Land of Hope and Dreams (Going Home)

If you were with me as I walked from Gartan Lough to Iona, you've probably heard this story before. My youngest son, Barnaby, walked with me for two days from Drymen to The Drover's Inn (look it up). One of the themes I was reflecting on as I made my pilgrimage was exile, and the related idea of home. Talking to Barnaby about the sense of 'homelessness' I felt, the sense of exile, I made the mistake of reflecting on my mortality. "The problem is", I told him, "when I die, I have no idea where I'd want you to scatter my ashes." He's a quick lad, my Barnaby, and without a moment's hesitation he chirped up, "Wetherspoons?"

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure that he was joking.

Mum would never have had a second's doubt about where she would have wanted her mortal remains to return; for the longest time she always wanted to go back home to Scotland. But she never left Essex. Scotland was always in Mum's heart and hopes, but an ever greater part of her heart was invested in her sons and her daughters-in-law, and her most beloved grandsons. Those loves were home too, and ultimately those loves had a stronger pull on her than the road North. Family meant everything to Mum.

For five years she's been in my bedroom cupboard and while she rested in peace everything I knew to be home fell apart outside her closed door; everything that mattered most to me was denigrated and destroyed. At the last, even the little sense of 'home' that I could hold on to, my own sense of the past and a history of love and family, was painstakingly deconstructed. There wasn't much left. So in January I went for a long walk and Mum stayed shut behind the door.

A pilgrimage can be a powerful thing. When I came back to Berkhamsted everything was whole, and happy and renewed...

...well, I made that bit up. When I came back from my pilgrimage everything that had been destroyed remained destroyed, and almost everything that had been lost remained lost. Almost everything that had been lost, remained lost, except for myself; somewhere between Letterkenny and St Columba's Bay I found myself again.

I found myself again and so at last I can take Mum home. It's time for her to go home. To be honest, I could have driven over the border and scattered her ashes in the first layby I found and I'd have done all that needed to be done, she just wanted to be in Scotland; and to be honest some more, part of her would have found the idea of being scattered about amongst the fast food wrappers and empty drinks cans of an A Road layby ridiculously funny. Anyway, it's not going to be like that. My two boys and I are going to make a pilgrimage from Bishopbriggs where she grew up, to the loch where she spent so many happy childhood holidays. By that loch we celebrated her seventieth birthday with her twin brother, her wee brother, and a lot of family. 

By that loch we'll say thank you to the God and the country who gave her to us, and then we'll give her back.

__________________________________________

In a few weeks' time my boys and I are going to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Anfield. The tour is called 'The Land of Hope and Dreams Tour'.

I remember one of the last Sundays when we went to visit my diminishing Mum. We came home and put the boys to bed. I got very drunk. I sat outside and looked at the garden and drank and drank and drank. And as I drank, I listened over and again to a song by Bruce Springsteen: 'Leave behind your sorrows, Let this day be the last, Tomorrow there'll be sunshine, And all this darkness past.'

Land of hope and dreams. We're going home.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Taylor Swift and Jesus

A couple of days ago a friend got in touch to ask me what the experience of having my head shaved had been like. (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Bruce Springsteen and Barbershops)

The jumping out of my skin bit is no exaggeration. I remember walking into the loos at Heathrow Airport before my flight to Derry, and of course the place was full of mirrors. Looking up I found a stranger standing in the place where I should have been and there really was a palpable jump in my heart to discover myself replaced. That feeling of estrangement remained for several days. The other thing I discovered was that I clearly run my fingers through my hair (which has never exactly been long and lustrous) a lot more than I was aware of; in the absence of hair I'd find myself wincing as I repeatedly scratched my poor bare scalp.

Anyway, my friend was right to call it a ritual. I was shaving my head as a symbol of penitence for mistakes I've made, and it was very much the right thing to do at the start of the pilgrimage; it had an important role in making the journey into something other than just a long walk. I did become strange to myself and week by week as my hair has been growing back I've been returning to the person I was.

