St Columba's Bay

Two greylag geese flow over our heads as we walked south to St Columba’s bay this morning and then, as we walked north, later, they flew over us again.

We collected a few sea washed pebbles and sat on the shoreline, facing south. The sense of peace and separation from all the crowded avenues of mainland life is intoxicating.

And then, on the sandy dunes of the Bay at the Back of the Ocean we sat for a while, facing west.

Today we’ve been gifted with sunshine and tomorrow the forecast is dire. Who knows, really, and in many ways, it doesn’t matter at all, for here we can walk into the pace of each day, enjoying each moment for what it is.

Nicholas

Today was a day filled with that odd combination of being in the present and being in the past.

We spent much of the morning and early afternoon walking and resting at Columba’s Bay. This is, according to the storytellers of centuries ago, the place where St Columba landed with his 12 monks from Ireland, thousands of years ago. Together, they brought Christianity to Scotland, Celtic Christianity. The deep peace of the flowing waters…

The bay is filled with pebbles, washed by centuries of ebb and flow, sunshine and rain. I cherish these stones, from the moment I first beheld and touched them; I have felt a resonance and a sense of completion in a way I cannot find language to describe. Let me just say, my backpack weighed a bit more in my departing than it had in my arriving…when Nicholas and I were married we gave a pebble from Iona to each of our guests, wanting to celebrate this place with those who had held us on our journey of immense light and the shadows that had preceded it.

As if to echo that, tonight at dinner we were honoured by a complete rainbow arcing above Mull, directly across from the Argyll Hotel, where we are staying, where we met. It reminded me that reflected light transforms even the darkest skies, bringing joy and beauty in extraordinary ways.

Judy

The Mary Chapel

Judy and I visited the Abbey early today and lit two candles in the Mary Chapel there. An extraordinary sense of peace and quiet pervades the place, punctuated now and then by the sound of birds twittering in the rafters.

Outside in the cloisters a host of starlings burbled and chortled away, their song sounding almost exotic and jungle like in that echoing place. Above our heads a flock of white doves flew in and out of the Abbey bell tower.

NIcholas

Just next door to the Argyll Hotel, the place where we met, there is a home with a beautiful garden. I have visited here a number of times, in spring, early summer and autumn and it has never ceased to delight me with its colours and textures and beauty.

It is all the more remarkable because shortly following my first visit to the island in 1998, the son of the woman whose garden this is, was killed; drowned with three other young men of Iona while returning in his boat from Mull on a bitterly cold winter’s night. This garden fronts onto the very sea where her child was lost to her and she gazes at his watery grave daily. Her husband is a sailor; he daily takes tours of tourists to Staffa and the islands to the north of Iona, no matter what the weather. But rather than abandoning her garden in her time of loss, she has worked to increase its impact. It sits exposed to the elements and speaks of strength unimaginable, it almost sings of magnificent grace. She has worked to place beauty between herself and what must be unbearable sorrow at times.

The hand-built wall of granite which surrounds it creates a barrier from brutal winds and seaspray that could damage the plants, but it is not high enough to block her view of the sea. It is a buffer, but not one that takes away her vision. In gazing at the flowers, the wall, and the sea that stretches for miles behind them, I am reminded that forgiveness, grief, healing…these take commitment, they take effort, one stone at a time…one moment at a time.

When I first arrived here, newly divorced, shattered, frightened and not quite knowing how I could go forward, her garden was less formed, her son was still alive, life, as yet, had not presented her with such excruciating pain. But following that agony and the choice to dig deeper, to live creatively, her garden has grown stronger and more defined in itself. This is also true of me.

Judy

Across the Water....

There is something ethereal about the process of arriving in Iona, by ferry across a deep stretch of water, that, quite, literally, defies imagination.

Is it the substance of dreams this arriving in such an ‘other’ place? Or is it the process of journeying itself?

This small island, a haven amongst the Hebrides, this small island invites the soul to a quiet, to a deeper more rested space and, at the same time, inspires me to an altogether altered state.

Judy and I have arrived here, twelve hours later; twelve hours of travel…

The light is longer, the liminal subduction of night into day is longer; it is, quite magical.

And our memories of having found each other here are walking beside us, step by step, as we encounter the ocean, the shoreline and the echoes of our lives.

Nicholas

We woke at 4:30 this morning and arrived on Iona’s shores at 6:30.

Though showers were forecast, we seemed to be following them. For at each moment, we had sunshine breaking through a beautiful sky of clouds. 

There was glorious light, always. 

The mountains were snow-capped and we were allowed to see the magnificence of the Scottish Highlands in the wake of spring. Waterfalls had begun to flow, the lochs reflected the splendour of the spring sunshine and we arrived from Mull on a ferryboat to see the abbey in reflected light.

This place is all about light for me.

I was in such darkness when her spirit called to mine, and in responding, the shadows became the way forward, the place to enter my own life in a new and transformative way.

We met a couple from Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the final ferryboat crossing…Iona’s gentle invitation reaches all who have ears to hear it, all who have a spirit to heal.

Judy

The Veil is thinner...

Fourteen years ago I sat in the crypt of Iona Abbey and was overcome with the  realisation that my life was going to change, irrevocably. I had no idea how, or in what manner, only that immense change was coming.


