For part of my summer vacation, I was living and working on a remote Scottish island called Iona, which is situated just off the west coast of Mull, and is part of the Inner Hebrides (Staffa and its famous Fingal's Cave belong to this group of islands too, and yes, I have been there!). This rocky island isn't very large (you can walk round it in a day), has a few farms and a small village community, yet in a single day in the height of the summer up to 1000 tourists and pilgrims from all over the world will make the three hour journey from the mainland to visit it.

Why? Because Iona was the island on which Saint Columba and his monks made their base when they left Ireland as Christian missionaries in the sixth century, and from where they converted Scottish Celts to Christianity; because in 1250 a Benedictine monastery was built on the island on the site of Columba's settlement; because in 1900 the Lord of Argyll bequeathed the Abbey Church, then in ruins, to the Scottish churches, with enough money for it to be restored and then used for ecumenical worship; because in the 1930's George MacLeod, along with six clergy and six unemployed labourers, restored the remainder of the monastic buildings and founded the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian movement,originally both for the purposes of training clergy and supporting them in their work; because today the Iona Community(1), which now works for peace and justice, runs the Abbey and it's buildings as a residential centre where work and worship are one, where the activities of a Sunday occur everyday, and where Christians from all denominations, backgrounds and countries can live and work together in community.

Iona is a very special place for many people. Some have just heard about it, some have been there as day visitors, some have stayed there for a week, living in either the restored Abbey buildings or in the recently built MacLeod Centre and taking part in the life of the community, some have worked there as volunteer workers and some have worked there on a more permanent basis.

Iona is the place where Celtic spirituality has its roots; a spirituality where work and worship are intertwined with each other in daily life. I first visited Iona when my school organised a trip to stay there for a week, and I liked it so much that I went back the following year, and then this summer I worked there as one of the many volunteer workers. The volunteer workers are the main working dogsbody which helps the community run. They work as kitchen and housekeeping staff in the two residential centres, they cook and serve in the coffee house, they work in the shop or they help with the day to day running of the Abbey Church. The latter of these was my job; "Abbey Guide". The title itself is a little misleading, as an ordinary day included conducting only one guided tour, instead it was a mixture of as many things as they could think of to give me to do!

A typical day as an Abbey Guide would start (usually after breakfast!) with preparing the Abbey for the morning service at 9am, which involved lighting the candles, putting out any books that were required, turning on the PA system and lights, and tolling the bell, then, after the service and a brief meeting it was down to the nitty gritty of changing candles, sweeping the floor (and people's feet as well sometimes, if they wouldn't get out of the way!), tidying the books, dusting, polishing and cleaning things, arranging and rearranging flowers, answering annoying questions from tourists and generally trying to keep the Abbey church tidy. Then after lunch came the guided tour; 45 minutes of explaining the history of the place and pointing out specific parts of the building with little anecdotal stories, most of which probably weren't true! By 3:30 pm I had finished that and was usually sitting in the coffee house drinking coffee and eating some kind of recently baked fattening cake (an interesting point is that for some reason most of the volunteer staff seem to put on weight when working here...I wonder why?!). And at some point in the evening I would go back into the church to set up for the evening service. the amount of time needed to set up depended on which service it was, as the evening services follow a pattern throughout the week including a service for peace and justice, another for healing, one for commitment, and an informal communion service conducted round a long table as in the last supper. I'd then clear up afterwards, making sure all the candles and lights were out before leaving. I never did like that part of the job, as an old Abbey church in darkness isn't the friendliest of places!

It wasn't all work though! There was socialising in the coffee house in the afternoons, and in the evenings sometimes the person leading the week for the guests would open a session for staff, or we would create our own. After the evening service there was sitting and talking, or watching videos, or even going to the pub (yes, there was a pub...of sorts!), or you could just go to bed and catch up on all the sleep you didn't have the night before because you had been to the village disco and not got to bed until 3am!

I suppose the thing that I noticed most in my job was how much work and worship can be combined, as I had to be at all the services except on my day off - it was in my 'contract'. And I also treated some things as everyday objects, such as the altar - which became a table, somewhere to put things, just as the original 'altar' was a table in an upper room. But by doing the work I was, I was serving God, and also serving the visitors who came to the island and to the Abbey. Something else I learned was how important each individual person was, as we all had a position which bore responsibility, and how much of an individual each person was, and this helped me a great deal, and is still helping me now that I'm back in the hustle and bustle of university life.

Iona is, and always will be, a very special place for me, not just because of the Abbey buildings, nor just because of the beauty and history of the island itself, but because of the sense of God that can be found there, a sense of God in the everyday things of life, and from this a feeling of peace.(2)

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(1) The Iona Community has its base in Glasgow and has members and associates worldwide. As well as their commitment to peace and justice, they also have commitments to prayer, use of time and money, and to meeting together.

(2) A recommended book for more information on the history of Iona and of the community is Chasing the Wild Goose by Ron Ferguson (pub. Fount).

If you think you might be interested in working on Iona, then contact Helen in Goodricke.