The annual Holy Isle retreat with Cynthia is beginning this week on the 24th June. As retreatants prepare for pilgrimage to the west of Scotland, Beth O’Neil and her husband Ken who attended last year’s, “Water in the Desert Wisdom School,” writes of the Holy Isle so we may all as a collective community bring our awareness and prayer to the furtive ground of this wisdom school. As Cynthia recently offered ‘Prayer this way allows action to be collective, diffusive, non-localized. When we put something into the atmosphere – here – everybody tuned into that wave length will pick it up. It’s carried on that current of Hope” (Cynthia Bourgeault, What Is Ours to Hold, excerpt teaching from May 2025).
From Beth O’Neil: My intention in writing about my retreat experience on the Holy Isle in 2024 is to bear witness to how ones intention and longing co-mingles in Thin Spaces, offering a luminous insight into the vivifying Presence of God in all things.
The Crossing
Last year I saw her from my bedroom window on the Isle of Arran. The Holy Isle, The Holy Mother, the ground of the luminous. She’s called me wistfully, in the gathering winter winds coming from beyond the window pane.I saw her outline. Her flowing hair cascading down her rock breast, the waistline valley, rising again to rounded hilltop hip, and a gentle slope of a thigh down to the ground.
Why now a year later, is there a longing for the Holy Isle. My own Mother passed three weeks ago. That may have something to do with it. The sadness is sweet for a full life, and there is a bone tiredness from the demands of caring for her over the last three years as she declined. This longing is not for just rest, it is a different deeper longing.
Cynthia maintains that part of her role is “tending the longing.” This longing was certainly tended when the opportunity opened up for Ken and I to travel from the south west corner of Australia to the west of Scotland to the Holy Isle to be on retreat with Cynthia and experience the magic of the Isle itself. It would be my first in-person meeting with my teacher. I knew not how I would first greet her. Hands in namaste prayer gesture, or ‘how you goin mate?”. That was all shot in the foot as we bumped into each other the day before the retreat on the Isle of Arran. “Hello Cynthia” Ken confidently calls. I look up and sure enough Cynthia in her checkered jacket, there, in person. The three of us, all be it taken by surprise, had a relaxed conversation, on a crossing/a bridge over a meandering brook. The bridge is a symbol of a crossing point, where I leave one place only to arrive in another. Cynthia has been that bridge for me over the years. God could not have arranged it more perfectly.
The crossing to the Holy Isle had to be timed and navigated by the ferryman who knew the waters, the tides, the under surge of swells. This crossing began to familiarize our feet with the moving terrain of inhabiting the liminal space of retreat.
We stepped onto the island and stood in silence at each of the eight Tibetan Buddhist stupors (a symbol of the enlightened mind of the Buddha). The Soay sheep that have roamed this island since pre-human times scurried past to seek out the verdant green grass in front of the Mother house. Once settled in our room by the welcoming staff that volunteer here, we went for a walk to sense into the island itself.
The Island is owned, stewarded and the yearly programme of retreats organized by, devotees of Tibetan Buddhism in the Karma Kagyu tradition. The isle’s previous owner, Mrs Morris, a devout Catholic, had been ‘instructed by Mother Mary in a dream to pass Holy Isle to Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, to be used for peace and meditation.’ Lama Yeshe had already ‘seen’ the Isle in a dream in 1981 and when he was approached by Mrs Morris and went to the island in 1990 he knew it would be ‘an island open for all’. Through fundraising he raised the necessary money to buy it and founded it as The Centre for World Peace and Health. He felt inspired and confident to, “re-awaken Holy Isle to its sacred purpose.”
High on Lama Yeshe’s agenda from the beginning was the stewardship and care of Holy Isle’s beautiful natural environment. Thousands of trees have been planted, eradication programmes of noxious weeds, and care of animals in the natural environment, as well as sustainability principles of the upgrade of buildings were priorities. This is ongoing.
We walked along a poo laden path shared by ancient breeds of Eriskay ponies, Soay sheep and Saanen goats. To our right the waters of the bay lapped rhythmically the pebbled shore.
