The Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence estimates that roughly one Canadian in four is acting as an unpaid caregiver for a family member, friend or neighbour. That’s around 10 million of us at any one time. Some are full-time caregivers, while others juggle caregiving with paid employment. This is a crowded pilgrimage, though the people on the path are often invisible because caregivers tend not to stand out. And so the journey can be lonely as well as demanding. But can it be holy? Can it contain grace and blessing?

It’s easier, of course, to see the rocks in the path rather than the blessings. In my experience, the rocks in the caregiver’s journey look a lot like the first four stages of grief that psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross listed: denial, anger, bargaining, depression.

In denial, or perhaps before the caregiver grasps the full scope of the challenges ahead, the thinking goes, “I can do this. It isn’t so bad. Maybe the diagnosis is wrong. We’ve got lots of time.” The opening stage of the pilgrimage feels manageable, and there is hope lighting the way.

Further along, as the reality sinks in and the demands on the caregiver become greater while energy is depleted, anger shows up on the path. Sometimes I feel irritation and frustration at David’s memory lapses, and then I feel guilty for that. I don’t live up to my own expectations of patience and kindness. Anger, fear and grief are entwined, as I miss the way things used to be for us and worry about the future.

Bargaining in this context can mean planning and hoping for a future that is now uncertain: just one more trip together, one more happy birthday, one more grandchild to be born. And there may be conversations with God in the sleepless hours of the night: “Just grant us this, and I’ll be less short-tempered, more patient.” Sometimes it’s the raw cry of the Psalmist: “How long, O Lord?” I don’t know if I can do this.

For the caregiver of someone with a progressive debilitating disease such as Alzheimer’s, the depression that can settle in is a form of anticipatory grieving. The person is being lost inch by inch, bit by bit. David compares his disease to a thief in a library who is randomly stealing and throwing away book after book, and I see the ways in which he is being changed and sabotaged by this merciless thief. It is heartbreaking. The rocks of depression are grief, loneliness, loss, for both of us. The world shrinks and the path becomes darker.

Artist, writer and United Methodist minister Jan Richardson, in her prayer poem A Blessing for the Brokenhearted, says, “Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger. Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew.” Easy answers or trite sayings don’t help, because they don’t touch the complex depth of the painful reality. Instead, she writes, “Perhaps it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating… [with] the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.” (This prayer can be found in her book The Cure for Sorrow.)

Caregivers have hearts that are breaking because of their loved one’s suffering, and yet they go on. Resilience and faithfulness are the pulse within those hearts, and caregiving can become a form of spiritual discipline, with a daily vow to continue it with love and devotion.

David and I have had a morning prayer and meditation practice for almost 50 years, and many mornings these days I sit with that vow to care on my heart. Some days it feels light and natural, while others it feels impossibly heavy. And I’m reminded of the pilgrimage that David and I made in 2019, when we walked from Lindisfarne across Scotland to Iona. Some mornings we anticipated the day’s walk ahead with pleasure, but on other mornings we were daunted by the distance, hurting with blisters and sore knees, and taciturn with each other as we set out wrapped in our separate cloaks of gloom. What saved us, kept us going and blessed us were the gifts along the way of other people’s care, the beauty of the earth, and surprise moments of grace.

I draw on those same gifts now, on this pilgrimage of caregiving. Other people’s love and understanding are immeasurably helpful. While walking to Iona, it was the practical gifts of plasters for blisters, a warm blanket to go over my sleeping bag, advice about walking poles and knee wraps. Now it’s a friend who meets me regularly for coffee so that I can vent, laugh and sometimes weep. Or it’s the little group of caregivers who meet monthly to share our stories, pool resources, and know that we are utterly understood by each other. Or it’s my son’s offer to move in for a few days so that I can visit my sisters on the other side of the country.

Richard Gillard’s “Servant Song” hymn expresses it well:

We are pilgrims on a journey,
Fellow travellers on the road.
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.

The gift of other people makes it possible to continue the pilgrimage. Earth’s blessing is another constant, and one on which I rely more and more. Walking across Scotland, we were startled repeatedly by the sheer beauty around us, no matter how sore or grumpy we had been: bluebells and gorse, cows and lambs, mountains and valleys, and finally the astonishing turquoise of the sea around Iona. The earth is unconditionally generous in her gifts, if we have eyes to see. And now, at home, as I walk our elderly dog down to the river or over to a park, it’s a time to breathe more deeply and see more clearly. Even in the cold or wet, the earth restores me and blesses me.

