Columba Pilgrim and Penitent - a re-read

Stepping back from full on church life gives time for reflection. So I picked up off the book shelf for a re-read this excellent account of Columba by Ian Bradley.

The author is careful not to romanticise either Celtic christianity nor St Columba. 

What still comes afresh is that the church has always been about community. It's about being a presence and that everything is provisional. 

Yet I have spent so much time in ministry having to maintain structures both physical and organisational. At times losing that sense of being a  presence, that it's okay for things to change, and you don't need a strategy for the next ten years. 

Columba and his community were content with a simple wooden building to worship in as well worshipping outside. Around the chapel would be buildings that contained workshops etc, as well as cells for sleep, prayer and solitude. Columba like so many of his era would also go off to be alone to pray, to reflect just like Jesus did. Everything was up for grabs. 

It strikes me in re-reading the book that Columba did not see himself as a missionary. Yes he shared the faith but it was more about the church being a presence which communicated God's Love to all.

Columba's Iona monastery, and others he went onto found, were like so many that originated in the Irish context. The community gathered around them, not in a structural model that we are now so familiar with e.g. 'diocese' with Bishop in charge. Rather an abbott gave the lead. There was a fluidity about them. They were like families. A sense of being provisional. In my own Methodist roots many a Primitive Methodist chapel was built on a style that meant if the cause did not work you could turn it into a house and many were and still are!!! It's all very provisional and has the capacity for change and moving on.

The author paints a picture of Columba as a real person who is both politically engaged and spiritually aware. There is so much in this book to ponder and I would certainly encourage people to read it.

In re-reading I am reminded that while the 'Iona Community' created by George McCloud, which has deeply affected my own understanding, bears many of the hallmarks of the Columban legacy, it is different, but both were/are in Ian Bradley's words...

'engaged in a life of prayer, work, and involvement in the world in which the themes of presence, poetry, politics, pilgrimage and penitence are all at the fore.'

and later he writes

'If the specific areas singled out for special attention by Community members in the late 1990s - sharing communion, justice, peace and the integrity of creation, racism and interfaith, the rediscovery of spirituality, the causes of the poor and exploited, constitutional issues, and the work with young people- did not feature on the agenda of the monks of Iona in the late sixth century that is largely because they would have taken most of them for granted. It is a measure of how far we have departed from earlier Christian principles that these causes now need to be specifically flagged up and championed.'

I recall the prayerful hope that by the year 2000 all christians would be able to share in communion. Sadly that still has yet to come. 

'Denominational Institutionalism' plagues the christian community. I think St Columba would have something strong to say about it. His deep sense of hospitality would be applied. I guess for him there was/is just the church/people of Christ so barriers would have to be broken down.

It's strange to think that Iona was on a busy highway and that network meant Columba was aware of christian communities in the middle east eg Egypt, Syria etc. The echoes of the practice of the Desert Fathers, eastern art work, style of prayers all find a familiarity in Columba's community and other monastic communities across Ireland and what is now Scotland at the time.   So much of this was lost as the more dominant organisation of the Roman church took centre stage. Yet it has remained bubbling under the surface of Christian practice. With institutional church solidified in its stone buildings and organisational structures since the demise of 'Celtic christianity' I believe a movement of the Spirit still urges the church to be more provisional, more on the edge working in those areas identified by the Iona Community above. 

It was to be hoped that post pandemic the church might seek to be more provisional and less bureaucratic but it struggles to break free from the safe and familiar. Now that I am no longer at the heart of an institutional church life I am free to tease out afresh how to be a disciple and how to be part of Christ's community. I will be looking more to Columba a Pilgrim and a Penitent.