Surprised by Joy
On spontaneity, sacred fires, and finding the centre
The Carob Tree…
I remember one day, whilst living in the desert of Almeria, I walked to the end of the valley, to where a large carob tree stands. It marks the place where the valley opens out into an expanse of farmland, into a wide river plain (when the river still flowed) - a place of transition from the steep, close-in cliffs of the valley to the more open area beyond. Now, as a side note, I learned later that carob trees are planted as boundary markers, much like the long-living yew trees planted as ancient boundary markers in Ireland. Whoever planted it, whatever boundaries they marked, and wherever they have gone now has been lost to time.
But on this particular morning, as I stepped into the shade of the tree and looked across the spreading land before me, into places I’d never walked, I felt a strong and growing urge to just keep walking. It grew inside me like the most beautiful and inspired notion taking form, unfolding like the ash leaves - the last tree to bud - that are now opening on the trees outside. And this was not just an urge to keep walking on that particular day, but for many days, to go forth with only what I had with me, to see where I would end up and with whom I would pass the time. I knew I would depend on the people I would meet - to feed me, give me shelter. And that was the appeal, the unknown of it all.
I was younger then. A young man, finding his feet, finding himself through movement and new places.
But I turned for home that day. Yet that spark, that deep need for spontaneity to reignite me, has remained. I experience it still. In my body it presents as a growing excitement, a quickening of the heart, a renewal. It’s a very pleasant feeling. To do something unplanned and spontaneous is a wonderful tonic for the soul. And so, though today I don’t quite feel the pull of something as radical as that morning in Almeria, I still know that urge when it arises. Yesterday, after a few hours of work at home, it arose again, and within an hour of the thought forming, I followed it. I threw a bed in my van and spontaneously drove to the Hill of Uisneach for their annual Fire Festival.
The Hill…
Have you been to the Hill of Uisneach? To the mythical centre of Ireland? It sits on private land now, but the ancient tradition of lighting a Bealtaine fire has been reignited. Five thousand or more people gather each May for one full day and a night that culminates in the lighting of the fire.
That spirit of spontaneity followed me up the hill that day. It felt like luck was on my side. Minutes before the procession began - a gathering of two hundred or more costumed, flag-bearing people walking up to the central fireplace - I noticed my growing hunger and figured it would be best to eat now rather than later. I chanced a BBQ spot, the queue was small, but the woman took one desperate and exhausted look at me and said, “Sorry, we need a break for thirty minutes.” I couldn’t argue, they had probably been serving food without a break for many hours. But she looked at me once more, feeling a small urge of compassion, and asked, “What do you want?” in that hopeful, inquisitive way, knowing my answer would either be granted or not depending on what I requested. “Just a burger,” I said. “OK, fine, we have just one left,” she responded. Delighted, I sat beside a hawthorn tree - one of many on the hill - and as I satisfied my hunger, the procession began just beside me.
I finished my food and began to walk alongside them. I spotted a banner I recognised: CELT - the Centre for Ecological Living and Training. I knew it well; located in Scariff in East Clare, I used to join their workshops and events years ago. Then I noticed two people I know, and decided there and then that I would simply join the procession. And so I did, and in a moment I went from observer to participant. A woman handed me a handmade fire torch and I lit it, the waxy paper sizzling and catching flame, and I marched up the hill, smiling gleefully.
Each year, someone special - someone representative of a more mythic expression of Irish cultural identity - is chosen to add the first flame to the twenty-foot sculpted bonfire. This year it was Eddie Lenihan, the well-known Irish storyteller. Eddie, with his great mass of briary hair and long, wizardly beard, stepped up with a burning staff and, to the loud cheers of those gathered, gazed into the opening, into the inner chamber of the fire mound, and poked the staff in as though he was rustling a mysterious animal out of its hole. Within moments the flames took hold and began to dance gloriously up into the air. Drummers pounded - African drums, medicine drums - old Celtic horns curved up into the night air, blowing forth, and fire dancers, the women dressed in white, the men in black, wove in circles around the crowd.
The Tree…
All those years ago, in the desert of Almeria, I was a wandering soul, looking for roots and connection, direction and purpose. It was the seeker’s time of life: outward-facing, restless, absorbing the thoughts and influences of others like dry earth takes in rain. That impulse never leaves us. But each stage of life, each decade, finds its own expression of that same deep longing. The direction of the searching simply changes.
When I first arrived at Uisneach that day, before venturing into the crowd and inevitably meeting the many people I know, before the conversations and the connections, I needed first to be alone. So I walked the fringes of the hill quietly, and made my way to the Cat Stone - the sacred centre, the navel of Ireland, the resting place of the goddess Éiru. There you find a quiet procession of people circling the great stone. As they pass, each one places a hand on its cool surface and takes their own private moment. Those light steps on the bare earth have a power to them that needs not to be named. Everything in me slowed. My nervous system settled. The four-hour drive dissolved. I was at the centre now, still, and arrived.
I said my own prayers. Expressed my gratitude. And then I sat by the stone and let the sweet, celebratory energy of the gathering wash over me, carried along by the gentle music of a young man playing a small handmade harp somewhere behind me.
Afterwards, I walked to a lone hawthorn tree and sat beneath it. Another tree, another vista, but this one green and unfolding, the land spreading westward towards the lowering sun, the counties of Ireland laid out across the horizon. But here, something was different. There was no urge to move, no pull towards those distant horizons. The feeling was the opposite of that morning in Almeria. Where that day had called me outward, into distance and motion, this moment called me inward. Downward. Into root and place and stillness, and the delight of simply being here.
My thoughts moved between Ireland and Guatemala. These two countries form the rhythm of my life, the dance I am lucky enough to still be dancing. Uisneach is always a homecoming for me, a moment of deep and nourishing connection to this land, to these roots, to whatever it is that Ireland continues to ask of me and give to me. And in time, I will return to Lake Atitlán, to my life there, a life that was itself first kindled by a surge of spontaneity and intuition not unlike the one that threw a bed in a van and drove north, though of greater resonance.
Perhaps that is the thing about spontaneity. It is like reaching a flame into our own inner fire and letting it burn bright again. To be ‘surprised by joy, impatient as the wind’ as Wordsworth would say. It is not only the engine of adventure and new beginnings, it’s a gift to your own inner spark and the delightful pull of the unknown. Sometimes the most unplanned moment drops you into the stillest, most rooted place you know. The young man I was under the carob tree wanted to keep walking, he wanted to dissolve into the unknown. The man sitting under the hawthorn had walked enough to know that the horizon is always in conversation with us.
The same beautiful longing, just wearing different clothes.
Go when the urge calls you. It knows the way.