Prayer Walking

 1) Prayer walks 2011  and 20122) What is prayer walking?  

3) Where to stay

 

4)  Poems and prayers

 

 

 1) Prayer walks 2011 and 2012  

There will be a major ecumenical event – a Prayer Walk on the Saturday before Pentcost, 27 May 2012. This will be based in Mountshannon , opposite Holy Island in Lough Derg on the Shannon.  There will be a walk at 1pm to Tuamgraney and the day ends with an evening service in Tuamgraney,   a musical Whitsun time  together, in the tenth-century Saint Cronan’s Church.  Leave a message on this page for more details of the boat and plan for the day.

We also plan a series of one-day walks,  as in previous years, arranged in clusters so that people who come from a  distance  can do more than one, and people who live more locally can come on the day.  Each day has a specific theme. 

Route guides and suggestions are available for those who walk independently. A spiritual and historical guide to some of  the sites and traditional routes will be published shortly.  A guide to Kilfenora is also available shortly.  

We will be providing  information to link with similar walks elsewhere, as part of a group developing links across Ireland, and in particular West Munster, so that people can undertake longer spiritual walks, similar to and connecting with the ancient pilgrim routes that once crossed Europe, of which the best-known, but not the only one,   is the Camino de Santiago, St. James’ Way to Compostela. In our case we walk between early Irish sites and places of pilgrimage in the past, seeking an understanding of our ‘Celtic’ heritage through the history and traditions, but not constructing it to suit our tastes.  We are conscious of the tradition, and modern need to tread lightly on the earth. We use joint transport where possible at the start and end of walks, and seek to leave our prayers but no physical signs of our passing on the landscape.  the group working on this project cover all Christian traditions and the intention is to provide for  both the enquiring walker and the committed pilgrim.  

In 2011 we  walked in East Clare, including Holy Island;  and on the Burren in conjunction with Clare Farm Heritage Co-operative. There were evening musical celebrations in the ancient churches at Tuamgraney and Kilfenora.  Other walks included the route of a medieval pilgrim way through mid-Clare and onto the Burren, and a West  Clare walk around Loop Head and on Scattery Island. Plans for next year include connecting with other walks, providing linked routes, and providing the material to allow individual walkers to follow the routes.  The walks have led attenders in turn to produce poems, articles, photographs and other expressions of spirituality. They have attracted people of all walking abilities and ages.  Each allowed people to drop in and out as suited their timetable, and people contributed from their own knowledge of the area and and spirituality. Each walk has a distinctive theme, and is intended to relate our emjoyment of the natural environment, the historical sites and the reminders of previous expressions of spirituality with the needs of the country and the world today.  There are no costs, except for the boats to Holy Island in Lough Derg and to Scattery Island in the Shannon estuary; and for parts of walks undertaken with Farm Heritage Tours.  More details from 087 9888 508, or from outside Ireland, 00 353 87 9888 508.

2)What is prayer walking?    

 

 

 

 

4)  Loop Head (Ceann Léime)

 

 

“What is the tower?” she asked as eyes explored

the leap of theAtlantic, breaking light

dancing on spray and shallows, western green

singing to souls fromAfrica’s red earth.

 

So we recalled the stories we once knew

of flashing lights set high on deadly coasts, 

each signal different, a protecting flame 

marking the channel, the unwavering guard

against the current drawing ships to break

like foam on rocks, fixed point and guide,

in storm and sorrow; the last light

to the emigrant, and first to welcome home.

 

And then our stories formed like shoreward waves

of solace raised from strength and bravery;

gracing the darling of another age

rowing to save the sailors in the dawn;

three men on Flannan’s Isle, the beacon set;

compass and guardian in the glowing dark.

 

Telling our knowledge brought back into mind

a surge of homage to forgotten good;

like an old tale turning as a hymn

- aid to the wanderer, strong to save –

sounding new depths, showing though different eyes

eternal rocks, where light leaps free to serve.

 

 

Rosemary Power

 

First published in Methodist Newsletter (Belfast), November 2011.

 

 

Notes

Ceann Léime, ‘head of the leap’, was possibly a Viking sailing direction forIceland.

The earliest known lighthouse ( teach solais, “house of light”, “house of solace”)  dates from 1670 and the current tower from the nineteenth century. 

The question was asked by a walker fromZimbabwe, which has no coastline.

In summer 20l1, for the first time, the lighthouse was opened to the public. 

Grace Darling (1815-42) lived with her father at the lighthouse on theNorthumbrianFarneIslands; and together in 1838  they rowed through a storm to save the survivors of a shipwreck. 

The poem  Flannan Isle by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962) commemorates the lighthouse keepers who vanished in 1900 from the islands west of  Lewis in theOuter Hebrides.