Bringing Celtic Ways to you

How can we be more eco friendly with Celtic Ways?

A dilemma I have with our Celtic Ways services is the amount of air travel we encourage as most people who share our tours are from North America and Australia. 

I was wondering if it would be more eco friendly to create more shows and bring some Ireland and Celtic Wisdom to the USA and Australia which would mean 2 of us using aeroplanes rather than 100s that come to Ireland to share what we do.

Unfortunately, should that become a pattern that spread and caused thousands to stop using aeroplanes there would be an incredible domino effect of mass unemployment not only from reduced airline services but also on the construction side that is forever expanding runways and airport facilities.

I often wonder if we could bring back passenger boats as they may be more eco friendly than aircraft and create substantial employment opportunities again in shipbuilding, building new seaports etc.  It would be much easier to build solar panelled boats than aeroplanes, for one.

However, I do feel that what people discover and recharged from in Ireland, though tradition, celebration and ancestry here can be experienced in their homelands, but may seem to be a little harder.

Healing with the natives

What we discovered when we toured the USA was the incredible amount of beauty in the landscape along with graciousness, kindness and open hearts of many USA people.

We also discovered a lot of ancient tradition and relics of ancient antiquity going back 1000s of years, just like in Ireland but somehow all of this in revered like it is in ireland. Reverence of ancestry and tradition seems to be still there in the hearts of the ancient tribes but maybe there is still some guilt of the “white man” who’s unwise decisions burned the bridges to the wisdom of the natives.

Exchange was too easily replaced with domination that developed into annihilation, but that is all past. Its the present that counts.

At one with tribes

It does seem that sense of purpose has been lost with many tribal people and with many “white man” people yet many have also resurrected to a new sense of purpose.

Its like the plot of the folk drama plays, the straw boys places, the mummers plays where a battle between cultures or old and new takes place and the so called “enemy” is slained but there is not a hero. In comes the medicine man, wise man, shaman, even goddess, and heals the slain person but as the slain person rises he or she becomes one with the one that once slained.

On our visit to the USA I did feel and experience of vibrations where the spirits of tribes and the spirits of white men were opening to being a recognition of being of the same spirit.

The potential of this came across to me as being as valuable as a visit to Ireland. The so called Shamanism of Ireland to me is no different to the tribal shamanisms of North America. The spirit of the present in both is attached to the same ancestry.

To me, its the recognition and embracing of this spirit that will return us to being more eco friendly with our planet.

I think there is one hard truth that we forget to live by

No matter what we do on this earth, including destroying our race, the earth will still live on. After all we have only been “guests” on this planet for the equivalent of a few seconds if we scaled the life of the earth with the lifespan of humans on the earth.

The earth can beautifully respond to our stewardship and it is in our hands to re-create another “garden of eden”, but if we do not, it is no loss to the earth other than her ability to share her love.

Translating that wisdom into a “how to become a perfect eco living citizen” is quite a puzzle with us all wondering who may carry the answer. Sometimes I think its as if we need a new Moses to climb a mountain and come back with a 10 commandments of eco living, but that’s a somewhat daft expectation. However, meditating on the symbolism of that I do find helps me to focus a bit more on what I can do so I offer that to others.

New habits evolve

With what we do with Celtic Ways we’ll look at some steps we can offer that consumes less but enhances our spirit more.

Despite talking about taking Celtic Ways to you in your homeland, we would still love you to come to Ireland still.

Luckily, we are surrounded with all of the elements that make Ireland special within a few miles radius of our base, so I would like to encourage “travel less –experience more”. I am always delighted when folks ask me to cut back the tour itinerary as we travel because to me this is not laziness but a call for more experience.

There is a bit of a peer pressure where folks try to visit as much as they can in Ireland to get the photos and show them back home as a kind of bragging of where they have been. Ask that person what they experienced at each place and the description may tend to be awfully cliched rather than a pouring of honest spirited passion.

Somehow I will change our motto of …

“We go where the tour buses do not go” – which will still be true spiritually, to

“Travel less and experience more”