The island at the end of the night

At St Columba's Bay

Day 24: Craignure to Fionnphort

Distance: 36.1 miles (488.4 total)

Time: 11 hrs 42 mins

Tomorrow: the ferry back to Oban, followed by the train back to Berkhamsted on Thursday.

The thing about a night hike is that it doesn't leave you with much to say about the scenery; even Barnaby's peerless powers of description would be tested!

Leaving the hotel at 7.30pm last night, the receptionist gave me a sympathetic smile as I handed in my room key and headed out; I don't think she thought my conclusion to this pilgrimage was a very good idea. Truth be told, I wasn't entirely convinced that it was a good idea either, but it had seemed like a suitably austere and challenging way to end a 'Celtic' pilgrimage and I'm sure St Columba would have been all in favour.

With various bit of hi-vis fabric dangling off me I set out into the night. I did have a head-torch, but I wasn't totally sure what its battery life was and so I wanted to keep that in reserve for as long as possible. It's remarkable how much light the stars shower into the darkness, and for the first eight miles or so I didn't need the torch at all; the borders of the single-track road were usually fairly visible. The left and right sides of the road dipped away slightly where they had been worn by the traffic whereas the centre remained fairly level, and my feet learnt to distinguish the difference most of the time. However, about two hours or so into the leg the stars were shrouded behind thick black clouds, and as the rain fell the wind rose.

Oddly enough, the most challenging miles were the earliest ones. Trying to follow the road without a torch felt mentally tiring a lot of the time; my concentration would weary and I'd find myself stumbling into a verge. My mind played its 'what if?' games: what if you trip and damage your knee, and there's no phone signal? what if this heavy rain turns into heavy snow? There were very few houses on the first half of the walk and that deepened my sense of isolation and vulnerability. At one point I was contemplating walking out for eighteen miles and then turning around and walking eighteen miles back to my hotel: I'd have done the 'mileage', did it really matter all that much whether or not I actually went to Iona?

Around the halfway mark everything became much easier. Although I couldn't really see it, I could hear the waters of Loch Scridain lap against the shore on my right and that sound was a comfort. There were more houses and signs of life, even if most of that life was tucked up in bed and sleeping gently. Although the rain could be hard, it never lasted for more than twenty minutes or so at any one time. With every step there was an increasing confidence that I could do this just fine. Slightly to my surprise the night was full of prayers of thanksgiving; I have so much to be thankful for, so much.

The rainclouds thinned sufficiently for the dawn to creep up behind me grey and weak as I approached Fionnphort. (That's one of my clunkier sentences. For the sake of clarity, it was the dawn that arrived in Fionnphort grey and weak, I was remarkably chipper). Just after 7am I arrived at the ferry-port. I was rather ahead of myself and had a wait of just over an hour for the first ferry to Iona.

On Iona I made my way straight to St Columba's Bay at the south of the island; the place where Columba is believed to have first set foot on the island I had walked through the night to. The weather was beautiful all morning and the brief, intermittent showers brought with them the gift of rainbows. The last time I had been on this island was with my dad at the start of my pilgrimage to Lindisfarne. Between my tiredness, this latest pilgrimage coming to its end, the memories of my late father, and just being on Columba's island, I expected it to be quite an emotional moment but it wasn't really. It all felt right. It was right that I was there. It was okay that I was alone. All was as it needed to be.

My plan had been to post a short video on Instagram marking the journey's end. I would find something to say which neatly and succinctly tied up all the themes of the past four weeks in a dinky little package. I made a couple of attempts at a recording but it was all very half-hearted and I gave up. This was time just to be. This was time just to be with St Columba, to be with his God and mine. This was time to simply be with myself and to believe again that I'm an okay person to be with. 

On rocks that Columba would have recognised, I sat in the morning sunshine and said my prayers and that was enough; that was the only thing that I needed to do.

