Read Iona Portal for Free Online

him with an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being.  Nothing else seemed to matter as long as he was in that presence.  He always awoke from the dream feeling strengthened and refreshed.
    The dream-hill became his sanctuary, a refuge of healing amidst the turmoil of his shattered life.  Month after month it was the same.  At the end of long days filled with frustration, anger, and loss, Patrick would yearn for sleep and hope the dream would return.  And it always did. 
    After the divorce was finalized the dream stopped coming, yet the Hill still called to him.  When he set out for Ireland he told his friends he was searching for his roots.  But he was really looking for the Hill.
    Ireland had been as green as the pictures in the travel books, but he never found the Hill.  His itinerary had retraced the life of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  He wasn’t sure why Patrick was important to him.  He’d grown up Catholic but rarely attended Mass.  In college he dabbled briefly in Buddhism, had a two-year fascination with “New Age,” and ended up a mildly convinced agnostic. 
    Yet he somehow felt a connection to his namesake, Patrick.  Guidebook in hand, he walked the Hill of Slemish where Patrick tended sheep as a teenager.  He visited the Hill of Slane, where Patrick defied the High King of Tara.  He finished his tour on Cathedral Hill in Downpatrick standing over Patrick’s grave.  He had no words to describe it, but being in Ireland was somehow a healing experience.  Yet he knew his quest was not over.
    There was still one place calling to him:  a tiny, storm-swept isle off the western coast of Scotland.  Though seemingly nothing more than a treeless sliver of rock and earth, historians consider the island to be one of the most significant places on earth.  It’s been given many names over the millennia, but in recent centuries, it’s simply been called Iona .
    Yet Iona is not easily reached.  Patrick’s cramped coach flight from Dublin to Glasgow had been followed by an hours-long rail journey to the city of Oban on the Scottish coast—a trip made infinitely longer by the screaming child in the seat behind him.  After an overnight stay in Oban (which included visits to several of the local pubs), he awoke just in time to catch the MacBrayne ferry to Mull. 
    Yet his journey was still not over.  Disembarking at Craignure on Mull’s eastern shore, Patrick would next board a tourist bus for a long trek westward—traveling a winding one-lane road the length of the island—to the village of Fionnphort on Mull’s western tip.  At Fionnphort he’d catch yet another ferry for the crossing to Iona.
    The summer he graduated from college, Patrick signed-up for an adventure tour and spent ten days backpacking the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.  At the time, Patrick thought Mongolia was the remotest place on earth.  It now struck him that Mongolia had been much more easily accessed than this little Scottish Isle.
     
     
    Patrick slapped a five-pound note on the bar and ordered a pint of Velvet, the thick, foamy Scottish ale he’d discovered the night before in a crowded Oban pub.  Pint in hand, he retreated to the rear observation deck to watch the port of Oban and the western shore of Scotland fade into the distance.
    Driven by its eight-cylinder, 3100 horsepower Mirlees Blackstone diesel, the Isle of Mull was already making fifteen knots across the smooth water of the sound.  The ship was designed to carry a full complement of 80 cars and 972 passengers but the summer crowds were still weeks away.  Lightly loaded today, she carried barely half her maximum capacity.  
    Patrick took a seat next to an older man who looked like a college professor enjoying an early summer vacation.
    The morning was bright and clear, and unusually warm for this early in the year.  Patrick leaned back in the deck chair, stretched out his legs, and enjoyed the sensation of the warm breeze gently ruffling his