Scotland Pilgrimage

I am about to embark on a Presbyterian heritage pilgrimage to Scotland with a group of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (the church I serve as Associate Pastor) members, staff, and friends. We leave Friday evening and the church portion of the tour ends July 21. After that, a friend and I are staying on for ten days and going to the Shetland Islands for a good chunk of that time.

I promised folks from church that I would resurrect the blog I kept during my sabbatical pilgrimage walking across France and Spain in the fall of 2022, so those who cannot go on the trip can follow along.

We will begin the trip in Edinburgh—birthplace of the Presbyterian arm of the Reformation, where we will spend three days. Then we have a day in Stirling before heading to the west. After a few hours in Oban, we’ll catch the ferry to the Isle of Mull where we’ll be based in Tobermory for three nights.

The second part of our pilgrimage goes back much further than the Reformation to Celtic Christianity, St Columba, and the Isle of Iona. We’ll have a day trip to Iona to visit the Abbey, and experience this “thin place” that has been a pilgrimage destination for more than a millennium.

Many of us hope to see puffins and Fingal’s Cave on the Isle of Staffa the next day, while others will explore Tobermory.

Then it’s back on the ferry and down to Glasgow for our final night of the tour.

I’ll try to post nightly during the church tour, and then as often as the muse strikes while I continue traveling in Scotland.

The Pilgrims’ Aiding

God be with thee in every pass,

Jesus be with thee on every hill,

Spirit be with thee on every stream,

Headland and ridge and lawn;

Each sea and land, each moor and meadow,

Each lying down, each rising up,

In the trough of waves, on the crest of the billows,

Each step of the journey this goest.

—from “New Moon of the Seasons: Prayers from the Highlands and Islands”, collected and translated from the Gaelic by Alexander Carmichael