Peregrinatio to an “Impossible” Peace: Nurturing Solitude in a Climate of Change
Waves crashing on black stone outcroppings, white beach sands, fields of sheep and highland cows, blue skies giving way to rain clouds, ancient Celtic stone crosses standing amidst ruins and a medieval Benedictine Abbey that as a whole reminds one of time’s passage. These are some of the outward impressions that strike me as I walk around the Isle of Iona along the eastern edge of the North Atlantic Ocean. I have made four pilgrimages here over the past two decades and each has been marked by a palpable sense of calm, stillness and peace. This is despite being surrounded by the ocean’s ever-moving winds, waves and weather, elements that have etched their being upon this isle’s rocky shoreline, stone ruins and a restored abbey that testifies to that persistent human spirit which has long sensed the sacred peace at the centre of these ever-changing relations.
What makes Iona sacred to me is the way in which the isle’s natural solitude intertwines with the generations of spiritual practice that continue to bring pilgrims here from far-flung lands. It was 16 years ago when I last made this trip from Canada with my partner and time has inevitably changed what we bring to these shores. Landing with us on this trip was our 12-year-old son Etienne who was making his first visit and his elder sister Iona who we introduced to her namesake as a two-year-old on our last journey. Despite this relatively short passage of time, there is a firm and recognizable presence of peace on this isle that persists across not only the short life of one pilgrim but far deeper ancestral cycles.
Sitting once more within this peace that has long inspired a climate of pilgrimage and prayer, I am reminded of the prophetic sixth century statement by Columcille or St. Columba about the persistence of this presence that drew him to this isle in 563 CE, as well as a succession of Celtic, Benedictine, Augustinian, Protestant and diverse pilgrims right up to the present:
In Iona of my heart, Iona of my love,
Instead of monks’ voices shall be lowing of cattle;
But ere the world comes to an end,
Iona shall be as it was.
If you listen closely, the ancestral stories of this sacred isle can be heard whispered amongst the weathered ruins and still-standing Crois Mhàrtainn (St. Martin’s Cross) that was carved over 1200 years ago by Celtic Christian monks. Being long inspired by these stories, I have contemplated and written about Iona in my 2007 PhD dissertation, 2016 book A Canadian Climate of Mind and most recently in my concluding response to the Indigenous elder teachings of Gae Ho Hwako Norma Jacobs in her 2022 book that I edited Ǫ da ga ho dhés: Reflecting on our Journeys. While my daughter has a maternal Scottish connection, my search is grounded in Columcille’s “legacy that inspired my father’s home parish of Saint Columbans, as well as my pre-teen confirmation lessons at a retreat centre dedicated to Iona” because of our proximity to a Scottish community. What has always intrigued me was the mixed nature of Columcille’s way that “did not reject pagan symbols, knowledge, and practices, as was often the case elsewhere” in Europe, but rather braided Christian and Celtic traditions like those referring to isles like Iona as “thin- spaces” where spirit seems to crowd in closer to us.
To help guide my latest journey, I brought the Celtic Christian writings of the Trappist hermit monk Thomas Merton who had followed his Welsh ancestors towards a pilgrim way known as peregrenatio, “going forth into strange countries.” Of particular interest to him was the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, a story of pilgrimage in the early sixth century by a monk in the same tradition as Columcille who offered Merton a “tract on the monastic life, the myth of peregrinatio, the quest for the impossible island… geography – a liturgical mandala?” In other words, the Earth’s geography can be engaged as offering us signs about how we are to publicly serve spirit (liturgy) in ways that supports our centring in life’s sacred mystery (mandala). Elsewhere, Merton connected this search to the braid-work found in Celtic writing, art, stone crosses and acts of peregrinatio which, he writes, is an “existential tribute to realities perceived in the very structure of the world, and of man, and of their being: a sense of ontological and spiritual dialogue between man and creation in which spiritual and bodily realities interweave and interlace themselves like manuscript illuminations in the Book of Kells.”
