A week in Iona

I’d like to bottle the feeling of watching a sand martin flying around my feet in a field of yellow and white on the way back from the beach. Is that possible?

I went to the Isle of Iona last week as part of a Greenbelt pilot trip to trial staying at the MacLeod centre, just up the hill from the Abbey. I had few expectations, only the vague hope of seeing a puffin, and the willingness to be carried along by someone else’s planning (and cooking…!)

Getting to Iona is a bit of a mission. Sheffield to Glasgow is nearing 6 hours of train travel, Glasgow to Oban is 3 hours of small-stopping-train beauty, and from there it’s a ferry, coach and further ferry before you draw into the island’s jetty. It’s a small island with only one hundred residents who are decisively outnumbered by the sheep (it’s how I imagine living on one of Catan’s little sheep resource hexagons to be).

The Abbey is Iona’s focal point. We joined for Pentecost Sunday (ft. the altar bedecked in red for the occasion), as well as the daily services at 9am and 9pm. The community has its own worship and hymn books. I loved the liturgy (“We will not offer to God / Offerings which cost us nothing”, alternative words to the Lord’s prayer: “save us in the time of trial” replacing “lead us not into temptation”), and the interesting ways of dividing the congregation for responses (e.g. those who prefer puffins to dolphins and vice versa). On Wednesday the service was themed around laughter and featured a lively reenactment of Abraham falling over on the floor and a beautiful song from Known Unknowns: God’s Intended Joy.

Dreams came true on Monday with a boat trip to Staffa in glorious sunshine, with sightings of seals, dolphins, AND puffins. The puffins bobbed in the sea for a while and then swooped in circles up towards the cliffs, flying with their webbed feet spread-eagled and their heads ducked. There is no way to make avian flight cuter.

We also took a trip to Camas, an off-grid outdoor centre back on the Isle of Mull. I had read about Camas through Alasdair McIntosh’s ‘Soil and Soul’ – one of my all-time favourite books. We ate lunch outdoors, had our hearts stolen by dog Ralph who swam out to clamber aboard a canoe, and I sustained injuries related to the kayaking sport of competitive bathtub-toy-whack’N’collect.

It feels an appropriate time to praise the wonderful people I was with for this week. It’s a bit of a gamble going on a holiday with a group you don’t know, and I got particularly lucky. Maddie can bring you in a haul of Iona Marble, Beth can let you in on the beautiful acoustics of the little chapel from the 1100s, Nathan can demonstrate the different knots he teaches to the scouts. It’s an incredible thing to find and build a home for a week with others, and discover some of the intricacies of who they are along the way. Their kindness and companionship is what made the week what it was.

Very early on in the week I had the feeling that this was a place I someday might really need. Walking down the path from the MacLeod Centre you see an archway and the sea beyond it refracting the light. Something about that view filled me with renewed gratitude each day.

Of course, you can’t guarantee the blue skies and golden sunshine as the sun sets at gone 10pm, or the magic of the people as experienced last week. But in many ways, that is what made last week feel all the more touched by grace.