I took time out to travel west recently. It has been over 10 years since I have last been to a conference/retreat with others who are interested in Forest Church type things. Many of the projects Quartz has been running flowed from that.
Here is a video of my journey!
For those interested in finding out more about the places I visited on the way, you can start in New Cumnock where I stopped with Cille for a coffee and found a warm welcome at the Church of Scotland Coffee morning
We then visited Govan old parish church, and the riverside museum.
My journey the next day took me back to a part of the world I have not visited in almost thirty years. I didn’t quite make it to my old camping grounds, but I was close enough to see familiar towns on the road signs.
The landscape brought about powerful feelings of long summers though. Weeks where we would live in camp as a family. Cooking on the fire, collecting water from a stream. Climbing a hill at sunset and walking down a short while later in the dawn light. The memories occupy more space in my memory than is chronically accurate. They are big memories though, so perhaps they really need that amount of space.
Kilmalieu – The Abernethy retreat centre
There is, of course, a lot I have felt out of this journey! but I’m sure it will follow in further posts. If you follow the link above you will find opportunities to visit, and experience the landscape yourself.
In the meantime here is some info about the name of the place
Could Malieu be the same person as St Molaise? Even if he wasn’t, perhaps their lives would have been similar.
We were accompanied during out time there. Many of the methods were familiar. Every practice of them is a doorway to something new. On returning home I was reminded of the following cards we produced when we took our artistic approach to worship outdoors for a walk on 2017.
If you think they would be useful, please print them out and share them around
– Then get in touch to let me know how it went!
