listening for the beat of the wings

Iona is a small, rocky island in the Hebrides. Three-and-a-half miles long and a mile-and-a-half broad, it is not imposing. Why do they come, in fulfilment of St Columba's prophecy that to this small

island homage will be paid by rulers

and commoners?

Some come because of its history, to capture the spirit of St Columba and the Celtic Church. They come to the ancient burial ground of kings, asking where the graves of Duncan and Macbeth can be found.

Others seek the fabled beauty of Iona - the changing colours of the dancing sea, the whiteness of the sand, and the quietness,

the quietness. The peace of Iona whispers to many. Iona has been described

as ''a thin place'' - only a tissue paper separating the material from the spiritual. Lots of people have tried to express the experience - and have returned again and again. Some come in search of healing. Still more come drawn by the work of the present-day ecumenical Iona Community which, after having rebuilt the living quarters of the Abbey, seeks to live the Gospel of Justice and Reconciliation in today's troubled world.

And many are tourists, unsure whether to scoff or pray. Among them are the post-Christian children of a fragmented and disquieted era. They are pretty sure that the old faith is redundant . . . Yet their feet have travelled this well-worn pilgrim way.

A Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit is the wild goose, a turbulent sign which is more appropriate to living the faith in our day than is the gentle dove. The story of the present-day Iona Community represents one contemporary attempt to listen for the beating wings.

The Community comprises Protestants and Roman Catholics, ordained and lay, men and women, young and old, married and celibate. It is not a conventional religious order, but it is bound together by a Rule of private prayer, economic sharing, and work for justice and peace. Its spiritual home is Iona, yet it lives in dispersion across the world. It is not an easy Community to categorise.

To understand its purpose we will have to travel to Glasgow in the 1930s; to understand its name and historical inspiration we must first travel in the company of one who is called a saint.

Columba's voyage from Ireland to Iona in AD 563 is one of the great foundational journeys of Western Christianity. Before his birth in Donegal in 521, his mother, Eithne, is said to have been told by an angel in a dream that her son would lead innumerable souls to the heavenly country. The spread of Christianity in Ireland, since the inspired leadership of St Patrick in the fourth century, had been accompanied by the emergence of monastic schools as important places of learning and piety. As soon as he was old enough, Columba was sent to a monastic school in Moville. At the end of his study here Columba was ordained a deacon.

After missions in Ulster he opted for exile, and Columba and his 12 followers, mainly relatives, landed on Iona on the eve of Pentecost, 563. The wings of the wild goose were beating.

Columba established his Community roughly where the medieval abbey now stands. Its reputation grew quickly, and visitors and pilgrims flocked there.

But Columba had not ventured to Scotland just to establish a colony of heaven. He was a missionary. He and his barefoot monks (the Peregrini - the wanderers) went out to preach the Gospel. Iona was strategically well-placed as a base for mission.

The importance of Columba and the pre-eminence of Iona can be seen in an event which occurred 11 years after his arrival there. Conall, king of the Dalriad Scots, died. Dalriada was a key part of the Columban mission; its political future needed to be secured, so the choice of successor was crucial. Two brothers, Eoghan and Aidan, were the main contenders. Among the Gaels, the chief religious leader had a key role in the choice. Although a close friend of Eoghan, Columba chose his brother, having dreamed three times that an angel had commanded him to pick Aidan. Columba consecrated Aidan as king on Iona - the first king in Britain ever to be so consecrated.

In May, 597, Columba told his monks he felt his end was near. Adomnan, an abbot of Iona who wrote a life of Columba about 100 years after his death, gives a touching account of the saint's last hours on June 9, 597. While Columba rested on the grassy knoll near his cell, his old white pony came to him. When Diarmit, a monk, wanted to drive it away, Columba forbade him, saying: ''Let it alone as it is fond of me. Let it pour out its bitter grief on my bosom . . . to this brute beast the Creator Himself hath in some way made it known that its master is about to leave it.'' From a hill above the monastery, Columba raised his hands and uttered the famous prophecy: ''Unto this place, small and mean though it may be, great homage shall yet be paid, not only by the kings and people of the Scots, but by the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations and their subjects. In great veneration, too, shall

it be held by holy men of other churches.''

He died shortly after midnight.

Another time, another place, another voyage. It is July, 1938. As the boat carries men from Glasgow to Iona for a new experiment in Christian community, the cry of another bird may be heard faintly through the screams of the seagulls.

