1. Blessing
the Pilgrims on Radio 4
Sunday morning, 8:10am: BBC Radio 4
broadcast of choral morning prayer at St Mary’s, as Kelvin and Audrey, readers
and choir treat us to a pilgrimage-themed service of travel music and celtic
blessings and we receive our badges.
Afterwards, we talk to the Mo, the producer, whom we recognize from the
last of these broadcasts we attended 9 or so years ago, and Ken, the engineer,
who enthuses over his gear and shows us the location of the BBC satellite on
his Pokemon-Go-style smartphone app (“22 degrees!” he says). (Available until 22 October at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w5zj4
)
2. Journey
to Iona
Sunday
afternoon: Having returned home to finish packing and to close things
up, we catch the train from Hyndland to Dalmuir, where we pick up the West
Highland Line train for Oban. At Oban we
meet up with most of the rest of our group and board the Cal-Mac ferry for
Craignure. From Craignure we take a bus
that crosses the island of Mull on little winding one-track roads, before
rocking and rolling our way across the sound to Iona.
3. Staffa
Monday afternoon: The best weather all week
was forecast for Monday, so we got tickets for the trip to the island of
Staffa, made famous by Felix Mendelsohn’s Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”). The island approached, black and columnar on
the horizon, as our little wooden boat, the Iolaire
of Iona, pitched and rolled on the rough seas, making it difficult to
capture the gaping sea caves cut into the island’s southern cliffs. Bruce from our church was with us, returning
to see the condition of the railing that he had installed more than 30 years
ago. After a rough, wet landing on the
lee side of the island, the group of us stepped onto the rough hexagons formed
by the tops of the basalt columns that make up the island, created by
quick-cooled lava from an undersea volcanic eruption 60 million years ago. We edged along the path for a couple hundred
meters, between crashing waves and basalt columns, extremely grateful for
Bruce’s rails, which he told us were made of high tension electric transmission
lines. We edged around the end of the
island and into Fingal’s Cave itself, terrifying with the waves booming and
roaring. It didn’t sound like the
Mendelsohn piece to me, at least in any literal sense, but it certainly was
amazing, and I will remember it for the rest of my life.
4. Geology
Pilgrimage into the Deep Time
Tuesday afternoon: Alex, a geologist in our
community, led a group of us on a geology pilgrimage through Deep Time around
the northern end of Iona: We started below the Argyll Hotel looking at a
60-million year old lava channel bored through 800 million year old
mudstone. We then walked up to the
machair on the northwest end of the island. Machair is fertile but thin soil on
top of raised shell beach sand and looks like a golf course. It’s several of thousand years old and is on
land that used to be beach before the land gradually rose in the aftermath of
the last ice age, springing back from the pressure of the kilometer-thick
glaciers of the last ice age. Finally,
Alex led us down onto the shell beach (made of finely broken sea shells rather
than silicon) just beyond the machair, where he showed us an outcropping of
lewisian gneiss. Lewisian gneiss is some
of the oldest, densest rock on earth, more than 2 billion years old: it is the
remains of the “roots of mountains”; the rest of these mountains, formed when
two tectonic plates crashed together, have long since worn away, leaving
something that was too tough even for glaciers to budge.
5. Mindfulness
and the Four Elements
Tuesday morning and on Thursday afternoon:
Margaret, a psychotherapist/ focuser/research mentor/artist/mindfulness trainer
led us in a series of outdoor mindfulness exercises (her specialty). On Tuesday there was a walking mindfulness
meditation through a muddy pasture, and on Thursday there was a standing
meditation on the grass between Bishops’ House and the sea, on the theme of the
four elements:
• earth: feel
the ground under your feet
• water: see the
water washing against the shore
• air: feel the
wind blowing against your skin
• fire: let
yourself experience the light around you and on your skin
This latter led me to some of the most
profound experiences I had during our week at Iona:
• Earth: I felt
the earth beneath my feet, but after the geology pilgrimage, the stability now
felt illusory, until I was able to extend my senses deep into the earth, below
the machair, until I reached the stability of the lewisian gneiss, billions of
years old.
• Water: The
brisk wind had brought a tear to my eye, and I now felt its cool moisture as it
evaporated. I also felt the moisture in
the air and the water in the earth. (Iona is the just about the wettest place
I’ve ever been to)
• Air: In
addition to the wind, I imagined the solidity of air that can hold an airplane
up in the sky, and the little molecules of oxygen being transported from the
air in my lungs to my blood stream and thence to every cell in my body.