Shelter from the Storm (Parts 1 and 2)

Oban harbour

This Atlantic wind had many voices through the night. It would shriek in eddies outside my bedroom window. It would suddenly thump flat against the drumskin wall and demand that I listen. It would stop long enough for you to believe that its rage had been pacified and then crescendo into the harbour and howl itself breathless. About an hour before dawn the rain arrived; endless handfuls of gravel thrown hard against the glass.

I was due to get a ferry to Mull at lunchtime today, but it was cancelled yesterday evening. I've got  a ticket for the 2pm sailing. My weather apps tell subtly different stories but the main theme remains the same; the wind is going to be like this for large parts of today. Some suggest a slight calming early afternoon, so I could be lucky. If not I'll just have to stay another night in Oban and get an early ferry tomorrow. My plans for getting sleep-ready for an overnight walk to the Iona ferry port are looking increasingly vulnerable. Monday and Tuesday could be two very long days.

The only fixed point in this week is being at the house at 3.30pm on Friday when my boys come home. Everything else is flexible. I'm a pilgrim: I will go to Iona.

______________________________________________

Once upon a time I used to know someone who would tease me for always coming up with 'little theories'; my small attempts to understand and explain all sorts of mundane aspects of everyday life. I was beginning to develop one of my 'little theories' after the tough walks from The Drover's Inn to Lochawe, and from Lochawe to Taynuilt. I'd decided that one of the features of this pilgrimage has been that in different ways its got harder as its gone along, but that each previous leg has prepared me for the next. The more I've thought about it, the more I've concluded that my latest little theory is hogwash. If the walk through Glen Noe had been on the second day of the walk, I'd still have made it (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Many rivers to cross); if the twenty-seven road miles to Buncrana had been the penultimate day of the journey and not the second, it would still have left me foot-sore (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Sore feet and twisted mirrors).

Rest assured, I've got a new 'little theory' and its been inspired by those pesky rough campers who keep plaguing my sense of achievement! I was cold, wet and tired when I finished Friday's leg from Lochawe; cold, wet and tired I checked into my room, hung up my clothes to dry, had a shower and went for something to eat. I'm not so sure how I'd have done if day after day for three weeks I'd not enjoyed the haven of various B&Bs (even if most of them weren't up for doing breakfast at the kind of time that I was wanting to leave), apartments, guest houses and hotels. Those havens made every day a fresh(ish) new beginning.

We all need our havens, our shelters from the storm. Our havens can be friendships and relationships; they can be favourite places or hobbies. We can find our havens in our families, in a Friday evening hour down the pub, in a game of chess or in a soap opera which we watch avidly.

Last night I lay awake thinking about this as the wind howled across the harbour outside. In a relatively short space of time I lost people, places, relationships, communities, which had been my havens. More than that. Not only did I lose my shelters from the storm, but those very havens, those places of shelter had become the stormiest places of all. I still feel pretty ashamed about how low I fell, but I feel I can understand it a lot better this morning. And with that there's a clearer sense of my need to create, rebuild new havens; nobody's going to do it for me.

Throughout it all though, prayer remained a haven for me, even if sometimes all that I could manage was 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner' or even just 'Thank you, God, for this new day.'

Never forget to give thanks for your havens, whoever, wherever or whatever they may be.

_________________________________________

Thanksgiving: for the people who work through the stormiest times to get power restored to people, to give shelter to the vulnerable, to protect the most isolated, to get transport networks working again and so much else.

Don't shoot! I'm a pilgrim.

St Columba told me to do it

Day 9: Ballycastle to Cushendall

Distance: 18 miles (189.2 total)

Total ascent: 1,591ft (13,969 total)

Time: 7 hrs 1 min

Tomorrow: Cushendall to Larne (est 26.6 miles)

"See, where you're from you have this thing called right of way, but round here we call that sh*te." I can't remember if the sheep farmer told me this before or after he'd let me know that farmers have a right to shoot trespassers. Thankfully the nature of the conversation was much more amiable than the content might suggest. The OS mapping app had definitely indicated that this was a footpath, but the farmer was keen to make sure that I knew that although he'd permit me passage across a mile or so of his land, he could just as easily choose not to. I made sure that I made frequent mention of 'pilgrimage' and 'St Columba' in the hopes of appealing to his possible religious sensibilities, and I was tireless in exclaiming what a beautiful country Ireland is.

