Reflections from Iona A sermon by Rev. Fred Small First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist June 30, 2013

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Oswin Freeman
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1 Reflections from Iona A sermon by Rev. Fred Small First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist June 30, 2013 Last fall, as my sixtieth birthday approached, my wife Julie asked what I wanted for a present. As the senior minister of this amazing congregation, as an activist, as the father of a 9-year-old, I knew the answer right away. All I wanted was rest. How about an overnight retreat somewhere? I suggested. Overnight? she exclaimed. This is your sixtieth birthday! How about a week? My jaw dropped and my brain exploded with possibility. Iona, I whispered. I could go to Iona. I don t remember when I first heard of Iona, the tiny Scottish island that has been a spiritual center for as long as human memory. Now it beckoned irresistibly from the Hebrides across the dark Atlantic. As I strive to develop multicultural competence, I ve been eager to learn more about my own Celtic heritage. I register for a week-long retreat led by John Philip Newell, a minister in the Church of Scotland, a renowned scholar and teacher of Celtic spirituality, and the former Warden of Iona Abbey. Called a Pilgrimage for Change, the retreat is offered for individuals and small groups seeking personal transformation and new birthings in our lives and world. I fly to Glasgow, take the train from Glasgow to Oban in the Firth of Lorn, take the ferry to the Isle of Mull, take the bus across Mull, and then a second ferry to Iona. As I approach the island from the sound, its rocky promontories and grassy, windswept heights thrust out of the frigid waters with the same fierce beauty that greeted its first settlers thousands of years ago. Our hotel, the St. Columba, is tidy and beautiful, the staff cheerful and attentive, the food delicious and plentiful, with vegetables fresh from the hotel s own organic garden and fish caught hours earlier from local boats. We on retreat are about thirty in number. Some are retirees with leisure for spiritual pursuits. A handful are working clergy like me. More than half are graduate students, mostly in their twenties, from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Many of the students come from evangelical or conservative Christian backgrounds. Some are struggling to reconcile what they ve learned at the Seattle School about the Bible, about each 1

2 other, about themselves with their present or former faith communities. They bring tremendous vitality and curiosity to what otherwise might have been a pretty solemn group. I am the only Unitarian Universalist. John Philip leads the assembly gently, tenderly, with great kindness. His accent echoes his native Canada and his ancestral Ireland and Scotland, where he has spent much of his life. After I introduce myself as from Cambridge and mention the demands of ministry following the Boston Marathon bombing, several people approach me offering sympathy and support. For the moment, I am the identified person in need. But as I talk one-on-one with other retreatants, many tell stories of tremendous suffering far greater than my own. (I ve changed their names to protect their privacy.) Kelly, who escaped from the Christian cult in which she d grown up. Marcia, recently divorced and undergoing a crisis of religious identity, wondering if she can remain a Christian. John and Sandy, a young married couple each diagnosed with cancer in the last year. Jennifer, partly estranged from her evangelical parents but more concerned about her younger sister Terri, who came out last year at age 22. Terri is now living with her grandmother, who used to pray every night at the dinner table that Terri be healed of her homosexuality. Sarah, to whom the daughter of her minister recently confided that she d been sexually abused by a congregant. The minister protected his daughter s abuser, permitting him to remain in the congregation without consequences. James, a husband and father formerly addicted to Internet porn, who with the aid of a Native American shaman cured his addiction, but in so doing lost his Christian faith. If anyone is ready for personal transformation and new birthings, this is the group! The next afternoon, Sunday, John Philip leads us to Martyrs Beach, where in the year 806 Viking marauders slaughtered 68 monks and lay workers. Drawing with a stick in the sand once soaked with blood, Philip creates a mandala that is also the head of the Celtic cross. He invites us to find two stones, one for ourselves and one for the world, and to place the stones in the mandala while expressing a wish for wholeness. For myself, I ask for healing of my estrangement from my own goodness, which I ve felt as long as I can remember, believing I need to earn and be worthy of love and acceptance, instead of knowing goodness as my birthright. 2

3 For the world, I ask for reconciliation of neighbor and stranger, people like us and other, as members of the human family. On Monday, John Philip talks about Celtic Christianity, in which he sees a life-affirming, creation-affirming alternative to Christian orthodoxy today. In the Celtic Christian tradition, he tells us, all creation is theophany a revelation of God. He cites the medieval English anchoress Julian of Norwich, who taught that we are not just made by God ; we are made of God. John Philip believes the doctrine of original sin has caused incalculable damage. We have convinced ourselves and our children, he argues, that our deepest energies are in opposition to God. Ancient words of depravity and unworthiness still haunt us. Imagine if every time I greeted my wife, Philip suggests, I began by saying how awful I am. She might like it once! But then it would grow tiresome. The Celtic tradition, he tells us, is filled with prayers of blessing. A blessing releases what is deepest in others and ourselves. Do we know that we are bearers of blessing? he asks. If we are serious about the work of transformation in our world, this is one of the most precious gifts we can give one another. During walking meditation on the grass outside the hotel, I am struck by a sudden insight. In my yearning to be healed of my estrangement from my own goodness, I can become impatient and self-blaming. Why am I still caught in the same old patterns? says the voice in my head. When will I become one with the divine? Why haven t I had a real mystical experience like the great mystics? In so doing, of course, I simply reiterate the pattern of alienation from goodness. So I let it go, accepting the rhythmic cycle of expansion and contraction, wholeness and fragmentation, as part of the human condition, or at least my human condition. I bless it all. In walking meditation, looking out at the blue sky and the deeper blue ocean, I think with each step: Blessing. Blessing. Blessing. I am tender with myself and all things. Before we say no to injustice and abuse of power, John Philip insists, we must say yes : yes to blessing, yes to our oneness, yes to the humanity even of the perpetrator. Otherwise we become mired in self-righteousness. 3

