Iona. I had never been there. It was one of those places I have had to imagine, so that Iona was an idea, not a place; at least not a place I knew by having been there and could revisit in memory. Yet I have read widely and sometimes deeply around the importance of Iona for Scottish history, culture and spirituality.
George Macleod is one of the Scottish Christians I have admired most ever since I learned of him when I was a teenager still glowing in the aftermath of conversion to Christ. In that quite enclosed early Evangelical context, George Macleod was viewed with deep suspicion as a liberal to be avoided, not least because he was critical of the theology and practice of Billy Graham's form of evangelism.
But George Macleod was outspoken and actively protested against the creation, even the concept of nuclear weapons. He was one of the first notable Christians I had come across who applied his faith to the huge political issues of his time, and mine. I was wholeheartedly, almost instinctively with him in a shared revulsion that the fundaments of matter, the stuff of creation, was being exploited by military co-option towards indiscriminate destruction.
Which brings me back to Iona, and especially George Macleod. I have wanted to visit the abbey that was resurrected by the sheer thrawn persistence of George Macleod. The rebuilding of Iona Abbey was both a monumental achievement of one man's vision, and a process that gave birth to forms of Scottish spirituality that combine contemplative prayer, social activism, political protest, environmental care, and a prophetic and biblical tradition expressed in liturgy, hymn, music and art. Peace and justice lie at the heart of Iona's concern with and for the world.
So on our recent visit to the West Coast, we spent a day on Iona, and in several occasional posts I will reflect on what I saw and felt, and discovered and rediscovered. The photograph is of the cross that is the theological core, and the theological engine that inspired and energised George Macleod as parish minister, and as founder of the Iona Community. He would have resisted being singled out, or being so dominant in the narrative that he got in the way of the real spiritual vision of Iona. So let me leave Lord Macleod of Fuinary to the side for now.
The forecast was rain with a following wind. The photograph shows why it is that Scottish west coast weather is not to be trusted. On a beautiful breezy and mostly blue sky day we sailed from Mull to Iona. There is no easy, quick, convenient way to reach Iona. That's as it should be for pilgrims. A pilgrimage was never meant to be an indulgent dawdle. We walked slowly, in company with others mostly unknown, up the brae towards the Abbey. I had seen programmes, read books, looked at photographs – the concrete reality was something else, both ordinary and extraordinary.
Ordinary because it is small, sits on a prominent raised setting, and is built in grey stone sympathetic to the surrounding landscape. Extraordinary because built in with those stones are the prayers and dreams, visions and activities, hopes and fears of generations of pilgrims who have come to this place for reasons of their own. And regularly all those inner longings are gathered and spoken in liturgy and song, and in prayer and action.
There's a small rocky hill fifty yards from the front door, from which you can look at the abbey and its entrance. I stood there, thankful and content that I had come. We all have our story, and carry within us memories and imaginings, longings and disappointments, our borne griefs and our heart-held gladness. This place called Iona is now part of that inner life.
As I was standing looking down at the other large stone cross dominating the entrance, I was aware that one of the reasons for my sense of spiritual affinity with George Macleod's political theology is my own experience of the cross as the place where I stand, theologically and existentially, head bowed in wonder. That other irascible Scottish theologian, P. T. Forsyth complained about the toil of mind and heart involved in theological writing about the cross of Christ: “Words are hard to stretch to the measure of eternal things without breaking under us somewhere.”
So when words live up to their highest capacity to communicate our deepest experiences, they are still inadequate, but perhaps they are all that we have. Perhaps. Because there is always image, and place, and community, and all that can be conveyed by beauty, location, and relatedness to others. Iona facilitates that inner conversation with self and others, with the world around us and the Creator and Redeemer God who surrounds and pervades and besieges our lives.
I'm writing this on Good Friday. Tonight I will lead the service, based on the the hymn "The Servant King." The key lines, according to Graham Kendrick, and supported by most who sing the hymn:
Hands that flung stars into space,
to cruel nails surrendered.
This is our God, the servant king!
Iona was a good place to prepare the heart for such taking, and blessing, and breaking, and sharing of the terrible and good news of Christ crucified. Because there is yet Saturday before Sunday. But Sunday is coming.