The morning had already offered some obstacles. Perhaps three miles or so along the quiet country road out of Ballycastle, I'd come across a load of Heras fencing blocking the road, a big red and white 'Road Closed' sign, and a variety of notices instructing me that absolutely nobody was to enter this area without the permission of the site foreman. I couldn't see a site or a foreman. Inspired by St Columba's disregard for the norms and customs of his day (which, of course, was to get him exiled from Ireland), I carefully moved a section of fencing aside and proceeded on my saintly way. It turns out that one half of the road had collapsed into the Glen below, but I felt confident that even with the combined weight of my rucksack and belly I was unlikely to cause any further damage. However, before I even reached the original cause of the road closure, I had to clamber over two or three trees that had come down in the recent storm. I am not a pretty sight crawling about on my hands and knees at the best of time, but with the tortoise like addition of a rucksack I am the very image of ungainliness.

Once again the day fell more or less into three sections. I'll be brief: quiet country lanes (with collapsed road, collapsed trees and almost collapsed pilgrim) - off-track farmland and forest - more quiet country lanes. Once again the weather was idyllic, except for a hint of rain to come when my friend the farmer was telling me about his shooting rights vis a vis trespassers.

Its been a difficult couple of days and at times the sense of loneliness has felt quite acute; it accumulates slowly like the feeling of tiredness. However, it was another sheep farmer who gave me a really beautiful gift as I came down the Glenaan Road towards Cushendall. She was inspecting fencing that needed to be replaced, but it seems few people in Ireland are ever so busy that they can't share some time for a blether. A conversation about where I'd come from that day and where I was heading, led to my explaining the whole route I was taking from Gartan Lough to Iona. The farmer told me that she'd walked some sections of the Camino de Santiago and was hoping to do some more later that year to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. As we parted ways she called after me, "Good luck for now."

I really loved that 'for now'. It spoke to me of a sense of the present moment being all we have to live in. The passage of Scripture I read at the end of every day as part of my Night Prayer (from Matthew 6) includes the line, 'Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.' I know that really positive change is happening on this pilgrimage; some of it I can feel, and some of it will be going on in ways that I can't yet perceive. But for all that, I also know that a lot of the things that have made the past five years so tough aren't about to suddenly disappear. But that's okay. I just need good luck for now. God's gift to us today, is today.

__________________________________________________________

Thanksgiving: the farmer who wished me 'Good luck for now'...

...oh, and the farmer who didn't shoot me, I guess.

nowhere near Giant enough

Day 8: Portrush to Ballycastle

Distance: 23.7 miles (171.2 total)

Total ascent: 1,797ft (12,378 total)

Time: 10 hrs 1 min

Tomorrow: Ballycastle to Cushandell (est 17.3 miles)

Okay, so let's begin straight out with the elephant in the room. As those of you who have been following on Instagram will already know, I am the man who added eight miles to an already fairly long walk for the specific purpose of seeing The Giants Causeway... and somehow managed to walk right past it. I know. Let that sink in. It happened about nine hours ago and it still hasn't sunk in with me. I do remember one point on the coastal path where these two American guys were looking down at the bay below with an expression that bordered on reverence; I peeked down and didn't see anything to write home about, and not wanting to interrupt their reverie I strolled on. It was a couple of miles further along the path when I saw a sign pointing to The Giants Causeway, and it was pointing back in the direction I'd come from. It was too long a day for doubling back on myself so I just had to keep on going. How did I miss a World Heritage Site? Mind you, I've never been that impressed by Stonehenge either, so maybe it's just me.