Then there are the surprise moments of grace. After one especially gruelling day’s hike on the Scottish pilgrimage, we arrived at a hostel and found it offered home-cooked meals and a hot tub. What joy! That small luxury went a long way. And grace has continued to surprise me on the caregiving pilgrimage: chancing upon a poem or a quote that lifts my spirits; getting a phone call from a friend checking in; being given a time and place to retreat for a day. I’m practising noting those moments of grace, and saying yes to opportunities for self-care, not least because the sobering fact is that caregivers have an increased risk of illness and even death because of the physical, emotional, social and spiritual load they carry.

In her book Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground, author and teacher Mirabai Starr encourages us to be exactly who we are, “a true human person doing their best to show up for this fleeting life with a measure of grace, with kindness and a sense of humour, with curiosity and a willingness to not have all the answers, with reverence for life.” And she too uses the walking metaphor: “Keep walking. Rest up and walk again. Fall down, get up, walk on. Pay attention to the landscape… Be alert to surprises… and keep your heart open against all odds. Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable or embarrassing or heartbreaking. Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace all over you, all around you, and settles deep inside you.”

The fifth stage of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified is acceptance. For a dying person, it heralds the ability to let go, say goodbyes, and have some measure of peace about the impending death. For the caregiver, perhaps acceptance is about being able to say yes to what is happening to their loved one – not that it’s good, but that it simply is; and in the yes, gradually to find the grace that “settles deep inside.”

I’m not there yet. But I trust that this journey, like all our journeys, is held tenderly in the heart of God where the pulse of love abides and nothing is lost. And I trust that as we near our destination, we are always going home.

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This is how it all started.

David: I have long been a commuting cyclist. I had an inbuilt compass: I always intuitively knew which way I was going. But then, one day, pausing at a four-way junction, I had to stop. I went through this junction three or more times a week, but on that day I stopped, feet down, unable to remember which way to go. I looked for the sun to get my bearings, then I could carry on, shaken and confused by this. I felt as if I had been mugged.

I had noticed some other worrying signs, such as forgotten conversations, difficulty multi-tasking and diminished awareness of time, so David saw his family doctor, who referred him to a neurologist, who ultimately referred him to the Toronto Memory Program. David’s MCI was confirmed, and we were given information about its symptoms and how to manage it. There is as yet no cure, but David was given the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial aimed at slowing any progression. And he is assessed every three or four months to monitor his condition. So far it remains stable, but living with cognitive impairment is frustrating.

David: Without a reliable memory I lose track of myself. Most of us need to remember what is coming next. We have a memory of having done this before. With a failed memory, trying to do something that was recently familiar may mean you have no idea how to do it now. Memory loss is often a complete deletion, and it makes me feel helpless. I have to do it from scratch, and that is hard work. Asking someone to explain yet again, “How do you do this?” feels shameful.

While I am grateful for the mild in David’s MCI, I am all too aware that as I step in to manage many of the details of daily life now, I can easily overstep and thus disable or infantilize David. So I need to practice more patience, more gentleness, less taking of control. We were colleagues in ministry for more than 40 years, as well as marriage partners, and just as we had to learn to navigate each other’s different styles and goals over those years, and weave in our parenting of three children, so our challenge now is to work together to navigate this disability gracefully and with trust that the Spirit will give us the gifts we need in the years ahead.

David: I do not trust myself to lead worship alone now. I need us to do it together. Preaching works well, as I have total control and a text that I wrote. Sometimes I think to myself, “I know I can lead a full Sunday service in church.” But another part of me quietly says, “Actually, no, you can’t anymore.” And this fills me with grief.

There is no way of knowing what the future holds. David carries the gene associated with Alzheimer’s disease, and his mother died with dementia, but neither of those factors means he will inevitably deteriorate. The clinical trial gives us hope, as does his steady cognitive scoring so far. He is more careful with what he eats and drinks and is taking a natural supplement that our younger son is adamant can make a positive difference. But we do not know. And at times David has spoken of his desire to choose an “off ramp” if the prognosis becomes darker.

