Gathered and Scattered

Neil Paynter

Description

Daily readings for four months from a wide range of contributors within the Iona Community, reflecting the concerns of the community. A follow-up to the best-selling This Is the Day.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian liturgy

Informations

• Publié par: Wild Goose Publications
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849520256
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also in this series:
This Is the Day: Readings and meditations from the Iona Community Neil Paynter

Readings©the individual contributors Compilation©2007 Neil Paynter
First published 2007 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. SCO03794. Limited Company Reg. No. SCO96243. www.ionabooks.com
ePub:ISBN 978-1-84952-025-6 Mobipocket:ISBN 978-1-84952-026-3 PDF:ISBN 978-1-84952-027-0
Cover design © 2007 Wild Goose Publications Cover photograph © Neil Paynter
All rights reserved. Apart from the circumstances specified below, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying or any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Non-commercial use: The material in this book may be used non-commercially for worship and group work without written permission from the publisher. If parts of the book are photocopied for such use, please make full acknowledgement of the source. Where a large number of copies are made, a donation may be made to the Iona Community, but this is not obligatory.
For any commercial use of the contents of this book, permission must be obtained in writing from the publisher in advance.
Ruth Burgess has asserted her right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

C ONTENTS
The topics for the days:


New ways to touch the hearts of all
Economic witness
Youth concern
The Word
Hospitality and welcome
This is the day
The Iona experience
Life in community
Women
Prayer
Justice and peace
The integrity of creation
Columban Christianity & The Celtic tradition
Racism
Community
Pilgrimage
Sexuality
Healing
Social action
Church renewal
Worship
Called to be One
Mission
Work
The poor and disadvantaged
Basic Christian communities
Non-violence and peacekeeping
Interfaith
Commitment
The rediscovery of spirituality
The thirty-first day

A mouse can do little but a nest of mice can work great havoc.

George MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community


F OREWORD
In work and worship
GOD IS WITH US
Gathered and scattered
GOD IS WITH US
Now and always
GOD IS WITH US.
The closing responses of the daily Act of Prayer of the Iona Community
Powerful yet tender words.
When Neil Paynter asked if I had any suggestions for this book’s title, I thought of the phrase ‘gathered and scattered’. For me they are empowering words, which have spiritually encouraged and strengthened the many people around the world who hold them in their hearts and say them on a daily basis. Whether gathered or scattered, God’s light, hope and healing enfold us.
The words in this book will be scattered in many places, yet their roots are in that shared vision of an engaged and radical Christianity. Although the reflections come from many sources, they are all propelled by the knowledge that God is to be found in everyday living – in the uncertainties, contradictions and laughter of our times.
And whether we are gathered or scattered, may these often prophetic reflections take us all into a renewed commitment to God, to this amazing earth we all walk upon and to our sisters and brothers everywhere.
Peter Millar

I NTRODUCTION
Each day of the month Iona Community members pray for one another, for the wider work of the Church, and for the community’s shared concerns. Like This Is the Day, this book explores some of those concerns.
These readings and meditations were gathered over the past few years, during which I have been working as an Editorial Assistant at Wild Goose Publications, the publishing wing of the Iona Community.
Some of these readings are taken from Wild Goose books; some are from Coracle: the magazine of the Iona Community; some are from other magazines and from newspapers and radio broadcasts; many are original to this publication.
Also included are short prayers for each day, and a list of scripture readings which readers might like to work through as part of a daily discipline.
The Iona Community believe ‘that social and political action leading to justice for all people, and encouraged by prayer and discussion, is a vital work of the Church at all levels’ (from the Rule of the Iona Community).
I hope that these readings and meditations will aid in prayer and reflection, and serve to encourage thoughtful, committed action in God’s world.
Gathered and Scattered was edited in a flat in Biggar, Scotland. The collection is again dedicated to all who believe in the power of the Word (and of words), and to all those who are working to make their communities more just and peaceful places.
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this book, especially Ian Fraser, Tom Gordon and Peter Millar. Thank you also to everyone at Wild Goose Publications: Sandra Kramer, Tri Boi Ta, Jane Darroch-Riley, Alex O’Neill and Lorna Rae – you are amazing.
Neil Paynter, Eastertide, 2007
Month 1


