To Walk with Saints and Scholars

2/22/26

“Doorway to the Water’s Edge” Photo by LKV Walsh

NB: It is humbling to realize my computer thinks for me sometimes. You likely got an email with the exact title above but with no decipherable content. My computer decided it was time to send you a message; I was not yet ready. Technology makes much easier, and it also keeps me apologizing with regularity. My apologies! This is the post that should have come to you today…

The Christian church following the lectionary today heard about Jesus going into the desert and fasting for 40 days. No matter which way your spirituality skews, it is easy to imagine all that must have died along the way. Forty days alone with no food in a desert environment surely means the death of ego, of self-delusion, of desires and more. And what does this sacred text say as Jesus finishes his pilgrimage of dying to his old sense of self? “Afterwards, he was hungry.”

I get that. A pilgrimage into dying could leave one famished.

Since I arrived in Ireland nearly 6 months ago, I have found myself at innumerable rituals of death all over the Southwest of Ireland. I have been in funeral masses in churches. I have been at removals – a ritual much like calling hours that takes place the day before the funeral but is also, somehow, referred to as the funeral. I have been in “month’s mind” masses – offered one month after a death, and I have been in anniversary masses – offered each year in memory of a death. The Irish bury their dead within two or three days of passing, and they drop everything to attend the funerals, removals, and memorial masses of neighbors, family, friends and enemies. Yet, in general, the Irish do not talk about death nor do they talk about the fact that a person is dying. As my favorite Irish person puts it, “We don’t do mourning, but we pay our respects very well.”

As I have clocked hours in the car and seen most of what I’ve seen of Ireland via the routes to and from the various memorials, I am struck by how hungry my pilgrimage here so far leaves me. Forty hungry days left Jesus uninterested in power and the comforts temptation offered. That is because forty hungry days give one perspective on what matters and what does not. And while my expectations are of explicit grief and intentional mourning, I have to give it to the Irish. The hunger I experience when I am weekly (at least) faced with a death ritual teaches me well that life is this moment and this moment only. Afterwards, I find myself hungry…not for more power, not for more comfort, but for more meaning…more of what matters. Pilgrimage toward dying might just leave us all famished, but we are not afraid.