David: Cognitive impairment is an ongoing condition, and not a good one. It feels as if someone has hacked my mind. In the long run I have little hope. Not only do I want to spare my family and friends from watching me deteriorate, I do not want to experience it myself. But meanwhile I will carry on and trust the Holy Spirit’s gentle hand at my shoulder. And I know She will have a gentle hand on my family’s hearts as I leave. Since my teens I have tried to be a disciple of Jesus. I have trusted Jesus so far in life. I will follow him willingly into death.

For now, we are both learning to live in the sacrament of the present moment and not to get ahead of the grace, as a wise spiritual director of mine used to say. We are cherishing the simple things and living quieter lives. Extravagant vacations and lengthy trips for their own sake are not necessary and would add an unwanted layer of confusion and disorientation for David. But time spent with family and close friends is priceless, and we are continuing to make memories, even if they fade.

Sharing this journey with others in the same circumstances has been particularly helpful. They understand about the frustration and impatience. They know that sometimes there is comedy, and sometimes there is an upwelling of grief. They recognize the fatigue and the fears. In small, informal support groups, we have been able to share experiences, resources and way markers.

Ultimately, we are all learning to face our own and our loved ones’ mortality. We live, we age, we surrender our health and independence, and we die. This is the normal trajectory of human life, not a rude interruption or malfunction. And at some point, we might realize, as a friend of mine put it, “They’re calling our row.” I picture us all, one by one, making our way out of our pews and down the aisle towards the altar for communion. Some of us will be limping and holding onto others’ arms; some of us will go swiftly and eagerly; some will need encouragement. But we are not alone, and we move towards a banquet.

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Even with congested traffic the journey can hardly be called a long one, but metaphorically it was huge, and almost two years later I still find myself ruminating on the vastness of the pilgrimage from full-time work to retirement.

My generation is retiring in record numbers as we Baby Boomers enter that stage of life, so there is plenty of advice, wise and otherwise, on how to retire gracefully. For clergy there are also protocols around leaving a parish cleanly, without trying to hang on to relationships forged during a ministry. Pastoral relationships are different from friendships, we are reminded. And yet after years of serving in a church community, having the privilege of entering deeply into people’s lives at times of great sorrow and great joy, seeing little ones grow up and elders die, friendships do form. A strong web of relationships develops. And the pain of walking away from that is real.

Leaving any ministry or job can be painful. But there is something additionally poignant about the pang of loss that comes with retirement, precisely because it is final. Perhaps that explains why many of us take on part-time roles after retiring, so that we can carry on doing what we did for so long. And churches need these newly retired people as volunteers and as interim clergy. I remember how much I valued that cohort in my own parishes over the years. Yet a friend in Guelph had warned me against jumping back into ministry or volunteerism too soon, for the sake of filling the uncomfortable, unfamiliar gap. And so I promised myself that I would do nothing for the first six months other than settling into Guelph and travelling to the UK to see family.

The other reality was that I was burned out after my final years of ministry during Covid and a huge church renovation project, and my husband had been suffering from memory loss for several years already. It was time for our world to shrink to a more manageable size and for our energies to be focused closer to home. In the metaphor of a pilgrimage, our roads needed to be smaller, slower, shorter, heading not outwards but inwards.

At first, I felt most acutely a huge sense of relief that I had put down the weighty responsibility of my work. A parishioner had told me that her husband, on retiring, had described his new life as heaven on earth. I got that. Our work demands so much of us, for better and for worse, and parish ministry in particular is a complex blend of leadership, service, management, pastoral care, liturgical expertise, teaching, preaching, and much more. It had felt at times like spinning an impossibly large number of plates on sticks, while trying not to let any fall. And yes, I knew it was God’s church, not mine. I knew I was a minister, not a messiah. I relied on the guidance and strength of the Spirit at work among us all. Nevertheless, it was a weight of responsibility that I was deeply relieved to put down.

