The Pilgrimage. Iona

Iona, late September 2014. A week in the Abbey

with Alastair McIntosh.

Iona is an island on the West coast of Scotland and home to the Iona Community. For over half the year, in the summer months, guests arrive every Saturday to spend a week together in community in the Abbey or one of the community’s other centres. You can find details at http://iona.org.uk/.



I wouldn’t have dun it without you.

Saturday evening ascending Dun I.

The weather in Iona was so good that I decided on my first evening to climb the small hill dominating the Abbey on this tiny island. From the summit there is a view which more than rewards the small effort for the climb. That, of course, depends on your level of fitness. I am fit but was having frequent attacks of tachycardia which left me faint and without energy. So when my first steps on the turf path began to make me feel faint I stopped, about 5 metres above sea level, and took the sensible step of deciding that I had climbed enough.

Then I saw, ahead of me, a man who had reached the first steep part of the hill. He had a lot of difficulty climbing, moving his feet very slowly, a bit unsure of his steps. I thought that I could at least make it to where he was standing about 40 metres away, so I struggled on and greeted him. I don’t remember who first admitted to having doubts about this mountaineering trial. Rod had brought a group from Boston for this week in Iona and most of them were aleady at the summit. I am 65, but Rod is a lot more than that. His legs and ankles were finding the steep ascent very taxing. He said he didn’t think he’d make it to the top. We paused and looked back:

So we made it up together. I would not have continued had it not been for Rod who seemed much worse off than I. He, too, would not have continued if it had not been clear to him that I was in a worse state than he was.

Even before Alastair McIntosh had captivated us with his highland brogue, the two of us had mastered one of the miracles of pilgrimage: the energy which comes from meeting as strangers. Our reward was to see the girl in the red skirt.

The making of Community.

The week in Iona brings together 30 or more people from different parts of the world. This time two centres joined together and so there were over 60 people mainly from the USA, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Australia and the UK. The resident staff who also form the community are even more diverse in their origins which included Africa and Japan. Within 24 hours of eating, working and praying together, sharing rooms, walking and talking individuals mix and begin, above all, to listen to each other, to learn new things and to enter into the Spirit of this Isle which has been a place of pilgrimage for over 800 years.

Pilgrimage and prayer.

For me, pilgrimage is above all about prayer. Here, in Iona, I had arrived frazzled, hence my tachycardia, a sign of inner imbalance, a disharmony of mind and spirit and body. The routine of work, space, reflection and prayer soon began to calm my heart. Every Tuesday there is a pilgrimage on this small island to places significant in its history: the bay where Columba landed on his exile from Ireland, the hill of the angels, the crossroads, the hermit’s cell and the van with flapjacks and drinks. It was about half way along this journey that my heart began to calm down, undoubtedly because of some wonderful people I was meeting.

Underlying all the activity is a silence, a silence which is prayer itself, a presence of God, and Peace. Alastair Mc Intosh is an inspiring person, a great speaker, who also speaks in silence and uses silence to say more than words can.

This silence was restoring me, bit by bit. That, too, is a gift of pilgrimage for, step by step, the clogged arteries of life within become free of blockages: deposits of worry, resentment and hurt dissolve; and the mind and body and spirit find each other again in silent harmony. Prayer invades everything, each moment, each step, each word. This is God’s presence among us: here, on Iona.

Surrounded by sea.

On one of the afternoons, guests for the week can take a boat trip to Staffa, which is home to Fingal’s cave and many puffins, although they have all flown off by September. But the visitors at the end of September were rewarded by sightings of basking sharks and accompanied by lively dolphins. The sea, like the sky on Iona, seems to continuously create new nuances of blue, especially in the gloaming. At mid-day, the sea revealed all beneath it in gently rocking movement as the tides met from different ends of the island.

The sea is for boats and as, in a sense, I am now embarking on a new voyage, I am encouraged when I consider St. Brendan, another Celtic saint from the 6th C. who, it is said, set out in a very small boat at over eighty years of age to convert whoever he could find, wherever he was going, which was far from clear and may even have been to Iceland and, some say, America. I imagine the “letting go” required to depart with no safeguards, no certainty of food or shelter and without any passport home.

The weather was so good that many people swam in the Atlantic. There are tropical looking white sands on the North of the Island but the sea is rarely warm although I believe it was around 16ºC on the Sunday.

And Finally,

Before the week’s community disperses, there is a concert. Of my 4 visits to Iona this 2014 concert was the finest. The Dutch and Swedish groups entertained us with very jolly pieces and some excellent acting.

We all packed some pebbles. The Island has a huge variety of rocks and pebbles of all colours, the most desired being the green Iona marble. When at Columba’s bay, we replaced the weight of the sandwiches we had eaten there with pebbles which, within a week, would be flown to Australia and the USA, as well as most of Europe.

For those who read my main blog http://www.the-raft-of-corks.com/blog/, it will be clear that staying put in an Abbey for a week is not a walking pilgrimage, even though we walked around this small island.. The theme of the week was “The Pilgrimage of life”, a theme which is huge and was given much life by Alastair – you may enjoy a visit to his own site http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/

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