Like yesterday, today's walk fell rather neatly into three sections. The day began and ended with several miles of road walking. The first section was entirely pavemented, so I didn't have to slow down or stop every time a car went past. The final section had no pavements, but it had virtually no cars either, so the walk into Ballycastle was really lovely. I headed out walking into the sunrise, and headed home with the sun setting behind me. The middle third of the walk was the marvellous coastal path from Bushmills (no, I didn't visit the distillery, I was in a hurry to get to The Giant's Causeway) all the way to Portbradden Harbour. Having grumbled about the lack of off-road walking I've been getting, this was just heaven. The first half was fairly easy going, the second half a little more challenging but nothing too onerous. The views throughout were stunning with the blue sky illuminating the sea; the coast being punctuated throughout with dramatic rocky outcrops. I did, however, make pretty slow progress for some parts of the coastal path and when I got to Afternoon Prayer at 3pm, there was still over eight miles to go, which is more than I'd have liked at that point. I shamefacedly confess that I did, briefly, toy with the temptation of getting a bus. In the end I made slow but sure progress to Ballycastle and supper at O'Connor's Bar.

It was tough going at times today and I'm getting increasingly tired, and increasingly slow to get going in the morning. I'm glad that it's a shorter day tomorrow and that I've got a hike-free day coming up when I get the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer.

A lot of my thinking about St Columba and the other great Celtic Saints, has been focused on their fortitude, their faithfulness, their endurance. I've been thinking too about the ways in which a pilgrimage is supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be challenging. I guess that there's a lot that appeals to me about all that at the moment: St Columba sleeping with a stone as his pillow, all the Celtic Saints praying the Psalms up to their neck in the freezing sea, Harry Lauder singing 'Keep Right on to the End of the Road', and so on and so forth. That narrative of life as struggle and managing to endure certainly has its allure. But I'm a bit over struggling and enduring. I know that has to be part of life, but I'm not sure I want it to be the lens through which I see life day after day after day.

When I was in Derry I visited the St Colmcille (Columba!) Heritage Centre at the Long Tower Church. In their collection they have a facsimile of The Book of Kells. The wonderful illuminated manuscripts created by many of the great Celtic monasteries highlight another dimension to the lives of these Christians. Alongside all the hardship and austerity, there was also a great creativity, a playfulness; the manuscripts have such enduring beauty, and also mischief, little visual jokes. There is a profound effervescence about these texts. Both St Columba and St Bridget are patron saints of poets. Life is not meant to be lived entirely in prose.

Jesus told His followers that one way to learn about God was to 'consider the lillies'. Well you 'consider' lillies by stopping, by really looking at them, by absorbing and giving thanks for their colour, their texture, their fragrance. The God of our struggles is also the God of our joys and delights.

______________________________________________________

Thanksgiving: for life.  

This Bank Holiday is a Bad Idea

Day 3: Bulcrana to Carndonagh

Distance: 15.7 miles (63.1 total)

Total ascent: 1295ft (5018 total)

Time: 5 hrs 28 mins

There are lots of good reasons why a skinhead with an English accent should probably refrain from trying to tell the Irish how to run their country, but nevertheless... This is a Bank Holiday weekend here in the Republic of Ireland, in honour of St Bridget. Now, St Bridget is one of Ireland's three patron saints, along with St Patrick and St Columba. Of those three, only two get a Bank Holiday, Patrick and Bridget. Obviously I'm already slightly put out that Columba gets overlooked in this way, but there's another consideration that's also being overlooked. Whilst St Bridget's Feast Day is February 1st, St Columba's is June 9th. My Irish friends I ask you, would you really rather have a Bank Holiday weekend in February than in June? I think we all know the answer to that.

After yesterday's especially long leg, I was delighted that today was one of the shortest; not least because it meant that I was able to tuck myself into a bar with the obligatory Guinness only fifteen minutes into the Scotland vs Italy Six Nations match... although there were moments when hitting the road again would have been more comfortable.

