Visit Iona

Easter or summer, after months of lockdown, we do all need a holiday this year. So I hope every reader will be able to afford and arrange a wee break somewhere special. Celebrating our 68th Wedding Anniversary – and subject to Covid safety legislation – my wife and I have booked a few days with family in our favourite place, the Isle of Iona.

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Now, I wonder what you think of Iona? Probably everybody knows something about Scotland’s “Sacred Isle”. Hundreds of coach parties have made hurried two-hour visits to the ancient Abbey Church (Cathedral) – and also in recent years to see John Smith’s grave! But it is so much better to holiday on Iona for a few days – and not just so that you will experience and have memories to relish forever of glorious afternoons on its white Hebridean beaches.

On a longer stay, a particularly liberating experience is to spend time at Columba’s Bay.

Nowadays, putting our own past behind us, people on the Iona Community’s weekly pilgrimages are invited to face the Atlantic and sing “I feel the winds of God today, Today my sail I lift!”

But, of course, the simple and wondrous Iona Cathedral is the most liberating experience to benefit from – especially by sharing in public worship, but also when on your own. Built on the sheltered site of Columba’s primitive settlement by the Benedictine Order c1203, it was destroyed by the Vikings. The abandoned ruins still inspired visitors like Johnson and Mendelssohn over the centuries until c. 1900 when the Duke of Argyle enabled restoration by public subscription and 1938 when the Lord George MacLeod’s Iona Community appealed for donations and began to rebuild the rest of the Abbey.

Cartoon: Bill McArthur

Inside, a moment or two of driven silence and maybe you sense the presence of the living God: certainly you begin to feel a sense of awe, and start to ponder where you are in life, and what you are meant to do.

Jack Kellet (Rev), Innerleithen