Irish stones stretch for hundreds of miles from Crookhaven to Ballycastle and from Claddaghduf to Dublin. Jagged blue limestone cuts across the impossibly green landscape of Ireland like veins. The dry-stacked walls, fragile as they are, dating back four-thousand years before Christ, parcel the countryside in beautiful geometric shapes.
Irish stones are foundation stones. They are the first blocks laid, giving rise to grand houses of civilization and bearing the aged weight of castles and blacksmith forges, parliament buildings, and peasant homes.
Foundation stones mark the consecration of century-old spaces of worship like St. Finbarr’s in the village of Inchigeelagh. Irish stones are stalwart sentinels of wars and weddings, funerals, and great acts of cruelty and forgiveness.
Michael Creedon was an Irish stone, a dry-stack wall, connecting people across politics, religion, oceans, continents, and, most especially, generations. Seeking common bonds, facilitating delicate and meaningful compromise, he purveyed joy and laughter through a brogue as thick as a smoke-filled pub and as melodious as the penny whistles that still lift the roof in the front parlor of the Creedon Hotel in County Cork. He loved music, art, and literature, tirelessly championing its creators. Michael’s humor, high-minded and low-browed, combined with a spiritually deep dissatisfaction with injustice and boundless enthusiasm for the marrow of everything, was his blue limestone, forming his dry-stack wall.
Michael was an Irish Stone, a foundation stone for marriages, first breaths, and last gasps. And as a professor of social work at The Catholic University of America, he was a foundation stone for students. A foundation on which to build a life of meaningful service, reaching heights far beyond the building blocks of their professors.
Michael was an Irish Stone; the Blarney Stone, the Cloch na Blarnan. And like Michael, kiss the Blarney Stone and walk away with the gift of gab - the oratorical equivalent of raising the dead. Off the tongue rolls ten thousand words of unparalleled eloquence, flattery, and love. And behind those, ten thousand more.
We need another Irish Stone in America, in the Middle East, and in corners so far forgotten that we only feel personal heartbreak.
But we can no longer wait to unearth and rebuild the foundation stones of Druids and Vikings, Sumerians and Babylonians, princes and paupers. The past is not strong enough to divine the future. So now is our moment to lay anew, build where fractures have formed, and shore the soil that ugliness disturbs.
So let us take jagged blue limestone and the granite of goodness, if we can find either, and stack them high. Let us do it for ourselves, for our children, and for those in need long after we’ll ever know it. This can be done. Shovels and pickaxes await, ready but idle. Muscle and arrogance smirk at just half the work. And scientific know-how sits like Skittles™ in an eighth grader’s hands.
We can do this, but not without a rare tool. And it may be missing. Look under the bed, in the back of the garage, or in that terrible black hole between the couch cushions. Or better yet, let’s crook our necks back to a time and place where we last cared about something or someone far beyond ourselves. That’s where we find the tool. That’s where we rediscover will.
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Michael spoke words with full-throated force and effect, whether in his native tongue or ancient Gaelic.
They healed tenderly, advocated ferociously, and always lifted the weight from the shoulders of burdened souls.
Yes, Michael Creedon was an Irish stone. But to me, he was greater than that. He was a friend of my father’s. And that’s a fine place to begin.
I would love to hear what you thought about this essay and if it brought any personal memories or stories to mind. Please feel free to leave a comment. I’ll answer all of them. I would love to strike up a conversation about this piece and your thoughts. Please consider sharing this newsletter with a friend. Thank you. - Mark
What a well written tribute. Thank you.
Beautifully written and yes ….we as a world need to begin building back love, honor and respect and find a way to unite as the human race!