Love Bites: Two Pebbles

Iona beckoned us as the ferry drew closer. Barely three miles long by one mile wide, skin of sand and rock exposed to the sun, Iona gazed curiously at the approaching boats.

In 563 AD, St Columba – an Irish abbot – sailed to Iona. The sky pressed low and wisps of cloud dripped onto the land, while the grass grew upward from the sky. Columba reached for the grass, pulled and Iona’s light stirred; handfuls of pebbles followed. 

We had precariously pitched our tent on the north of the island, and despite the wind pulling at our shoulders, both us and the tent clung on stubbornly. Iona is known to be a ‘thin place’, a veil between heaven and earth, an entryway into suspension. We made our way to St Columba’s Bay, which resides on the opposite end of the island, in the south. There, the bay is made entirely of pebbles, each one worn down to the size of a decision. They say the pebbles there hold mystical powers. You must choose two pebbles: one representing something in your life you would like to let go of, and one representing something that you would like to manifest for your future. 

For me, the real decision is which pebble to pick. Such decisions plague me; I feel them move under my skin, contaminated by a litany of thoughts. I wanted to split open the earth and lie against it and feel its cool surface, letting it spin underneath me, while I remain its passive recipient. Perhaps, love tempts that same surrender; it arrives, undoing and reshaping the landscape, and recedes. The current will continue to meet with the pebbles on St Columba’s Bay, and the world will spin on regardless. I let my fingers curl over the pebbles, one in each palm, before they wash away.