This beautiful site is the rocky island of Skellig Michael off the coast of western Ireland. It is a lonely and barren place now, as it was in the Early Middle Ages, when sometime between 500-700 CE hermits built a monastery there. These Christian monks wanted to spend their lives with as much solitude as possible, and the harsh living conditions were for them a way to focus their mental attention away from this-worldly pleasures and towards an existence of spiritual contemplation. Indeed, the life of self-imposed quarantine is one of the hallmarks of Celtic Christianity. Strange to think of people who would actively choose an existence of near complete solitude.
