I left early in the morning for Glendalough to join a group of pilgrims on St. Kevin’s Way. Glendalough,”glen of two lakes,” is the site of a medieval monastic city in County Wicklow, south of Dublin. It was founded in the 6th century by the ascetic monk Kevin and has been a destination for pilgrims ever since. St. Kevin’s Way is the pilgrim path the leads from the small village of Hollywood, through the Wicklow Gap, to the doorstep of St. Kevin’s monastery. I was very excited to do my first pilgrimage in Ireland and impressed to see the parking lot full of cars and walkers, despite the rainy weather. And then someone broke the news to me: the pilgrimage was cancelled. The local mountain rescue team had advised the organizers against doing the pilgrimage because several sections of the path had been replaced by small but rushing rivers.

I was so disappointed.

I’ve been reading “Questions of Travel” by John Hutchinson, a small book/essay that was published by the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College, Dublin. I am completely absorbed in Hutchinson’s writing, and for the past few days, I’ve been dwelling on this particular passage:

There are several senses of the word ‘gift’, but common to them all is the understanding that it is something impossible to obtain through our own efforts. We cannot meaningfully buy a gift for ourselves; it cannot be acquired through an act of will. A gift is bestowed upon us…

…The idea of a ‘gift’ also applies to the outer life of a work of art. As Lewis Hyde has written, the art that matters, which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, is work that is received by us as a gift. The work appeals to that part of our being which is given and not acquired.

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I was so disappointed.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to spend the day learning that some disappointments are gifts in disguise.

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The Labyrinth

Labyrinth designs can be traced to prehistoric times, but it was adopted by medieval Christians to symbolize pilgrimage. While we were unable to walk St. Kevin’s pilgrim path to the monastic city on Saturday, we were able to symbolically walk the pilgrim’s path by tracing the Glendalough labyrinth with our feet. Not the journey we expected, but one lesson of pilgrimage is to embrace the unexpected.

There is also a labyrinth inside the Glendalough Visitor Centre carved onto the surface of The Hollywood Stone. This stone was originally located in Hollywood, where we should have started our pilgrimage on Saturday. Archaeologist Louise Nugent has written about the Hollywood Stone on her research blog Pilgrimage in Medieval Ireland.

St. Kevin’s Well

After silently walking the Labyrinth, the pilgrimage organizers led us over to St. Kevin’s Well. I had not read or heard any mention of this holy well or its rag tree when I was researching Glendalough and the St. Kevin’s Way pilgrim path. It is truly a hidden gem, located across the river from the Visitor Centre car park and labyrinth, not within the grounds of the ‘monastic city.’

Holy Wells are relatively common in Ireland and often found at early Christian sites. They are usually associated with a particular saint and/or specific healing powers. This well also has a ‘rag tree.’

Hanging rags or mementos from tree branches is an ancient ritual, and it seems to occur in disparate places all over the world. In Europe, it is a hanger-on from pagan days, when trees were especially potent symbols of magic. Like many pagan rituals, rag trees morphed with Christianity. They survive in many places, including here at Glendalough, where visitors have tied fabric to the tree to symbolize wishes or prayers.

Seamus Heaney “St. Kevin and the Blackbird.”

We continued to explore the ruins of Glendalough in the rain. Since we had come all that way to follow the path of St. Kevin, it seemed appropriate to pay homage to him somehow. One of my fellow pilgrims had brought along a copy of Seamus Heaney’s poem “St. Kevin and the Blackbird.” He read it aloud to us as we stood in the rain and listened. It is a beautiful retelling of one of the most famous legends of St. Kevin. The monk was meditating with his arms outstretches when a blackbird landed in his upturned palm and began to nest. Heaney describes Kevin’s reaction:

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

Heaney then wonders about Kevin, his pain and his prayer:

‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

It is a beautiful meditation on the old legend of St. Kevin and the extent of his compassion. You can read the entire poem and hear a recitation by Heaney himself here.

After the reading, everyone was quiet and thoughtful, and our pilgrim group was beginning to get smaller as a people walked off to explore on their own. I wasn’t ready to go home, so I joined a small group of pilgrims on the Miner’s Walk, counter-clockwise around the lake.

The Miner’s Village

I hadn’t expected to see the ruins of a miner’s village at a medieval monastic site, and even if I had known, I probably wouldn’t have expected to be so moved by it. I felt so small walking through the valley, and even smaller next to the huge boulders around the old mining village. Because of all the rain, there were impromptu rivers everywhere, running beneath the stone pathway and through the stone skeletons of the houses, rushing and roaring like great pumping veins through the body a stone-earth beast.

And the greatest surging vein of them all, the rushing waterfall at the far end of the valley:

A Lone Holly Tree

In Celtic folklore, the Holly tree is the evergreen counterpart to the Oak. Oak rules the ‘light’ half of the year, from the winter to the summer solstice, while Holly rules the ‘dark’ half. Holly is also said to have protective powers. This lone Holly was located near the top of the waterfall, keeping watch over the valley and lakes below.

The Meaning of Vast:     noun archaic

noun: vast; plural noun: vasts

1. an immense space.

Origin: late Middle English: from Latin vastus ‘void, immense’.

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Labyrinths – Holy Well and Rag Tree – Kevin and the Blackbird – Water, Stone, and Holly – The Vast

All gifts I would not have received if the St. Kevin’s Way pilgrimage had gone according to plan. Is a gift really a ‘gift’ if it is expected? I’m not sure that it is possible to go on pilgrimage feeling certain of the gifts you will receive, confident in the outcome of your journey. Perhaps pilgrimage is setting out with an intention, but without expectations. An intention to confront uncertainty. Or to accept uncertainty?  To accept that the outcome is unknown, but you go anyway.

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Pilgrimage One – Be open to the possibility of unexpected gifts.

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By Amanda Wagstaff, Hut2Hut Pilgrimage Editor, March 26, 2016