Except, that's not actually what's happening, because it can't. 

Almost as soon as I'd written about 'returning' I knew that I was mischaracterising what is happening. There's no question of returning to the person who once I was, because it's simply not possible. What's more, to 'return' would require a massively unhelpful attempt at amnesia; an erasure of the things I've done wrong would also be an erasure of the ways in which I've grown and the ways in which growth lies before me. The person I was might not have the failures I have, but the person I was hasn't learnt the things I've learnt either.

As I've been thinking about the mysterious Celts I've been reminded of how compelling a good story can be; how much we can be drawn to believing something not because it's factually true, but because it resonates, inspires and moves us (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). One such story that resonates with many of us is the story of the Return to Eden/Return to Innocence; the idea that we can 'go back' to a time when life was better, when we were better. It's such a pervasive vision, from the Enlightenment story of 'the noble savage' through to Taylor Swift singing, 'Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it. I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it'.

There's another well-known story which provides a counterpoint to the dream of returning to a perfect past. I'm always struck by the stories of the Resurrected Jesus still carrying the wounds which He suffered at the Crucifixion. Surely if God could raise Jesus from the dead, then God could have healed His wounds too? But that's not the story. The story is that the Risen Jesus was still the wounded Jesus, still the scarred Jesus.

There were no wounds in Eden, but then there wasn't much wisdom in Eden either.

goal

home

I have a memory but I don't know if it's a true one or not. The football team I played for as a child got beaten just about every week. We were so bad that on the rare occasion that we won, our manager, Jack, would take us to the village pub where we'd be treated to a fizzy drink and a bag of crisps... each! I wasn't a great footballer but I was fast and so I played on the wing. I remember, but I don't know if I do, getting the ball and running for the goal and there was only the goalie to beat; but I couldn't make the shot. I remember feeling overwhelmed by there not being anyone nearby that I could pass the ball to for them to score. There was just me.

This morning after breakfast I went for a short walk around Craignure; it's not really possible to take a long walk around Craignure. Being back here has stirred a lot of memories. Last time I was here it was with Dad, at the start of my pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne. I'm staying in the same hotel in pretty much the same room. I felt a palpable shock when I walked into the room, as if time was collapsing, distorting; for a moment I felt quite disorientated: Dad was dropping his bags in the next-door room, and then we would go for dinner together.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that this last stage of the pilgrimage would trigger all sorts of emotions; I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. Last night I went to bed very early.

It was on my little walk after breakfast that the memory, if it is one, of that football match came back. Perhaps it carries too much emotion to be true. The Noonday Demon walked with me too (A Pilgrim's Cairn: The Noonday Demon calls me Billy). Why are you doing this? What did you really think you'd achieve?

When I first settled on the idea of walking across Mull overnight it felt like such an adventure; it really energised me, motivated me. Right now it feels a little too big. I'm full of self-doubt and don't believe that these legs really got me this far. Maybe I feel a bit scared: am I scared that I can't finish this journey or scared that I'm about to? 

There's quite a sense of loneliness too; being alone isn't a hardship for someone like me, most of the time.

The last leg of my pilgrimage to Lindisfarne was walked with Dad and Paul, and with Susie. We celebrated together that evening in the pub. The following day we shared in a celebration of the Eucharist in the parish church (A Pilgrim's Cairn: From An Ocean To A Sea.). This night and dawn will be a very different kind of ending. All the themes of this journey feel like they're coming into sharp focus: exile, penitence, pilgrimage and thanksgiving. This is how it should be. This is how it is. It's okay.

From Iona I will bring something back for my sons; they are Home.

____________________________________________

Thanksgiving: So yes, okay, I'm feeling a bit low and confused today - daunted. So thank you for the guy at the hotel who's just been asking me what I'm in Mull for. I told him about tonight's walk. "Och, I walked across Skye one night with a friend. Mind you, we left at midnight and we were both totally pissed." I could have kissed him!

Barnaby's undulating ways

Day 19: Drymen to Rowardennan

Distance: 14.9 miles (391.3
total)

Time: 7 hrs 26 mins

Barnaby writes:

After stepping outside the Winnock Hotel, I was filled with a sense of happiness that I was finally able to join Daddy on this phenomenal walk. The day started with a gradual ascent along a road and after about a mile we hooked a left into a lovely forest where the temperature obviously increased. Daddy and I took off our hats as the inescapable Conic Hill loomed over us and the mild February breeze wafted past us. Walking for a while, we emerged into an open wild green Scottish moorland.

As Conic Hill came closer and closer we prepared ourself for the inevitable climb we were about to face. For those of you who don't know, Conic Hill is a steep incline which marks an important point in the West Highland Way. As we climbed, we noticed that snow patches were becoming more and more frequent until it came to the point where we were trudging through neck high snow drifts (joke) - the snow was about 2 inches deep. We had lovely views over Loch Lomond and across the Loch we could see snowy glens and our cameras couldn't do justice to the view - next time you'll have to come with us.

Looking out we could see there was an obvious snow line circling each of the hills that surrounded us. Half-way up Conic Hill, Daddy took off his hat... he immediately regretted it as the closer we got to the summit the icier the air became. For those of you who are new to this blog, let me tell you we have a tradition that whenever I join Daddy on the walk, we have one point in the day when we record 'Bring Me Sunshine'. For every walk we have done, in the sleeting rain and in the glorious sunshine, we have always done this. Today, was no different as we reached the summit of our walk, Daddy joined me in a glorious chorus (if I say so myself) of 'Bring Me Sunshine'. The social media algorithms deleted his singing as it was an insult to Morecambe and Wise.

After a lot of persuading we had a nice lunch in a cafe, just outside of the hotel we are staying in. But we still had six miles to walk across the bonny banks of Loch Lomond before returning here to for a pint of Ossian - the Scottish equivalent of Guinness!

Weirdly the ascents during the last six miles were harder than the 360 metre ascent up the side of Conic Hill. They may not have been 160 ft giants but they were constant undulating paths. I thought they would never end, as at some points in the last five miles we got quite low and that every incline thought the route was levelling out, but no it was just another hill. We checked how far it was to get to our destination and it seemed to endlessly be stuck on 2.5 miles. Every time we checked Daddy would angrily exclaim, "It was 2.5 bleeding miles, 2.5 miles ago."

Finally we reached our destination and filled up on pizza and J20 (and for some people a pint or two of Ossian). Tomorrow we have what is said to be the toughest part of the West Highland Way from Rowardennan to Inverarnan. Wish me luck!

I have to say, a highlight of today was seeing the beautiful views as a prize for the tough climb up Conic Hill. But more than anything, was spending time with Daddy after a long two and half weeks building up to today. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, for my second leg of the journey.

_________________________________________________________

Thanksgiving: Neil the Driver.

Valentine's Pizzas

Day 14: Maybole to Irvine

Distance: 21.1 miles (307.1 total)

Total ascent: 469ft (21,412 total)

Time: 7hrs 48mins

Tomorrow: Irvine to Largs (est 22.3 miles)

Staring at an enormous statue of a mouse in Alloway, I found myself remembering a wedding rehearsal I'd taken when I was at All Saints in Edmonton. As with many of the weddings I took then, both the bride and groom were from Nigerian families. During the rehearsal I noticed that the best man kept nudging the groom and whispering something to him and that the groom just kept shaking his head. Finally the best man broke silence and very gently and very patiently told me that I wasn't pronouncing the groom's name correctly. I was cross with myself for my mispronunciation, but these things can happen sometimes. What I was most upset by was the fact that the groom had not felt that he could correct me. I was the figure of power in all sorts of different ways; mine was the dominant voice and if that's how I was going to pronounce his name then that's just how the world turns.

