Iona

On Iona, looking back at Mull.

After passing my defense in 1998, I spent five weeks in the British Isles as a graduation present to myself. One of my favorite bands is an Irish Christian group called Iona, named after an island off the western coast of Scotland. Of course, when I learned where the island was, I rushed off to visit. This evening, I stumbled upon a website that reminded me of it, and decided to share my journal entries from the trip. The visit occurred 13 years ago this past Thursday/Friday. This was one of the top highlights of my entire trip and I hope you can see why just rereading it, I wish I was back there.

Iona is tiny, about three square miles, but it’s historical value is incalculable. St. Columba (aka St. Columcille) was self-exiled from Ireland as penance for being the cause of a battle, and settled on the island and formed a monastery that helped preserve Christianity during the Nordic raids of the mid first millennium. The Book of Kells was created there and many kings are buried, including Duncan, the Scottish king murdered by Macbeth.

“It’s A Small World After All”

There’s an old, silly joke about an Earth astronaut goes into a bar on Mars and ends up sitting next to an alien from Neptune. The Neptunian turns to him and says, “Hey, you’re from Earth. Say, do you know….?”

The reason that’s funny is because of how often that sort of thing happens and you really do know the person they’re asking about. We joke about the ‘six degrees of separation’ and the Kevin Bacon game, because for a planet of 7+ billion people, it is amazing how small of a family we really are.