March 15, 2007

Bloody Mary

"Religion has always played a significant role, albeit an often violent one here." Martin said, as he stared ahead into the cloudy horizon, with both hands calmly on the bus's steering wheel.

"Ireland" he continued, "Has been on the striking end of the whip through many religious and political conversions through the centuries."

The sun smeared a streak of pale light through the thin clouds on the flat western horizon.

"After all, the drink many of you have drank after particularly festive nights - a Bloody Mary - was a name given to Mary, the Queen of England, by the Irish in the 1550's. It was not a term of endarment. At least not if you were a Protestant in Ireland at that time."

The bus rode on it's pneumatic suspension quietly over the cracks in the wet asphalt as Kilarney approached in the dim afternoon. I listened to Martin narrate another tale of his country's history, and the strings Ireland has for so long had attached to it; pulling it back and forth between beliefs.

Martin's lesson went on to explain the founding of the Church of England by Queen Mary's father, Henry VIII, King of England. He renounced Catholicism when Pope Clement VII refused to grant him a divorce. King Henry's subsequent decree was to convert England to Protestantism with the newly established Church of England. This news was not met well in Ireland, a Catholic land since it's conversion from Celtic traditions in the 5th Century.

Martin paused in his narrative to remind us, in his white collared satire, that after Henry's excommunication from the Catholic church, the founding of his new Protestant Church - which he made certain did allow his first marriage to be annulled, and blessed the marriage to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, - and a huge religious and social upheaval of religious conversion throughout England that ensued - and by de-facto, the devoutly Catholic Island of Ireland, - King Henry soon had his new wife beheaded on his claim that she was a witch. A witch, Martin noted, who happened to not be able to bear a male heir to King Henry's throne.

As the rain began to fall on the large clean windows, I leaned my head against glass, and continued to listen to the history lesson. Ireland's bloody past was gently orated to us in Martin' impeccable gentile Irish accent. He told us of the monks tortured and executed to repress the Catholic resistance against new Protestant Church of England. He told of the treason, the beheadings, and the decree by Henry that he was second to God, His chosen one.

Martin's deliveries were well rehearsed. As we pulled into the lights of Killarney, his story ended with the complete reversal of religious doctrine with Henry's daughter, Queen Mary. She resented her father's new Church. When she inherited the throne, she claimed England - and it's Irish lands - to return to Catholicism. And the bloody cycle was reversed.

"And they say, the Queen was not as forgiving as her father. Which might not be saying much. Hundreds died in the Marian Persecutions for the same faith they were forced to adopt only decades before."

As his tale concluded, the bus lurched to a stop, shifting all of the passengers weight forward; waking up the many passengers whose interest in Irish history was not as great as their desire for an afternoon nap.

"So next time you drink a Bloody Mary" Martin said as he opened the door at our hotel, "You'll know where the name comes from. I'll see you at dinner in the lobby at 7."

Walking off of the bus into the air awakened me from the fairy tale our guide told in the quiet and still confines of the motor coach. My mind leapt ahead 450 years to the present as the soles of my shoes landed on the curb, sending faint ripples of sensation up my sleepy legs. Cars moved. Light bulbs burned. Doors revolved. Thoughts progressed.

I sat in the pub of the hotel that evening, thinking about the history lesson. Somehow Martin's professionalism had removed any personal inflection on the story. I remembered no cynicism in his voice, though such a story would seem to merit much. Perhaps the repetition of the tale had eroded any effort at editorializing the story. Perhaps his pride in his history prevented any bias or criticism, on whichever side he belonged. Or perhaps, I thought, it was simply too long ago to have any personal understanding of the matter. After all, I convinced myself, those days were long gone. They were called the mid-evil times for a reason, I told myself.

I looked up at the plasma T.V. screen, scrolling news and flashing images that happened hours and minutes ago from all around the world on a clean, 3 inch deep, mass-produced appliance from half the world away.

I ordered a beer, to celebrate modernity and all of our progress, and I congratulated myself on the advances we have made in the last four and half centuries. I leaned back in the upholstered chair and waited for our tour group to arrive in the hotel lobby for dinner.

As I waited, I watched the news. It was happening around the world. Hours, minutes, even moments ago. The BBC journalists flashed images across the smooth screen from a satellite hanging 22,000 miles into the outer edge of the atmosphere, circling an earth that is no longer deemed to be flat. I watched Tikrit burn. I watched Shiite militia, masked and marching in Sadr City. I watched Hamas fighters piled high in pickup trucks in Gaza. I watched U.S.M.C. infantry kicking down doors in Baghdad. I watched freedom fighters lying dead and drying in the Sudanese sand. I watched tanks tread through Golan Heights. I watched marauders run through the streets in Jersulam. I watched images of wreckage. Of waste. Of conquest and of conviction. Of modern Maries, as bloody as ever.

The thought rose slowly like that whip, 450 years long. Even longer. The sine wave rolled through my spine into my mind until the end of the line - right up until that very present moment, in my present moment, in that chair in that pub in a hotel in Kilarny, and it cracked loud and painful in my forehead.

I humbly reminded myself that my life is not the pinnacle nor even the final product of history. I am not part of the chosen kind. I am at best a the genealogical benefactor of temporary winners; my kind had better weapons and friends in higher places. My tour group began congregating in front of the dining room at the back end of the lobby, waiting to enter the buffet; waiting to enjoy their awards while they could.

I tipped my glass to the notion, and to the conquers and the converted, and religious and the renegades, finished my beer and headed for the buffet.

Posted by Todd Roeth at March 15, 2007 07:41 PM