This remembrance in an Alloway park was stirred because the mouse statue was a celebration of Rabbie Burns' beautiful poem, 'Ode to a Mouse' (Robert Burns Poem -"To a Mouse"). Of course, Burns is celebrated not just for his poetic vision and profound humanity, but because he wrote the words that his people spoke. He took the speech, the thoughts, the lives of his people and turned them into literature. He gave a voice to those whose voices were rarely heard.

What is our true voice? We adopt all sorts of different 'voices' during our lifetimes. Our family background gives us a certain voice in terms of our vocabulary (I'm delighted that scunner, wheesht and eejit are part of my voice!), but it can also instill in us a sense of things that cannot be said, things that mustn't be talked about. At school and college we might 'try on' different voices. I went to the same school as Jamie Oliver and like him we all talked as if we'd been born within earshot of Bow Bells, even though most of us were growing up in comfortable Essex commuter belt villages. In our professional lives and in all sorts of other contexts, we learn ways of speaking and ways of not speaking and thinking. But where in all this do we find our true voice? Which patterns of speech and thought are authentically ours?

Arran on a blue day

Today should have been such a simple and enjoyable day's walking. The first few miles took me downhill along country roads from Maybole to Ayr. When I reached the beach at Ayr all I had to do was hook a right and keep going along coastal paths and beaches until I reached Irvine. Weatherwise it was one of the best days of the pilgrimage so far, and for most of the day my beloved Isle of Arran was never far from sight. It should have been such a lovely day's walking but unfortunately The Noonday Demon (A Pilgrim's Cairn: The Noonday Demon calls me Billy) wasn't willing to wait until noon. Within an hour of setting out, all sorts of angry thoughts started bubbling; anger at myself, anger at others. It all rather took me by surprise. The most insidious voice was the one that whispered, "You know that even if you get to Iona, nothing will have changed." At several points the desire to chuck it in was bafflingly intense: I've done most of the hard bits. I know that change is happening.

For most of the past week I've shared in saying Afternoon Prayer with my friend Paul. We video call and I hold the phone up so that he can see the same view that I can as we pray together. Today, before we turned to our prayers he remarked that this leg must be really easy going after yesterday's twenty-seven miles. I hesitated. There was a great deal of temptation to agree and to point out how lovely and blue the sky was, and how long and empty the beach was. However I decided to tell my friend the truth, that in fact today was being weirdly difficult. After I'd spoken to him in my true voice, things began to feel so much better.

The lowest moment came when my phone pinged while I was walking through Ayr. At once I felt rather uplifted that one of my friends was sending me a message. In fact, it was an advert from a well-known pizza delivery company, telling me about the special offer they had on for Valentine's Day. That was so many different kinds of unhelpful.

_____________________________________________________

Thanksgiving: for the people who help us to speak in our true voice.

Sore feet and twisted mirrors

'there is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in'
Leonard Cohen

Day 2: Letterkenny to Buncrana.

Distance: 27.9 miles (47.1 total).

Total ascent: 1771ft (3723ft total)

Time: 10 hrs 9 mins

Where to begin? I could begin with all the bits of me that are hurting, but still chastened by my friend's parody of 'A Pilgrim's Cairn' (A Pilgrim's Cairn: The Pilgrim Parodied) I'm not going to do that... except to say that my feet have taken a pasting. Two days in, one of the frustrations of walking in Ireland is the lack of good old public footpaths. Today has been almost entirely road walking, which is good for my legs and good for the pace I can maintain, but it batters my feet.

Right now what I'm most aware of though is not my aching feet, but that I got through this leg in a reasonable time and in reasonable shape. This will be the third longest leg of the whole walk, and the second longest in terms of walking that I have to do with my full backpack on and I was a bit anxious about how it would go. I know I'm in good shape because I've just got up from my table to order a Guinness and not felt anything crack or pop, and not muttered even the mildest of expletives. The weather has been ideal; in fact, a little after Midday Prayer I had to stop to take a layer off because I was getting too hot. I say a mighty 'Ha!' to all the people who questioned why I was making this walk in January/February (I'm going to come to regret that mighty 'Ha!' before the pilgrimage is completed, I have no doubt).

