A meditation on the Holy Isle of Iona

Many of you are aware of my love for Celtic spirituality. The Isle of Iona is a special place in that tradition. I visited it many years ago, and it was a joy to meditate on the long history of this place of faith. The Celts felt that this little island straddled the boarder between this world and the Other World—a “thin place” as they called it.

This meditation on the isle of Iona is from Celtic Daily Prayer, published by the Northumbria Community.

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Washing bright pebbles at Columba’s bay
the sea stretches all the way back to Ireland.

All hearts have capacity for self-deceit
and every soul’s experience is freshly felt,
monastic diseases rediscovered not invented!

Wise guardians here nod unsurprised:
some troubles require fasting and prayer overnight,
a stone for a pillow.

There’s a small green hill you’d hardly notice,
just beside the way.
See, Columba talks with angels.
All places have memory
but some have more memory than others.

Unmoving, the island absorbs the busy visitors,
those curious, eager seeking ones,
and fed, stilled and pilgrimaged,
washes them back to Fionnphort.

Famed kings of Scotland made this journey,
eager for their coronation
and again with dignity in death,
borne then along the Street of the Dead
to stretch side by side
in their Releig Oran.

What rain! nothing like it,
relentless, forgiving
– and the sky when it clears …

There is a certain quality to the light,
a colour on the water,
beauty to take your breath away,
always there, always new.

All the while Iona remembers;
her people discover the rhythms of their day,
name their longings, know their belonging
here in the island’s deep stillness,
and the machair absorbs their footsteps.

The sense of continuity is so strong:
our turn to work,
to ache, to sleep,
a hidden stillness all pervasive.