As with the Crois Mhàrtainn, the Book of Kells’ origin is deeply intertwined with Iona and the work of Columcille in his writing hut whose foundations can still be seen on the hill in front of the restored 12th century Benedictine Abbey. This hermit way of writing also resonates with Merton who over his last decade of life wrote in a hermitage away from his Trappist monastery that, like the abbey, is rooted in the Benedictine tradition. Within this solitude he wrote the classic 1967 Mystics and Zen Masters which can be read as a search for true interfaith dialogue that is rooted in the peregrinatio tradition. From the sixth to tenth centuries, Celtic Christian monks navigated the North Atlantic to sacred islands through, Merton writes, “their considerable skill in navigation” which allowed them to follow signs “that had perhaps come to them down the years of seafaring tradition.” But what he found was not only an earthly knowledge for reading the shifting winds, waves, weather and stars. They also had complementary spiritual practices for reading those earthly signs. As Monica Weis describes in Thomas Merton and the Celts, “These monks embraced poverty, solitude, contemplation and an ascetic discipline which was “austere in the extreme: physical penances… such as fasting and immersion in cold water.”
When I reflect on the legends of Columcille and other Celtic monks who would pray or “recite psalms in the sea, often up to their neck and for several hours”, I inevitably find myself reflecting on stories from around my birth waters like those of the first Indigenous (Haudenosaunee) Catholic saint Kateri Tekakwitha. As I contemplate in A Canadian Climate of Mind, some of these tell of her going to pray on an isle in the St. Lawrence River near my birthplace, as well as praying from within its cold waters. This connecting reflection was not merely accidental, for what I originally brought to Iona were questions about how some early Indigenous converts to Catholicism in Canada took up those traditions within a pressurized missionary context, as well as how some French canadien who lived in close relation with Indigenous actively engaged those traditions like my son’s namesake Étienne Brûlé. My decades of working with Indigenous people in Canada had highlighted for me the disconnect of spirit from nature in the French Catholic religion of my birth, and my initial trips to Iona were searching for a potentially different approach to reconciling with the lands where I live.
While peregrinatio is informed by the kind of solitary hermit spirit that resonates with the nature of an isle like Iona, this does not mean that pilgrims were unsupported in their journey. As Merton studied Celtic Christianity, he noted the old “anamchara” tradition of giving guidance. In the classic Anam Cara by the late Celtic Christian theologian John O’Donohue, he explains that this Gaelic term translates as a “soul friend” who is one’s spiritual guide. It refers to someone who, he writes, “you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life… The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away… there is also in the soul a blind side where you are not able to see. Therefore you must depend on the one you love to see for you what you cannot see for yourself.” In contrast to the more systemic guidance of a Catholic monastery, Merton saw this Celtic approach as having similarities with the Desert Fathers who were the root of his monastic tradition. We need to recall, he writes, “that there was no set rule for the hermit – only certain rather free prevalent customs. He had to make his own rule of life, based on the individual teaching and advice received.”
One thing that became clear to my ancestral anam cara Merton as he studied the Celtic Christian way was the contrast between the hierarchical ecclesial system of the Roman Catholic church and the more flexible way of giving and seeking guidance amongst the Celtic hermit monks. Reflecting on the 5th century arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland from Gaul, he noted its many differences with the already emerging Celtic Christian tradition. These included Patrick bringing “the ordinary urban [Chris]tianity of Gaul” that was “totally non-monastic” and thus contrasted “the new and disturbing influence of monasticism”; Patrick’s “complaints about obstruction” by those who saw him as “not a peregrinus” in the spirit of the local traditions that influenced Brendan and then Columcille; and Patrick’s general feeling that the Celtic Christian way had “spread like wildfire because there were no Romans and no cities. Hence the whole Church became monastic. And Patrick came to break it up and bring in urban and Roman setup.” Such a perspective reminds me of those entrenched roots from which colonialism in Canada emerged and the ancient possibility of alternative pathways.
Just as with past pilgrimages, my walk around Iona eventually brought me to the sacred well and ancient spring that sits between Columcille’s writing hermitage and the abbey. Here I recalled my collaborative writing with Haudenosaunee elder Norma Jacobs as the “thin space” of Iona became a way for me to cross-culturally reflect upon her teachings on the sacred meeting place that she calls Ǫ da ga ho dhés and which centres colonial treaties like the Two Row Wampum. In a chapter that is addressed to my daughter, I connected Jacobs’ teaching on waters as the life-blood of our Mother Earth with the sacred sense of waters in Iona’s Celtic Christian tradition; from an ocean isle to the holy wells of Scotland and Ireland. Through reflection and dialogue, we meet in Ǫ da ga ho dhés which is not a physical place like an isle but rather is co-created by people embodying values like peace, sharing, gratitude and respect. Reflecting on Canada’s colonial legacy, I concluded with these words: “We are called to deconstruct, destabilize, and prune ourselves, starting in the place where we work and live. But that is not all, for in the living spaces that open up, we need to begin naturalizing those viable seeds from our Canadien-Celtic ancestry that can take root here in the spirit of plantain’s embrace of diversity, indigeneity, and life on Mother Earth.”
