The spirituality of place. Although it’s largely secular, Robert L. Harris’ Returning Light, his memoir of spending three decades working on Skellig Michael, is about spirituality of place. Poetically written, his is the account of being one of the caretakers on an island about seven miles west of southern Ireland. Some call the book nature writing, and I suppose in a sense it is. He describes his companions—puffins, razorbills, and gannets—and life among the ruins of a monastery from the Medieval Period. There’s no straightforward narrative arc here. This is a set of reflections produced by a wind-swept, weather-beaten man who, when on the island, lived with very little. His writing, as is often the case with those who isolate themselves, tends toward the reflective. It may raise more questions than it attempts to answer. And it fires the imagination with monks seeking such an inaccessible place to pray.
My wife and I came to read this book somewhat accidentally. Someone we know was having a difficult time getting through it—looking for that missing narrative arc—and suggested that it might appeal to us. In our three years and change in Scotland, we never did make it to Ireland. From the pictures of Skellig Michael, it’s like Skye (which we did reach), only more so. And smaller. More intimate. We did spend a pleasant time on Iona. The photos didn’t turn out because, in those days you had to mail your slide canisters in the Royal Post for processing and the poor thing got crushed, exposing the film to light. Iona is less sharp, less demanding. More accessible. But the idea of finding yourself an island, even if only tidal, like Lindisfarne (which we also did see), is a time-honored way of reconnecting with your soul.
Harris doesn’t write in a traditional Christian idiom, but he focuses on light. The monks’ cells, at least some of them, share the early Celtic monument alignment with angles of the sun illuminating rooms with no artificial lights. Illumination is, it seems, what he was seeking, It came as no surprise that his words evoke those of Thomas Merton for some. Harris observes, thinks, and contemplates. Sometimes bursts into poetry. His is a memoir of a man who spent quite a lot of time alone. Who befriended, briefly, sea birds. Returning Light isn’t really a book to rush through, but one to engage slowly. In a sense, I suppose, by isolating yourself on an island where monks once hid and prayed.