The leader of the group, aged 42, like Columba, is making his own peregrination for the love of Christ. His name is George Fielden MacLeod.

MacLeod was born on June 17, 1895, into a distinguished family which produced five Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. As a young captain in the First World War, he was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre. The experiences in the Ypres mud made a deep impression on him, however, and as he reflected on these in the light of his Christian faith, he became a pacifist and decided to study for ordination.

In 1926 the new minister joined the staff

of St Cuthbert's in Edinburgh, a notable preaching centre. MacLeod, with his aristocratic bearing, commanding presence, charisma, and passionate conviction, quickly became known as one of the outstanding young preachers in Scotland. In 1930 he became minister of Govan Old Parish Church, Glasgow. It was a life-changing decision.

The young minister was appalled by the social deprivations in depression-era Govan and the Church's lack of response. In theological terms he was conservative, but his experiences in the streets and back courts of Govan reinforced his growing socialist views.

MacLeod, distressed by the wastage of human skills which mass unemployment brought, invited craftsmen to repair a broken-down mill at Fingleton, near Glasgow, which served as a leisure retreat for hard-pressed Govan families. The Church itself did a great deal of social work, helping those who were up against it.

But MacLeod knew that something more radical needed to be done. Churches were busy, clean, in good order; the communities round about were in ruins. Churches were Sunday affairs, for the good of the soul; what was needed was a faith which penetrated to the heart of the common life. But what to do?

''Come to Iona,'' a spirit, or a wild goose, seemed to say. His sister, Mrs Ellen Murray, and his senior assistant, Dr Harry Whitley, both suggested that he ''do a Fingleton Mill'' and organise the restoration of Iona Abbey.

Towards the end of his life George played down his role, insisting that he was pushed, reluctantly, to implement other people's ideas. He told how he wrote to the Iona Cathedral Trustees, hoping they would refuse any rebuilding: ''To my horror they replied: 'How marvellous'. They also added in a footnote: 'By the way, you will find the money', I said damn!'' The truth was more complex. As early as 1935 he had circulated a private paper in which he said the Protestant churches were trying to recover their catholic heritage, part of which was the collective witness of the Church.

He also argued that, as large parts of

urban Scotland moved out to new housing schemes, the Church of Scotland should develop ministerial teams and teach people how to live corporately.

At the end of the paper, MacLeod proposed the establishment of a ''Brotherhood within the Church of Scotland, of no permanent vows, into which men of such a mind

could come for the first two or three years of their ministry''.

The first six months after leaving college would be spent in community life; they

would then be ready ''to be drafted out -

still as members of the brotherhood - to

the congested areas and the housing

schemes where they would carry their ideas into practice''.

The base for the new brotherhood would be Iona, and unemployed craftsmen would be invited to restore the ancient Abbey buildings. In its origins then the Iona Community

was essentially an experiment to train

Church of Scotland ministers for the new urban Scotland.

In the first issue of the Coracle, the community's magazine, MacLeod wrote: ''It was a slightly dazed company who sat down for their first meal together out in the

open, beneath the old Abbey and beside the solitary log cabin that was to be our dormitory and sitting and dining room for the next

three months!

''Few knew more than two of the others previously; the majority were sitting in a community of complete strangers. Had we been too hurried? Would we all get on together? As we looked at the size of the hut, some must have wondered. But as we looked at the Abbey we were reminded that the whole purpose of the experiment was to prove that what it stood for still worked.''

Living in cramped quarters and sharing with others brought home the essentially corporate nature of Christian faith and made the corporate language of the New Testament and the Early Church come alive. The essentially individualistic nature of Christianity represented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was seen to be inadequate.

The problem facing the Church was similar to that confronting the world: how to live corporately, sharing life and its resources in a spirit of interdependence, while preserving the rights of the individual.

The experiment on the island was regarded with suspicion, particularly within the

Church of Scotland. Who were these

people? Muddled romantics? Communists? Crypto-Roman Catholics? As rumours grew about the weekly celebration of the sacrament, responses in worship, candles in the Abbey, and political discussion, the controversy increased.

MacLeod defended the project in The Coracle: ''It is an exceedingly calculated movement within the normal purpose of the Church. Poverty is not our aim, far less is the principle of celibacy involved. Those who come here will claim no 'sacrifice'; we only claim a privilege to make perhaps the sacrifice of those who work in really difficult places a little less acute.''

