The Grief We Carry

Walking the Coffin Road. A Grief Pilgrimage Invitation

Walking the Coffin Road

This Saturday I’m heading off the Isle of the Big Women (The Isle of Eigg) for the Gather the Keeners Retreat.

One of our grief rituals is walking a Coffin Road. This is the road that the villagers of Grulin (who were forcibly removed in the Highlands clearances) carried the coffin of their dead to Kildonnan Church.

A Grief Pilgrimage

We begin this ritual at the Well of the Holy Women, bringing our blessings for these otherworldly well maidens and asking a blessing from them. Here we will take time to sit by the well and the waters flowing from deep underground sources, which enter into the world at this point, for wells are portals through which divinity flows.

This year we invite you to share the grief you carry so that we may also carry it - from the Well of the Holy Women to the end of our pilgrimage where we are greeted by Sheela n Gig.

Each footstep in this walk is a prayer, last year as I walked, I was joined by both island ancestors as well as my own ancestors - for I walked with my grandmother, who has long been an ancestor.

West - the Direction the Soul Takes

Coffin roads generally follow the direction the dead would have been carried, east to west, for the deceased would have been buried in the west, towards ‎Tír na nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth, and Tir Tairngire (the Promised Land) - the next worlds lying just beyond the setting sun.

Eigg’s coffin road runs east to west as Grulin lies close to the shore with little land for a cemetery. So we will walk from the Well of the Holy Women to the Kildonnan church, just under 4 miles, to where we will be greeted by a Sheela na Gig.

‘You come out of the earth, you return to the earth, you come out of me and you return to me … You can ignore death as much as you want to, but death is going to come’

( Big Vagina Energy - via the Guardian newspaper article)

Sheela na Gig is very much about life, death, and rebirth - and while our society one which is described by Francis Weller as being grief-phobic and death-denying grief is also something that can isolate people. We are expected to get over grief in record time and get back to ‘normal’.

We walk with the keening women who conducted long and detailed rituals, women who held such rituals in the islands for hundreds of years - for there are records of those who raised the dearth dirge for St Donnan - almost 2,000 years ago.

On our grief pilgrimage, while we walk in silence, we walk together. We walk with all those who have walked this path before. For those who walked this path and then were carried on this path on their last journey.

We walk with hearts and souls expanding as we meet birdsong and breeze, sheep and heather, fern and peat. We walk with tide and arching sun as it moves to set behind the peaks of Rum, and we walk wrapped in a deafening silence.

We walk with our own grief and collective grief. We walk with those in pain and those with uncertain futures. We walk with those beloveds we would like to see again - even if only for cherished minutes. We walk with ancestors, we walk with the ancestors of ancestors.

Garbh Bealach, The Piper's Cairn

An Invitation

We will also walk with the grief you carry, should you wish to share it. You are invited to share this below, or perhaps you’d like us to walk with the names of your beloved long dead, those that are ill, or those coming towards the end of their lives. Feel free to add a sentence or two along with their names.

Links:

Big vagina energy: the return of the sheela na gig

Gather the Keeners Retreat