The focus of this stage of the journey is Strove Beach, the place where Columba went into exile from his homeland of Ireland and began his journey to Scotland. Exile can take many forms.

We all need our truth-tellers, human mirrors. We need those people who can tell us that no, those clothes really don't suit us; tell us that we've got a stray eyebrow hair that really should be clipped; tell us that perhaps we should buy a packet of mints on the way to work, because we're still absolutely reeking from the garlic-heavy supper we enjoyed the night before. It's not always easy to hear what they have to say. Sometimes it can be downright painful to hear what they have to say. However, through years of experience and the belief that we're loved, we come to trust them even when we're slow to acknowledge that yes, they might have a point. 

But what if our truth-tellers, our human mirrors, become like carnival mirrors which show us exaggerated, distorted reflections of ourselves? What if our truth-tellers become story-tellers, telling stories about who we are and who we were, which are fundamentally untrue? It can be so hard to reclaim the truth of yourself, because you have loved and believed the reflection that they have shown you for so very long. It can be so hard not to keep looking into that mirror, both compelled and repelled by the grotesque image it shows you.  It can be so hard to face the truth that your truth-teller no longer is. It is a kind of exile.

It's an exile which reaches its nadir when you clothe yourself in that distorted image and become a stranger even to yourself.

What our heart needs is to be able to see ourselves through the eyes of God, the Truest Truth-teller. We need to look into the mirror that God holds up to us; to see ourselves for the loved, valued, children of God that we are. But how do we actually do that in practice? Religious texts, religious institutions, religious leaders, all have a long track record of holding up distorting mirrors to all sorts of people.

Where then do we find the true vision of who we are in the eyes of God?

I have my answers. What are yours? Use the comments section below to let people know. I hope that some of your answers are different from mine... our uniqueness is one of God's greatest gifts of all!

_________________________________________________________

Thanksgiving: 

Usually at this time on a Friday night I'd be having a couple of pints with my good friends Charlie and John. I give thanks for both of them tonight. Especially I give thanks that Charlie was on the side of the angels, when I needed some angels on my side.

The Pilgrimage Begins: of Celts and their jewellery

From this bank of Gartan Lough

Day 1: Letterkenny to Gartan Lough and back.

Distance: 19.2 miles (19.2 total)

Total ascent: 1952 ft

Time: 7 hrs 4 minutes

The pilgrimage began this morning at Gartan Lough when I threw my wedding ring into the winter-dark water. It was a very hard thing to do. If it had been an easy thing to do, then I probably wouldn't have needed to do it at all.

It has been painful enough trying to come to terms with us having no shared future. In recent months that pain has been compounded by the increasing awareness that we no longer seem to have much of a shared past either. That ring was no longer a token of future hope nor a memento of past happiness, it had been emptied.

I had known for some time that this action (this ritual?) needed to be a part of this pilgrimage, or it would be a journey that took me nowhere. There's a tradition that pilgrims to Iona go to the beach where Columba first landed and throw a stone into the sea to symbolise things that they want to leave behind, but I knew that by the time I reached Iona I absolutely needed to be looking forwards not looking back. Stroove Beach was the next candidate; only four days into the walk, it was the place where Columba left the people and land he loved and went into exile. Last night however, I just knew with sudden and absolute clarity that it had to be done today or it would always be something for tomorrow.

I'd like to think that my Celtic ancestors are proud of me; they were forever chucking their precious metal possessions into seas and lochs and rivers.

The plan when I'd set out this morning had been to spend a little time at Gartan Lough, birthplace of St Columba. Just as I'm hoping to spend at least a few hours on Iona, it seemed right to linger in that place; I'd made good time on the way there so there was no need to hurry away. However, I found myself itching to return to the road. I footered about for a bit, said some prayers, took some photos, but I just wanted to be walking again.

