a detour of music, memory, grief and generosity

This piece comes with apologies - it is not about walking, but a few thoughts on the past few days off the path. 

I was asked a while ago if I would like to take part in a recording of new, and older unpublished music from the Iona Community, with a few other appropriate pieces thrown in. Of course I said yes - I would make the time and I wasn't far off the Scottish border by the weekend of recording. So we gathered - singers, instrumentalists, all with some kind of association to the community, from all over the UK. It was a highly focussed, tiring, but wonderful couple of days with very talented, extraordinary, and beautiful people. It always fills me with a bit more hope when I do this kind of thing with these people. And even though it's hard work there is something very relaxing about just fitting in to the music, not having to bash every note, and not being in charge. It feels natural and alive. 

And I have a wonderful and generous friend in Glasgow who always gives me a bed when I'm passing through, for which I am very grateful. 

There is a song written nearly two decades ago by John Bell, in response to the boating accident that took place just before a Christmas, when four young men from the island community of Iona were killed by a wave that overwhelmed their boat in the Sound. I went to the island as a volunteer musician that Christmas, long before I officially worked for the Community. I was very young. After offering to cancel, the islanders insisted that Christmas still go ahead at the Abbey, allowing the Community to do what they do best at that time of year - to gather people from all places and situations and give them a Christmas that otherwise they would find unhappy elsewhere. Hope had to still be given a place. So we, a motley crew of volunteers arrived on an island frantic to find their boys, grieving at what they already knew. Crofters, hotel staff, community staff, b&b owners, boatmen, the postman, retreat house workers, shop assistants, children, men, women - all were out every day scouring the small but treacherous coastline in the fierce December weather. While we were there the first body was found. And as I was the Abbey musician for that short period of time, my job was to play for the funeral of this young man. I have rarely felt quite so unqualified. I wasn't an islander, I didn't know the boys well, I was young and English. But I did the job, because it was what I had to do, and did it, alongside friends in the music loft in the Abbey, in the best and most authentic way I possibly could. And as Savage Garden's 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' played at the exit of the coffin, we embraced and wept. 

We volunteers left the island before New Year, and Neil, the bookshop manager I think then played for the subsequent funerals. 

Alongside the whirlwind of the island in frantic grief, the dynamics of the volunteers were also often messy and complex and I spent most of those two weeks in a haze of sleeplessness. After arriving home I remember going to a New Years party at a friend's house, and being taken home early as I couldn't stay upright out of pure exhaustion. 

The song John wrote was beautiful - deeply authentic and appropriate words for such a unique tragedy as this. But the islanders were not, understandably, ready for it to be sung, and so the words alone were printed on the service sheets. I kept a copy of the manuscript however and still have it. 

When I worked on the island as the full time resident Abbey musician, a few years later, I still kept this music but I never played it in the two years I lived there. It wasn't mine to play or sing. 

Last year I visited the island again for a week on music and liturgy, and in a wee sing led by John, I turned the page of the sheet and there was the song. This was the first time I had heard it being sung and I couldn't join in as I was trying not to weep. I had to leave and sit down by the sea and sob. I don't know why. There's always a sense in which if one thing makes you weep you then find yourself weeping for everything else you haven't been able to weep for. I didn't want to be seen and I didn't want people to know. It was not my grief. They were not my sons, fathers, brothers, or lovers. I have never presumed to call Iona 'home' apart from the times when it physically has been. And yet, musicians, liturgists, leaders - those who find themselves doing a job they sometimes don't feel qualified enough or strong enough to do, do it because they are asked and because they are needed, and so do it with the most authenticity they can muster. But these things sometimes leave their mark, more than people realise. 

And so to this weekend. We as a group were given the job of recording this song. A soloist was needed and I was asked. I hadn't said anything to anyone about any of this and when I spoke to our director at the end of the recording he hadn't even been aware of the story of this song. It was a long time ago. He just knew that it was beautiful and deeply poignant and wanted to find a way to do it meaningfully. He could have asked anyone - most had better voices. I'm not sure I really did a good job of it, and it is now recorded and there's nothing I can do. But I still find my eyes filling with tears as I write this. 

I wanted to ask 'why now?' - does it take nearly two decades for a song to be ready to sing, and for people to be ready to hear it? Sometimes I suppose it does. But what I can't imagine is the grief of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, friends - for them maybe there will never have passed enough time. 

God give them peace 

but not a fragile peace, 

more like the peace 

Christ knew despite the storm, 

convinced that nothing in the height or depth 

could kill the soul created in God's form. 

God give them peace 

whose voices now are still, 

whose touch is gone, 

whose laughter rings no more. 

In your great purpose find a place for them, 

a safer sea, an ever friendly shore. 

(vs 3&4) 

John L Bell, Dec 1998 

And... 

I write this in the knowledge that a dear friend is in the midst of the most painful time of her life, and deeply aware that I can do nothing except hope and wonder and write. 

So, it is back to the path tomorrow. There's always a slight anxiety starting again even after only three days out. 

I will officially be in Scotland very soon.