Communion of Saints
The point at
which one begins story is arbitrary, a bracket put around an experience to help
understand and/or savor it. I am
choosing to begin this story by recollecting my dream in January 2009 featuring
both Jesus and Sheela-na-gig. I could have
begun it with my son’s birth
or with his death. I could have begun it
with an imaginary encounter with monks of the Ceile Day order whose
footsteps I follow.
It is before 6 a.m. on April 27, 2014.
This day marks the 45th anniversary of the birth of my first
child, Arthur Donovan. I stand on an
ancient stone on the beach near the ferry dock on the Isle of Iona off the west
coast of Scotland awaiting the appearance of the sun so
I might sing the words that have been sung here for centuries. As the point of light appears on the horizon
and begins to intensify, I start to chant and to bath myself in the first 9
rays of the sun.
The timing of
my pilgrimage was dictated by the date of the silent retreat I am attending on
this Isle so important in the spread of a unique form of Christianity in the
Celtic lands. Until a few weeks before
my arrival I was unaware there was a Sheela-na-gig on the island. It is
on the exterior wall of the medieval nunnery ruins I walked through on my way
to my hotel after disembarking from the ferry yesterday afternoon. It was they who called me here, Jesus and
Sheela-na-gig. The dream foretold it,
and set me on the path of inquiry that brought me here on this day.
