Kenneth Steven, in his poem of imagined fragments, “A Song Among The Stones”, describes what the journey might have been like for the Celtic Christian monks who are believed to have travelled from Iona to Iceland.
On the first page, these two lines grabbed me
yet this is the place they came to find
an island thin to the divine
That’s a wonderful phrase, “thin to the divine”. I can think of many places where it feels as if the land is thin to the divine, those special places which move and stir your spirit. Off the West coast of Scotland is definitely one of those places for me.
Where are yours?
‘Thin to the divine’. Wonderful. Iona is certainly such a place. Kilchattan Bay on Rothesay, too. And the Auld Kirk, St Monans. And a country church we came upon, open and empty, at the end of a single track road near Finzean, with some wild flowers in a simple vase, and a burn running nearby.
[…] of the idea of the “thin spaces” for example, where you feel connected to something greater than […]