Saint Columba offers and the Crane Colmcille Celtic

offers An original block print from the Anamchara Series of Celtic Saints.
Image 8”x8” matted to 10”x10” on a beautiful handmade paper from Nepal.

About:
Colmcille (Saint Columba)

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ…
–Monastic Rule of St. Benedict

St. Columba was exiled from his beloved Ireland for apparently copying a psalter—a copyright infringement. Setting sail as a “Peregrini,” he founded a monastery off the west coast of Scotland, the island of Iona, where he lived out his life. This new block print, Hospitality, and Christine Valters Paintner's wonderful poem, St. Columba and the Crane, captures one of the many ancient colorful stories about him.

The Saint has a vision,
a crane battered by wind and rain
would tumble onto Iona's shores
in three turns of sun and moon,
the third hour before evening.

Indeed at the appointed time
she slumps her long slender
body across grass still soaked
from storm, down fluttering,
her voice strained, then silent.

Columba sends a monk to greet her,
gather her tenderly into his strong
solid arms, lift her all hallow bone
and white feathers, welcome
this weary one into the hearth.

Crane comes as pilgrim
buffeted by elements into exile,
a stranger at the door
three days later, renewed, revived,
enough time for resurrection

she lifts her wide wings gently
at first, then with greater force
to carry herself back across sea
and threshold, her flight
a prayer of homecoming.

Prayer:

We raise our hands
and bless the hungry and poor.
We lay these hands
to tend the hurting and the sore.
We stretch out these hands
to welcome the stranger at the door.

- Ray Simpson, His Complete Celtic Prayers.