Climbing away from Gartan Lough in bright sunshine it felt like the journey had finally, properly begun. Each step now was a step forwards, a step towards Iona and all that it represents; a step towards Iona and all that I hope to find on the way. There was a wholly unexpected sense of elation and renewed purpose.

That sense of elation did dissipate considerably when I got lost in a housing estate on the outskirts of Letterkenny. Bad words were muttered.

________________________________________________

Thanksgiving:

So thankful for enjoying the most perfect walking weather in a very beautiful landscape. 

But above all I give thanks for the joy I experienced when I came across this shop front...

Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.

When I was preparing for my 2010 pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne, most of my reading centred around Celtic Christianity. If you're interested in this subject then get yourself a copy of Donald Meek's 'The Quest for Celtic Christianity'. Read it, read it again, and then keep it handy to hit anyone with when they invite you to their Celtic Christian Messy Matins or whatever.

This year my reading has been much more focused on the Celts in general. Heavens to Betsy it's a minefield. Up until January I'd believed what's apparently called the 'standard model' of the history of the Celts. This was a rather marvellous story of a people from Central Europe who over the course of many centuries fought and drank their way across Europe until they reached the continent's westernmost shore and there was nowhere else for them to go. It stirs images of this great Warrior People staring out across the Atlantic bereft; rather like the story of Alexander the Great weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. There's something darkly romantic about this 'standard model'.

Unfortunately the 'standard model' is not very popular anymore, with one author writing that 'the persistence of the standard model is puzzling...' ('The Celts: Search for a Civilization', by Alice Roberts). Some go further still and reject the very idea of a Celtic people. In his book 'The Atlantic Celts', Simon James writes that 'the 'canonical' story of the island Celts is much more an invention than a discovery'. Broadly speaking the new narrative is that in this country the idea of a Celtic people was an eighteenth-century reaction to the expanding power of England and the corresponding draining of power from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The story of the Celts was a defiant story of a people who had lived on these islands much longer than the English interlopers, who were just the Johnny-come-lately offspring of French invaders. Or something like that.

I've also read that the Celts originated in Portugal and then moved up and down the Atlantic seaboard all the way to the Hebrides and beyond, largely as a result of trade. Oh, and then there are other historians who are claiming that new DNA evidence suggests that the 'standard model' might have had something to it after all.

Exactly.

What I've found most thought-provoking about all this is the idea that sometimes the stories we tell of our histories are more about the needs of the present moment, than about the verifiable truths of the past. 

Iona, 2010

I wrote in an earlier post that part of my sense of 'exile' is born of a sense that I have lost hold of my own 'history'. Some of that history has been lost, some of it has been wilfully distorted, some of it I think I chose to let go of. Across these weeks ahead I pray I rediscover and reclaim my history as a way of coming 'home' to myself.

St Columba's history is contested too. Some people claim that he was sent into exile and excommunicated for a while as a punishment for a battle he instigated, others claim that he left voluntarily as a missionary. Some believe that he went to Scotland to convert the Picts, some that he went to Scotland as a kind of ambassador to the Picts. Although I largely accept the story of Columba's fall and exile because I think the weight of the evidence supports it, I realize that I am also drawn to it because it resonates with a story I need to hear, the story of my faith; the story of sin and redemption, of failure and new beginnings, the story of a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

_______________________________________________

When the walking proper starts tomorrow, I'll head up each blog with a summary of how far I've walked, how long for, the weather etc, just as I did fifteen years ago. However, as part of my fostering a sense of thanksgiving on this pilgrimage I'm going to conclude each blog with something that I'm particularly thankful for that day. So to begin:

Thanksgiving: for James and Barnaby's mum for agreeing to look after them over these four weeks so that I could go for a walk. Thanks too to her parents and anyone else who's helping out with those amazing boys of mine.

