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As I said the the video field report, he greeted me outside the train station, and as I loaded in my back-pack and small carry on, he asked, “So, has your trip been uneventful so far?” I said “Yes.” And then I looked in the back of his taxi where my two bags where. I had three. “Where’s my suitcase?” I asked. I quickly looked around. It was nowhere. Could it still be on the train? It was, but by then the train had taken off for its next stop. Fortunately, the next stop was the end of the line, and it would return in an hour. So, I got my bag and Sean and headed off to Portmagee, which is where the Skellig Michael boats take off for the island.
He told me to sit up front with him. When I went around to get into the taxi’s passenger side door on the right side of his car, he stopped me. “Stan, you’re not in the U.S. anymore. Get in on the other side.” That was a warning and would haunt me every time I drove in the UK over the next week.
Sean and I got to talking about his life and mine. I have him an Angel Quest business card on which is printed “Sword of St. Michael Television Documentary.” I told him about the project to the seven monasteries of St. Michael’s Sword, and how they’re in a straight line, etc, and how I had my doubts that I was doing what I should be doing. I have had doubts about this trip for a long time. I knew it was going to be expensive, with unknown expenses along the way. And since I’ve driven across part of the UK, a lot of France, and now the equivalent of the length of Italy, the price of gasoline makes the trip even more expensive. I also knew it would physical tax me. I’m 75 and in moderately good health. I worked out on the treadmill and lifted weights during the cold spring months in preparation for this trip, and then when the weather broke started regular 4-mile brisk walks, sometimes with a loaded backpack. But I doubted I was being wise to try to do this trip across 6 countries, 7 mountains, about 10,000 air and road miles in 22 days.
I expressed these doubts to Sean. He seemed unusually interested as I told him about the Sword of St. Michael and the legends involving the monastery founding’s hundreds and thousands of years ago.
When I finished he held out his bare arm, and said, “Do you see the hairs on my arm? They’re standing up on end.”
“Really?” I said. “Why is that?”
“Stan, I didn’t know a thing about you or your project when I agreed to take this long fare to Portmagee. But I don’t have any doubt that you should be doing this?”
“Really? Why is that?” I asked.
“Do you know what my name is?” he said.
“Sean,” I answered.
“No, I mean my full name.”
“No, what is it?”
“It’s Sean. Michael. Swords, and until you started telling me about your trip I knew nothing of the Sword of St. Michael. Look here,” and he pointed at his taxi license on top of the car’s instrument panel in front of me. The license featured Sean’s picture and in large bold letters his name, “SEAN SWORDS.”
Now, folks, I have video of this exchange…and I can’t share it. But there’s the story as best as I can tell it at the moment. Sean’s on the list so perhaps he’ll correct me.
Sean Michael Swords being assigned to be my taxi driver was a big transcendent moment. It was St. Michael reaching down and by proxy appearing to me. I think St. Michael then spoke audibly to me with the voice of Sean Michael, “Do not doubt that you are on a mission from God.”
I chuckled at that. It sounds pretentious. But it was a moment I will never forget the rest of my life. I have always wanted to see an angel. Maybe I did. Sean then told me he and his five (or is it six?) children attend St. Michael’s Church, and the kids all go to St. Michael’s Catholic School.
The trip has not been easy, as I will later relate. But when the sweat was pouring off my back as I climbed those 600 odd steps to the top of Skellig Michael (taking frequent rests), I am reminded that the transcendency of the supernatural accompanies all of us every day. Just look for it.
Great and memorable experiences require great and memorable effort.
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