Soul Surrender

“The greatness of a man’s power is in the measure of his surrender.”

~ William Booth

Have you given any thought to your own “cultural DNA?”  To the landscapes, the religious and political systems, and the other forces that shaped your ancestors – and that helped to shape you?

Forty years ago I had a conversation with my great aunt Nora Moriarty, an ancient member of my clan.  In that meeting I learned a lesson on surrender I’d like to share with you.  A lesson forged on the rainy, wind-swept island of Ireland.

• Ireland was bound to Britain in servitude for over 1,000 years
• Ireland regularly gives up its children to emigration
• Ireland invented its own dance, its own music, and its own whiskey
• Ireland is a land of poets, bards, and…..booze

There is a inescapable shadow that is cast over the land that says night is always about to fall.

Nora’s 70-year-old son John lived with her.  John lived in a kind of shadowland between the sheep he tended and the poteen he drank.  John had surrendered utterly to his addiction to alcohol, and seemed a wholly depleted human being who lived for his next drink.  Nora was all too aware that John had given to the ghost (her words).   Being the dutiful mother, Nora was unprepared to see her only son a ward of the state, so he lived with her.

Nora was the clan historian.  She knew the dates of birth of all the clan members, even those who fled to America in the early years of the 20th century.  She also knew something else about each person.  So when she came at me with the question, “Paddy boy, do ya drink, lad, do ya drink?” I immediately understood the import.  She had one eye on her boy in the back room and another on a picture of her long departed husband.

The answer to the “drink” question had become all-important to ALL Moriarty clan members.

This encounter with Nora Moriarty in January, 1978 was to become a sentinel moment in my life.  It was the first time I was hit squarely with the single most important question I’d ever wrestle with, a central question for countless generations of my clansmen.  Would we, could we break the power of the “drink?”

During my trip to Ireland I witnessed Illustration after illustration of people of

• my same blood,
• my same temperament,
• my same size and description

Each reckoned with their individual lot in life, but all were marked in unmistakable ways with a cultural identity.  These cultural markers are powerful forces that pull us in one way and another.  For me, like it or not, these forces require both my acquiescence and my conscious decision to turn in a different direction.  Will I choose to be dictated by them or not?  Left unattended, these forces would pave the way for me to live as Nora’s son, John.