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Skellig Michael, like two other famous monastic islands I have visited in years past, is named for the archangel, who reputedly came to Ireland to help Patrick with the snakes and the demons. But that name came later. When that first boat load of monks approached, it was only a skeilic—a stone island—one of many islands off the west coast of Ireland. Why did they choose this one? What seemed promising? What made them hopeful? What told them that God was better to be found or served here than at the place they came from?
Perhaps they liked that it points to the sky. Skellig Michael is 714 feet of stony verticality, a natural Gothic cathedral with narrow spikes of eroded rock decorating it like gargoyles. It has twin peaks, one at each end, like the fingertips of two parted hands lifted to heaven. Making no compromise with horizontal reality, it thrusts straight up from the sea floor to the clouds. Any living thing that dares to ride its audacious breaching of the sea will have to hold on for dear life.
Fittingly, there is no place for our boat to tie up. Skellig Michael is little more accessible now than it was 1,400 years ago when the monks arrived. Nate and I jump off the boat onto a concrete platform that has been stuck like a limpet to the base of a cliff–on an island that is all cliffs. The captain backs the boat away, telling us he will wait out in the ocean until he sees we have returned to the platform. I find myself hoping he is a vigilant and reliable man.
We walk a few minutes on a narrow 19th-century concrete path built to service a lighthouse that once provided the only human beings on Skellig Michael but now is fully automated. The path circles around near the base of the island toward and intersects some medieval steps that will take us higher.
Actually there are three ancient pathways to the top of Skellig Michael. An eastern ascent begins near the landing platform and another path starts out from Blue Cove on the northern side of the island. Today there are only a handful of days a year during which a boat could successfully approach the northern steps, part of the evidence that climatic conditions were different in the first few centuries of monastic life than they are today.
Three paths up the mountain. It reminds me of the favorite metaphor of religious universalists. "There are many paths up the mountain," they say, suggesting that most all quests for the spiritual are equally valid. It is a tempting view, one that certainly fits nicely with our modern let's get along, affirm everybody, who-are-you-to-say mood.
But the metaphor takes a mysterious turn on Skellig Michael. In addition to the southern ascent, there are also on the south side 14 steps carved into solid stone that begin in the middle of nowhere in particular and lead further on to more nowhere. They do not start at the sea nor do they end in the heights. They are simply there, testimony to an unfulfilled idea—begun in hope, buttressed with sweat, but left hanging, in process and in stone.
No, I do not believe that all paths lead to the top of the mountain. Some lead off cliffs. Some rise promisingly for a ways but then descend back to the base. And some, like the 14 Skellig steps, lead nowhere at all.
Where, I wonder, is my own path leading?
The lighthouse road intersects in a few hundred yards with the southern ascent. I am glad for it. Here, finally, is the real thing, the authentic stuff, the guidebook-promised tangible evidence of ancient spirituality. I am thankful for the steps—until I start to climb them.
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