The day almost started well. Chatting with the waitress at breakfast I couldn't help sharing my observation that this is a beautiful country, but it's such a shame that there are no footpaths and walking is largely road-walking. To be honest, I'd been hoping that she might let me in on some local secret; there's some app out there, or a locally produced set of maps, which showed all sorts of tracks and trails unknown to the good people at Ordnance Survey. Instead she shook her head gravely and said, "I know, walking, and with the way people drive it's just so dangerous." It wasn't, really, what I wanted to hear. 

Nevertheless, its been a really lovely day's walking. It was blowy out there, with none of the blue skies and sunshine that we had yesterday; but the countryside was wide and rolling, beautiful shades of  auburn, and largely traffic-free.

One of the things I've been trying to reflect on during this time, is the question of our stories and histories; the narratives we have of ourselves and of others. Ireland's patron saints give us something to think about in that regard. St Patrick's story is perhaps the most reliable, as we have his autobiography, the story of his life in his own words. With St Columba we're on slightly different ground; our main source of information about Columba was written around a hundred years after his death and it's a hagiography, an account whose main purpose is to demonstrate Columba's saintliness. And then we come to St Bridget, whose very existence is questioned by many; it's observed that she seems very like the Celtic goddess Brigid, and it's possible that the early Christians of Ireland simply took the story of this popular goddess and Christianised it.

Does it matter? Does it matter how accurate our 'histories' are? In an earlier post I wrote about one of the sceptical views of Celtic history, which proposes that the very idea of 'the Celts' was a response to growing English political power in the eighteenth century (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). If we tell ourselves stories about ourselves which help us to feel a sense of purpose and justification, tell ourselves stories about ourselves which make us feel good, does it matter all that much how true they really are?

My answer to that question would be this pilgrimage itself. What matters most this month, that I get to Iona or how I get there? If I took the bus to Moville tomorrow, and a cab to Derry, and so on and so forth, would it still be the same? Is the only thing that matters that I get to the place I want to be?

Two or three days before I set out I had a dream, or a nightmare; I think St Columba would have thought of it as a vision, so let's call it that. In my vision I walked through the night across Mull to Fionnphort, all ready to get the ferry across to Iona. However, for some reason (dreams are rarely good on detail) the ferry couldn't run that day and I wouldn't be able to get to the island, I wouldn't reach Iona; I could see so clearly that flat green strip that was so close that I could almost touch it. I felt that powerful sense of 'this can't be happening'; a feeling that all of us have known at some time or other. And then just as suddenly I felt a great sense of peace. I'd done the hard bit. I'd done my best. Getting to Iona wasn't the most important thing after all. What mattered most was that I had made the journey.

_____________________________________________

Thanksgiving:

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.

Benedicite

Bless the Lord all that grows in the ground

Those of you who have been keeping up on Instagram will already know that (with great reluctance), I've added a fourth theme to this pilgrimage. Alongside exile, penitence and pilgrimage, it's going to be an opportunity to think about thanksgiving. Here's the why...

First there was the question, then there was the litany and finally came the benedicite.

The question was simple and always the same: I would ask, "How are you this morning?"

The litany varied, but could be something along the lines of, "My husband's been rushed back into hospital. The doctors just don't know what's wrong with him, but he's in a lot of pain and he's just not eating. My daughter's finally left her partner, you know the one I told you about; she's with us just now but she needs to find somewhere, and it looks like she might lose her job; they say they're 'downsizing'. And my eldest grandson, he helped at the last Quiz Night, remember? He's a good boy you know, but he's in with the wrong crowd, bad boys, and it looks like he might get suspended from school. Maybe next week we'll find out, I don't know, he doesn't say much."

Then came the benedicite: "But it's Sunday morning and I'm in my church, so thank God."

For sixteen years I was privileged to serve churches in Edmonton, North London. It was a world away from the world I'd grown up in or am serving in now. The Church Urban Fund provides a great tool for looking up demographic information on parishes (https://cuf.org.uk/shinealight). In Edmonton, working age poverty is 22%, child poverty 26% and pensioner poverty 31%. In my current parish those figures are 4%, 5% and 6% respectively.

