Waymarkers...

Read excerpts here...

   I've called them signposts or breadcrumbs.  When I recently finalized my trip to Iona for next year, I discovered a new term...waymarkers, and a new book.  After I booked my stay at the St. Columba hotel on Iona, I stumbled on a new blog by Mary A. De Jong, the author of this book.  Surprisingly, she was on her way to Iona at that very moment! I ordered her book and am now following her, day by day, as she visits this incredible thin place...probably one of the most famous thin places on earth.  What I like about the book is that it is also a journal in which you can write your responses to her reflection questions.

   This sort of thing happens to me all the time so I don't know why I am surprised every time it does. The synchronicity of occurrences is a constant wonder to me and I love it when the planets seem to line up.  This trip next year is a perfect example of it.  I will be spending a week in my beloved Burren on the first leg of the trip.  For the first time I will be there at the height of the bloom and I will be able to walk this amazing thin place in the company of orchids and alpine wildflowers.  I thought I wouldn't be able to rent my favorite house in Ballyvaughan this time because I would need 4 other people to share the house cost but I met a man at an art opening recently, quite by "chance" who said he and his wife had always dreamed of visiting Ireland!  The next thing I knew, I had another couple signing on and...Viola!  I'll again be staying in "John's house" in Ballyvaughan. (I call it that because it is where my friend John O'Donohue use to hold his Celtic spirituality retreats and it is through John that I discovered this amazing location).

   I had planned to travel to Glendalough, Ireland in September next year but as things began to shape up for the Spring I decided to add it to this trip...if I was able to change my reservation that is.  I just heard back that the little stone hermitage (that is what it is called, and after my visit to Thomas Merton's hermitage it has a whole new meaning for me...click on this link to see a video of the place) in the Wicklow mountains is mine for two weeks!  The trip is complete.  Three thin places in one trip!  Amazing...the planets really were all in alignment this time!

   How does this synchronicity happen?  I don't know.  I only know it happens and when it does it is good to go along with it.  Contemplative photography is like that as well.  Images draw us in and move us from one place to another and it is best to throw out the plan and follow along.