ANGELA YOUNGMAN reports on an ancient tradition taking part this week on the Isle of Man…
Norwich, UK
Scores of people are taking part in a unique annual walking event known as ‘Praying the Keeills’ on the Isle of Man this week.
The week-long event, which started on Saturday, 21st May and runs though until Saturday, 28th May, sees participants visiting ‘keeills’ – small buildings of earth and stone, which formed family chapels, wayside shrines, places of retreat or hermitages – to spend times of spiritual reflection.
People taking part in a previous Praying the Keeills event. PICTURE: Courtesy of Praying the Keeills.
While more than 250 keeills are known to have existed on the island off England’s north-west coast , although only around half now remain. Some date back to Celtic times when, according to the Praying the Keeills website, the keeills were regarded as “thin places, where we can draw close to God”. Many are located in remote and beautiful locations such as a wooded glade or a quiet shelf of rock overlooking the sea, where the presence of God can be sensed in the quietness.
The concept of Praying the Keeills started back in 2006, when the then Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man, Rev Graeme Knowles, came up with the idea of organising a series of walks around these spiritual locations, providing a time to reflect and rediscover what has been lost over time.
Praying the Keeills now takes place throughout the fourth week of May every year, enabling people to take part in guided walks around a changing selection of Keeills. The aim is simple according to the event’s website: “to discover the places of great beauty and peace, sense their unique spirituality…To reflect on their place at the heart of our Christian journey…and to deepen our own personal prayer life.”
Although many of the walks begin at churches and involve worship sessions, organiser Phil Craine stressed that “[w]e are an ecumenical Christian group and our events are open to people of all faiths and none.”
Rev Jo Dudley, of Christ Church Laxey, who is holding a welcome service at the start of the week and a walk around the Agneash area, said that “praying the Keeills links the past, the present and the future”.
“They are places where people have worshipped for generations. It offers time to reflect, using history to reflect on the gift of the present and the future.”
People taking part in a previous Praying the Keeills event. PICTURE: Courtesy of Praying the Keeills.
Rosemary Clarke, of the Isle of Man Cathedral, is a regular participant on these walks.
“One perfect evening we started our Keeills’ event at Smeale Farm in the north of the Island,” she recalls of one event. “We took packed teas and enjoyed chatting over drinks before walking along country lanes to one of the Keeills. The landowner came out to talk to us, and he said that his family had been looking after the site for 800 years. It was amazing to think of the continuity of tenure and the links back towards the time when the small chapel would have been in regular use. It is a real treat to have companionable chats with people from across the island – and beyond- and from different denominations as we walk through the beautiful Manx countryside.”
Clarke added that the hospitality offered by the different churches and chapels across the week was “always welcome and appreciated”.
“One year we sat on the knee high walls of a keeill in Maughold churchyard. The vicar led a communion service and brought water from Maughold’s well to dribble through our fingers as a form of blessing. Sometimes I feel closer to God in the open air than I do in Sunday worship.”
