The Easter Weekend from Hell: A Tentative Introduction

more cat pictures

I haven't posted anything from my 1989 Great Britannic Adventure journal for awhile.

A lot of that is because I've been screamingly busy--with my garden, with activities of organizations I'm involved in, with trying actually to land a full-time job.

But a lot of it is prudence? discretion? cowardice?

All of the above?

I spent Easter weekend of 1989 on the Scottish isle of Iona. In my journal I record the sights and sounds of my geographical experience there. But those four days are also--predominently--the record of an emotional and spiritual journey into my own soul.

And it wasn't pretty. That inward trip was dark, cold, and dreary as the weather that swept down over that little North Atlantic speck of stone and peat that late March weekend.

Ought it be disclosed? True, I'm not who I was nineteen years ago, though I can sympathize with that young woman.

But will my readers understand that? What if I'm interviewing with a church, and a member of the pulpit committee happens on my blog and knows it's mine? Will he judge who I am now by who I was then? What if a pastor member of my presbytery sees it, and thinks, "What a wet noodle! I'm not clueing her in to any vacancies I've heard of!"

But then, if a church is that judgemental, do I really want to serve them? Would I be able to serve them? And any pastor colleague who might be passing me references knows who I am now and wouldn't care!

Besides [she says snarkily] I read all sorts of people who go to Iona and hang out with the Iona Community, and find it the most spiritually uplifting, life-changing experience they've been through.

Oh, really?

So . . . in the interest of full disclosure and for the sake of some cynical entertainment, maybe it's time for me to present the other side.

But first, in a subsequent post [or three], I'll give some background on certain people and on why I went to Iona in the first place.

Right now, however, I need to go out and get my fingernails dirty again. Assuming my own weather isn't acting Scottish and bucketing rain.