I had never seen a landscape remotely like it. Several years ago I spent two weeks with a group on pilgrimage in Ireland. We visited a dozen sacred sites, but one of the most impressive was the Burren in southwest Ireland. Where we entered the Burren, an endless plain of flat, barren limestone rocks, perhaps six feet thick, stretched before us. An impressive 25 miles from east to west and 15 miles from north to south, the landscape presents a view of desolation, of deep and endless emptiness. With no trees or even much visible vegetation rising from the rock, the limestone formation is broken only by wide crevices that only increase the sense of dry, arid, and lifeless space.

But that’s only the first impression; it’s not the truth of the Burren. Barren landscapes — physical, spiritual, and emotional ones — are rarely as empty or desolate as they appear to be at first glance. Enter the Burren, as you would any apparent emptiness, and look more deeply, and you will find life in abundance.

The Burren is an easy landscape to spiritualize; its story lends itself to metaphor. Once upon a time it was covered with forests of pine, hazel, and yew. Later, ice buried the land, and when the glaciers receded, all that was left behind was limestone. Under normal circumstances, the land would usually reseed itself and, over time, re-develop into the forest it had been before. But the appearance of human beings and the agricultural practices they brought with them prevented this, and centuries later the Burren remains mostly limestone. It is a landscape forever changed by the ice and the changes it has experienced since the ice receded.

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