Chasing the Wild Goose

Ronald Ferguson

Description

The history of the Iona Community including the work of George MacLeod whose inspiration placed Iona firmly on the Christian map once again in the twentieth century.

Sujets

• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Wild Goose Publications
• Date de parution: 05 mars 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849520836
• Langue: English

Extrait

Chasing
the Wild Goose
The Story of the Iona Community
Ronald Ferguson
Copyright © Ronald Ferguson, 1998 First published by Collins, 1988 Revised edition published by Wild Goose Publications, 1998 Reprinted from 2006 by Wild Goose Publications, 4th Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK. Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division of the Iona Community. Scottish Charity No. SC003794. Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243. www.ionabooks.com
ePub:ISBN 978-1-84952-083-6 Mobipocket:ISBN 978-1-84952-084-3 PDF:ISBN 978-1-84952-085-0
Cover illustration: ‘TheWild Geese of Hy’, by Trevor Thorn © 1998 Trevor Thorn Photograph: David Jones, MJP
All rights reserved. Apart from reasonable personal use on the purchaser’s own system and related devices, no part of this document or file(s) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Ron Ferguson has asserted his right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Ronald Ferguson is Minister of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney.
After seven years in journalism, he studied at St Andrews University, graduating MA with honours in History and Philosophy, and at New College, Edinburgh, graduating BD with first class honours in New Testament studies. A postgraduate year at Duke University, where he was awarded the degree of Master of Theology, was followed by eight years’ ministry in the Glasgow housing scheme of Easterhouse. After an exchange year with the United Church of Canada, he was deputy warden of Iona Abbey from 1980-81, and then elected Leader of the Iona Community from 1981-88.
He is the author of Geoff: a Life of the Revd Geoffrey M. Shaw; Grace and Dysentery: Personal Reflections on a Visit to India; George MacLeod, a much acclaimed biography of the founder of the Iona Community, Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil, a ‘cult’ appraisal of his home town, Cowdenbeath in Fife, and its football team; Technology at the Crossroads; and two works for the stage ‘Every Blessed Thing’ and ‘ORKNEYINGA’. He is also editor of Daily Readings with George MacLeod; joint editor of The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory: Iona Prayers by the Revd George F. MacLeod. Ronald Ferguson has had short fiction and poetry published in the Glasgow Herald, for which he is a regular columnist.
Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition
Acknowledgements in the Revised Edition
Acknowledgements in the Original Edition
Original Foreword
Prologue
Part One: THE BEATING OF WINGS
1.      The Dove of the Church
2.      The Celtic Way
3.      The Glory of the West
Part Two: FLYING IN FORMATION
4.      New Island Soldiers
5.      Birds of Prey
6.      Glory to God in the High Street
7.      Travelling On and Reaching Out
8.      The End of the Beginning?
9.      The Shaking of the Foundations
10.    The Long Haul
11.    Learning To Fly Again
Part Three: ON A WING AND A PRAYER
12.    Communities of Resistance
13.    The Descent of the Spirit
14.    Dancing with a Limp
Epilogue
Postscript
Bibliography
Iona Community Information
Wild Goose Publications’ Title List
Preface to the Revised Edition
The Iona Community is immensely grateful to Ron Ferguson for his ready agreement to the publication of an extended version of Chasing the Wild Goose. The need and demand for an accessible account of the Iona Community’s story is as strong as ever; and it is especially appropriate that I should be writing this at the time of the celebrations to mark the fourteen hundredth anniversary of St Columba’s death and that this book should be published in the year of the Community’s sixtieth anniversary.
Only minimal adjustments have been made to the text of the 1988 edition. The final chapter attempts to identify and explore the events and developments in the Community’s life over the last ten years.
Royalties from this new edition will go to the Wild Goose Resource Group, a project of the Iona Community promoting and exploring new approaches to worship throughout Britain and beyond.
My personal thanks and warm appreciation go to all those who have helped assemble the additional material: as a former civil servant I recognize that my style can scarcely match that of an ex-journalist! I hope nonetheless that this book will continue to provide enrichment, stimulation, and perhaps challenge too, for all those who are interested in the work and concerns of the Iona Community.
Norman Shanks
Leader, Iona Community
Iona, Columba’s Day, 1997
Bird of Heaven
Catch the bird of heaven, Lock him in a cage of gold; Look again tomorrow, And he will be gone.
Ah! the bird of heaven! Follow where the bird has gone; Ah! the bird of heaven! Keep on travelling on.