To say I can sense peace while sitting amidst Iona’s holy well is not to deny this isle’s turbulent history of change and violence, or its uncertain position in today’s seemingly unstoppable climate of change. The 8th to 11th centuries were marked by successive waves of Norse raids along these coasts that have left legends of Celtic Christian monks being murdered while safe-guarding its traditions and sacred art. It is said that the Book of Kells was moved from Iona to the more relative safety of Ireland during this period of uncertainty. Those raids eventually cleared the way for the few Celtic monks who remained to support the formation of a Benedictine Abbey in the 12th century and, a few centuries later, an Augustinian nunnery whose ruins I love writing within. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century would bring new forms of social violence as both these Roman Catholic institutions gradually fell into ruin until the Abbey’s restoration began in the early 1900s. Each one of these historic changes can be sensed on this isle and in the twentieth century emergence of an ecumenical Iona community that is centred in the restored Abbey and, in its words, “long for a just and peaceful world in which all of life can flourish.”
Just like the rough ocean, times change and yet somehow the peace of this “impossible island” continues to inspire a search for different ways of living in this world. In contrast to the way of past and present human violence that is ultimately based on the might of one group being inflicted upon another, the current ecumenical community on Iona asserts that it is through “partnership with others that we can pursue social and environmental justice and peace.” It is a spirit of collaboration across religious and political lines that intimates Jacobs’ sense of Ǫ da ga ho dhés as a sacred meeting place where we can foster a sharing of peace; and is aligned with Merton’s approach to interfaith dialogue and peacemaking that he found guidance for in the Celtic Christian way.
It has always been the mixed nature of Iona’s Celtic Christian roots that struck me as local indigenous sensibilities about the spirit of creation came into a less rigid relation with Christianity. Perhaps the term “mixed” is not the best word for what I mean, for the term “braided” feels more alive and in tune with the sacred knotwork that marks creations like the Book of Kells. The strands of this braid go beyond a simplified sense of Celtic and Christian strands. At the centre of it all is the spirit of creation that can be felt in every elemental relation of this “impossible island” or seen on the ancient rock of the Crois Mhàrtainn upon which teachings are engraved. Even the terms Celtic and Christian carry diverse cultural strands in the form of Gaelic, Norse, Roman Catholic and even Desert Fathers.
These stands make up the braided tapestry that I can sense in the solitary peace of Iona to which I bring my own influences as a French canadien engaged in an ongoing dialogue with Jacobs’ Haudenosaunee tradition. And as with the central strand of the “impossible island”, I also bring the sense of peace I feel in the places around my home. Each place has its unique presence. The rolling waves of an Ontario lake foster a calm like that which I feel amidst Iona’s waters, and yet there are also diverse relational elements unique to the geography of each place and season in time. When I walk in a local urban forest during a snowstorm that buffers the city’s drive and noise, the place suddenly seems to invite me into the temporal intimation of a peace that is unique to its presence even if it is often obscured by our drive. These diverse experiences recall the words of O’Donohue: “The silence of landscape conceals vast presence… The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice… The earth is full of soul.”
It is a couple weeks since I was on Iona and helping me to reflect on the experience is an Ontario lake I regularly visit to offer prayers, contemplate, journal and write. A recognizable peace and stillness can also be sensed here as the sun sparkles on blue-green waters and the evergreens of the autumn forest gradually dress themselves in the changing red, orange and yellow colours of their deciduous brethren. And yet as I reflect on this lake, it is equally clear that there are some unique North Atlantic elemental dimensions to the peace felt on Iona, as well as one significant human dimension. That isle is a recognized “thin space” where acts of peregrinatio, hermit solitude, prayer, contemplation and works like sacred writing have been sustained for millennia. In contrast, my beloved Ontario lakes are today places of modern pilgrimage marked more by a spirit of recreation and the utility of “getting away” from the modern grind.
