12 Reasons to Journey to Iona
/If your household is anything like mine, you have undoubtedly heard, and sung!, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on repeat in these last few weeks. This song puts in mind the symbols of gift giving through both lyric and image and we come away alert for turtle doves, French hens, maids and lords, and golden rings in modern and located forms.
The sacred journey to Iona is an event that marks every individual's life who goes in indelible ways, and becomes a place within one's memory and soulscape that conjures deep feelings of sacred and personal connection. These 12 Days of Christmas I want to share with you thoughts and images that have become symbolic with integral aspects of the Waymarkers Iona program offerings that hopefully will leave you singing a song that enlivens you this season! It may very well be that your soul will feel sung to, and be courted and called to make a sacred journey to Iona this Summer 2023 with Waymarkers!
“The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.”
The First Reason to Journey to Iona
Both the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage and the Wild Iona Journey work within a Celtic spiritual worldview that understands that the presence of God is imminent--that the Holy is here in our midst. Every element, every more-than-human being is an expression of the Divine in our midst.
This is a journey that reconnects one to that sacred ecology.
Both program offerings create space and offer guidance to support one in remembering this essential truth. You will be given time to recover a deep connection to the sacred and mysterious landscape that resides within you, and to trek and traverse the wild and sacred landscape that is Iona. If you are need of practices and rituals that reconnect you to this stream of ancient wisdom, look no further. Come to Iona!
There is something both mysterious and deeply resonate with the Scottish landscape. As one journeys westwards towards the Hebridean Islands and to Iona, there is a deep sense of being on a spiritual path that is unique to one’s particular journey, but also connects one to the millions of other pilgrims who have stepped into the unknown and mythic West.
“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
The Second Reason to Journey to Iona
Within the lyrics of the famed Christmas song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" we are introduced to two turtle doves, a European and Northern African bird of the pigeon family, Columbidae. Here It is important to note a couple things. One, the etymological connection between the turtle dove and Columcille, or St. Columba, the patron saint of Iona and the founder of the early Christian monastic community on Iona. You will often find iconography of Columba with a dove; these birds still orbit around the Iona Abbey bell tower to this day.
The second thing I want to mention is that turtle doves are also monogamous mating pairs, who often remain in a faithful relationship for life. That the singer's beloved gave this gift, speaks to the priceless gift of fidelity. Make this step with me: my teacher, the great mythologist Martin Shaw, talks about how the land longs for us to be faithful to it once again, and that there are places that long for us to bring our loving gaze back to it. For those of us who live within the Celtic diaspora, there is something to be said of the deep longing to reconnect to the landscapes of our beloved ancestors, and to experience a relationship with that land in a deeply known way.
The journey to Iona requires you to train, bus, and ferry through the west of Scotland and into the Western Isles, the Hebrides. It is an ancient landscape that is quite literally billions of years old. When one traverses through these hills and valleys, the very landscapes that lit the modern imagination for stories like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and (cough-cough) Outlander, there is a sense of a home-coming, a sort of "I knew it all along!" feeling.
The landscape awakens profound feelings and longings that provoke wonder and awe that result in a relationality absolutely akin to love. When we reconnect to feelings like this through our crossing to Iona, we are co-creating the conditions for a journey of sacred eco-awakening, which is really long hand for a glorious and faithful love affair with our sacred and wonder-filled Earth!
The "Second Reason to Journey to Iona" is to receive this "turtle dove" of a gift this season!
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
The Third Reason to Journey to Iona
Both the Wild Iona Journey and the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage builds a Staffa Island excursion into the week's program offering. It is a joy to be on the Iolaire, a storied and salty vessel that has carried Waymarkers groups since 2004, and many others as well! The jovial and relational crew of Staffa Trips take time and great care to court conditions that will invite the wild life to come near; it is not uncommon to be curiously perceived by seals, to be chased by dolphins, or to witness the glorious form of a Minkie whale.
