Pilgrimage

Yesterday was evicted to the Iona pilgrimage, a walk around the island visiting the sights of the early church here.  They included the abandoned nunnery, St. Columba’s bay where Columba first came to Iona, “the hermitage” which is likely something with more agricultural roots, and a number of places on the island of interest. 

I have detailed the walk elsewhere, look at my Facebook page for more photos and more detail on the places involved.  Here I’d like to talk about pilgrimage. What is it to me, why pilgrimage.  Just some thoughts. 

Pilgrimage is travel.  That is to say it involves a place that you do’t know and which you need to accept on its own terms.  Our pilgrimage yesterday was a seven mile journey to landscapes that we don’t know, and to places where we need to attend to the way of the place.  At one point we were told, we are going to go to a place where there are two paths, one looks smooth and grassy.   The other is rocky.   We will take the rocky path, because the smooth one is boggy, and actually more dangerous. 

Pilgrimage is sacred.   It opens the soul and the heart.   We prayed, we heard poetry, and the poetry of the stories of the people who had been there so many years ago.   Columba’s insistence in getting beyond where he could see Ireland.   The mourning of the last three nuns leaving the nunnery.  And the surroundings.  The beautiful blooming heather. 

Lastly, Pilgrimage is church.  It is something that brings you out of yourself and into a community that transcends time.   Even if you do it alone, you walk in the steps of countless others before you, as we do in church as well.   It is timeless, bringing the old and the new together. 

And, to finish, a picture of the heather. 

(There are better ones on my camera.)