The Cross

There are moments in life when small but somewhat serendipitous discoveries make you catch your breath.

You find that missing piece of jewellery, or you bump into an old friend in a mall when visiting a distant city, those kinds of things.
And then there are the events which seem to defy anything short of divine interference.

The regular reader of this space will remember how Lauralea indicated a desire to visit her ancestral home town while we were in the UK, and the next day came a letter from a stranger offering us a bed in that EXACT SAME TOWN.

Well, for those of you keeping score between God and coincidence, Lauralea and I experienced another such Epiphany while in a book store in the Iona Abby.
Lauralea took a pottery course last autumn and wanted to continue to explore her creativity with that medium. I had asked her to consider making me a Celtic Cross to hang on my wall, and for Christmas she presented me with a beautiful, hand carved clay Celtic cross.

The design for the carving came from a long process of looking at different Celtic designs, knots, and images.

The final outcome was a beautiful piece of work that hangs proudly in my office. Exactly the kind of thing I was after.

One would think that was the end of that story. Except that while we were in the bookshop Lauralea happened upon a book about the design, style and history of Celtic Crosses.

She came looking for me in a hurry, showing me what she had stumbled upon.

In the book of 101 Celtic Crosses, cross number 86 was a picture of an exact copy of my cross with the following caption;

"This style is used by some modern Celtic artists to represent the Isle of Iona, which in Gaelic means the Isle of Saints. St. Columba landed there in 563 with twelve companions and founded the monastery where, it is believed, the Book of Kells was begun."

In other words, seven months before we would be on Iona, with no real connection to the place or that unique design, Lauralea was carving me an Iona Cross.

A great big fluke, or a God who is not constrained by the limits of time? You decide.

As for us, we bought the book, with humble hearts and surprised looks on our faces.