Open doors and open hearts on the holy island of Iona

written by Rev David MacGregor

For nine immense weeks from mid-August this year, I served as a full-time volunteer on Iona, Scotland with the ecumenical Christian community there – the blessing of a lifetime!

Anyone can come to Iona. And they do – from around the world (including several Aussie friends), as tourist for a couple of hours; for several days, or for six nights at a time as a guest of The Iona Community, joining the week’s specially themed program. Yes, living tangibly in Christian community. In my case even longer, with a great team of staff and volunteers.

To make it to Iona, you can’t escape significant travel. From Glasgow; train, ferry, bus across Mull; then a final ferry to that holy island of Iona. A significant pilgrimage in someway to get there.

As an Iona Community “vollie”, I’ve been enriched and challenged like few other times in my life. Just a few weeks into my stay, amid a Sunday night Service of Quiet, I found myself asking; God, how would you want me to grow, be blessed by this unique opportunity in this unique, holy place?  

The answer? To grow deeper in my love for, relationship with and discipleship of God through Jesus; God wanted some deep work from me, work needing outward expression.

A fellow volunteer, Alison, described Iona – the island: its beauty and history and the Iona Community experience as one of “open doors & open hearts.” That’s been my “take home”! Open hearts and open doors in understanding and embracing hopes and concerns around creation, the climate crisis, other faiths, justice and peace, community, LGBTIQ+ longings, ecumenism, creativity and reflection.

I loved my musical volunteer role along Euan, the Abbey musician with the thickest Scottish accent!  I delighted in leading singing including simple chants, with djembe drum each Sunday leading worshippers at service-end out of the Abbey via one of several wonderful short African songs to morning tea, with shared oatcakes around the cloisters, playing much piano, leading several services and presiding one Sunday at Communion – on the same site where Columba broke bread and shared the cup 1560 years earlier. That continues to humble me.

I was encouraged as lay people especially young people led worship, via the Abbey worship book; for guests to be involved musically or in readings or prayers. I delighted in the number of younger people attracted to the Iona Community’s expressions of deeply inclusive worship, community life, justice & peacemaking light years away from often packaged and overhyped religion!

I so sensed the presence of God on Iona that inescapably, songwriter me found ample avenue for expression: instrumentals and shorter worship songs, some sung in abbey worship!

You don’t delve too deeply into the history of life on this tiny Hebridean island of Iona before realising what history it is. History, Gaelic and Celtic. History with Columba travelling from Ireland to Iona in 563 A.D; establishing a worshipping, serving, faith-sharing, evangelising community there which over time would impact so much not only of present-day Scotland but England and continental Europe too. History, with the gruesome legacy of the Vikings some centuries later.   History in the 13th century founding of a Benedictine Monastery and an Augustinian Nunnery.

History, as Reformation times see both Monastery and the Nunnery abandoned and over the centuries fall into ruin. Yet all this time, Iona, continues to be a place of spiritual pilgrimage, a place famously described as a thin place - where the gap between the spiritual and the material is tissue paper thin. I “get that”!

History. As in the late 1930’s, Rev George Macleod, an activist, pacifist, visionary Church of Scotland Minister, believing that the church had lost touch with ordinary working people, with what community is all about, with the needs of the world, invokes a grand vision of completing the rebuilding of the Abbey and especially the eating, sleeping and meeting quarters adjacent to the Abbey.

He gathers a collection of Church of Scotland ministers, trainees, as well as unemployed folk and begins the rebuilding of the Abbey surrounds; experiencing the common life together, worshiping together, being community together in that Benedictine tradition, and so the Iona Community is born. 86 years later I thank God for the astounding privilege of being just part of the 2024 iteration of that international, ecumenical Christian movement, as it continues for “the purposes of:

• Transforming lives to change the world
• working for justice and peace,
• the rebuilding of community and
• the renewal of worship.”

The Iona Community has long embraced the hospitality of God. God indeed welcomes all. As we sang God Welcomes All often during my time on Iona, God’s welcome deeply impacted me. It’s something so lacking in these demanding times. I recall the brief reflection I offered at a weekly Service of Welcome, when reflecting on Matthew 25’s 'Parable of the Sheep and the Goats', I suggested a better title would be the Parable of Welcome. It’s a parable of whether we will reach out, or we won’t, and yes, the implications. Whether we’ll dare to see and seek Christ in our neighbour; that neighbour who’s different to us. The Parable of Welcome. To those on his right, the King says …

‘I was hungry … when you’ve done it for one of the least of these of mine, you have done it for me.’

When we reach out, as Jesus calls from us; whoever, however, whenever that might be; we reach out to Jesus. We meet the face of Christ. In the loving heart of God, all are welcome.

As I move forward from the enrichment of Iona, which I sense will stay with me forever, I sense God through Jesus, through the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, calling me more emphatically and joyfully to be such a person of welcome, in justice-seeking and peacemaking. To be an open-doored, open-hearted disciple of Christ. God surely calls that from each one of us.

You might like to listen to this new song, When Heaven, earth come close', written during David's time on Iona.

David also hosts the very popular Together to Celebrate website, resourcing your congregation with music aligned with the Revised Common Lectionary readings.