Later that evening, I met Judy at a table in the Argyll Hotel restaurant, having been invited there by her fellow guest, Mary. We never looked back.




And our journey together, ever since, has been one of trust; trusting the unknown against all odds. I believe the special qualities of the island were gifted to us to allow two strangers who had never met to come together and to find a shared companionship half way through our lives in a manner that, quite literally, tested the ether.
Truly, the veil is thinner there, and, to quote Blaise Pascal:


"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."



Nicholas

The rocks that make up parts of Iona are 2900 million years old, it is called Lewisian Gneiss, it is found here on Iona, as well as on Lewis and Harris, islands in the Outer Hebrides. 2900 million years old…I cannot comprehend.

Iona is only 3 miles long and 1 mile wide. Here, in her soil, are buried kings of Scotland, MacBeth and MacDuff numbering among them. Viking and Scandinavian kings are also buried here. In life, as well as in death, people from all walks of life, people from around the world, find their way to her shores to rest.

We join in the ranks of the thousands of pilgrims who continue to make their way each year to this jewel in the Atlantic when we depart for the far north in the wee hours tomorrow morning. First we board a plane, then a train, then a ferryboat, a bus, and finally the short ferry ride from Mull to Iona will complete our pilgrimage. It will take us just over 12 hours from door to door. When I first travelled to Iona, it took me over 36.

There is no speedy way to make this journey, no last-minute impulse arrives one on Iona’s shores. It is too remote, at least from New York City or the Southeast of England, or almost anywhere else on earth, to make it a casual destination. Perhaps this is one of her greatest gifts, to remind me, and all who feel beckoned to her rugged beauty, that growth and healing cannot be rushed.

The path to wholeness and a deepening understanding of Self takes time, effort and commitment. There is no instant solution when life presents extraordinary challenges and questions. Resting on her shores, walking on stones created billions of years ago, brings the deep peace the Celtic church spoke of, the deep peace available across centuries and miles and generations:

I arise today through the strength of heaven;

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,

Speed of lighting,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

The Deer’s Cry

(Ancient Celtic prayer)

Judy

The Bay at the Back of the Ocean

In a few days time, Judy and I will walk to the Bay at the Back of the Ocean on Iona. This evocative name has mysterious origins, but is an English translation from the Scots Gaelic of Camas Cuil an t-Saimh .
There is a fabulous blow hole there which at high tide and in high seas sends spray pouting into the air above the rocks and, looking west there is nothing but the Atlantic all the way to North America.

Above the sands of the beach is a stretch of mahair, wild grasses and flowers that are grazed by the island's sheep.
It is a peaceful, sublime place.
We're so thankful to be revisiting the island and look forward to a time of true rest and recuperation, for when we get back April will be almost over and there is so much to do.


Nicholas




This is me leaning against a cairn on Dun-I, the highest point on the Isle of Iona.

It is here, on this tiny island that I feel the incredible sense of coming home to some ancient part of myself. I am not alone in this experience, for thousands of years, pilgrims have come to this little piece of earth in the Atlantic seeking sanctuary and healing.


Perhaps these words, read by my sister and my Father-in-law at our wedding ceremony might express it best...


A few places in the world are held to be holy, because of the love which consecrates them and the faith which enshrines them. Their names are themselves talismans of spiritual beauty, Of these is Iona.


It is but a small isle, fashioned of a little sand, a few grasses salt with the spray of an ever-restless wave, a few rocks that wade in heather and upon whose brows the sea-wind weaves the yellow lichen.


From age to age, lonely hearts have never ceased to bring their burden here. 
And here hope waits.
To tell the story of Iona is to go back to God, and to end in God.


Fiona Macleod


Judy

Dreams, Oceans and Tides...

14 years ago I first saw Titanic and was captured by the drama and the story of the protagonist, Rose. Today, Judy and I saw the film again in 3D and it was still as gripping for all of the passage of time. But it was the sight of the Statue of Liberty in the closing moments of the film that struck home today, because in 7 short weeks time we will be entering New York Harbour at around 7 am and will be seeing her before we dock in Brooklyn, a potent symbol of hope and of new beginnings.

And perhaps this season of our life is especially oceanic right now, because last night I dreamed that Judy and I were staying by the sea, which was separated from us by a deep canyon. Only the immense waves were growing higher and higher as they poured over the canyon, threatening to flood everything in sight. We sought safety in a small aircraft piloted by an itinerant character who flew us up and over the raging seas and into clouds that seemed like water…

Nicholas

There are constancies in life to remind me that paradox is inevitable.

The erosion of the earth as water carves a small stream to the sea meeting the unending lullaby of the tides, and then, the waves from that ocean, which pound the stones at water’s edge create more sand that is washed into the depths.

Beginning….Living….Ending…Beginning

These words are linear; most of my early thinking about my birth, life and death was linear. My actual experience of life is not so. I have found life to be more circular in nature, a breath is not complete without an inhalation and an exhalation, a seed can only be produced from a flower that has blossomed, and even then it must break the hard coating that has enveloped it, protecting  it from harm until external circumstances are optimum for growth. 

Different moments on the journey, but they are all part of the same journey.

We take hold. And we let go. Both are necessary for wholeness and completion.

Judy