A pilgrimage of sorts

Just as you round the corner on the ascent of Mount Pleasant, the huge, concrete circle comes into view. She is crowned with barbs, crouched and glowering over a near deserted city. Only as you climb the concrete steps does the cathedral begin to appear friendly. In this quiet hour of gloaming, the half-light of can barely coax a song out of the stained-glass panels. Their coloured glass frames this tired vista. And the heart is tired too as it beats out its gentle throb inside a broken body. Paddy’s wigwam wears its crown of thorns as a reminder that we who search out the truth will always bleed. But today, the world is locked down. The door of every bar in town is bolted, the cathedral door is a buttress that keeps the would-be pilgrim firmly on the outside.

Always outsiders, we who circumvent the now dormant cathedral ask nothing for ourselves. We have embraced our loneliness and our longing. We have been searching the hallowed halls of God’s houses for decades and with each turn there is only ever emptiness. And perhaps it will remain so until such time as we might leave our bodies and ascend into the funnel and merge with the coloured lights high in the vaulted roof of the loveliest cathedral of them all. This is our rain dance that joins us to our bridegroom in a sweet intoxication stronger than any wine. It is our sanity within that glorious madness, the music that rises above the cacophony.

So you tell me what gave them the right to take away our liberty; to pull us by our ankles from the safety of our inner sanctum. You tell me the cost of the scars from the struggle against the handcuffs and leg restraints. Tell me the price we must pay to get out of the lockdown that started at the end of the hospital ward. You tell me how long it will be before this total violation ends. Even the man whose seat is in this cathedral would only have a sanitised version of the spirit. Those of us whose rebirth is in the rafters are considered dangerous, better locked away out of sight. You may have the keys to the heavy, sculpted doors but we have the keys to eternity. All the different parts of us that make one human person would like to keep on living.