Blog

Day 6

I was overcome when I looked down on the precise hexagonal basalt columns that make Fingal’s Cave on Staffa Island. Of course I was reminded of honeycomb and our thousands of honeybees at the cathedral. For a moment I was bereft, missing my Rob, their keeper.

Apparently this landscape was created 60 million years ago. In the face of it, Mendelssohn could do nothing less than bow and compose Hebrides Overture. A heart-felt blog post is my humble offering, also from here on my knees .

We had started the day together singing:

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” (From our pilgrimage Prayer & Song Book – Hymn #680 God, our help in ages past).

Then we found timeless majesty over and over again as the day unfolded.

Bless God. Bless Me. Bless My Fellow Travelers.

Day 5

OK, so I’m a swimmer, by most anyone’s definition, as long as it doesn’t include flip turns. I almost always remember to pack a suit and when I forget, there are other options. So when the 80-year-olds scheduled the charge into the ocean, I was tempted. But it was smack in the middle of my no-commitment-promise-to-myself time. I did appreciate the variety of descriptions they used to entice us: “quick plunge,” “toe dip,” and especially “metaphorical swimming.”

But when I heard the water temperature (21 degrees, do the conversion if you must), the choice was clear: No ocean for me! Besides, at our B & B down the road, the Andoran House, we can swim metaphorically too. Not especially monastic, I know, but, hey, the reading material legitimizes it, not to mention our host extraordinaire, Richard.

Day 4

Trinity

Three meaningful times:

Borage on our wedding cake

My June gift to Rob

Then…

Garnish on the soup!

Imagine my gratitude

Divine Iona

Day 3

We made it to Iona on this, the third anniversary of Rob’s surgery for bladder cancer. He is well now. Thank God.

I miss Rob AND I am very grateful, over-the-top grateful, simultaneously.

This is my home-away-from-home, a B & B down the lane from the hotel where we share our meals and where most of the others are staying.

Day 2

I signed up for this trip from the wait list and learned I had a space to travel in late April. For this reason, I flew to Glasgow

(pronounced Glaz-go, by Londoners at least) on a later flight than the others.

That meant I had a longer layover in London.

To think this multi-faith prayer space was directly on my route in the giant Heathrow airport while I waited. People like me feel lonely here every day; they get lost…and found.

I took off my shoes and joined the pray-ers, welcoming their quiet company.