When we arrive to Staffa Island, we are invited to explore Fingal's Cave and then to go and sit with the puffins. Incredibly, the puffins rely on the presence of humans as we stave off predators. The result is that we can sit quite close to the puffins, experiencing awe and wonder in these creatures and what they reveal about the nature of God.
This trip to Staffa Island is held in the framework of "sacred rewilding"--a way of understanding our human interrelationship with the whole ecology, and also a way of bringing ourselves and our understanding of the Sacred, back into the whole community of creation. We take our approach very seriously and see it as a wild practice of communion. It is not uncommon for Waymarkers participants to come away enraptured as their encounters with the caves and the puffins significantly shifted or opened up their experience of the Sacred in fresh and new ways.
“Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey!”
The Fourth Reason to Journey to Iona
There are some theories that suggest that the gifts given within the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas," are symbolic of aspects and features of the Christian faith. Within this lens, the four calling birds are emblematic of the four gospels within Christian scripture.
Iona is known within Christian history to be the cradle of Celtic Christianity, a unique stream of spirituality that emerged in response to the Christian mission intersecting a particular indigenous spiritual worldview. While there are many distinct features of Celtic Christian spirituality, a distinguishing element is the belief that the natural world has been proclaiming the stories within sacred scriptures for millennia. Within this stream of spirituality is the belief that Creation is the primary and original sacred text!
The Waymarkers Iona programs both work within a Celtic spiritual worldview. The teachings and program offerings, whether myth-specific or working directly with Celtic Christian spirituality, invite participants into practices that engage the wild landscape as sacred scripture. We work together to recover an ancient lexicon, one in which we once were all fluent. This way of "reading the land" becomes integral to our programming and offers a profound worldview shift for program participants.
“...You’re always standing in the middle of the sacred circle, and that’s your whole life.”
The Fifth Reason to Journey to Iona
One of the most incredible and transformational elements of the Waymarkers Iona programs is that we gather intentionally within the power of the circle. When we are in contexts of learning, we are in a circle; and when we close our evenings with Council, we again are in circle. This sacred form (truly a golden ring!) creates the context in which our souls feel invited to show up, to speak, to cry, to dream, to long, to desire.
The Waymarkers Iona programs are unique in their location and their soul-centric approach to both the individual and collective journey.
Our groups' lodging is on the North Beach of Iona, a mile walk away from the hustle and bustle of the village and Abbey life. Our group meets and holds is circle and Council times within the Byre, a barn-like facility that also hosts poetry nights, weddings, Cèilidhs, and workshops. It is absolutely authentic and hosts nests of sparrows and roses that grow through the walls. When imagining the kind of context that courts the soul on one's spiritual formation journey, this is it. There is nothing commercial or duplicatable about this space. Here is where we gather in circle to learn from dear friend John about the poetics of place, where we have a mind blowing lecture on the geology of Iona, and where we move our bodies and breath to come fully into the path of this sacred journey.
The North Beach sits just below the windows of our lodging facility (The Green Shed) and is the location for ceremony, ritual, yoga, and circles of laughter. Here we come into a wider and more immense sense of the community of creation of which we are apart. The form of the circle reminds us of our belonging, our wholeness, and our integral interrelationship with our sacred and holy planet. It is a way that we practice being together that reconnects us to a deep sense of home.
“What is sacred is what is worthy of our reverence, what evokes awe and wonder..., and what when contemplated transforms us utterly.”
The Sixth Reason to Journey to Iona
On the North End of Iona and within the holding of Lagondorain, a 60 acre croft-land, you will find The Green Shed, the precious lodging for the Waymarkers Iona offerings since 2004. You very well may also find six geese a laying, along with indigenous Hebridean black sheep, Corn crakes, and a family of otters that frolic on the North Beach, that is a stone's throw from your bedroom window at the Green Shed.
