Iona
Crossing during the night from Donegal in Ireland to Iona in Scotland, we followed in the wake of St Columba who left his native Donegal in penitence for having caused blood to be shed in a dispute over the copying of a sacred text. “To each cow its calf, to each book its copy,” had been the verdict against him that so incensed the zealous Columba, accused of plagiarism. Arriving in Scotland, Columba established a monastery at Iona in the sixth century that became “the cradle of Christianity in Scotland” and base for a remarkable missionary endeavor that saw Christianity spread eastward via Lindisfarne in Northumbria on deep into Dark Age Europe. Columba died in 597AD, the very year in which Augustine brought Christianity to the English at Canterbury. It is thought that the Book of Kells, the supreme cultural achievement of Early Christian Britain, was crafted here.
The restored Abbey (photo) is today an ecumenical center of retreat run by the Iona Community, founded in the 1930s by George Macleod, a Church of Scotland minister in inner city Glasgow, concerned to make his faith relevant to the contemporary world. The special atmosphere of Iona surely results from this deep tradition of religious vocation. A unique collection of exquisitely carved High Crosses; a sacred burial ground that houses the mortal remains of the kings of Scotland and Norway (not to mention politicians as diverse in time and reputation as Duncan - from Shakespeare’s Macbeth - and John Smith - the best Labor Prime Minister that Britain never had); the roseate ruins of an Augustinian nunnery; the lively restoration of the Abbey itself: all these combine to produce a tangible sense of the numinous. Bathed in spring sunshine, with the rare corncrake rattling in a field adjacent to the Abbey and skylarks trilling overhead: how hard it was to leave this place unmoved! Easier to say that we would some day have to return…
Crossing during the night from Donegal in Ireland to Iona in Scotland, we followed in the wake of St Columba who left his native Donegal in penitence for having caused blood to be shed in a dispute over the copying of a sacred text. “To each cow its calf, to each book its copy,” had been the verdict against him that so incensed the zealous Columba, accused of plagiarism. Arriving in Scotland, Columba established a monastery at Iona in the sixth century that became “the cradle of Christianity in Scotland” and base for a remarkable missionary endeavor that saw Christianity spread eastward via Lindisfarne in Northumbria on deep into Dark Age Europe. Columba died in 597AD, the very year in which Augustine brought Christianity to the English at Canterbury. It is thought that the Book of Kells, the supreme cultural achievement of Early Christian Britain, was crafted here.
The restored Abbey (photo) is today an ecumenical center of retreat run by the Iona Community, founded in the 1930s by George Macleod, a Church of Scotland minister in inner city Glasgow, concerned to make his faith relevant to the contemporary world. The special atmosphere of Iona surely results from this deep tradition of religious vocation. A unique collection of exquisitely carved High Crosses; a sacred burial ground that houses the mortal remains of the kings of Scotland and Norway (not to mention politicians as diverse in time and reputation as Duncan - from Shakespeare’s Macbeth - and John Smith - the best Labor Prime Minister that Britain never had); the roseate ruins of an Augustinian nunnery; the lively restoration of the Abbey itself: all these combine to produce a tangible sense of the numinous. Bathed in spring sunshine, with the rare corncrake rattling in a field adjacent to the Abbey and skylarks trilling overhead: how hard it was to leave this place unmoved! Easier to say that we would some day have to return…
