In September of 2021, I had the opportunity to travel to Scotland and explore the land of my ancestors with my daughter who was finishing up her master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh. We affectionately refer to this glorious two-week trip as the September Scottish Sojourn.
Bailey met me at Edinburgh Airport and led me through this city she fell in love with while studying abroad her junior year of college. After having dinner that night with her lovely roommates from China and England, I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow and didn’t move again until I heard her sing-song voice saying, “Mom. Mom. We have to get going if we’re going to get to the castle by 10.” This was during the pandemic and tickets were assigned specific times to keep the crowds to a minimum and allow for social distancing. I smiled as I thought about how the tables had turned from the days I would wake her up to get her going on her day.
We headed out for my first Scottish
breakfast and a walk up the Royal Mile to tour Edinburgh Castle. Legend has it that if a University of Edinburgh student visits the castle before they graduate, they will fail their final exams. Since Bailey had completed her coursework by then,
she felt safe walking through the 12th century military base and royal residence. Over the next few days we would walk thousands of steps exploring this beautiful, walkable, but quite hilly city. I must confess that I had to pick up my pace to keep up with the brisk gait my daughter had developed during her time here.
From Edinburgh we traveled by bus, train, ferry, and the occasional taxi, to visit the places we had chosen for our itinerary. We stayed at a cozy bed and breakfast on the “bonnie banks” of Loch Lomond and spent a couple of days in the wee village of Dornie where we toured what I like to call my ancestral home, Eilean Donan castle. From Dornie we took a day trip to the Isle of Skye, a place of breath-taking beauty, then headed to Inverness, one of my favorite spots on our trip. Loch Ness gets all the attention but the River Ness which runs through the city stole my heart.
But by far, the place I loved the most was the Isle of Iona. Long a place of sacred pilgrimage, Iona is said to be the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland after St. Columba established a monastery there in the 6th century. What stands in that place today is a beautiful Benedictine abbey, home to a thriving faith community focused on environmental and social justice. Pilgrims who visit Iona often speak of it as a “thin space,” using a term that made its way into Celtic Christianity from the pre-Christian, pagan people who inhabited the British Isles thousands of years ago. It is often used in a spiritual sense to refer to places where “heaven meets earth” and the veil between the two is “thin.” People describe these places and times and the feelings they engender in a multitude of ways: having a sense of transcending ordinary reality, glimpsing the sacred or the divine, a connection to something bigger than themselves. I would describe it as a feeling of oneness with all of life - a feeling of mystery and awe.
In my life I have experienced being in a thin space, accompanied by those feelings of oneness, awe, and connection a few times. Holding my baby girl for the first time. Surrounding my dad’s bed with my sisters and daughter as he transitioned from this world to the eternal. In Scotland I felt it walking along the River Ness, seeing the sunlight quickening the colors of magnificent stained-glass cathedral windows, and at the top of Dun I, or The Hill of Iona. I felt it, too, in majestic Eilean Donan castle where my 8th great grandfather Farquar McRae once lived.
But here’s what surprised me: I also felt this thin space awareness as I was in a cramped train seat, jangling along the tracks, looking out dirty train windows and becoming fully aware – in all the cells of my body – of the joy of traveling with my daughter in that amazing place. In that moment I realized that it is a gift of mindfulness practice to take me to a thin place, a place where heaven meets earth – however you might define that – a place of connection to all of life – anytime I drop fully into my body. Anytime I can get out of busy mind and be with the direct, sensory, physical experience of the present moment. What I realized in moments and places both sacred and mundane on my trip, is that meditation is a kind of portal – not necessarily to enlightenment or transcendence – but to the sacred space of the present moment. And while I wouldn’t turn down another trip to the beautiful Isle of Iona, I don’t have to go there to find that thin space. I can find it within myself, anytime I choose to be here, now.