Pilgrimage to Iona: St Columba's Bay

They say that Iona is a thin place--a spot in God's creation where heaven is separated from earth by the thinnest of veils. If Iona is a thin place, St. Columba's Bay, is the thinnest of thin places. It is the spot where a handful of Irish monks landed in 563 as pilgrims and became evangists who transformed Christianity forever. 

It takes being a pilgrim to get there today. 

You travel down a long road. 

Through a golf course. 

Climb a small mountain. 

Walk around a lake. 

Slosh through a bog. 

Climb down the mountain. 

Through the ferns. 

Across the crossroads. 

 

And you are there. 

Lord you have come to the seashore, neither searching for the rich nor the wise,

desiring only that I should follow 

O Jesus, with your eyes set upon me,

gently smiling, 

you have spoken my name. 

All I longed for I have found by the water, 

at your side I will see other shores. 

Translation of Pescador  de hombres by Cesareo Gabarain sung at the Abbey tonight