As we settled into the home back in the town where we had raised our children, and as we reconnected with old friends there, a slow trickle of energy began to return. We visited family in England and spent a month in Scotland, hiking in the hills of Skye and walking through the chain of islands that make up the Outer Hebrides. Unlike our pilgrimage three years before, when we had walked some 500 kilometres from Lindisfarne across Scotland to Iona, we were not walking all day and camping by night this time, but instead had a car and a comfortable caravan. It was much easier, freer – another metaphor for transitioning into retirement.

And yet there was also a pang of grief under the relief. As my energy returned, I found myself missing the work and the sense of purpose and identity it gave. I missed the life of the church community, with all its ups and downs, challenges and joys. I missed the friends I had made there. My husband noticed that sitting in a pew on Sundays as a parishioner, rather than standing behind the altar as a priest, rankled with him and made him restless, critical, sad. And we both found ourselves antsy on Saturdays, as though we were forgetting to do something, after four decades of gearing up for Sundays.

So the honeymoon period of retirement as heaven on earth turned out to be more complex. Retirement (on a pension, with a home of our own) was a gift and a privilege, and yet it also involved loss and disorientation. It was hard to get used to not being busy all the time. With colleagues still working, some struggling, I felt guilty for having slipped into the slow lane. But my friend’s words about not jumping into busyness too soon, allowing some fallow time instead, stayed with me.

The same friend is a gardener, and he turned up on my birthday in the spring with a car full of perennial plantings from his garden. He knew I had great ambitions to turn our large empty lawn into flower and vegetable gardens. My family gave me ten rose bushes as a birthday gift, and around the same time I bought vegetable seeds and seedlings from a local organic farm. The fallow time was about to give way to a season of planting.

Somewhat to my husband’s alarm, I began digging up sections of the lawn, creating new, curving spaces for the flower beds and business-like raised beds for the vegetables. I pictured a riot of colour throughout the summer and copious food to take us into the winter. But gardening is a long, slow game. The perennials took their time to root. Some were unable to cope with the toxins produced by our two large black walnut trees and had to be moved. Others grew but put out few blooms. While my neighbour planted beds full of annuals for instant colour, which I glanced at enviously while digging up yet another piece of the lawn, I was discovering that perennials take time and care.

The vegetables, too, had lessons to teach me. We had copious lettuce and an abundance of green beans, but the peppers were reluctant to thrive, and the tomato plants grew leggy and weak because I failed to prune them. The squash played a game with me where they multiplied under cover of their leaves. Just when I thought the last one had been picked, more were discovered hiding in the shade. I forgot I had a packet of carrot seeds and tossed them into the ground late in the summer. They yielded a small handful of miniatures in mid-November.

Gardening invites you to slow down and notice. There is some strenuous physical effort required at certain points, but mostly it felt last year like a matter of getting to know the little piece of land we had settled on, and the plants I was bringing to it. As we were rooting into our new stage of life, the plants were embodying a parallel process. As I tended them, watered and weeded them and enjoyed their bounty, I was also aware of settling myself down, focusing on one thing at a time, instead of spinning multiple plates. Often I just stopped and smelled the roses.

Two of our adult children have also moved back to Guelph, where they grew up. We see them often and delight in being able to drop in on each other. Our youngest one lives in Mexico and often reminds us that in traditional cultures we would be regarded as elders who have entered into a chapter of life typified by wisdom, a slower pace, a handing off of responsibilities. That reminder has been helpful for me, conditioned as I am to being productive, busy, in control. Doing nothing more than smelling the roses and observing the vegetables grow can be a spiritual practice.

“Consider the lilies,” said Jesus. “They neither spin nor toil, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” So I took time to consider the lilies, and the roses, and the beans, tomatoes and squash. I gave myself permission to keep my calendar relatively empty. I practised patience – not a strong suit of mine, but increasingly important as my husband and I cope with his memory loss.

This pilgrimage into retirement is a journey to a new destination. Ultimately of course, and naturally, it leads to death. But along the way it invites us to learn letting go, slowing down, trusting, being more than doing, watching more than acting.

In his book To Bless the Space Between Us, teacher and poet John O’Donohue has a blessing for retirement, which includes these words:

You stand on the shore of new invitation
To open your life to what is left undone;
Let your heart enjoy a different rhythm
When drawn to the wonder of other horizons.

Have the courage for a new approach to time;
Allow it to slow until you find freedom
To draw alongside the mystery you hold
And befriend your own beauty of soul.