While I consciously approach Iona as a place of peregrinatio that stretches across millennia, I am also aware that a binary view of that which is sacred and profane can lead me to forget the presence of spirit wherever we are; from my urban home to Ontario lakes that are my regular place of pilgrimage. It is clear from Merton’s decades of journaling that his prayer with the hills, forests, fields, waters, birds and other Earth relations around his hermitage were foundational and that the Celtic Christian way helped him on his journey. The following words exemplify his sense of peaceful presence that is intertwined with these Earth relations: “When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough, and to add something else is to mess it all up.” Rather than firmly demarcating between the sacred and every day, a true peregrinatio reminds us that spirit is moving through all the elements of our life; which does not preclude there also being “thin places” for deepening our sense of peace and awareness of practices for sustaining it in our lives.
As I sit with the still lake on a mid-weekday in early autumn, after school’s return has shifted the pace of human recreation on its shores, there is a peace here that easily draws from me prayers of gratitude in that Indigenous spirit I learned from years of teaching and writing with Norma Jacobs. Recalling the many times I have heard her express a Thanksgiving Address for all our earthly and spiritual relations, it is clear that Indigenous prayers have long been offered on the lakes I frequent for reasons not unlike why I give thanks on their shores or those of a distant Iona. And yet even while I recognize the ancestral depth of prayer that is part of this lake, there is a sustained nature to the prayer of a long-recognized “thin place” like Iona that is unique. Of course, the same is true in Ontario where Indigenous peoples have long had stories, ways and pilgrimages related to particular places sacred to their ancestors, practices that were violently suppressed throughout the colonial era as superstitions that blocked Canada’s modern development of people, land and water.
Though the dominant colonial approach to land and water in Canada has been as property and resources to own or profit from through extraction, my peregrinatio to Iona offers another possibility to contemplate. What if underlying the 20th century cottage and camping tradition of “getting away from it all” is a deeper almost forgotten instinct that is now knotted with the confusion of colonialism? The pull to be more immersed and feel the rejuvenation of the land partially arises from the felt sense of peace that is related to its now well-documented mental and physical health benefits. But far beyond the utilitarian view of land-based health and water recreation, there can also be sensed on the lakeshores I regularly journey to with so many other Canadians and, for that matter, Scots a seed of peregrinatio and prayer that perhaps we can still try to nurture into something real within our modern world.
By occasionally taking our peregrinatio from a local lake to a more distant and recognized “thin place”, we will inevitably come upon an abundance of signs that can remind us of forgotten cultural practices which were long engaged as means for internally “thinning” pilgrims. Such practices are meant to more fully opening us into a peace that can be felt more distinctly in certain sacred places. And yet the reality is that such a lengthy peregrinatio must necessarily be “occasional” in the carbon constraints of our time. We need to recall that the real value of approaching a “thin space” are the reminders to clear space within our consciousness and ways so we can attend what the spirit of our relations are offering. This is a real challenge in our modern world where our ever-expanding highways, institutional networks and virtual relations take up an abundance of space such that a sense of the sacred has little room to transform us; we are not “thin” enough.
Looking through the open window of the nunnery ruin, I can seemingly see more clearly how the “impossible” peace I have long been searching for is being shrouded not only by the legacy of colonial and hierarchical violence, but how those disturbances continue to manifest today in our climate of change. This modification of the term climate change is meant to highlight the intertwined nature of various global changes that have unique features wherever we live on this Earth. Our climate of change can be heard speaking in intensifying fires, floods, winds, biological extinctions, Indigenous calls for truthful reconciliation and a host of locally manifesting environmental issues and related injustices. But this turbulence is also welling up from our human depths as we struggle with ecological grief, climate anxieties and denials, environmental sensitivities, land dislocation, addictive screen-mediated living, artificial intelligence and polarized politics. This should not be that surprising as our greenhouse gas emissions are teaching us how intertwined we are with the Earth.
The uncertain spirit of our climate of change can be heard echoing across time in this little prayer attributed to Columcille: “a little man, trembling and most wretched, rowing through the infinite storm of this age.” Or what about these words by Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me”. While Merton’s prayer was asking for divine support during a dark night turning point in his journey, his words also symbolically connect with the journey I and other pilgrims physically navigate to Iona today.
Coming from Canada’s largest city of Toronto with its ever-expanding highways, gridlock and aggressive drivers, the etiquette of the Scottish “passing places” along the single-lane roads that our bus navigated westward across the larger Isle of Mull to the Iona ferry is like a first sign of the slowing down needed to truly approach not only a “thin space”, but also likely our climate of change. Unlike the North American drive which is always inclined to expand roads into the land and emissions into the air, here a single lane passage remains with short passing places for vehicles to recognize traffic ahead and give-way amidst the rocky hills and flowing creeks. This passing place etiquette slows down our modern pace as we approach an isle where vehicles are limited to locals, roads still resemble the pace of pilgrim pathways and beyond some craft stores limits the space for consumerism.
Each step toward the “impossible island” brings more signs of our approach to a reality that is different in tempo, manners and quality of connectedness than our modern habits which are inextricably knotted into our climate of change. The extent of this challenge was starkly highlighted a few days after departing Iona as we concluded our family trip in the urban bustle and tourism of downtown London. Being our daughter’s first time overseas since being a young toddler, she wanted to see this old cosmopolitan city that both her parents had also visited in their twenties. As we took in the sites of Buckingham Palace and then Westminster Abbey, the peace of Iona was quickly washed away by the crowds and then a spectacle that stopped me in my tracks. A series of iconic red telephone booths had long lines at them not for making a call, as there were no phones, but to take selfies. We were on a very different virtual shore that has colonized much of our lives since my first visit to Iona more than two decades ago and London a decade before that.
Our modern pace seems to quickly draw us into a screen-mediated way of being that ensures we are always virtually accessible and yet also alone in the biggest crowds with social images searching for “likes”. Over the first decade of the 21st century our use of smartphone and tablet screens grew steadily, but with the social isolation of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic this way of being surged. On average, the use of screens increased during the pandemic by 5 hours per day, with the result being that those who are defined as heavy users are now on devices about 17.5 hours per day and moderate users 30 hours per week. While a balanced approach to virtual sociality has mental health benefits, especially for those who are already isolated, their addictive use is associated with mental health issues like attention-deficit symptoms, impaired emotional and social intelligence, depression and anxiety. As Sherry Turkle wrote over a decade ago, our digital relations are more often than not offering “the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other.”
One can feel an expansive sense of connection in the solitude of a “thin place” peregrinatio that differs in vital ways from the virtual isolation described by Turkle. The technological dimensions of this concern was diagnosed by Merton a half-century ago as the first computers were being created. His concern was not with the computers and other machines in themselves, but rather with what he saw as the quickly spreading technological worldview and its tendency to dehumanize or depersonalize life. As he wrote: “What is depersonalization?... The way I conceive it, it’s the idea of a person being cut off from his internal resources, his creative self, spontaneity, direct contact with life. In my language, a person is depersonalized when he has no direct contact with anything… He has reactions that are dictated for him by everyone else.” In contrast to the constricting pressures that mark our era of virtual networks and artificial intelligence, the solitude of an “impossible island” is in Merton’s teachings a journey of reconnection to a spiritual centre that is interconnected with the world.
The energy and passion of our daughter is what gifted us this trip to Scotland and her namesake, Iona. Without her initiative, I would have stayed mired in my resistances around air travel generally and related carbon footprint concerns such that memories in relation with Merton’s guidance would have been my primary inspiration. Luckily, Iona brought us back into relation with this “thin place”, though this peregrinatio does offers a slightly different view. We gave Iona her name because of our experience on that isle and this inspiration continued to stir when I wrote the story of her name in relation to Jacobs’s teachings on reconciling with Indigenous lands. Perhaps Iona’s gift arose from the spirit of her name such that it was the “impossible island” which brought us back. As is held in Indigenous and old Christian teachings, a given name can be a guide for contemplating who we are and what we can offer this life. In the words of Merton once more, it is “moving to be “baptized”… with a name I must live up to. After all, a name indicates a divine demand.”
