Sometime between 2015 and 2018, with the sunspot cycle low in its eleven year sequence, I imagined, in pastel, how an aurora might look over Iona Abbey, feeling that such an event, if ever it happened, would beautifully illustrate the idea that Iona is a thin place where heaven reaches down to touch the earth.
So I was absolutely thrilled to see the picture below taken by Mark Wildman, Head Chef at The Bishops House, Iona, on 24th September 2024. Thank you Mark and thank you Robbie (Warden of Bishops House)
Just wonderful!
The pastel was an outworking of a poem I had written in 2015
Aurora
Your hand,
O Lord,
ripples the light
at the ends of the earth.
You have set the stage
for dancing curtains
to irradiate
the dark hours
preceding
a polar dawn,
with the assistance
of Your beautiful servant
the sun,
whose life-giving
irridescence
is muted
and borrowed,
so we might safely
be wonder-struck
by the glory
of Your
heavenly light.