I awoke very early on the first morning on Iona to a wonderful rising sun. The clouds splattered across the sky with the horizon holding off the darker ones. I stood outside and had my morning smoke as I pondered the forces that created this tiny isle that I heard you can circumvent in just a few hours. How majestic they must have been.
How does one even begin to think of crossing a vast ocean in just a tiny craft as St. Columba must have done? To me it is just unfathomable.
I moved about the dorm room in a silence I had hoped would not disturb the others. I gathered my things to step out into the waking day and I hummed a tune not known in my mind. Yet I sit here typing on a piece of plastic and metal that did not exist even 30 years ago. Unreal to imagine what it would have been like without it and penning it all down with a quill or pen on a piece of paper or parchment. Then I remembered the illuminated pieces and I can hardly imagine making the dyes, or colors, and taking countless hours to paint the books they once produced.
What a marvelous sight just outside my window. The colors stretching across the sky like a painters canvas and I cannot help but feel the presence of the universe in such a small place. I have never questioned God, or His existence, but I have often wondered if He had forsaken us, but it is during times like this when I am reaffirmed of some greater power that lies behind the creation of a place so beautiful as the one I am currently at.
I stayed up late taking pictures of the dusk that enveloped the land and awoke early in the morning to capture some of the dawning colors. How wonderful it is to be able to witness such moments of the day when you are in a liminal state. I feel very liminal here – in the world but apart from it.
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