Lock him in religion. Gold and frankincense and myrrh Carry to his prison, But he will be gone.
Temple made of marble, Beak and feather made of gold, All the bells are ringing, But the bird has gone.
Bell and book and candle, Cannot hold him any more, For the bird is flying As he did before.
Ah! the bird of heaven! Follow where the bird has gone; If you want to find him, Keep on travelling on.
Sydney Carter
Acknowledgements in the Revised Edition
I am grateful to Oxford University Press for permission to quote from Adomnan’s Life of St Columba (A.O. and M.O. Anderson, 1961), and also for permission to quote from The Letters of John Keats (ed. M. Buxton Forman, 1952); to Colin Morton for permission to quote from Ralph Morton’s book The Iona Community: Personal Impressions of the Early Years (Saint Andrew Press, 1974), and to Iona Community Wild Goose Publications and Wild Goose Resource Group for permission to quote various materials. The biblical extracts are from the Revised Standard Version, published by the American Council of Churches. The song ‘Bird of Heaven’ is reproduced by permission of Sydney Carter © 1969 Stainer and Bell Ltd from ‘Green Print for Song’. Patrick Kavanagh’s poem ‘Beyond The Headlines’ is reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Patrick Kavanagh, c/o Peter Fallon, Literary Agent, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co. Meath, Ireland. The texts of the Carmina Gadelica were re-published in 1992 by Floris Books, Edinburgh.
Acknowledgements in the Original Edition
There has long been a need for a book which tells the story of the Iona Community and describes its present-day life and work — and sets it within the context of Iona’s remarkable history.
One way to tell the story would have been through the testimony of those who have been affected by the work of the Community on island and mainland, but this would have meant a multi-volumed work.
Some names are given here, but I am keenly aware of the many who could, or even should, have been mentioned. The full and detailed story must await a definitive academic treatise. I am grateful to those who read the first draft of the manuscript and made suggestions; at the end of the day the judgements are mine.
In the interests of narrative flow in what is intended as a popular yet well-grounded history, it was decided not to clutter the text with annotations. The quotations from the Iona Community history are from the Community’s magazine, Coracle, unless otherwise stated. Those interested in pursuing historical researches further will find a selected bibliography at the end of the book.
All royalties from this book will go towards the work of the Iona Community.
I would like to record my thanks to the Council of the Iona Community for setting aside the necessary time for me to research and write the book in the course of a very busy and demanding year, and to the staff of the Community for their support and encouragement. Thanks also to Offline Services, Edinburgh whose donation of a word processor made the compiling of the manuscript at first a terror and then a delight. My editors at Collins have been encouraging and enthusiastic.
I am grateful to George MacLeod, not only for kindly agreeing to write the foreword but also for his warm personal support. and to my wife, Cristine, for gently coping with writer’s dementia.
The living story of the Iona Community continues. Today, Lord MacLeod laid the foundation stone of a new international youth centre on Iona, ensuring that future generations will have the opportunity to participate in a new stage of the divine chase — finding in the process that their lives are strangely changed.
Ron Ferguson
Leader, Iona Community
Iona, Columba’s Day, 1987
Original Foreword
by the Very Revd Lord MacLeod of Fuinary, Founder of the Iona Community
Here is a book our modern Church badly needs. Written by one who first trained as a journalist and later became a minister, it has both clarity and brevity and is marked by historical and theological excellence.
How many Christians are aware that Rome was not in charge of all Europe in the early centuries? On the contrary, the Celtic Church had a different date for Easter and an outlook of its own.
Coming up-to-date, how many know that the Church of Scotland is in the forefront of Church Unity — with Roman Catholic bishops conferring and worshipping with Presbyterians in Iona Abbey, and Roman Catholic bishops inviting Presbyterian Moderators to come to worship with them on that same site?
Iona is a congenial site for this and for so much more. It was Columba, on his deathbed, who anticipated that his monastery would one day be deserted but ‘ere the world come to an end, Iona would be as it was’.
It is by this rebirth, now occurring in modern terms, that the membership of the Iona Community today is composed of Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, women as well as men — numbering some two hundred Members. Another eight hundred Associates are scattered across the world, and more than two thousand ‘Friends’ help with our finances. Nor is the Community any longer only concerned with clergy, male