A Diy Holy Island Retreat
LONGING FOR A HOLY ISLAND RETREAT?
At this time of year people around the world plan for a retreat. Many book in to one on UK’s Holy Island of Lindisfarne.
The Covid pandemic need not mean that all is lost. You can plan your own month long retreat at home using my A Holy Island Prayer Book (Morehouse/Canterbury). David Adam said this book ‘provides a pattern that would enrich us all’.
This retreat guide provides morning, midday and evening Bible readings, reflection and prayer each day for a month. There is a theme for each week ranging from creation to community, from peace to saints and sinners.
Each midday focusses on a pilgrim site on the island – which you can re-imagine morning and evening also – and offers inspirations linked to that site. One example, from St. Cuthbert’s Isle:
‘When I first came to live on Holy Island I heard a sound that was strange to me, it was the cry of the seals. ‘Are they in child birth?’ I asked David Adam, the Vicar. ‘They’re praising God’ he replied. I began to listen more thoughtfully to the sounds of God in creation…
We can listen to the sounds of creation on or off islands, for, as my London landlady once said to me ‘People are my scenery’. God pulses through engines and computers as well as through beasts. Some urban pilgrims to Holy Island fear that this is not so. I encourage them to do what Columba did, to make God their island as they return.
Lord, you are my island
In your bosom I nest.
You are the calm of the sea
In that peace I rest
You are the waves on the shore’s glistening stones
Their sound is my hymn
You are the song of the birds
Their tune I sing
You are the sea breaking on rock
I praise you with the swell.
You are the ocean that laps my being
In you I dwell.
You can purchase copies from this web site or Amazon.
