The Big House was, according to W.B. Yeats, where order and beauty meet to bring great art to its community. This, in short, is what we have been engaged in at Castlecoote House for the past 15 years.
With the moral collapse of many of our traditional institutions; the demise of a large number of rural community structures; the eclipsing of many parish churches as centres of community activity; the ‘rationalisation’ of post offices and other traditional services; the severe reduction in the numbers of Garda stations; the de-humanising of banks and libraries; the closure of rural public houses and local shops, all centres or fora of local leadership and collective conversation have now disappeared and may be lost to rural Ireland forever. As a result, a great vacuum exists.
Technology and new and untested forms of communication have altered the very nature of human connection and communication, redefining the nature of civic relationships and priorities. As a consequence it has become clear that we need to find a new interpretation of discussion, to provide a coherent cultural and intellectual map of human reality going forward.
It so happens that at Castlecoote House we have been attending to and addressing these areas of human need and activity for a number of years. At our annual Percy French festival for instance, while illuminating the neglected historical and sociological context of French’s life and work, we have tentatively been teasing out precisely such questions as had become most urgent for our society in the emerging moment.
In our style of approach we raised many of the bigger questions; examined them through the prisms of French’s comic genius, his connectedness to the grassroots culture of the people of Roscommon and the wider country in his own time. Building on these understandings, we have each year, conducted a study of the cultural undergrowth of French’s time and our own. Year on year, post-event surveys show a public appetite to expand on the issues raised, particularly the bigger questions of truth, morality and ethics.
Alongside the big attraction of the music and entertainment, people who travel to the Percy French Festival come from a very diverse range of backgrounds and were found to be a very thoughtful and reflective audience. In matters dealing with the press and political governance it was clear they had become very weary and tired of partial truths and their integrity being challenged on a regular basis. Mainly because some of the media presume that their readers have the same value system as they do, whereas in reality this isn’t always the case – worse still the media continue to perpetuate it.
The Sean Freyne Memorial Lecture took up the challenge of issues of faith and morality and became a way of reaching out to people, from all walks of life, who on a very deep spiritual level were searching for a coherent faith and an undiluted approach to the Traditions. Truth and religion was a way of engaging with the world, a living relationship with the Transcendent, not a set of beliefs, dogmas and practises, and it was clear they were more at ease when these bigger questions were raised in a secular setting. They saw faith as a way of living, thinking and being in the same reality as other people. They had a misgiving too about who takes ownership of these value system(s), that constitute their beliefs or that make up their spiritual well being.
Consequently they were looking for a neutral, objective, unbiased interpretation and approach to the Traditions and these bigger questions.
It was out of this context, four years ago we successfully launched our Myth & History series which, alongside Classical Hebrew, has now become part of the intellectual cultural conversation at Castlecoote House.
What now for Castlecoote House?
The growing hunger and longing for issues of truth, faith, morality and beauty in society are very pertinent issues and advanced the notion that maybe we have to reframe our thinking in order to reach a deeper truth.
Go back to the texts again and take an historical and archaeological approach to the biblical narrative. Look, for instance, for the Jesus of history in the narrative, examine the historical, political and social landscape in which this extraordinary charismatic figure lived and moved.
Likewise with the great Classical prophets, Jeremiah, Amos and Isaiah, taking the literary and archaeological approach to these giant literary works may in fact bring us to a deeper understanding of their story, the world in which they moved, and enrich our faith in a more wholesome manner. This approach strains the biblical narrative of its supernatural language in an attempt to make it more accessible and compatible for us today. It examines ‘the setting in life’ in which the texts were created and asks the very pertinent question ‘does the biblical story that created the paradigm shift for the community in which it evolved, originally, have any meaning for us in today’s very secularised society’?
Some of these ideas may make us feel very challenged or uncomfortable, however, familiar certainties of belief today may no longer be able to stand up to the scrutiny of the challenge of faith combined with reason. Notwithstanding these challenges our hunger to think and talk about the moral and the transcendent will never be satisfied, never sated especially now when our world have been arrested from its hurtling pace.
Now may be the time to look again at life. Look again at the narratives that shaped our worlds, the biblical stories that shaped the people who mean and meant so much to us. Our ancestors, our grandparents, great, great hard-working people who built up our country with their bare hands, some of whom are now suddenly and cruelly it seems taken away from us without any family around them to thank them and say goodbye. It should always be remembered we are here, only because of them.
Up until recently we all felt we had so many choices in life. All that has now been punctuated and at a deeper level it prompts us to ask the reason why? Now may be the appropriate time to rekindle the light we all have been bestowed with, or is our hope placed in a long wait for things to start up as before and (we) lose ourselves again in the fray?
The approach to the Traditions outlined above may be the bridge to help us cross over and return to base camp so when we do go forward the next time, we will, as Bob Dylan said, ‘have God on our side’.
For more information on the courses outlined above or Classical Hebrew, beginners course commences every Monday (7 pm), please email info@castlecootehouse.com