Most groups who go to Iona will stay in the Village at one of the two hotels, which are amazing facilities and have an exciting buzz of energy about them. The Waymarkers' offerings are fortunate to have established a long-standing relationship with The Green Shed, a very unique communal lodging facility on the North End of Iona. A deep friendship with John and Rachel is the bedrock of this essential programatic element. Staying in the wilds of the North End has become an integral element of the Waymarkers Iona program offerings.
The Green Shed as a location supports a journey of sacred eco-awakening. The land brims with stories both ancient and new, and opens up a dialogue with the Soul and the Sacred that are a bit more accessible in the wide open spaces of Lagandorain. The space itself is carefully and lovingly curated with enstoried items that create the context for reflection, imagination, and creative energy. The books that line the shelves are reason enough to journey to this far-flung treasure!
Our programs invite participants to be just that: PARTICIPANTS and co-creators in their individual and groups' collective journeys. We live together for the week we are on Iona; we sleep, eat, and learn together in community. The reality of energy costs in the West coast of Scotland, as is true throughout Europe and the rest of the world, asks us to be creative in how we run our programs. In response to inflation and rising costs, we choose to embrace the ancient art of being together in the "hearth-place" of the Green Shed home: we cook our meals together, do up our dishes, as well as enjoy evenings of tea and shortbread and chocolates. As a five-star eco-tourism facility, we also get to engage in very real practices of sustainability and regeneratively: we compost, recycle, are mindful of our water usage and other energy expenses.
The North Beach is just over a knoll and your feet can be in the white sands with hardly another soul around you within five minutes of crossing the door's threshold. This feeling of privacy and isolation is ironically hard to find in other parts of Iona during tourist season, which is another reason why we are so fortunate to have The Green Shed as our programatic home.
“The island set apart...still yields its secret.... To teach the heart of Iona is to find something eternal.”
The Seventh Reason to Journey to Iona
A distinguishing aspect of the Waymarkers Iona programs is its engagement with local experts and artisans as part of our "teaching" group. This invites our program participants to not only get to know Iona through the spiritual communities on the island, but also the people who live their lives in this place and know it thoroughly. I honor my teachers who have gifted me access to these relationships and introduced me and my work to the possibility of collaborating with these Iona wisdom bearers.
Both the Wild Iona Journey and the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage integrate a day of learning about the geology and unique stones of Iona. You may likely have heard stories of the famed Iona Green Stone, or even have one in your pocket! These pursued stones, along with the Deep Time geological stories of Iona, are given more meaning and context through a unique lecture and walking tour by a beloved local geologist; time with a local stone-worker who will assist you in making your found treasures into jewelry; and time with an amazing artisan with a long ancestral lineage to Iona whose work invites us to see how all of our lives (and unique gifts!) contribute to the craft of being human.
These sessions are particular to the Waymarkers offerings and provide unique learning opportunities that compliment the deeper sacred journey work we are about while on Iona. These gatherings orient our personal journeys into a greater cosmic story that is revealed through stones. We are invited to learn how to listen to the sacred script that is revealed through the unique geology of this Holy Island and what it reveals about our own spiritual journey and sacred eco-awakening!
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
The Eighth Reason to Journey to Iona
The gift of the guide will arrive beside one who is committed to enacting the archetypal stages of the mythical pilgrimage journey. And guides may be two feet, feathers, fronds, or fins! Many forms take on the role of guide on the journey, and part of the exciting work is looking deeper into the environment, putting one's ear to the ground so to speak, to connect to the guidance that is numinously present all around us.
As you respond to the Call to make a sacred journey to Iona, you will begin to encounter the inevitable archetypes, or stages, of a heroic journey. This isn't to get confused with swashbuckling heroes per se; rather, this is an acknowledgment that there is a universal arc that holds the form of any journey of transformation. There is a profound gift that lays within the framework of the Departure, Severance, and the Return. We see this pattern within the modern stories of Percy Jackson and Harry Potter, and also in the ancient tales of Odysseus and Celtic saints, as well as within the emergence of Jesus and other spiritual leaders.
