Iona: The Holy Isle of Scotland

by Ray Waddle

It’s one thing to write about trends in Celtic spirituality or periodically attend (as I do) a Celtic-flavored worship service. It's another thing to touch the stones of Celtic ground zero itself, the ancient isle of Iona on the west coast of Scotland. Iona stands as a rugged monument to the courage and cost of discipleship across 1,500 years of belief. It carries the force of blessing, even for a daytripping visitor.

It takes a measure of Christian charity just to get there. That is, you first drive across the green mountainous island of Mull, on a narrow one-lane road, which demands makeshift cooperation with every car coming at you. Motorists wave a friendly thank you as they perilously pass each other, using tiny shoulder turn-outs along the way. Thus was vehicular disaster continuously averted by good will and caution, if not Providence. Godspeed indeed.

After this 38-mile obstacle course, you take a passenger-only ferry off the western tip of Mull that conveys you smoothly to Iona in 15 minutes.

It's fitting that you can't arrive on Iona by car. You don't need one. The island is small enough to walk. Sedans and SUVs seem beside the point in the spiritual landscape of the isle, among its ruins, history and mission.

Iona, barely two square miles in size, endured a tempestuous history to emerge as a place of remarkable spiritual leverage. The western world's interest in things Celtic these days— music and crafts, for sure, but notably worship innovation and theology—takes much of its inspiration from this unlikely grassy windswept rock of an island in the Inner Hebrides.

You step off the pier and gravitate to the soul of the place, the old abbey, built 800 years ago. It is a stone complex of church, cloister, museum and chapel—formerly a monastery filled with the prayers of medieval monks for nearly 400 years. They bore witness to the memory of St. Columba, the Irishman who settled Iona in 563 AD in order to bring Christianity to the unruly Scottish mainland.

Columba’s Celtic evangelism took hold in Britain in his lifetime, but within a century it officially lost out to the Roman version of the faith.

It was never completely snuffed out. But after the Reformation of 1560 swept across Scotland, Iona languished as a picturesque ruin for nearly 400 years more. It took a new crop of visionaries, in the 1930s, to rebuild it.

The leader was Presbyterian minister George MacLeod, who forged a new ecumenical identity at Iona, mindful of the labor woes of the Great Depression and anxiety of the coming war. A newly fashioned Iona Community, a mix of lay people and clergy, pledged to communicate the Gospel afresh to the emerging urban world and “find new ways to touch the hearts of all.”

The embers of Celtic spirituality were stoked anew: The Iona Community, today with a membership of 240 people, trains and sends cadres out into the world, relying on some 3,000 supporters in Britain and elsewhere. It's not a separate denomination but keeps links with the Church of Scotland and others. The Community runs spiritual retreats (two residential centers on Iona accommodate about 100 people), a busy publishing house in Glasgow (Wild Goose Publications) and ministries for young people.

Iona is shaping a new Celtic sensibility. One motto is: Spirituality is about engagement, not escape. Iona supporters promote justice and peace, interfaith dialogue and worship renewal. The latter has especially surfaced in the United States, where churches experiment with Celtic worship elements to enliven musty liturgies and prayers. Celtic themes include love of creation, gender equality, the power of silence and stillness, the image of God glowing inside humanity.

Critics say this new Celtic practice is a mere arbitrary stew of latter-day trends, since it's impossible to recover the actual details of historic Celtic faith and practice. But influential ministers like Presbyterian J Philip Newell argue that the Celtic way, forced to the fringes of official Christianity for centuries, is finding the light again: It appeals to believers who hunger to be in touch with the image of God deep within them, connecting them to inner sources of creativity, wonder and gratitude.

So pilgrims come daily (sometimes 1,000 a week) to make contact with a buried stream of faith. On a recent Sunday, dozens of us were there, stopping at the abbey, the graveyard, the ruins of the medieval nunnery—also the little shops and restaurant in the shoreline hamlet of Baille Mor.

In a devotional book inside a sanctuary, a prayer was written to send us on our way: “May God shield us in the valley, may Christ aid us on the mountains, may the Holy Spirit bathe us on the slopes, in hollow, on hill,on plain. Amen.”

Ray Waddle, a writer based in Nashville, is author of
A Turbulent Peace: The Psalms for Our Time
(Upper Room Books).

Iona photos by Jane Hines.