Thin Spaces – Pilgrimmage on Iona

Today, Tuesday, we pilgrimmaged over the island of Iona. We visited “thin spaces”, spaces where the space between the here and now and the eternal is very thin. We visited the site where Columba landed with his twelve monks. We walked across the heather laden hills, with thick wet peat bog beneath our boots. Some was in silence. Some was busy chatting with the neighbour, the scenery lost amidst the talk. And with each step came the realisation the 1500 years ago the Irishman Colum Cille walked this land, prayed in these spaces, began his redemption in this place.
The thinnest place was the hermit’s cell, out on it’s own amongst the crags and bog. A place where people have come to pray, to be, to be slowly sanded by the wind and the divine.
I have realised as I have thought about thin spaces that the Highlands were also thin spaces for me. And my sadness is that I did not get to stay or to walk in them, but just drove through and around them. Experienced from a car is not the same as feeling the wind and being scrapped. Tomorrow I plan to explore some more thin spaces.