Wonder, courage, freedom, mystery, beauty. These are gospel words of wisdom and good news at this stage in the pilgrimage of life. And Christ, whom Mary Magdalene mistook for a gardener, tends our souls with loving care.

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I considered walking part of the Camino de Santiago, as several friends have done, but it didn’t feel quite right; it didn’t feel like my land. Instead, what began to coalesce was the thought of finding a path that would take me through my own home country of Scotland, where I was born and spent my early childhood. And then I hit upon the idea of walking to the island of Iona, one of the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

St. Aidan, patron of my parish, was a monk on Iona in the seventh century. Iona was the cradle of Celtic Christianity, and when the King of Northumbria in England wanted to restore Christianity to his realm, he asked for one of the monks from Iona to come. Ultimately it was Aidan who established a monastery there, on the island of Lindisfarne, and Celtic Christianity took root and flourished.

These two holy islands associated with Aidan, Lindisfarne and Iona, are some 550 kilometres apart on foot, linked by no single pilgrims’ way but by a series of ancient footpaths and old roads, some well signposted and others not so much. With my sister and her partner as our accompanying support team, with their caravan and a tent, and with a thick sheaf of detailed maps, we set out on May 5 from Lindisfarne with June 1 as our planned arrival date on Iona.

David and I were also celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary that year. I pictured the pilgrimage as a special experience that we would share together, as we walked in prayerful contemplation from Lindisfarne, where we had spent retreats as young clergy newly ordained in England, over the hills of the border country, past the great ruined abbeys of Jedburgh and Melrose, along the shores of Loch Lomond, up the West Highland Way, and finally to the islands of Mull and Iona. It would be a pilgrimage of the heart and soul, in the footsteps of the great St. Aidan, after whom one of our sons is named. What could be more romantic?

The reality was far more challenging, physically painful, emotionally tough and spiritually rewarding than anything I could have imagined, and our experiences were so markedly different that we each tell the story now from our own perspective.

Caught up in wonder

David:
I am married to a planner, and our support team was her UK sister and partner. Perhaps unwisely, I chose to let them do the planning – unwise, not because they needed supervision, but because I did not get engaged in owning this early part of the walk. As we walked, I was frequently irritated by what seemed like bad planning or odd choices. But actually, the choices they made in careful planning were always correct. Next time I will take ownership in all the stages. Planning and route-finding for an un-commercialized pilgrimage are vital. Hindsight cost me a lot of grumpiness and frustration. Perhaps this, for me, was a necessary transition out of busy parish life and into the silent walking of pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is not conversational. Paths tend to be single file, so chatting is hard and distracts you from finding your footing on irregular surfaces, and the wind tends to whip your words away over the hill before they have a chance of being heard. Even being together, much of the walking was silent. That too requires some adjustment. We would walk through the morning and stop for a path-side lunch. These lunches were the springs of life! First the feet were set free, then the bodies reclined, and then conversation over a sandwich.

The third challenge was footwear and rain-proofing. I can only suggest that buying where you are walking is better than buying from MEC, which is Canada-centric. I replaced everything enroute.

By now, reading this, I ask, “Why go?” Well, it took me about half the pilgrimage to discover this. “Dis-cover” sounds to me like taking the covering off something. It began for me with clouds as we crossed Glen Coe. We paused for a break as we entered this huge valley, made by a collapsed volcano and then chiselled out by glaciers ages ago. As we descended into the glen, we stopped for a rest after the long morning walk. Lying back on the heather and looking up, there were clouds – white against a cobalt blue sky. Clouds of such magnificence and wonder, mesmerizing in their shape and sheer volume. I was caught up in wonder. I could have spent all day looking at them. What was actually happening was the Spirit finally finding a way to open my eyes and my heart and turn down the noise of my mind and my beloved “critical thinking” mode. Pilgrimage is not a problem to be solved, a project to complete or an item on a bucket list; it is removing yourself from a place where you know, where you are in control, where you are able to carry on as normal. Pilgrimage, for me, was the dismantling, the stripping away of my interface with daily life and leaving me emotionally and spiritually undefended and open.