• Fire: I closed
my eyes and observed the light coming in through my eyelids. Then I felt the metabolic fires that energize
all of my cells, and the fire of my spirit deep within me, connected to the
spirit fires of each of the other people in our little circle.
6. A
Hard Lesson
Wednesday midday: I love labyrinths, especially seven-circuit
Cretan labyrinths like the one on my parents’ property at Murray Creek. So when I learned that there is one at
Columba’s Bay, at the southeast corner of the island, I decided that I needed
to go there. I missed my chance to do it
with the postgraduate students, so when a 90 minute window of opportunity
opened up on Wednesday, I set off on my own, against Diane’s advice. A series of things then went wrong: I was soaked by the rain before I even got to
our B&B, which was on the way. I
stopped and changed clothes, putting on my rain pants. Then I headed west toward the golf course on
the machair on the west side of the island, where Kenneth and I had run 8 years
before. Then I turned south, following a
rather indistinct track across the machair.
When this ran out, I headed up a rocky, wet path, with a stream running
down it, until I reached the little loch near the top. My maps had gotten wet and were
disintegrating, and I knew that I had to go around the loch, so I turned
right. Big mistake! I was supposed to follow around to the left
of loch. The path soon became submerged
in the loch, so I struck out on a way above and parallel to the path, until the
path gave out. There followed a little
valley that descended from the loch.
However the valley was essentially a stream, so I was walking through a
bog.
The valley descended steeply, and I
realized that I did not know where I was and that if I twisted an ankle on the
treacherous footing I would be in serious trouble. However, having chosen this way, I grimly
stayed on the way I’d chosen, and eventually saw the sea through the mist. Descending further I came to a beach. Was it Columba’s Bay? It didn’t look right, and by my reckoning I
was probably at the southwest rather than the southeast corner of the
island. There was certainly no labyrinth
here. I couldn’t follow the shore to the
left because it was too steep and underwater at this point. Also, I’d almost used up my 90 min window and
was essentially lost. Diane would be
worrying about me. I began to feel
foolish and sorry for myself.
Finally, I decided to have a wee
reconnoiter. I ascended the steep slope
of the beach, pulling myself up onto machair.
Still no labyrinth. Then I saw the
roof of a house in the distance, and fencing.
Civilization! Next, I notice the
flag marking the number 3 hole of the golf course. I had somehow gone in a circle and was
actually on the west side of the island, much closer to our B & B than I’d
realized. This was at the same time both
highly annoying and a huge relief.
As I walked quickly back to the B&B
to change out of my soaking, sandy shoes, I reflected on this misadventure and
what it said about me: I sometimes form
somewhat crazy plans that I stick to determinedly. I also have a tendency to strike out on my
own, and can find myself in a lonely or even scary place. And I have been systematically ignoring the
fact that I am no longer as limber and resilient as I was 20 years ago, let
alone 40 years ago. Better preparation,
better conditions, travelling in company, and letting go of plans that aren’t
working: There are all really good ideas
for successful adventures!
7. Beer and Hymns
Thursday evening: After various more
conventional religious services, including compline each night, Wednesday
afternoon Eucharist and a healing service at the Abbey, the postgraduate
students in our group put on a beer and hymns event, featuring, naturally,
hymn-singing accompanied by imbibing beer (and wine). This turned out to be
great fun, with our enthusiasm making up for our lack of musical talent,
although the hymns could not be delivered at the spritely pace that Diane would
have preferred. At the time, I assumed
that only Episcopalians could dream up such a thing; however, I have since
learned that it is A Thing, and has an ancient as well as a modern history,
going back to the “Hymn for Ninkasi,” the Sumerian goddess of beer.
8.
Saint James’ Way
Thursday night: At the end of our last day, as we headed back
on our nightly trek back to the B&B, we stopped, turned off our electric
torches/flashlights, and looked up at the night sky, which had cleared for the
moment. Iona has no street lights, so we
could see the Milky Way spread out above us, running north-south, the same way
we were travelling. In Spanish, one of
the terms for the Milky Way is El Camino
de Santiago, also the name of the most famous of pilgrim paths, leading to
the shrine of Saint James in northwest Spain.
The Milky Way is a path of stars to guide pilgrims, both celestial and terrestrial,
and we were glad to follow it.