For sixteen years I had a lot of learning to do, and I had some of the kindest, hardest-working, most generous teachers I could ever wish for. One of the most important lessons they taught me was about thankfulness. Those who know me well might observe that, perhaps from time to time, I can be a little bit 'glass half-empty'. To find myself serving a community where people daily faced struggles the likes of which I'd never known, and yet never lost sight of all that they had to give thanks for, was something that always inspired me. This wasn't a shallow, 'Don't worry, be happy' view of life. My friends there knew very well the reality of how tough life could be. What I was being taught (and I was a terrible learner!), was that the night never got so dark that some light could not be seen; and if some light could be seen, then give thanks to God for the light.

Living thankfully is not an easy thing to do, because in large part our culture is devoted to fostering dissatisfaction. How many times a day do we see/hear/watch an advert telling us how much better our lives could be if only we had a more nutritious breakfast cereal, clearer skin, a more exotic holiday, a better car, or phone, or anything, or everything. It's hard to be thankful for what you have in life if you're being bombarded with the not so subtle message that life could be that much better if you would only get out your credit card.

One of the great hymns of the Church which was much treasured and celebrated by Celtic Christians was the Benedicite; it's a great outpouring of praise to God and I pray it every morning:

Bless the Lord all you works of the Lord: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord sun and moon: bless the Lord you stars of heaven; bless the Lord all rain and dew: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord all birds of the air: bless the Lord you beasts and cattle; bless the Lord all people on earth: sing his praise and exalt him for ever.

It's almost breathless in its exuberance and its celebration of life and its gifts. Tellingly, this great hymn of thanksgiving is taken from a story of persecution and suffering, the story of the faithful Jews, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace by the tyrannical King Nebuchadnezzar.

Perhaps it's when we have little or nothing, in times of hardship or struggle, that we are most acutely aware of what we do have and can give thanks.

I am so sorry that I was not a lot more thankful for all that I had.

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'.

Boot News (spoiler alert: it's not good)

Happy Feet

So, yesterday I went for a short walk with a friend; three miles or so. We walked at a very leisurely pace and then went for a coffee. My brand new boots have been giving me an increasing amount of pain in my right ankle - that bony bit that sticks out. Ever the optimist (?) I was quite convinced that sooner or later we'd reach that blessed moment when the boots were 'broken in'. It hasn't happened. As my friend and I were sitting with our coffees my ankle became more and more painful and when I got up to walk again I was hobbling horribly. Something was getting broken but it wasn't my boots.

Limping home I felt fairly despondent. If I carried on wearing these boots there was a good chance that I'd properly hurt my ankle and then instead of spending February striding manfully across Ireland and Scotland (no sniggering at the back please), I'd spend the month on the sofa watching daytime TV.

That was when I had my epiphany. My old boots felt fine to walk in and I wouldn't like to guess how many miles I've done in them over the past sixteen years or more. They're a second skin. The only slight problem with them was that they were rather more porous than you'd like walking boots to be, but surely that wasn't an insurmountable flaw?

Waterproof socks!!! Ordered them yesterday. They're arriving today. I feel like singing. What could go wrong?

Over the next few days I'm going to post a few reflections on the themes I want to explore on this journey I'm going to make, inspired by the life of St Columba: exile, penitence and pilgrimage. I could write them in a detached way and pretend that they're just elements of Columba's life that seem interesting. That would be dishonest. They're themes I want to reflect on and pray about because I feel that they can give me some helpful frameworks to look at what my life has been like over the past few years, what I have learnt and how I can grow. Some of what I write is likely to be quite personal. If that's something you'd feel uncomfortable with then it might be best to skip them and wait until the pilgrimage starts two weeks today; then all the blogs will be about the beautiful landscape, the horrible weather, which bits of me are hurting, and just how much I enjoyed my evening in whatever pub I happened to be staying in the night before.

Two weeks today!

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.