A Return to Prayer

Exploring a Relationship to Place

I remember a few years ago, it was on the edge of summer and I was leaning out of the window seeking a cool breeze the words ‘return to prayer’ drifted in on the wind.

Now and then I’ll be reminded of the phrases and briefly consider what ‘prayer’ means to me. One thread of prayer is gratitude for the land under my feet, my relationship to place, familiarity with certain places over the years - and the stories places have given me.

Relationship to Place

Prayer as a relationship to place. When I sit of a morning, prayer beads in hand - I use the silver step beads to connect to place. They are an invitation to step into the sacred, whether that is to sit quietly and try not to engage with racing thoughts, to breath into the circle the beads form - the circle of life, which connects all things. It’s a portal to breath into which I find clams anxiety. There is a reciprocity, bringing gratitude for life, for living, to see another morning - and be fed a deep nourishing calm.

Celtic Soul Prayer Beads with hagstone - Designed by Jude Lally

As my fingers feel the familiar spherical shape of the embossed step beads, and their cool temperature of the polished silver I think of a place for each bead. On my Brighid prayer beads I think of a little bay at the end of Balnahard Bay at the North end of the Isle of Colonsay, a place I experienced Brighid as a woman of the Hebrides. While it’s not a literal translation the Hebrides are know as Brighid’s Isles.

For the second bead my mind returns to the village of Grulin on the East Coast of the Isle of Eigg. A village whose inhabitants were cleared off the land by a landlord who saw sheep as being more profitable than people. Brighid is there in the three tumbling Oystercatchers that I watched, playfully flying around each other. This is a holy place for lies the Well of the Holy Women. The story of who these women were has been lost but their tangible magic as Keepers of the Well remains.

The third bead brings to mind the flow of creativity and my relationship with Brighid, ever changing as we both continue to morph and shapeshift.

Concealed beneath familiarity and silence, the earth holds back and it never occurs to us to wonder how the earth sees us. 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 intend towards it? Perhaps your favorite place feels proud of you. We tend to think of death as a return to clay, a victory for nature. But maybe it is the converse: that when you die, our native place will fill with sorrow. It will miss your voice, your breath and the bright waves of your thought, how you walked through the light and brought news of other places. When the funeral cortege passes the home of the departed person, is it the home that is getting one last chance to say farewell to its beloved resident or is it the deceased getting one last look at home? Or is it both?

John O’Donohue. Beauty. The Invisible Embrace. Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity and Hope. Where does Beauty Dwell, pg 33

Well of the Holy Women, Grulinn, Isle of Eigg

Prayer takes many forms, the invitation to connect to place and imagining my feet taking steps on holy ground is one which will continually ground me, and offers a reciprocal relationship.