A new Christian retreat centre has just opened at Kilmalieu on the Ardgour peninsula. The first event is a birdwatching retreat including contemplative worship, birdwatching walks, and reflections on birds in the Bible. The centre, run by the Abernethy Trust and managed by Steve Aisthorpe and his wife Liz may be new, but the location is an ancient place of prayer.
‘Kilmalieu’ means ‘Moluag’s cell’, where the Saint who spread Christian faith across the northern Highlands came to pray in solitude, away from his monastery on the island of Lismore. • • • The Kilmalieu estate covers 3000 acres, including coastline and mountain tops and rich rainforest environment. Steve and Liz’s vision is for it to be ‘a place of stillness, enabling people to reflect, focus less on doing and more on being, knowing themselves to be in the loving gaze of God.
’ Visiting the centre, as individuals or in groups we can pause to notice, to take a good look at the natural world using both binoculars and magnifying glass. “I’m astounded at the beauty of this place,” says Zac Wright, a member of the Kilmalieu team. And we may encounter God there in the wild place as we walk in the footsteps of Moluag, not only discovering that we are in God’s ‘loving gaze’, but moved to worship, returning that gaze.
We may discover in nature metaphors of our relationship with God. Steve writes of the patience of the birdwatcher, spending hours crouched in the hide for just one brief, stupe.