Exile

A moment passed in silence and then the Bishop said to me, "Stuart, how did you get so lost?" It was just a couple of weeks before Christmas. The previous day I'd phoned to let him know that my marriage was ending. He could not have listened more carefully, he could not have been kinder, he could not have been any wiser.

The word 'lost' really struck me. I hadn't felt lost. There had been times when life had felt like a maelstrom, a bewildering vortex of fear, bereavement, anger and pain; I can see now that it had felt like that for far too long a time. Like someone being carried down violent rapids just clinging on to a life-belt, I'd been too focused on trying to keep my head above water to even begin to notice that I was being carried so far from all that I knew, from all that I was.

I was very close to my mum. I'd love to be telling her now about the pilgrimage I'm going to be making. Moments of odd behaviour were at first laughed away; don't we all become just a little more forgetful, a little more eccentric as we grow older? We were on holiday in Scotland when my brother phoned to confirm what we all suspected, all feared. Mum had dementia; mixed dementia it's called, Alzheimer's and vascular dementia all wrapped up in one. We would bring her to stay with us at weekends, not every weekend but as often as we could. Every time we thought we'd got all the strategies we needed in place to care for her we would discover that she had deteriorated again, new challenges would arise. As these things go it was all fairly swift in the end.

When the phone call came in the middle of the night I was in Sarajevo. I was on a week-long course about reconciliation. That day we'd visited the Body Identification Centre in Tuzla; remains of victims of the Srebrenica massacre continue to be ploughed up in fields across the region and the team there work to identify them so that they can be returned home to their loved ones; after that we had gone to Srebrenica itself. I got the first flight out of Sarajevo and by the middle of the afternoon I was standing by Mum's hospital bed; she'd fallen and looked so bruised. Less than twenty-four hours later she died. I got home to see her at least.

After that, loss seemed to follow loss and there was never quite the time to get back on your feet before the next one descended.

Our identities are organic and complex. We are interwoven with one another; our stories, histories, identities are never entirely our own. For the overwhelming majority of people we are identified by our relationships from the moment of birth; we are someone's daughter or son, we are grandchildren and siblings, we become friends, lovers, partners, spouses (which means we get in-laws!), we become parents and grandparents. Each relationship changes us and so does each loss of a relationship. A silly example, maybe, but there are times when I'm trying to remember some event from my childhood and I want to pick up the phone and ask Mum or Dad if they can remember the details; because they're not there anymore that part of my own history has become less clear to me, my story of who I am has to be told a little more hesitantly. I lost a lot of stories about myself in a fairly short space of time and the cumulative effect has been like losing a clear sense of where I belong, going into exile.

Columba didn't choose exile, didn't choose to lose the places and people that were 'home' to him, and neither did I. However he did choose to offend his mentor, St Finnian, by illicitly copying parts of his precious Bible. He did choose not to be reconciled. He did choose to ignore the judgement of Ireland's High King. He did choose to rouse his clan to battle. And the fact that he wasn't exiled until two years after the battle would seem to suggest that he continued to fight his corner, continued to refuse to accept that he was at fault. Perhaps there were ongoing attempts by the other clan leaders to find a peaceful resolution and he refused all those too. Columba made a lot of bad choices, each one leading to the next, and he ended up in exile. 

So did I. This pilgrimage is not about finding a way back to the 'home' that I had; I understand that that won't happen. I pray instead that this pilgrimage might be about learning to find a new sense of where and who 'home' is, about learning to 'sing the Lord's song in a strange land'.

St Columba: exile, penitence and pilgrimage

In 2009 I walked the Kintyre Way with my Uncle Jimmy. The walk ends near the village of Southend and nearby there's rock that appears to bear the imprint of a foot. By tradition this is St Columba’s footprint and marks the place where he first set foot in Scotland. 

