The Inside Joke

Iona is an island 3 miles long by 1 mile wide, population about 120. The Abbey, built in 13th century, originally founded by St. Columba in the 6th century, is the main tourist attraction. It has a graveyard where about 45 Scottish kings are buried, including Macbeth. I'm particularly fond of the ruins of the old Nunnery; I've eaten lunch a number of days sitting on a bench there. There is a general store, a small grocery that would fit inside most of our 7-11s, and a handful of small shops selling art and jewelry, and a lovely used bookstore. The truth is, though, you can see all of that in a day (perhaps less if you don't stop to pray in the Abbey). So what do people do here? Especially if, like me, they are here for 10 days?

The answer: they collect stones. There are stones everywhere. The beaches are littered with them. People walk along with their heads down, looking for stones that call to them. There are rose colored granite (the stone that make the cliffs across the sound always look like sunset); brilliant green stones the color of my dining room (yes, that color actually does exist in nature); white marble;and mermaids tears, stones spotted with the tears of a mermaid when St. Columba cast her out for falling in love with a monk. Most of the rocks are worn smooth by the ocean, but my favorites are rough, waiting to be smoothed, much like me. I had a 15 minute conversation today with fellow visitors about how to get home with 15 pounds of rocks added to our luggage. (Conclusion? Shipping them back is not an option.)

People don't collect the stones simply because they are beautiful or because they are free souvenirs to take home to our family and friends. We collect them because they are a way to take Iona home with us. I think I'm trying to build my own abbey, stone by stone.

Iona is made of stone. But not just any stone. The stone of Iona is 2.9 billion years old.

2.9 billion years old. Nearly 3,000 million years old.

Iona is, I'm told, literally the oldest place on earth. If you find a stone with a fossil in it, it's not originally from Iona. Iona rose out of the sea before the smallest carbon organism formed within the depths. Fossil stones are pilgrim stones, traveling from near and far, drawn by God to this place that has been rained with God's grace longer than any place on this planet.

No wonder we collect stones. The ancient Abbey is not even milliseconds old when compared to the age of the stones around us. You can pick up a piece of creation and put it in your pocket. It's irresistible.

I go to the Abbey at least once a day for prayer, but most of my prayer has taken place sitting on a sand dune, watching the waves of Iona sound or the north Atlantic lap on the shores. This is amazing to me. I'm not a nature girl. I am not the kind of person who lays back on the scratchy sea grass getting sand in my hair while I watch the clouds drift by. Yet here I cannot be outside enough. The sun doesn't set until 10:30 p.m. and the light lasts even longer and I'm grateful, because it gives me more time to be outside in the chapel that is the island of Iona, prepared by God at the beginning of the world.

Last Tuesday I walked across the island and sat on a dune at the edge of the beach. I sat there trying to paint the sky and the sea and the stones that had found their way into my bag when I walked along the beach. My paintings are terrible, not only because I am artistically challenged, but also because there is no way to capture the peace that makes the colors brighter, the sun warmer, the winds fresher.

As I look out at the beaches on Iona I am struck by how familiar they are. It took me some time to place it, but I finally figured it out. The white sand, the turquoise and lapis-colored water, the jagged stone outcroppings against which the waves fling themselves. I've seen them before...in Hawaii.

Hawaii. I had many pictures of Scotland in my mind, but none of them were Hawaii. If you gaze inland it is undoubtedly Scotland. There are impossibly green hills dotted with the creme puffs shapes of sheep. There are jagged stone cliffs beyond. The wind brings the scent of the heather growing in the fields. But turn and face the ocean, and it looks like a deserted beach you might stumble upon in Hawaii, laid out like a bejeweled gift from God.

Today at the Abbey, the preacher spoke of joy. It was a sermon I needed to hear. I realized that is what I've been feeling as I sit on the dunes. Not simply happiness or contentment or peace, but joy. I feel connected to God through the stones that first peeked out of the ocean 2.9 billion years ago; through the prayer of nearly two millenia that has covered this island; through the understanding that it's all connected through time and space, so that a baby beach created by a volcano in Hawaii is the twin of the ancient beach of Iona. (Though, I must say, you know the difference immediately when you feel the temperature of the water.)

Last Tuesday when I finally put away my paints and dusted off the sand, I walked back across the island, not really praying, but more just thinking to God about the amazing similarity between Iona and Hawaii. And then God, hearing my mere thoughts, gave me a miracle.

As I came up the hill to my hotel, three young men sat on a bench playing instruments and singing. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me as I caught snatches of the sound on the Scottish wind. As I came close I realized I was not imagining things at all.

The young men were playing ukelele and singing in Hawaiian.

2.9 billion years this sacred place has been here, but on a Tuesday afternoon on a sunny June day in 2008, God heard my thoughts and took the time to let me in on the inside joke.