When I sit with the passing place etiquette and related modern absences that are part of today’s journey to Iona, they ask me to contemplate practices like peregrinatio, solitude and slowing down that have long been nurtured here as ways of settling our internal state into a “thin place”. For any “pilgrimage to make sense”, Merton wrote, “it must represent a complete integration of his inner and outer life, of his relation to himself and to other” people (Conj 203). Peregrinatio is one of many practices that, when renewed, can help us to remember that there is much more mystery to our earthly journey and relations than what our modern systems let on. These practices are vital guides for journeying into the centre of that “liturgical mandala” where we can settle into the peace of an Iona; a peace that also suffuses those home waters where our search begins and ends, even in our turbulent climate of change.
Toward the end of Merton’s life, it is said that he contemplated “creating an Office of Hermits to use for his personal prayer in the hermitage.” He had spent a couple decades navigating the difficult passage from his Trappist monastery to the hermit vocation he felt called to. Over the years of his journaling, Merton gradually found a way of braiding the valued teachings of his Trappist formation that included the Rule of St. Benedict with what he learned from the preceding approaches of the Desert Fathers and Celtic Christian monks. The latter had their own Rule of Columcille that has many consistencies with Merton’s hermit practice, even if he would call the letter of this Rule as being more severe than what he was inclined toward: “Be alone in a separate place near a chief city…; A few religious men to converse with thee of God…; A person who would talk with thee in idle words… thou shalt not admit; … Forgiveness from the heart for everyone. Constant prayers for those who trouble thee…; Three labors in the day – prayers, work and reading”.
The ways of peregrinatio, prayer, contemplation and hermit solitude have whole histories of emerging guidelines that are meant to support their deepening in each pilgrim. And yet at the same time, Merton knew from his experience of the Catholic Church and Trappist monastery that a focus on institutional systems can seep into our practices in ways that block out the sense of sacred presence in our relations. This struggle can be sensed in the guidance Merton offered around the same time as his Celtic studies to his friend and one-time Trappist student Ernesto Cardenal. Before becoming an influential liberation theologian, Cardenal requested guidance in setting up his spiritual community of Solentiname in Nicaragua. In response, his anam cara offered the following: “The first rule is that there be no rules. And after this, then, all other rules are unnecessary.”
It is unlikely that this advice was meant to promote some kind of free-for-all that gives no guidance or discipline, for Merton had clearly learned much about the value of these in his monastery and then hermitage. Rather, this call for “no rules” seems to be more akin to the less formal relational approach of an anam cara who gives personalized guidance for navigating to the “impossible island”. Each pilgrim requires support that is as unique to their solitary journey as the elemental relations of any particular lake or ocean shore. The guidance needed for such a peregrinatio cannot be based on a systematic or “universal answer to all questions.” As with the way of an anam cara, it is rooted in a living relationship with the soul needs of a pilgrim who is “prepared to listen in simplicity and accept, with faith”. This flexibility that is central to Merton’s never formalized Office of Hermits also has value as I contemplate how to adapt his guiding practices to life in today’s fast-paced climate of change.
Office of Hermits: Adapting an Anam Cara’s Guidance
Peregrinatio to a “thin place” whose purpose speaks to our intent of journeying toward that “impossible island” that is the peaceful centre of who we are and what we must keep alive wherever we happen to live.
Nurturing Patient Stillness means patiently giving time and space away from our social pressures and mental ruminations as we deepen into the stillness of a “thin place” like Iona, even as the elements of a vast and mysterious ocean or climate of change swirl around us.
“Thinning” of Self is concerned with fasting, clearing or pruning practices that, rather than denying the body’s sacredness, is meant to thin ourselves in preparation to attend the subtle spirit of our Earth relations. Traditional fasts focus on food, sleep, silence and solitude. In our modern context, some of those can be adapted like reducing processed foods or health-based fasts, and we can add others related to the passing place etiquette, virtual detoxing and slow movement.
Contemplative Earth Prayer arises from our still centre as we bring forth prayers that offer gratitude and request guidance, or as we contemplate the divine mystery that centres the peace we experience when on peregrinatio. The Earth dimension highlights the value of infusing our contemplative prayer with elemental relations as exemplified in Columcille’s water-immersed prayers and Merton’s Psalm singing at dawn.
Seek Guidance of an Anam Cara whose ancestral writings or living presence can direct your unfolding spiritual practice and its relation to the unique social, personal and life challenges we struggle to braid a spiritual way within the pressures of our present climate of change.
