Iona Pilgrimage Begins

This week, several members from Holy Trinity will travel several thousand miles to visit a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland called Iona.  Iona is home to a Christian community centered in “the liberating power of Jesus Christ and a commitment to the personal and social transformation that spring from the gospel.”  Members of the community share a common rule which includes:

·         Daily prayer and reading the Bible

·         Mutual sharing and accountability for our use of time and money

·         Regular meeting together

·         Action and reflection for justice, peace and the integrity of creation

The Holy Trinity group of travelers will participate in the life and worship of the Iona community while they are there, and they will share their experiences with us in a forum when they return.  In the meantime, however, you can follow them in their travels by visiting the blog, holytrinityationa.blogspot.com.

The Iona Community was founded in 1938 by George MacLeod, a minister who lived and served in the context of the poverty and despair of the Depression.  From a dockland parish in Govan, Glasgow, he took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to Iona to rebuild both the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey and the common life by working and living together, sharing skills and effort as well as joys and achievement. That original task became a sign of hopeful rebuilding of community in Scotland and beyond.

Below is an excerpt from a sermon by George MacLeod, delivered in 1955, called  “Benediction of a Day.”

To take a natural analogy, there is a living flower.  You want to have it, so you pluck it.  But, by your act of plucking, it dies.

You are fascinated by a sparkling running stream, a living stream of water.  But, if you grasp it, it runs through your fingers, you scoop it into a pail, you no longer have life, but just a bucket of H2O.

There is a sunbeam dancing in your room, life from the sun.  If you pull down the curtain to capture the beam, it is gone.

There is a bracing wind that enlivens your whole being.  But try to catch it in a bag and you have stagnant air.  All this reminds us how not to get in touch with life.

Here is the root trouble of our lives.  We all love life, but the moment we try to hold it, we miss it.  The fact that things change and move and flow is their life.  Try to make them static and you die of worry.

This is just as true of God who is the Life of life.  The only way to achieve a sense of God’s presence is to put yourself in the way of Him.  In our analogy, you achieve a sense of life in the presence of a flower, by a running stream, in a bracing wind, with sunbeams falling on the stream.  You come home to say you have had a perfectly lovely day, which means a lively day.  It has been a benediction of a day.

You can only achieve a sense of God in a similar way…You can only find God in the now.