St Columba, like most of the Celtic saints, is often viewed through a rose-tinted mist; devoted to prayer, the quintessence of kindness, and proto-environmentalists with a deep love of the natural world. In truth these were warrior-saints deeply rooted in and shaped by the Celtic warrior culture. They viewed themselves as being in a battle with the devil and his hordes of demons and that sense of being engaged in a very real conflict shaped everything about them. You can see some reflection of that in The Rule of St Columba: ‘Take not of food till thou are hungry. Sleep not till thou feelest desire… Thy measure of prayer shall be until thy tears come; or thy measure of work of labour till thy tears come…’ Clearly a world away from contemporary versions of ‘Celtic spirituality’.

According to the Venerable Bede, Columba ‘came to Britain to preach the word of God to the kingdoms of the northern Picts.’ However, St Columba came to Britain as an exile not as a missionary and preaching the word of God to the northern Picts was almost certainly not one of his chief aims.        

Around 560AD a battle was fought between the army of King Diarmait, High King of Ireland, and St Columba’s clan, the Northern Uí Néill; by birth St Columba was a prince of the Northern Uí Néill and could well have gone on to become king had he not entered the religious life. Exactly what part Columba played in inciting the Battle of Cúl Dreimhe is uncertain but one of the best-known stories involves a Bible. It’s said that during a visit to Rome, Pope Pelagius had given one of Columba’s teachers, St Finnian of Moville, a copy of St Jerome’s translation of the Bible. On a visit to his teacher, Columba secretly set about making himself a copy of this rare and precious translation. When Finnian discovered what his former pupil was up to a huge dispute erupted, which they both agreed to take to King Diarmait to be resolved. The High King’s judgement went against Columba, and angrily determined that justice had not been done he stirred his clan to battle. It’s possible that Columba himself took part in the conflict as he was marked with a livid scar throughout his life.

Although St Columba’s clan won the battle, the clans and clergy of Ireland were outraged at the huge loss of life and felt that the Northern Uí Néill were responsible for the suffering that had been caused. A synod was called at which Columba was excommunicated but the judgement was overturned on the understanding that he would leave Ireland and go into exile.

Some traditions have it that a penitent St Columba set out to save as many souls for Christ as had been killed in the battle. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s more likely that in the first instance his mission was a diplomatic one. Scotland at that time was divided between the kingdom of Dál Riata, which was an expanding Irish colony, and the territories of the northern Picts. Just a couple of years before Columba was exiled from Ireland the Pictish King Bruide fought and killed King Gabhran of Dál Riata and reclaimed much of the territory that had been lost to the colonists.

Iona, where Columba and his followers founded their monastery, was more or less on the border between the territories of Dál Riata and the Northern Picts. Furthermore, as a member of the Northern Uí Néill ‘royal family’, St Columba was related to the Kings of Dál Riata. It’s likely that St Columba’s relationship with the Picts was more akin to that of an ambassador seeking to bring reconciliation where there were conflicts and at the same time trying to protect the interests of his kinsfolk. Given that he himself had been exiled for his violent refusal to be reconciled with St Finnian and King Diarmait, it seems fitting that he was to give so much of his life striving to reconcile others and foster peace.

Reconciliation was also a significant part of the spiritual service that St Columba and the monks of Iona sought to offer. Many of those who came to the island came as penitents seeking absolution, and the path to absolution could be hard one on Iona. Some of the penitents were sent to the Columban monastery on the island of Tiree as a penance for their sins, and sometimes they were sent there for many years. Yet however ‘tough’ the remedy with which St Columba treated sick souls, there is also something of the ‘gentle Columba’ to be seen in many of his encounters with those who sought his counsel; we see someone with a real insight into the sufferings of the human heart, and with a deep compassion for those sufferings.

The pilgrimage I’ll be starting in just over a fortnight is shaped by the legacy of a man who was sent into exile as a penitent, and those will be three of the themes I want to try to explore on this journey: exile, penitence and pilgrimage.