It would be easy - and wrong

- to romanticise Christian community. The tensions of living together are not magically dispersed. The testimony of so many on Iona is that healing comes through living the questions and not accepting

easy answers.

Somehow, the Church at large must restore real community to its heart, and intentional communities such as Iona can offer hard-won experience in the quest for such an essential recovery. People are not attracted to communities such as Iona simply because of a need for community. It is a particular style of community which is important.

What is the style of the contemporary Iona community? Perhaps it can best be described as ''incarnational''. Consider the opening verses

of John's Gospel: ''The Word became flesh

and dwelt among us.'' The Gospel is about the embodiment of the spiritual - the fleshing out

of the eternal. In the centre of the cloisters

of Iona Abbey there stands a controversial bronze statue. Called The Descent of the Spirit,

it was controversial because of its subject matter - the Virgin Mary - and its author - a Jew,

Jacob Lipchitz.

The statue stands as a statement in bronze of the community's central theme: the invasion of the material by the spiritual, the Incarnation at the heart of the created order.

If we reduce such phrases to the concept of merely a mystic spark within the soul, then quite simply we have mislaid the key for which the modern world is blindly groping. Men will look elsewhere - and vainly - for their salvation.

When Mother Teresa asked a number of schoolchildren in India where God was, the Christian children pointed ''up there'' and the Hindu children pointed ''in here''.

Incarnational Christian faith says both answers are correct. Indian theology has retained a sense of the mystery at the heart of life.

Life is inescapably mysterious, even when we hold on to faith. One of Iona's gifts has been to help ordinary people form a language which speaks of vocation in simple terms - a vocabulary at the same time rich and responsive to mystery. In its early days, the Iona Community had a maxim: ''The movement is a work of faith. It will continue just as long as God requires it.'' This may be somewhat messianic, but it has the virtue of recognising the essentially provisional nature of the Community; it is a disposable tool, not an everlasting institution; it is only a tiny part of the Church's witness. Even if the Community were to self-destruct tomorrow, God would somehow manage to struggle through His day.

From the new postscript by

Norman Shanks, present leader:

The first edition of Chasing the Wild Goose was published to coincide

with the Iona Community's 50th anniversary and the opening of the MacLeod Centre in August 1988. Now, 10 years on, St Columba's Day 1997 is just past, the 1400th anniversary of his death, marked by pilgrimages and celebration.

The Community has grown over recent years - both as a movement and an organisation. More people are seeking to become members than the new members' programme can accommodate; and the wider constituency of Associate Members and Friends is expanding also.

The interest in the Community's work and concerns seems as strong as ever, reflected both in the numbers coming to Iona (more than 1200 a day in high summer, over 160,000 in 1996) and seeking to stay for the week's programme in the Community's island centres, and in the demand for information about the Community.

From its inception, the Community was about building - at first the restoration of the living quarters of the Benedictine Abbey. I firmly believe we are still rebuilding. We are about rebuilding individual's lives - with our awareness that so many people are looking for depth, purpose, and meaning in their lives. We are about the rebuilding of the Church and also about the rebuilding of society: this is why action for peace and justice is a key part of the rule to which Members are committed.

From time to time we are asked about the authenticity of the wild goose as a Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit; and consultations with Celtic scholars have failed to allay

the suspicion that the origins can be traced

no further back than George MacLeod's imagination! But it is a symbol with rich, creative, and inspiring connotations and possibilities. One of the Members relates this story: ''I was telling someone (in the US) about the wild goose being a symbol of the Holy Spirit. He replied: 'Well, that wouldn't work in America because here it's a pest and people shoot it'. I didn't think it at the time, but I realised that if ever there was a good reason for the wild goose being a symbol of the Holy Spirit it was because it is a pest and people want to shoot it!''

copywright: Ron Ferguson

This extract was abridged by Kevin McCardle

l Chasing the Wild Goose: the Story of the Iona community by Ron Ferguson is published in a new edition this week by Wild Goose Publications at #8.99

Herald readers can obtain the book at the special price of #7 plus #1 p&p by cutting out or photocopying the book cover, shown left, and sending it with a cheque directly to St Andrew Press at 121 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4YN.

Please make cheques payable to St Andrew Press