Summer School In Ireland
I drive to the Ursulines convent near Shannonbridge who offer me hospitality. I will take part in the Clonmacnoise Summer School a few miles away. People associated with the many early Irish monastic sites throughout Europe are welcomed to it. On Sunday I am invited to lead a service of Blessing the Earth and Healing the Land on the public Pilgrim Way beside the historic monastic site. On Friday I speak on ‘The Spirit of the Early Irish Monks’. I hope to unpack the spirit of penance and poetry, devotion and obedience, learning and hospitality, soul-friendship and pilgrimage, listening to nature and to ordinary people in foreign mission lands. Both the service and the lecture can be downloaded from this site 1) CLONMACNOISE 2014 2) A Healing of the Land Service.
While I was preparing the lecture I had a thought. Why not publish a list of all known early Irish monastic site and encourage the growing Clonmacnoise network to make pilgrimages to these and give feed-back on experiences?