Today I'm on the blog tour for Eden Burning by Deirdre Quiery with a guest post from the author.
Tom listened to Mrs McLaughlin's brogues briskly clump across the marble floor towards the exit at the back of the Church. When the wooden door thumped closed, he looked around the Church to make sure that he was alone, then heaved himself to his feet, opened the Confessional, blessed himself, and in the darkness whispered to Father Anthony, 'Father, get me a gun'.
Northern Ireland, 1972. On the Crumlin Road, Belfast, the violent sectarian Troubles have forced Tom Martin to take drastic measures to protect his family. Across the divide William McManus pursues his own particular bloody code, murdering for a cause. Yet both men have underestimated the power of love and an individuals belief in right and wrong, a belief that will shake the lives of both families with a greater impact than any bomb blast. This is a compelling, challenging story of conflict between and within families driven by religion, belief, loyalty and love. In a world deeply riven by division, how can any individual transcend the seemingly inevitable violence of their very existence?
WHAT DOES EDEN BURNING TELL US ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS?
In the Native American Indian tradition I am told that a newly born
child is given a song. The song is sung at birth and at every
significant anniversary during life and sung for the last time at
death. I love the intimacy of that story because I relate to it. My
Mother’s song was “Danny Boy”. She sang it after every family
meal, on birthdays. When she visited me in Oxford 19 years ago, I
didn’t know that she would be dead within a week. “Danny Boy”
would be sung again, but not by her.
There was no time to ask her friends in Belfast to attend her
funeral. So we had a Requiem Mass with only my father, my husband and
my two sisters and brother in law. There was a bunch of roses on top
of the coffin and my husband played the guitar.
During the Mass, the door of the Church opened and a busload of
holidaymakers from Cork in Ireland poured in. My grandparents came from Cork. The Cork folk
dutifully and respectfully took their seats in the pews. Martin strummed the last song “Danny Boy”
and more than 50 strangers from Cork sang from the depths of their hearts.
What has that to do with Eden Burning and the evolution of human
consciousness?
It’s a story with so much untold. You don’t know about my
relationship with my Mother. An author tells a story and what is not told is the canvas on which the story
is painted. In Eden Burning the blank canvas contains the unwritten
words of a song that was breathed into me at birth and which I had to
sing for all of my life. The title of the song is “Why are we here?
What are we meant to do with this flicker of life? Where are we
going?”
I kept singing it to myself and this morning I continue to sing it. I
don’t need a special occasion for the song. It is a mantra burnt
into my heart. When I began Eden Burning the song I was given at
birth was in my heart. As any professional singer would, I studied
the art of singing. In my case it involved completing a Masters in
Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Psychology.
I began to understand the notes of the song that had been given to
me. I still had to sing them. I sang them in my novels, beginning with Eden Burning, then The Secret Wound
and The Painter. Not everyone might know that Eden Burning is a story
of the potential evolution of human consciousness. It reveals in a
novel format that we all are born with a reptile consciousness which
evolves into something emotional, then rational and beyond that into
a consciousness which knows the unity of everything and acts from
that knowledge with love.
Eden Burning explores the evolution of consciousness in the minds of
assassins William and Cedric and reveals the interconnectedness of everyone within the story. It
is a story of the evolution of love within an environment of hatred.
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