Carmel Reflections

2 - It begins on the Mountain

I was born in a place where the mountains sweep down to the sea. My grandparents' parents emigrated from another such place, the legendary Mountains of Mourne in Ireland. I never met my greatgrandparents, but through stories my grandad told me I can feel the love and the longing for the place that was left and the life almost lost. It is because of their stories that it is not lost.

There is a huge nostalgia, as big as the ocean inside me like the longing of the salmon, to return to where they are born both to spawn and to die.

But the be_longing goes back to the creation of the continents and beyond. Our mountains came up out of the sea right where I am walking now. Some of them are made of basalt that bubbled out as molten lava from the actual centre of the earth. The magnificence and power of the forces of creation take your breath away, every day, when you go where the mountains sweep down to the sea.

I remember standing with my grandad at the harbour, two years old, my hand holding his way above my head, utterly dwarfed by my surroundings, and totally at peace.

I think Carmel is a physical place, though I have never been. But it is a real place in me.

'I have brought you into the land of Carmel, to eat its fruits.'

Elijah lived on Mt Carmel, and the brothers lived at a the wadi of Elijah. They see this flawed prophet, who went up to heaven in a chariot of fire, as their founding father. There is so much to say about him, his joy and despair, his wild zeal and his gnawing reluctance, and his saving by the gift of a raven. I suppose that must be for another time.

It is a beautiful phrase there from the Bible, on its own as it stands: 'I have brought you into the land of Carmel to eat its fruits', but Jeremiah was furious, going on to say more or less: 'I have brought you into the land of Carmel with its good fruits, and look at the mess you have made of it.'

You can't be too cosy for too long in this tradition. The mountains could move, and turn your world upside down. The place is in you. The core is molten.