Sustainable Work is the progeny of fostering a spiritual relation with this Earth life. Whether it be sustainable gardening, peacemaking, restoring an Abbey or forgotten practices, carving crosses, educating or writing, the root of such work is the still centre of that seed which we are trying to sustainably plant within ourselves as we relate with our community, the Earth and mystery underlying it all.
Navigating today’s stormy climate of change toward the peace I can sense on Iona and in the Office of Hermits requires bringing the spirit of those ways into some kind of intimate relation with ‘who we are’ and the ‘work we are called to do’, which for me is about being a writer, social work educator and, for a time, program administrator in a university. But to be honest, such a full circle peregrinatio raises more questions than answers. What does it mean to be a social work educator and writer who is concerned about the social challenges carried in our climate of change, and yet is paradoxically pre-disposed to the hermit ways taught by my anam cara and Iona? How do I reach toward the solitude of a hermit in Canada’s largest city, in a time of aggressive virtuality and while being a father? Is such a path possible outside of a monastic vocation or community like those of the early Celtic Christians? Perhaps all that can be done for now is to sit with the questions and see what intuitions arise as opposed to falling into our virtual tendency of browsing for quick artificial answers.
My return to what today feels like an “impossible” isle of peace challenges me to honour this presence as the centre of any sustainable response to our mysterious climate of change. One of the innovations I appreciated most when I left social work in the early 2000s to undertake environmental studies was the flexibility of its graduate education. In contrast to social work where electives are limited due to professional accreditation requirements, this program only had one required course that took you through a process of creating your own plan of study. As I write in a co-authored book on what was the first environmental studies program in North America, the individualized plans of study and other innovations like qualitative Pass/Unsatisfactory grading was meant “to increase risk-taking among students as they devise unique approaches to thinking, learning and acting environmentally” with a changing Earth that we are intertwined into. It is an organic and less systemic education that still resonates more with me than the social work profession within which I currently teach.
There is so much in the personalized approach to the environmental studies that I engaged which hints at the creative knot-work of the Celtic Crosses, Merton’s “impossible island” as personalized “liturgical mandala”, and the flexible Office of Hermits that I am trying to adapt for my life. In fact, it was the flexible creativity of environmental studies that originally opened space for me to contemplate what a “thin place” like Iona could offer my journey toward a different quality of dialogue with Indigenous understandings of colonialism, land relations and our climate of change. Despite the systemic requirements of the social work program I currently teach within, I still attempt to instill the flexible spirit of that education in the format of my courses as well as the issues I write about. But I also know more must be done in creating spaces for slowing down, disconnecting from destabilizing modern pressures, reconnecting with the presence of our Earth relations and, most importantly, nurturing a feel for the peace we want to re-centre in this life.
The deep living inspiration that centres Iona’s “impossible peace” can offer us a very different sense of our position in the intensifying storm. Such a peregrinatio is not to some final solitary abode but rather has the feel of one who is breathing in-and-out. The breath-like nature of this hermit isle is beautifully inscribed throughout the writings of my anam cara, and so I conclude with these words of Merton:
Solitude is as necessary for society as silence is for language and air for the lungs and food for the body. A community that seeks to invade or destroy the spiritual solitude of individuals who compose it is condemning itself to death by spiritual asphyxiation... True solitude separates one person from the rest in order that he may freely develop the good that is his own, and then fulfill his true destiny by putting himself at the service of everyone else.
Merci and Mercy, Thank you, Mòran taing, Nya weh, for the peaceful solitude of the “impossible” Iona!
Select References:
Bamford, C. & Marsh, W. P. 1987. Celtic Christianity: Ecology and Holiness, An Anthology. Lindisfarne.
Bradley, I. 2026. Liquid Faith: Scotland’s Sacred and Supernatural Waters. Birlinn.
Hughes, J. 1997. Anam Cara.: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. Harper Perennial.
Jacobs, N., with T. Leduc (Ed.). 2022. Ǫ da ga ho dhés: Reflecting on our Journeys. MQUP.
Leduc, T. 2016. A Canadian Climate of Mind: Passages from Fur to Energy and Beyond. MQUP.
Merton, T. 1967. Mystics and Zen Masters. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Weis, M. 2016. Thomas Merton and the Celts: A New World Opening Up. Pickwick Publications.
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