Leaving Iona and Moving On

We have had our last dinner here. Most of the meals have been vegetarian, and I’ve enjoyed them. Tonight we had herring salad, herring with fruit and some kind of cream sauce I think. That was not good, but they made up for it with vanilla ice cream and spiced fruit compote for dessert. Yum, yum!

Our evening worship was a communion service. The presider sat at the head of a table that had been set up between the choir stalls in front of the altar. He stood when he had things to say so that the folks who were seated farther away could see. Again we passed the bread and the wine around, instead of us going to the table to receive communion. We had breakfast at 7:30 Friday morning followed by worship at 8:15. The Iona experience was wonderful, but I’ve decided that I am not cut out for living in that much community for more than a week or two. However, I loved meeting all the folks from different countries and from other parts of the U.S., and I enjoyed each worship experience very much.

We caught the 9:00 AM ferry to Mull, and waved good-bye to all of our Iona Community friends at the dock. We traced our way back across Mull to Craignure and the ferry to Oban. Upon disembarking from the ferry we drove north through the Highlands. The day was mostly overcast with intermittent rain, but the mountains and valleys we drove through were beautiful. I grew up in West Virginia where the mountains seemed close together and the valleys were narrow. Here the hills are more separated and the valleys wider. We drove to Plockton where we are staying in a little hotel on the waterfront with a wonderful restaurant. From the front door you look out on palm trees, a bit of beach, the bay and all surrounded by stunning mountains.

I was telling Tom at dinner that it seems that a lot the things I’ve been reading and thinking about for the past couple of years are coming together. Last year when Craig Miller came to Grace to guide us through our capital stewardship program he stressed that what was important for us, as a community and individually was not equal gifts, but rather equal sacrifice. In the closing responses of our Iona morning worship we pray, “we will not offer to God sacrifices that cost us nothing.” All of this reminds me that we don’t give to God out of our surplus or out of anything we happen to have left over. Rather in order to truly understand our relationship to God, we give to God first out of the core of our resources. That relationship acknowledges that God is the giver of all that we have, and it expresses our trust that God will continue to give us what we need.

I’ve also been thinking about the purpose of church. Of course there is not just one purpose, but what has been going through my mind is that we don’t “go to church” just to fulfill an obligation or to get our bread and wine or even to learn the doctrines or creeds, but through our participation we are reminded that we are connected to all creation and thus we have an obligation to help God care for our little part of that creation. We aren’t expected to do the same things, but each of us can do some thing. To borrow the title of a book by Henry Nouwen, we go to get ‘bread for the journey,’ which fortifies us for our daily lives and enables us to share God’s love with others.