“Landscape is not just there. It was here long ago, long before we were dreamed. It was here without us. It watched us arrive.”
~John O’Donohue

These are the words that have given form to the pilgrimage I am helping to lead to Ireland. This journey will take us on the various landscapes that make up the tiny but important island of Ireland. In the span of ten days we will be on an even smaller island, in the mountains, in pasture and farmland and on the rockiest, and I am told, windiest cliffs ever to be experienced.

Over the course of the last several days leading up to this trip, two different people have asked me about the purpose of this adventure. I have to admit to be taken aback. One person even said: “What can you do there that you can’t do here?” Being one of those people who is always up for the next opportunity to pack my bags, I found myself stumbling over my words.

When this journey was first dreamed we talked about what the gift of landscape is to us. We also talked about what it means to travel to places that have given birth to the long, enduring evolution of our faith story. Certainly the land of Ireland has done that as those monks so long ago copied and saved the sacred texts from those who wanted to rule people by squashing their intellect. They also improved upon the beauty of those words by illuminating the words with image and color and the now famous Celtic designs we see in such works as The Book of Kells.

But this path we are on is also about being present to the diversity of this landscape and the ways in which poets and scholars have written their experience of the Holy, guided and inspired by the Creation they see all around them. Our hope is that practicing this presence will not only inspire us to understand these beautiful texts and what it meant to the faith experience of the writers but also inspire us to be present to our own experience of the Divine and to follow their example. How does the landscape that birthed each of us live in someplace that longs to be spoken and offered to the world?

This is a part of our hope as we planned and shaped each day of this pilgrimage. Of course much more will happen. Friendships will be formed and others will be strengthened. Conflicts will be negotiated and problems will find resolution. Prayers will be said and blessings will be offered. Songs will be sung…..this is a mighty group of singers! And community will be formed, that kind of intense community that happens when people are on the shaky ground that is not their own place of comfort and familiarity.

But this landscape thing is what will continue to hold us whether we articulate it well or not. I know it is true for me because of what happened yesterday. As I was packing up all I needed from my office and was headed out the door, I reached into my mailbox one last time and pulled out an envelope from someone I had not heard from in several years. It was really just a ‘catch up’ letter telling me of jobs and children and houses sent by someone who now lives in Canada but whose wedding I was blessed to perform years ago. On the cover of the notecard were these words: “Is it not possible that a place could have huge affection for those who dwell there? Perhaps your place loves having you there. It misses you when you are away and in its secret way rejoices when you return. Could it be possible that a landscape might have a deep friendship with you? That it could sense your presence and feel the care you extend towards it?”

The writer? That fine and noble Irishman, John O’Donohue. And so we stand between the landscape that will miss us and that which will watch us arrive.

And to that I say blessed be.