One must leave the conditions of home to be changed. Upon crossing the threshold (the Departure stage), one will begin to encounter variations of severance--tensions
and upheaval of varying degrees as one descends into the psycho-spiritual realms of the extra-ordinary underworld. Here one will always encounter guides: wise ones who will offer a whisper of direction; drop a bit of bread crumb; and companion one through the grief-shaded shadows of the journey to ensure a return home.
The Waymarkers Iona programs takes the framework of the mythological and pilgrimage journey very seriously. It creates the form of how you prepare for your own personal departure as well as how we move collectively through our week together. Daily you are invited to be on the look out for Sacred Guidance, and be curious about the various forms this Presence may take.
We are confident in the well-practiced guidance you will receive from the human guides for your trip; Mary, Victoria, and Sarah have all journeyed to Iona and their vocational work is centered on companioning others through the wilds of their inner soul-scape. From experience, we also know that you will receive integral direction for your particular spiritual journey from Meadow Flower; from Sea; from the Road; from various trails; as well as other pilgrimage companions and encounters within sacred spaces all over the island.
The gift of guidance you will receive on this journey to Iona is mysterious and provocative. Who will be knocking on your door and will you have the courage to admit them?
Enjoy listening in to these Fireside Chats with Guides Mary DeJong, Victoria Loorz and Sarah Steinke
“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’
And so it starts.”
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
The Ninth Reason to Journey to Iona
A deeply meaningful, and ultimately a favorite, part of the Waymarkers Iona programs is spending collective time within the walls of the Nunnery. One can feel the feminine presence of hundreds of years of dedicated lives that served within these ruined walls. Here they cooked, prayed, tended herbs, midwifed life, husbanded livestock, and maybe even danced (imagine with me nine nuns dancing! Delightful!). Indeed, there is a deep joy experienced when one spends time within these walls.
We create a program that provides ample space for wild wanders and sacred saunters. And, we also are committed to learn from the spiritual legacy of Iona and spend time within the walls of the Iona Abbey, St. Oran's Chapel, and the Nunnery.
While journeying out to the wild edges of Iona is essential to the experience of this Holy Isle, it is also of deep value to connect to the historical sites of Christian veneration and worship that have called millions of pilgrims to Iona over the past 1500 years. The Waymarkers Iona programs honors the "Nine's"-a monastic hour in the morning and at night at which people gather at the Iona Abbey in an interfaith and ecumenical service that affirms the dignity of all life. These optional services are often the first time a retreat participant has stepped foot within a church in years, or the service invites a reframe of how one experiences the Source of All Blessings.
A private tour of the Iona Abbey is another way our groups deepen into the stories of Saint Columba and the impact of his mission on the island and surrounding Celtic lands.
Guided meditations at the Nunnery is another powerful way that our groups experience the sacred sites of Iona. Here we connect to the legacy of women throughout church history, as well as their integral roles within the community as midwives, healers, and educators. Within these ruined walls we reconnect to the undeniable presence of the Divine Feminine within our selves, as well as through the ancient and pre-Christian presence of the Sheela na gig. We go to these pilgrimage sites as ways to reconnect to a sacred reality and remember the various forms the Holy One has taken throughout history.
“Ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”
The Tenth Reason to Journey to Iona
The day-long pilgrimage walk to Columba's Bay takes us by many ancient and holy sites--places where Christian stories intersect with pre-Christian sentiments. It is a walk that many take as an embodiment of their own mythic and spiritual journey, a point in the week where grief and loss are taken on a long walk to the site of St. Columba's own exile.
Where is the gift in this? In our modern Western culture there are few spaces that acknowledge and embrace the requisite role grief and exile play in our own formation. The gift of the Waymarkers' Iona programs is a storied and sacred container that offers a much needed threshold into this underworld.
