Over the next two or three consecutive summers I journeyed to the small Hebridean island of Iona, a mile from the shores of Mull, its sights and sounds pulling me back. I could walk from one end to the other in an afternoon, three miles from a white, sandy beach to a dark, grey cliff top—and from time to time I still find myself traversing those paths in my dreams. My first visit was with a small group of young Christians from the Diocese of York, although we soon became attached to a larger group from across Europe travelling in the same direction.
Catching the early train at York, we headed north into Scotland and on up to Glasgow Queen Street station in time to catch the midday shuttle to Oban. The winding journey along the base of vast, dark green valleys was painfully slow, but somehow it aroused my curiosity: there was something unique about this expedition, I thought. Its ease unapparent, there was a definite sense of journey. We arrived in Oban three hours later. From there, the voyage by ferry around the islands took three-quarters of an hour, docking at Craignure on the Isle of Mull. We travelled on by coach, cross country to Fionnphort, another journey lasting two hours. The last, welcome leg was the ferry to Iona itself, which turned out to be a pleasantly brief crossing despite dizzying waves.
Wearied, but relieved, we reached the MacLeod Centre on the lower slopes of a hill beyond the Benedictine Abbey in the early evening. Separating from my Yorkshire companions, I found myself sharing a room with characters from across the continent, one of whom stood out immediately. His feet shod in sandals and his scalp hidden beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, this blond-bearded German soon took to playing House of the Rising Sun on his acoustic guitar over and over again.
For the next week I would be a visiting member of the Iona Community, which was founded in 1938 by Reverend George McLeod on the site of a much earlier Christian community. It is believed that its founder, Columba—a Catholic saint who had previously established a number of monasteries in Ireland—set down on one of the island’s shores around 563CE. Having led an army in battle at home that left 3,000 men dead, he had fled Ireland with 12 others, intent on seeking refuge on the west coast of Scotland. His exile may have been an attempt to escape his conscience as much as retribution. When he finally arrived on Iona by coracle, it was to change the destiny of this small, exposed outcrop amidst choppy seas; he climbed to the summit of its highest hill and looked across the horizon. Standing atop Carn-Cul-ri-Eirinn—the hill with its back to Ireland—he could no longer see his homeland, and Iona became his home.
The modern community was centred upon a 10th century abbey which post-dated the monastery that Columba built, but its spiritual essence undoubtedly has different ancestry. Although its current incarnation started as a project linked to the Church of Scotland, it is now an ecumenical community which appeals to Christians of many denominations and of different social and cultural backgrounds. Its liberal approach brings together individuals who are interested in restoring the common life through social and political works, empathising with issues of peace and justice. It was the emphasis on social work that appealed to me more than the call to renew a faith based on the gospels, and it was this that drew me back the following year.
The MacLeod Centre was a modern building accommodating arts facilities, meeting rooms, a kitchen and dining room, a social area and numerous bedrooms. We soon learnt that we were there to live as a cooperative community for the week, each of us given our chores. On one day we would be cleaning the toilets, on another doing the washing up or clearing the breakfast tables. The water we drank was coloured by the peat on the moor, dribbling out of the taps straight from the island’s own reservoir. Our food came from the community’s allotments. Living as companions from several nations was relatively simple. Given that the activities we engaged in were challenging, we always thought deeply about each issue raised.
Meanwhile, Iona’s unique liturgy used in worship every day was intensely moving, pulling unexpected emotions out from the depths of our souls. The mid-week pilgrimage around the island focused on its history and provided pause for reflection. Entering this environment as one whose faith was doubtful, however, generated its own set of emotions, leaving me confused and feeling lost. Conscious of the weakness of my faith, I demanded the signs that those early saints were said to have witnessed on the island. If old sages had seen Christ before them on these rocks, I asked myself, why could he not reveal himself to me?
While I had travelled to Iona in a group, I soon found that I preferred solitude. Our mornings and evenings were spent in workshops, but our afternoons were free and so I would wander off to explore the lanes and footpaths on my own. Every evening a beautiful service was held in the abbey, but I soon found myself uncomfortable within those stone walls, mindful of my pitiful faith and the resulting sense of hypocrisy that overwhelmed me.
