed Samu with the “Blessing of the four elements”. During this you can hear the song An Irish Blessing, which on the recording is sang by our choir, Bástya Kamarakórus (we sang 8 years with my Mum and both sisters in this choir). On the ceremony we sang this song with my Mum, Dara (tenor), Gyula (basso), (the two latter seeing the notes first time that morning, congratulations).

We would like to wish you all the best for 2011 with the lines of this song. Till we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of Her hand.

May the road rise to meet you

May the wind be always at your back

May the sun shine warm upon your face

The rain fall soft upon your fields

And until we meet again

Until we meet again

May God hold you in the palm

Of Her Hand

With love: Cili, Sziszi, Samu

2011. január 31.

For the Greeting, click HERE! Press "Diavetítés" and don't forget some volume.