Month 1 Day 1
N EW W AYS TO T OUCH THE H EARTS OF A LL
The GalGael Trust:The rekindling of community
Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Scotland is supposed to be an up-to-the-moment reflection on current affairs. If you’re presenting it, the producers phone about 18 hours before the broadcast is due, to start agreeing the topic and wording that will go out, normally live, just before 7:30 the next morning.
But it’s a minefield out there! As the 2-minute Thought aims to be thought-provoking but not confrontational, you have to be terribly sensitive. The art is to phrase things in a way that deepens people’s thinking, yet minimises the chances of putting a foot in the porridge when set loose from the news studio.
For fifty quid, it’s a tough shift. Not only does planning, writing and agreeing the draft take up much of the creative energy of the previous day – you don’t sleep well that night either. At least, I don’t! I keep waking up with fantasies of the alarm not going off and the imagined ignominy of letting down an awaiting nation – not to mention an awaiting mother on the Isle of Lewis!
It’s also advisable to leave enough time to check the internet news before setting off at the crack of dawn. Once I referred to a British soldier’s death in Iraq, but rapidly tweaked this on learning that more casualties had been announced overnight. The newsroom would probably have alerted me as I’d gone in, but it’s easy for glitches to slip by and for the hard-fought-for airspace that the Thought enjoys to appear less than cutting edge.
Recently I received a letter from one of the most senior generals in the British army. He said he always listened to Thought for the Day as ‘part of my daily fix before I leave for work … so that I know what the nation has been told and may appear in some form in my in-tray half an hour later!’ He was London-based and was referring to the Radio 4 version, but still, one can imagine the same influence at a Scottish level.
All in all, to broadcast the morning’s ‘God-slot’ pulls you, for a moment, onto the cutting edge of current affairs. And that is why it was so very strange, on 10th November 2005, for me to have had occasion to present Thought for the Day from a studio in Stornoway spoken … posthumously!
Now, if that sounds like a George MacLeod story coming on, you’re on the right tracks. For it concerns a man who, with his wife, often worked in Govan at a massive desk that had once been the powerhouse of none other than George MacLeod’s secretary.
Sometimes in my role as a board member of the GalGael Trust, I’ll lean over that same desk and say, ‘You know, there’s only one person I could imagine with a greater capacity for getting things done than the Big Man himself, and that was his secretary!’
The GalGael is an award-winning community organisation. Local unemployed people started it, some of whom had met at protests when the M77 motorway took a slice off Pollok Park. Participants are ordinary members of the community, which includes youths who have just left school, retired shipyard workers filled with elders’ wisdom, recovering drug addicts, folk recently out of jail, the occasional academic, and the even more occasional clergy person.
Vibrant workshops resound with boat building, silversmithing, stone carving, basketwork and weaving. But more than that, the GalGael’s a test bed and repair workshop for the software of human beings – for the rekindling of community.
It’s a testimony to all that George MacLeod had in mind that day a wee laddie’s stone apocryphally broke the stained-glass inscription on a church window and rendered it, ‘GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGH ST’.
To read Ron Ferguson’s magisterial biography of George is like looking back over a blueprint for the GalGael Trust and seeing the dream come to fruition. ‘George found that as men cheerfully offered their labour in a worthwhile cause, community began to form quite naturally.’ That’s GalGael for you, and the key visionaries in the GalGael all see the historical connection. For George, in his pre-Iona incarnation, it was Fingalton Mill that would ‘provide a Govan in the country at the lowest possible charges, where folk can get good air fresher than at the coast’.
For today’s GalGael, it’s Barmaddy Farm, presently being established on lease from the Forestry Commission at Loch Awe and with longer-term plans for a rural resettlement project to connect city and country – because human beings need both.
Phrases like ‘Work is worship’ run daily through the Fairley Street workshop. We’re not a religious organisation and few of the participants would see themselves as potential ‘bums on pews’ to fill the churches. Equally, few would want to shy from the crucial role that spirituality an