Over the evenings of last weekend Sarah and I watched a series of programmes on BBC Scotland called “Sacred Islands” about the presenter’s spiritual searching through the Hebrides and Shetland Islands. All the islands looked differently beautiful, of course. Long white beaches, tumbled geologies and raging seas.
But what interested me more was how the differently interesting people, born on the islands or who had deliberately moved to them, talked. People of various religious beliefs and none but every one of them speaking of a longing they’d had and that I feel myself. A longing for what some of them called meaning, some called heaven, others God, and I haven’t yet found a word for that’s any better than depth, which won’t quite do, will it?
From a couple of the people in the last and probably best of the programmes, the Shetlands one, I wrote down these two summary quotes before going to bed on Sunday night:
“In a remote place like this you come up against yourself. That’s what you’re here for. To find out who you really are. Your limits, certainly. But more your possibilities. In a place like this where there are no distractions.”
And the second one:
“Here I am, in my place, living at walking pace. Like we all are here.”
Both thoughtfully wonderful things to hear. As was the frequent talk from across the islands of “thin places” where life itself feels only thinly separated from something or somewhere else, that might be heaven, or maybe heaven is already there for some of them. On their sacred islands?
All very tempting, of course. That beauty in all its remoteness. But I didn’t and don’t want to go, or at best have only a mild curiosity about ever visiting those outer of the Hebrides and faraway Shetland. Because my place, where I can always find my remoteness and my silence, and where I come up against myself, living at walking pace, is of course here living in Liverpool. Where as you can perhaps tell, my spiritual search continues and probably always will
I hope so.
Painting of Berneray and Outer Hebrides photographs by Sarah Horton.
“Sacred Islands” is on BBC iPlayer.
It was beautiful. Tiree, for me, is all the medicine I need. It really is a thin place - literally, too - a gossamer thin strip of land between the waves and the sky. Trouble with all these documentaries is the fear that their otherness is gradually being eroded away, sadly.
I love that phrase "living at walking pace". Will look out for these programmes. However, as someone who has walked in both the Shetlands and Outer Hebrides, I can highly recommend a visit. Both places really get under your skin and the landscapes full of beauty, peace, strength and stillness are wonderful for reflection.