Opening the heart

IT’S somehow ironic to be leading retreats in Celtic Christianity on the island of Iona.At the height of the Celtic Christian period, hermit monks in particular were leaving the island because it was too busy: the excited clamour of talk and argument and creating was such that they had to retreat elsewhere.

But I’ve always wanted to bring people here. The wonder of Iona is that at the Abbey and in the village there can be crowds of excited pilgrims, yet walk three quarters of a mile to the west side of the island and it feels as though there’s no-one between you and America.

Kristina and I live not far away on the Isle of Seil. This island has its links with the Celtic Christian story too: it’s more than likely St Brendan established a monastic settlement here, down below the present kirk. South of us is the tiny island of Eileach an Naoimh with its wonderfully preserved beehive cells and monastery, more than likely the island the Celts called Hinba. The place to which they retreated from that busy island of Iona!

I have known Iona from earliest childhood days. This was where my mother first found faith, and the place where many a family summer holiday was spent. I still remember running to St Columba’s Bay. Like other Hebridean landfalls Iona was utterly safe for children: the only real dangers barbed wire fences and bulls. So we children were free range, and we didn’t only explore the familiar corners, we ventured into the edge places and sought out the hidden corners.

Kristina grew up on the west coast of Sweden. Her childhood was made up of islands too, but ones she visited with friends in boats. It was about leaving the world of the ordinary, opening the senses to places that were set apart and special. Just as it was to the Celts.

We choose to have retreats on Iona in October, the month when the island is starting to think about hibernating, the season almost over at last. There are far fewer tourists about, and often the weather is wild. But that means when the light comes in abundance it is all the more wonderful and catches the heart: suddenly the Ross of Mull is turned red by the low light of early evening.

Over the days of our stay at the Argyll Hotel, Kristina and I lead talks and workshops on the Celtic Christian story and on the part Iona played in that story. We think about what lay at the heart of that early faith, of how the Celts saw the world and one another. We think above all of how they seem to have understood God and of how they carried their faith out into the world

We often say that a lot of our time is spent playing. We think about how much the Celts loved art and creating it, for it was on Iona that the Book of Kells was begun before it was taken to be out of reach of Viking hands. We spend time up at the Abbey drawing and painting, reflecting on our own journeys and letting their stories pour into what we create.

We take the group to look for cowrie shells on one of the beaches, and to find green stones on St Columba’s Bay. We go in search of the Well of the North Wind; we make a pilgrimage to St Oran’s Chapel. And, because it’s a retreat, we give people time to be themselves and to find themselves. Iona is an extraordinary place: again and again people visit and discover the island to be a melting place. They meet themselves and are broken: it would be impossible for them to return to the mainland the same.

We want to allow retreatants to find ways to express themselves: that feels obvious in the light of the Celtic Christian path. Kristina is a photographer and I am a writer, so there are gentle talks and exercises in both disciplines. We know that Iona will inspire over the days, and we want folk to be able to catch that inspiration with both hands. But inevitably what they find, what they are given, is filtered through their life experience, through all they carry with them. It is that life journey that can create such extraordinary things, and often enough they pour them into what is being created without their fully being aware of what they are. It’s only later that they become apparent; it’s only then we see what has been created clearly. Or it might be that it’s only truly apparent once the suitcase is taken home once more and opened, and the heart too.

We share what we create with one another, when there is a desire for that to happen. There is never pressure put on folk to share because sometimes what has been created has come from a deep place of shadow. That place may remain raw and sore; now that it has been found it has the chance to heal, but it may well feel too soon to share it with others. And I always like to think of the analogy of the ceilidh here: all of us are part of the circle around the fire at the ceilidh, but not all of us need to feel obliged to speak or perform. But we are part of the ceilidh nonetheless by our part in the circle.

I don’t believe it’s anything in particular that Kristina or I do. I have likened it to opening a door to allow people to walk through. Certainly we’re getting alongside folk: sharing and listening. But that’s true for the group as a whole: over the five days we effectively become a little family, listening and learning together.Because we come from a western world which seems increasingly incapable of understanding either of those things, far less able to put them into practice. I’ve always loved the fact that on Iona we wear no labels: all of those blow away on the west wind and leave us our real selves, our true selves.

I once woke up with a poem when staying on the island. I had been thinking the evening before about the Hermit’s Cell and about the person or people who had lived there.Usually poems need time for distillation, but this one poured whole onto the page that early Sunday morning. The voice was that of the hermit:

I had to listen for a silence that was born inside.

It took a whole year to find and now it does not fail.

I need nothing; all I want is where I am.

I used to pray, and praying then was struggle with myself.

Now I am made prayer, am hollowed out a song that needs no sound.

I pick the blow of flowers, bring them back in blues and reds and golds, and in the slow of winter dark I watch for dawn and know that I am growing into light a little every day

The Hermit’s Cell’ from ‘Iona the other Island’ by Kenneth Steven, published by Saint Andrew Press