Thought for the Week – 5th May 2024

Notes from Tiree

I am on holiday on Tiree, the most westerly of the Inner Hebrides in Scotland. It is the windiest place in Britain, the first land encountered by Atlantic gales. Today I walked to the remains of a monastery, well over 1000 years old. It is perched beneath cliffs facing the sea, a collection of stone huts housing a community of perhaps 10. Even in the sunshine today it was wild, it would have been a very hard place to live in 1000. What drew monks to this place of isolation? Perhaps as they gazed out on the Atlantic , I wonder if they saw the wide ocean and the sweeping horizon as a worthy altar to offer their praises to the Lord of sea and sky?

Rev David Poyner