We don’t think about September 11th much anymore, but I woke up rather early today, as I did on that morning 24 years ago. I had pushed my bed up against the open window on that hot California evening, and at 5:45am the next morning a blast of wind blew the venetian blinds forward with a great clatter. I sprang from bed and went outside. The sky was aflame with bulbous clouds, like so many blooms of orange fire. There was no wind outside, and I couldn’t imagine what might have caused that single blast of air at 5:45. I went inside to get ready for holy hour and Mass. It was only as I approached the church two hours later for Mass that my parishioners, dazed and almost in tears, told me about the attacks on New York and Washington.
Today I awoke naturally at 5:45 and went outside. All was quiet, and all was bright. A nearly full moon shone over pale fields, while Orion’s belt stretched over the eastern sky. Two planets looked down as well: Jupiter high above and Venus lower on the horizon, in all her shining precision. Rather than a blast of wind from flaming clouds, a gentle breeze deftly rustled the tall field grasses. Three months in rural Ireland has put a blessed distance between me and our anxious coastal cities.
How nearly perfect has been my sojourn in the Irish countryside! How healing it has been to live quietly among the sheep and the cows, to greet my friend the red fox with her full white-tipped tail patrolling the field every morning before sunrise, and to give the farmyard dogs a run for their money on my red bike. How bracing to range through tall grasses in high boots, crossing streams and rivulets without fear of snakes or garbage. Ireland is like a jungle, at least in the summer, a land of gentle rain and strong wind, fields and hedgerows overflowing with flora and fauna. The world has been at war since 9-11, but not here in rural Ireland.
The bible describes heaven as a city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven adorned as a bride for her husband. But I wonder if more like a village than a city like New York or Beijing? The other day I went into the village to pick up some milk and to make a visit at the parish church. It was about 5pm, and many were going home after a day at the lumber mill, the village school, or the dairy plant. The light was turning golden and the air crisp on this late September afternoon in one of ten thousand Irish villages. A deeply satisfying sense of community swept over me, and I realized what kind of “city” God has in mind for us. In most Irish villages there is only one main street, the road between townlands along which most of the villagers have built their homes. There are no “developments” or apartment complexes but only a row of brightly-colored houses with their chimneys and flowerpots. I know many of these people by now, having talked to them in the one village grocery store, worshipped God with them in their only parish church, and dropped off my laundry with Mrs. Mayberry in the only village dry cleaners. I’ve talked about cows and weather with them in the village pubs (not one but three of them in my village).
In a week I return to the city, which has a different kind of beauty born of the concentrated energy of large numbers of people. I think heaven will be more like a village than either the splendid isolation of the farmhouse or the exciting density of the city. Heaven will be, I think, a natural community of those who know and love each other, who have built their homes not far from the village tabernacle and along the road that links one village with the next. And the Lamb of God will be the light, and the tabernacle, of that City.
After the bad guys destroyed our thousand-foot towers in New York, we built an even taller tower for a city that never sleeps. Exciting stuff, but as I grow older the city holds less fascination for me. The village is the thing for me now, a place in which everyone has a home, and with which terrorists do not think to bother.
Today I awoke naturally at 5:45 and went outside. All was quiet, and all was bright. A nearly full moon shone over pale fields, while Orion’s belt stretched over the eastern sky. Two planets looked down as well: Jupiter high above and Venus lower on the horizon, in all her shining precision. Rather than a blast of wind from flaming clouds, a gentle breeze deftly rustled the tall field grasses. Three months in rural Ireland has put a blessed distance between me and our anxious coastal cities.
How nearly perfect has been my sojourn in the Irish countryside! How healing it has been to live quietly among the sheep and the cows, to greet my friend the red fox with her full white-tipped tail patrolling the field every morning before sunrise, and to give the farmyard dogs a run for their money on my red bike. How bracing to range through tall grasses in high boots, crossing streams and rivulets without fear of snakes or garbage. Ireland is like a jungle, at least in the summer, a land of gentle rain and strong wind, fields and hedgerows overflowing with flora and fauna. The world has been at war since 9-11, but not here in rural Ireland.
The bible describes heaven as a city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven adorned as a bride for her husband. But I wonder if more like a village than a city like New York or Beijing? The other day I went into the village to pick up some milk and to make a visit at the parish church. It was about 5pm, and many were going home after a day at the lumber mill, the village school, or the dairy plant. The light was turning golden and the air crisp on this late September afternoon in one of ten thousand Irish villages. A deeply satisfying sense of community swept over me, and I realized what kind of “city” God has in mind for us. In most Irish villages there is only one main street, the road between townlands along which most of the villagers have built their homes. There are no “developments” or apartment complexes but only a row of brightly-colored houses with their chimneys and flowerpots. I know many of these people by now, having talked to them in the one village grocery store, worshipped God with them in their only parish church, and dropped off my laundry with Mrs. Mayberry in the only village dry cleaners. I’ve talked about cows and weather with them in the village pubs (not one but three of them in my village).
In a week I return to the city, which has a different kind of beauty born of the concentrated energy of large numbers of people. I think heaven will be more like a village than either the splendid isolation of the farmhouse or the exciting density of the city. Heaven will be, I think, a natural community of those who know and love each other, who have built their homes not far from the village tabernacle and along the road that links one village with the next. And the Lamb of God will be the light, and the tabernacle, of that City.
After the bad guys destroyed our thousand-foot towers in New York, we built an even taller tower for a city that never sleeps. Exciting stuff, but as I grow older the city holds less fascination for me. The village is the thing for me now, a place in which everyone has a home, and with which terrorists do not think to bother.
A rainbow of my little farmhouse on September 11, 2025
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