The framework of the Waymarkers Iona programs follows the archetypal stages of the mythical and pilgrimage journey. Each week offers a days-long container that follows the arc of any story of transformation. Collectively we engage the Call, the Departure, the Severance/Initiation, the Arrival, and the Return, which are archetypal stages found within both mythic story structures (which we engage in the Wild Iona Journey) as well as the pilgrimage journey (which we focus on in the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage).
Any journey of transformation will require one to to cross the threshold into the underworld, the topsy-turvy place where ordeals are engaged, the ultimate question is asked, and the where we are asked to meet our "dragon"-the symbol of lost and exiled aspects of our True Self. This is the stage where we are ushered into the soul's hall, the place where psychotherapist and ritualist Francis Weller tells us we are initiated by our grief.
Our walk to Columba's Bay is set aside as a journey to enter in to this Soul Hall and metabolize grief through the rituals of walking, silence, prayer, and stone-hunting and throwing. If you are needing a journey that will hold and companion your sacred grief, the Waymarkers Iona programs are for you!
“Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow.”
“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”
The Eleventh Reason to Journey to Iona
A unique program feature of the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage is its integration of yoga and mindful movement. We believe strongly in the reality that our bodies carry at a cellular level: memories, joy, grief, and the journey at hand all live deeply within our bones. By centering a daily movement practice during the pilgrimage journey, we are acknowledging the importance of giving the body space to metabolize the journey, as well as space to "speak" through its own deep wisdom.
As a way to integrate the pilgrimage journey into the body, the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage offers daily yoga expressions with poet, psychotherapist, and certified yoga instructor Sarah Steinke. Our yoga sessions are an elemental experience on the North Beach, the location of the legendary white sands and turquoise waters of Iona (and if weather is inclement, we gather in the safekeeping of the Byre, which is pretty amazing too!). With the tidal rhythms of the sea and the whispers of the wind, we move our bodies in response to our sacred journey.
Morning Yoga Matins are offered as a way to move our body in prayerful positions, bringing ourselves into an embodied form of the Celtic encircling prayer, a seven-directional prayer that acknowledges the imminence of the divine with-out and within our physical bodies. Afternoon sessions provide an opportunity to go deeper into the griefs and joys of the day, bringing our body, heart and soul into attunement and alignment with wonder and awe.
“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”
The Twelfth Reason to Journey to Iona
Ultimately, one must cross the threshold to leave their lives for something that will transform them. The Wild Iona Journey and the Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage invite a very explicit threshold crossing and hold the space for one's personal journey and the collective shared adventure that awaits every group on Iona. While we provide the container, it is you who get to engage the heart-centered sharing and find the road and the wild places that speak to you, that offer their sacred stories to you.
There is an ancient language that we reconnect to while on Iona. This primeval tongue reminds us of our holy heritage and that we are members of the great community of creation. These fundamental and integral truths often require a journey, a collective adventure, as a way of return. Much of our modern and Western worldview have separated us from our essential and interrelated nature with a sacred and holy world. This interrelationship is part and parcel to how we manifest our own True Nature.
Our Iona programs insist on providing time to go on personal wanders as well as collective adventures as ways to reconnect to the Sacred Wild, the Spirit of the Universe that has been expressed through Celtic spirituality, the Christian mission,
mythic stories, turquoise waters, ethereal sunsets, loving Councils, the feel of a friends hand on your back...and so much more!
We invite you to come on these journeys of sacred eco-awakening, a requisite journey for the healing of our selves, our communities, and the rest of the more-than-human world! All of you is welcomed: the parts that seek, question, desire, long, hope, grieve, wonder, rage, and feel in touch. There is something in your life that is awaiting to be brought forth, and it is something that cannot manifest within the comforts of your home.
There are but a few spots left in each of these unique and authentic program offerings. If you have longed to make a sacred journey to Iona; to meaningful mark a transition within your life; to express your inner journey with an outer one; or to give rise to reconnected relationship with the Sacred, these are the programs for you!
“There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in their life something that was never beheld before.”
“Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea."
~Antonio Machado