By the middle of the week, I was no longer hurrying down to the abbey for worship before sunset, but heading off in the opposite direction, climbing the steep hillside to the summit of Dún-I, where I would sit at the base of a huge rock and survey the scene below me. I would stay there until I saw people—the like of ants from that height—emerge from the abbey’s entrance and then I would descend the slopes again while there was still light, the sky already orange, to meet my companions in the MacLeod Centre in time for our evening activities.
One evening towards the end of the week I took part in a workshop in which we were asked to ponder upon what we possessed, whether that was something tangible, a relationship, a collection of material goods or something of emotional value. Unfortunately, despite the many very real blessings I had been bestowed with—my family, my home, my education—I was an unhappy, pessimistic teenager. The purpose of the workshop had been to link what we had been given in life to the existence of a generous God, so that we might find greater focus in our worship, expressing real gratitude in prayer. When my adolescent depression broke this linkage, however, my fragile faith evolved into disbelief and I now denied that we had a Creator and an Overseer of our affairs.
That same evening, I climbed halfway up Dún-I again and stood looking up towards the stars. I drove myself to tears and in a moment’s theatre cried out, ‘You’re not real, you’re not there’—an irony that was lost on me at the time. It was an act of rebellion at first more than an affirmation of a reality that had dawned on me just then. My faith was weak to be sure, but I was no more convinced by my disbelief than I was by the belief which had accompanied me throughout my childhood. Yet just as faith can grow over time, my belief in nothingness became almost religious in itself, as I served it with the philosophical acrobatics of an immature mind.
I confessed my unbelief to my mother on my return from Iona, half hoping that she would have words to convince me that our faith was true and half hoping that she would accept the conclusion I had reached. It had never occurred to me that I was not alone in my struggle to find faith and so it came as some surprise that one of my siblings had found the writings of the Archbishop of Durham useful in setting him back on track. Instead of feeling reassured, however, I just found myself more confused.
Initially disbelief gave rise to questions about the meaning of life and the nature of the universe. I used to wonder whether the nothingness on the outside of the universe—if such a place existed—was of the same substance as the nothingness between all the matter contained within it.
I used to wonder if every star above us at night was a clone of our galaxy, each following an identical course, but in the future and the past. I used to wonder how it had all started and how, given the infinite timescale involved, we had ever reached today. I pondered on questions that my mind was too small to comprehend, until at last, I absorbed myself in science fiction and settled for the make-believe world of time travel and quantum leaps.
If I could not convince my family that I was too tired to attend church on a Sunday morning, I would insist on sitting at the back to merely observe instead. This was not a boycott of my family: my brothers were already away from home and studying at university, my sister was in the choir, my father was invariably involved in lay preaching and my mother in delivering the sacraments. At the communion rail, I would hide my hands and bow my head, seeking only the blessing and refusing the bread and wine. Instead of singing hymns I would gulp like a fish, opening and closing my lips silently with my hymnal in hand, refusing to read the words set out before me.
Although I claimed not to believe in God, those actions spawned by the feeling of hypocrisy revealed a subconscious faith. I might well have argued that my concern was discomfort at that stage, asserting that as an autonomous character, nobody knew what my heart contained except me, but my behaviour consistently proved otherwise. At times, that discomfort proved unbearably painful.
The death of a loved one when you believe in nothingness, when you believe that life has no meaning and that this life is all there is—death when you do not believe—is an emotionally crushing experience. When my maternal grandfather passed away, clearly every member of our family was terribly upset. Yet his funeral was marked out by the sense of optimism which pervaded it, the service really quite beautiful and profound. My grandfather was one of those forever generous gentlemen who lived a good life in the service of others all of his years. In that country setting in the heart of Buckinghamshire, on a lovely summer’s day, there was a sense of peace. The message that day was clear. There was upset, but not grief, because the faithful saw that, as a deeply kind, practising Christian, he was taking his place in paradise.
As for this 16-year-old boy: disbelieving in God, and therefore in the Day of Judgement and the Hereafter, I could not come to terms with this at all. My grief overwhelmed me and I could find no solace in the words of all those compassionate souls surrounding me. I felt all alone and I began to see greater meanings in those initial meanderings of my mind than I could have intended at the time: nothingness amidst nothingness.
