Pilgrimage
Here's a riddle:
What do you get when you take 5 men, add prayer, a walking/driving/ferry-riding journey, sleeping on hard ground, buckets of rain, biting midges, large amounts of cheese and sausage, probing questions, and an ancient holy site from the 6th century?
Pilgrimage.
Adam, Ben, Graham, Glenn, and Dust took a trip across the Isle of Mull to the Isle of Iona, where Celtic monks from Ireland first landed in the 6th century.
Pilgrimages are interesting organisms -- you never know how the Spirit will show up, and where He'll send you. . . . you are walking in the footsteps of others who have gone before, so you're not really exploring "new" ground. Yet, it IS new ground. . . . for the pilgrim. It is critical in this journey of faith to "walk in someone else's shoes" -- to gain a sense of context, history, and the "cloud of witnesses" who have gone before.
We learned that while much of the church rotted away in the 6th century, these crazy Celtic saints were crossing seas in cowhide coracles (small circular boats) and creating communities wherever they landed. They would set up a cross at springs where people came for water, would bless the spring in the name of Triune God, and share the good news that "God's love is a gift in His Son accessed through His Spirit." It enlarged our hearts, zapped our minds, and pushed us to consider whether our day and age require similar men of courage and compassion.
Iona is a tiny island far off the coast of Scotland. We had to take two ferries to get there. The picture above is the four guys on the top of Iona's largest hill. By the time the photo was taken, we had already visited the typical sites that most tourists visit: the abbey, the interpretive center, the village. . . . The rain started coming down in driving sheets, and we cinched our hoods tight and climbed the hill.
As we slipped and crawled up the hill, each man was caught in his own meditation. I know that I wondered if this wasn't closer to the original spirit of the men who pushed their coracles into the crashing North Atlantic surf. You can see the look on our faces after just reaching the top. Wet, cold, full of fire.
We walked down to a beach on the far side of the island and the older men prayed a blessing over the two young "lads" on some rocks that jutted into the surf. The sun came out and blinded us all. Imagine that!
There is so much more to share. . . . each man has his own stories. The key is that we didn't walk away with a "high" -- no, it was deeper and springier than that. A tensile blade of steel inserted in the spot where our backbones used to be.
We tasted the rough spray of wind-tossed sea and Spirit. It is a cliche, but still so true: we'll never be the same.