After 20 minutes of walking we stumbled across the narrow pathway to Saint Molaise cave. I knew very little of this Irish Saint. I walked up the rock steps as bracken fern spilt onto the narrowing path. Near to the top, my footsteps spontaeously slowed by an overwhelming reverence in my being, silence rose up like liquid filling me from toe to head. For me such was the energy of St Molaise cave.
“Our own completion of purpose, somewhere in us knows. We can’t know it with our mind. Our feet know. We return and return to the non-sentimental, spiritual perceptual organ of our inner heart.”
-Cynthia Bourgeault, Holy Isle Retreat 2024
Thus, begun the Wisdom retreat. We lay on the rocks close to the shore from the cave and, I kid you not, the very stones were humming. The land of the Holy Isle is vivified. The abundance of the organic gardens are testimony to this. I have never seen such broad huge leafed produce – ever. The dedication and knowledge of the devoted gardeners and volunteers that work them was a joy to work alongside.
Water In the Desert
The retreat centered around the cross fertilization of the Wisdom of the Desert Mothers and Fathers as it moved into the northern watery Celtic lands and spirituality.
How did the wisdom land in the water drenched earthy lands in the North?
When one glances to the horizon in these island peppered waters, often you can not see where the sky and water, and land meet. They merge into each other, so misty and flowing is the landscape. For me, Cynthia was able to name the on fire singularity of purpose of the desert monks. Their wisdom was clear, sharp edged as they bought fierce attention into the eye of the heart to become Ihidaya. It mysteriously made its way to Ireland and sparked in the hearts of many ‘wandering fools for Christ’ that sailed and walked their way across the Celtic waters and lands. They resided in caves, around sacred water wells and springs. This had its practical reasons and, for the Celts, person, land and the sacred flowed in and through each other. They merge. What was and is a water source is inextricably sacred, coming from the source. Everything is softened in the element of water- it yields and flows. Even the sharp edges of the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers flowed with tender heartedness.
In the Celtic imagination, navigating mystery is through myth. “Myths are not just ancient stories but living narratives that shape our understanding of the world and ourselves”(1). Cynthia has long been fascinated by the ancient story of Irish Saint Brendon (he is a sailor after all). His sea faring voyage has been a ‘back drop to her life’ and eventually she wrote a play around the narrative of his journey, which comes from the 8th Century Immran Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot). This mythic story, an actual physical voyage to the “Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum,” the Promised Land of the Saints, is infused with fantastical creatures and miraculous events as Brendon searches for the promised land. Cynthia describes it as “a happy embrace of the physical world and also the edge of where we place our attention so we can ‘see’ the place the saints promised”.(2)
“The two worlds touch each other, one is in the other and this is the unitive creative imagination. There is a sense of mysterium. A fresh ‘ah, allowing the worlds to become a responsive partner. We participate in our own reality. We call to us what we are seeking” ( CB Holy Isle retreat 2024)
As if God wanted to emphasize this inter-penetration of the worlds, a sailing boat anchors in the bay of the Holy isle the night of Cynthia directing her play on St Brendon.
“Manifestation emerges out of silence, allowing them to flow together “ (2)
In this misty, meeting place, where the imaginal vivifies this world, what yearnings and wisdom is whispered back out of the ground?
At the end of this June, the mystical and practical vision of Thomas Keating, as illuminated through Cynthia in her latest book will be prayed, contemplated and interwoven into the the Holy Isle. The Isle, itself a crossing place of renewed and lived vision.
May we ‘tune into that wave length’ so a sense of ‘mysterium’ can renew us over and over. That all the places we find ourselves in may be made holy.
I leave you with how a saying of the desert Father seeped up from the ground of the Holy Isle at the cave of St Molaise: “Abba Lot went out to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”
The Prayer of St. Brendan
Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You. Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You.
Citations
- Dr Martin Shaw
- Cynthia Bourgeault Holy Isle Retreat 2024