4 John Philip tells a story about his father, who late in life suffered from Alzheimer s. But he could always remember the blessing of Aaron: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. When his father could no longer drive and had to sell his car, Philip accompanied him to the auto dealer. Philip phoned ahead to instruct the salesman to speak directly to his father, out of respect, rather than to Philip. The young salesman completely understood and addressed Philip s father throughout. At one point, his father asked, How much do we need to pay you for this car? Oh, no, sir, the salesman replied. We re going to pay you. The old man turned to Philip and said, Well, that s very generous. The deal made, Philip explained to the salesman that his father always liked to leave people with a blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you, his father said to the salesman. The Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. Tears were streaming down the salesman s face. He will never, ever forget that moment, Philip says. The next morning, while we meditate silently together in the centuries-old stone chapel, my watch alarm goes off. As I hasten to shut it off, my first thought is I can t do anything right. My second thought is to blame St. Augustine for having invented original sin! John Philip tells us that in The Acts of John, one of the ancient texts excluded from the Christian canon but recovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, Jesus at the Last Supper invites his disciples into a circle and leads them in a dance a dance! I am the mirror, he tells them. Look into me and you will see yourself. Wednesday is the day of our pilgrimage of the entire length of the island, nearly eight miles round trip. It is a glorious morning, sunny and cool. The beach at Columba s Bay, where St. Columba, exiled from Ireland, first set foot on Iona, is covered with small stones, some of them reputed to be 2.8 billion years old nearly one-quarter the age of the Milky Way. John Philip invites us to find two stones: one to represent new beginnings and another to represent something we want to let go of. Keep the first, he tells us, and throw the other into the sea. 4

5 I choose a stone to represent blessings embrace of my own goodness and another to represent pride and separateness, which I throw into the sea. From Columba s Bay we hike to the ruins of an ancient hermit s hut, where St. Columba himself is said to have retreated for prayer and contemplation. There we form a circle and join in a body prayer of celebration and release. The more I listen to John Philip, the Church of Scotland minister. the more he sounds to me like a Unitarian Universalist. I ask him about Jesus. I like what Martin Buber said, he answers. I don t believe in Jesus. I believe with Jesus. Do you ever worry about a heresy trial? I ask. He smiles. It s not a heretic-hunting time, fortunately, he replies. The next day the group talks about transformation. Force cannot transform, John Philip says. It can only frighten or inhibit. Only love transforms. I ask him about anger. As a man who grew up in an angry home, I mistrust anger. But I have learned especially from women who have told me that anger saved their lives. I wonder about Jesus driving the money-changers from the temple. What is the role of anger, I ask, in working for justice? John Philip pauses a moment, then replies. All energy, he says, has a light side and a shadow side. In the prophetic tradition, sacred anger reflects the wildness of God, the fury of God. We need a stirring of energy to move the status quo. The critical question is: does my anger serve my ego, or does it serve wholeness? In a mere second, he says, anger that serves wholeness can flip into anger that serves the ego. The last evening of our retreat, each of is invited to speak of something we ve been grateful for this week. Students from the Seattle School share beautiful pantoums, a form of poetry in which each line repeats in a prescribed sequence. The only thing I can offer worthy of this company is a song: I lead the group in singing Tree of Life by Guy Carawan and Luci Murphy. As I lie down in my bed that night, I begin to sob. I really don t want to leave. I love my wife and daughter. I love my job. I have an amazing, blessed life. But this week has been a taste of heaven. I ve studied with wise teachers before. I ve walked in magnificent beauty. I ve joined in sacred community. I ve eaten delicious food. I ve left obligations behind and rested deeply. 5

6 But I ve never done all of these things in one time and place. In that unity, this past week has been unprecedented and miraculous. The next morning, we board the ferry and wistfully watch the Isle of Iona grow smaller until we dock at Mull. At Queen Street Station in Glasgow, we say our last farewells. I feel certain I will see some of these new friends again. But the unique and beloved community we created on Iona, that sacred time and place, will never be repeated. On the Internet, I look up the structure of a pantoum. I write: To be broken open, that new things may grow I seek the wholeness of healing my estrangement from my own goodness Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God With every step, I bless and am blessed I seek the wholeness of healing my estrangement from my own goodness I am tender with myself and all things With every step, I bless and am blessed My pride and my separateness I throw into the sea I am tender with myself and all things Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God My pride and my separateness I throw into the sea To be broken open, that new things may grow Amen and Blessed Be. 6

Sunday, June 16 Letting go and being led

Sunday, June 16 Letting go and being led Iona Itinerary 2019 Thursday, June 13 Arriving in Scotland Arrive in Glasgow in time to take the 12:20 train to Oban. Arrive in Oban in the afternoon and check into our hotel. The hotel is a short walk