A week at St. Columba’s Abbey on Iona

Tiny island off the coast of Scotland is the perfect pilgrimage destination

My life of travel, in these later years and even before that, seems to show a strong pattern of quest. Of pilgrimages: A search for meaning, for new knowledge and insight, and for religious reflection.

I know I am not unique in this often-restless search for greater meaning. It’s in the human condition.

In high school, I had opportunities for occasional weekends of silence and meditation, through a church-based group called Youth Corps. Then at the University of Toronto at the Catholic college, there were routinely scheduled, days of talks and prayer.

This was in the 1950s, and the sessions consisted of the presentation of ideas and inspiration; talks largely given by a priest; lit candles in the chapel; and readings from Christian scripture.

Then as newlyweds, with the struggles of new relationships, and with a grievous, early bereavement, my husband and I were strengthened by Marriage Encounter weekends, offered by the churches.

I am still always alert to centres of contemplation.

I have spent time at Oka in Quebec, on the Camino in Spain, at Loyola House in Guelph, the Desert House of Prayer near Tucson,

Ariz., and at Villa St. Joseph in Cobourg.

Even great art galleries can be sites of meditation, such as the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. As can walks, paddles and sleeping out in creation.

Then a year ago I heard that a much-admired friend, Rev. Bob Root of Peterborough’s Mark Street United Church, had led pilgrimages to the remote island of Iona, off Scotland’s west coast.

Considered for many centuries a sacred isle, a “thin place” between the human and the sacred, Iona had been settled in 563 by St. Columba, a monk who came by small boat from Ireland with 12 followers. He farmed and built an abbey, wrote and missionized.

For a thousand years, the Abbey at Iona sheltered a community of monks, and in 1200, a community of nuns. It is considered the founding place of Christianity in the United Kingdom, and it is Celtic in nature, not Roman.

An American group called “Pilgrim Quests” made all the arrangements. As the newsletter expresses it: “Iona is the ideal setting for exploring a new religious paradigm: one that is inclusive, intellectually and scientifically honest, and soulsatisfying.”

“If the call is heeded,” wrote famous thinker Joseph Campbell, “it is a dangerous adventure, moving out of the familiar, crossing the threshold to places where dualistic rules don’t apply.” (“Hero with a

Thousand Faces.”)

Geographically, it was an adventure to get to Iona. Fly to Glasgow, drive three hours north and west through the lightly-populated, and hauntingly beautiful Scottish countryside to the oceanside town of Oban.

Then take a ferry to the large island of Mull, and a two-hour bus trip on a one-lane road across Mull, through the most astonishing landscape of crags, glens and sheep, to the village of Fionnasport, from whence another 10-minute ferry ride lands you on Iona.

Only three miles in length, with a population of 150, the island lives on farming and fishing and visitors, many just for the day, to the abbey.

The abbey is now re-roofed, and managed by a vowed, ecumenical, Christian community of 300, only a few who actually live there. Led by the Abbey people, Iona has a small school with seven students. On Climate Action Day in September, the children held a rally, and made the front page of the Guardian newspaper.

For a week in a small hotel, I heard the bells tolling for services at 9 a.m., 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. I felt like a monk. I hiked up steep hillsides to holy wells and to beaches with labyrinths.

The Celts had a monastic tradition of “peregrinatio,” the spiritual practice of holy wandering. Their ways may just be the key to a renewal of the religion of Christianity for our day.