STORY BY DEVON ANNE FARMER
PHOTOS BY JC JOHNSON

 This week our Culture Keeper passports take us to the famed but tiny Scottish island of Iona for a fleeting moment of reflection, as recounted by our newest Culture Keeper contributor.  

In A.D. 563 after being banished from his native Ireland, St. Columba landed on Iona in the Southern Hebrides with the intention of bringing Celtic monasticism and Christianity to Scotland as penance. The island happened to be the first spot he reached from which he could no longer see the outline of his beloved Ireland in the distance.