I never quite recovered from the clouds: even when they were emptying sheets of rain on us, I continued, to Lucy’s slight bemusement, to look up and say, “See how magnificent the rain looks as it sweeps over the cliff above us!” In fact, I was astonished by waves in the sea, by grasses blown by the wind, by the gulls that could hang in the air then tumble, screaming down only to sweep up for sheer joy, by the stonework of a wall made by hands long dead and farms long abandoned by the Clearances. Darkly I found an inner fury at the English wealthy for the callous disregard they had had of “inconvenient peasants” farming where they wanted to shoot pheasants for fun. Pilgrimage opened a way of perceiving. The simplicity of mist spoke of holiness in creation. A beautiful old country estate house spoke of arrogance and greed.

Each day ended in a pub. We called up our support team (whose support, I slowly realized, more and more came from their grace-filled openness of heart) and had a welcomed drink. It was not the distance walked that finally mattered to me; it was the breaking open of my narrowed, outcome-oriented vision, my defences of logic and practicality. It was the awakening of my soul to the unnoticed beauty of dew on the moss in a stone wall, the majesty of a lake, the surge of the sea against rocks, crashing as if for the sheer joy of it all, and God’s invitation to me to dance in this, to delight in it, and continue to notice it. For that too is where God is! 

Pilgrimage is about letting go

Lucy:
I knew we were approaching the pilgrimage with different agendas when David baulked at the idea of walking barefoot across the sands that separate Lindisfarne from the mainland. Pilgrims to Holy Island, as it is called locally, have been crossing barefoot for many centuries, following tall wooden staves that mark a safe passage at low tide. “It’s a pilgrimage tradition!” I urged him. “It’ll be cold and uncomfortable,” he objected. David is a rationalist to my idealism, and he was rightly worrying about keeping our feet dry and unscathed. He is also doggedly loyal and supportive, so took his shoes and socks off as I did, and plodded dubiously across the cold, wet sands on that first hour of our long walk.

I began to question the wisdom of my dream when David strained a knee on Day 4. It grew increasingly painful daily, and he was fearful of a permanent injury. Then we both developed blisters – the walkers’ curse. Small but fiercely painful, they made every step a mental challenge. And we still had hundreds of miles ahead of us, with some challenging terrain. We took a rest day then carried on, David gritting his teeth while I took on the role of encourager and official optimist, while silently wondering if we should give it up.

The turning point came when we faced a two-day hike along the West Highland Way, out of reach of roads and phone range, and so without the safety net of our support duo picking us up, bringing us to our tent and feeding us. We would be carrying extra gear and staying in a hostel between two days of gruelling, rugged walking. It was decision time: press on and take the risk of not being able to make it or wave a white flag now and simply drive the rest of the way to Iona. We decided to press on.

Miraculously, a new pair of walking boots, a knee brace, plus some encouraging words from a German physician staying in the hostel, gave David renewed confidence and the comfort in walking that he’d been desperate for. The mood between us shifted and the land offered up breathtaking beauty with vast banks of bluebells, the long loch and then the highlands opening up before us. The day we emerged successfully from the challenge of that stage is the one day we asked another walker to take a picture of us both, and I still see the quiet, weary joy in that image.

Pilgrimage is about letting go, it seems to me. I had to let go of my preconceived ideas of how it would be, and of how we would experience it together. I had to let David’s experience be his, and mine be mine. We continued to walk together, but we were on different pilgrimages internally, spiritually. I let go of the romantic image I’d had of the two of us chanting psalms and singing hymns as we walked, and instead found simple Celtic prayers like mantras to recite silently. And the more I was able to let go of, like a ship shedding excess cargo, the more I was able to receive.

The day we walked onto the tiny ferry that would take us the last mile to Iona, I felt not euphoria or victory but a quiet, deep sense of peace and gratitude. We spent three days there, joining in the nourishing worship of the Iona Community in the abbey, and letting the gifts of the pilgrimage soak in. It felt like coming home: home to our final destination, but also home to my Scottish roots and home to a Celtic expression of Christianity that is profoundly life-affirming and creation-centred. The pilgrimage was over, and a prayer from the Iona abbey welcome service gave words to what was in my heart:

You, God, have brought us to this thin place
where earth and heaven embrace,
the past interweaves with the future,
and what we want is replaced by what we need.
…. God, you are good to us. Amen.

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