Iona I - Pilgrimage Plans

In another couple of weeks I will be on the island of Iona, off the northwest coast of Scotland, spending a week as part of a group from our Presbyterian church. My husband and I will be spending the preceding week in Paris. My warped thought processes last winter produced a speedy determination that, as long as I had to cross the ocean, we should make the most of it, despite certain cost factors that render that decision laughable.

I thought that I would write a bit about our plans as I start to orient myself toward the next few weeks, starting with the whole Iona idea, the brainchild of our new associate pastor. Thanks to her, we are in the midst of a three-year cyle of adult programming on the themes of The Bible, The Traditions of the Church, and Christian Practice. The Iona trip is meant as a culmination of the past year's work on the second topic, but I see now that it also serves as a bridge between the concepts of tradition and practice.

Our little group has been decimated by illness -- two of the women were diagnosed with breast cancer almost simultaneously in the past month and will be spending the next few weeks contending with chemo instead of lost luggage. (Their plights make my decision, along the lines of "once in a lifetime -- the money be damned") somewhat less laughable. As a result, there will be twelve of us, ranging in age from 80+ to 15, meeting in a Glasgow hotel one evening and making the journey to Iona the next day. One of the women who was somewhat hesitant to make the committment last winter told me that the deal was clinched when she heard me talking about the trip as a pilgrimage ~ a word that always reminds me of Mrs. Ellis, my English professor for Intro to British Lit at Mount Holyoke, who told us that each year she hoped in vain for one of her former students to produce a movie of The Canterbury Tales.

Well, it won't be April and we won't be looking for the bones of St. Thomas Becket, but we will, for those of you familiar with The Canterbury Tales, make up a somewhat diverse group of pilgrims. According to one of those internet quizzes making the rounds some time ago, I get to be the Prioress. I don't remember a thing about her Tale, but I'm guessing that enlightenment is sure to come quickly from another quarter.

Our destination:

Main Entry: pil·grim·age
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'pil-gr&-mij
1 : a journey of a pilgrim ; especially : one to a shrine or a sacred place
2 : the course of life on earth

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

(Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales)