Thursday 4 May
Returning to work yesterday after a day off wasn't so bad, especially as I got to read in church yesterday morning--it was fantastic! I felt so. . .valued.
The guests this week are mostly from Holland (we heard their football fight song of "Hup, Holland, Hup!" as they danced around in bright orange at the guest concert last night), the Netherlands, Canada, and the U.S. (two of whom are from Roanoke!). Another couple are from Florida, and the husband is a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA) and helped me along with some encouragements about seminary.
The guest concert had some great stuff in it--the folks with the adults-with-developmental-disabilities group did some really great Celtic music with guitars, violin, drums, and tin whistle; a large contingent of the Canada group calling themselves "Maple Syrup" sung some folk songs; and other just invited us to sing along with Beatles lyrics.
Worship was amazing last night--besides singing "Halle, Halle, Halle" at one point, near the end we did a rousing traditional Israeli song called "Hevenu Shalom Alechem" (meaning "May peace be with us"), which had perhaps fifty of us running about in the aisles, joining hands as we spontaneously danced and sang. Definitely one of those times when you can fell the spirit of God pulsing in your veins and breathing new air in your lungs.
At the pub, I tried some Ember, which is a lager (I'm so not a drinking person, so I'm cautiously sampling things here and there), took a sip of Hans's Guinness and promptly cringed, and enjoyed getting to know two of the new vollies, Birgitte and Katie. Both of them are quite nice. Birgitte is from Denmark and is a Lutheran--yay!--and wants to study social sciences at Uni, hopefully in the fall. Katie is a friend of Amanda's from school in New Brunswick, Canada, and I'm anticipating finding out more soon.
other highlights from the day:
-conversation with a guest named Johann, a retired Lutheran minister from Canada who spend 8 years in Liberia
-handing out and getting hungs from Matty, who loves Weird Al songs
-Scrabble, good conversations with Zoe and Markus (both in Abbey Housekeeping with me), Steve, Matty again, and Kate and Amanda
I must've done a lot of talking today to have had this many good conversations, eh? (Oh, the Canadians are getting to my speech!)
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Making the Pilgrimage
(above, a picture of Iona Abbey, since I haven't yet provided one. . .can you believe I WORK there?!)
Well, if yesterday was a jewel of a day, today's been a slimy, moss-covered, fetid stone buried at the bottom of a bog.
Matty and I went on the "on-road" pilgrimage to various sites on the island and the weather was hideous. As we were led in a group of a few dozen about the island's sacred sites of interest, rain stung our faces like nettles, the wind tossed us forwards and slammed into us like an obstinate concrete wall, and the near-freezing chill sent a constant ache into our skin. We saw a few of the famous Celtic crosses, Martyrs Bay (evidently a massacre of monks took place there!), the Augustinian Nunnery ruins, a beach near where St. Columba landed with twelve others in a coracle in 563, and another place having to do with Columba called Angels' Hill. At each site, we heard the history along with a Scripture reading, then sang a song together; we ate lunch on the Machair Beach and stopped a little while later for steaming hot tea in tumblers and flapjack (a sweet oat-ish bar probably also made with golden syrup, which is like thick pancake syrup) served by other Iona staff out of the back of a van driven to the spot for the occasion. It was, in fact, such bad weather that the ferry only had one run off the island today; the other trips were cancelled because the sea was so rough. The other vollies say that the only they've seen worse than this is when it snowed about six inches in March.
The ceilidh was great fun last night, although greatly exhausting. I was twirled- and jigged-out and my face probably tom-ah-to red from exertion. Wonderful--danced with Matty and John the sacristan.
I had good fun exchanging jokes with Annie and Eve, two to Richard and Biddy's three daughters. Actually, Richard later asked me if I'd read at worship tomorrow morning, and I'm realy looking forward to it.
Otherwise, it was relaxing and good to hangout with Matty, Amanda (from Sweden), Melissa (from Atlanta), and Darren (a Glaswegian) at Cul Shuna this afternoon. This evening's staff program session on ecology and prophecy was pretty great as well.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The Ceilidh Approaches
Monday 1 May
Just walked to the post office, only to remember that today's a bank holiday, so no post, and no purchasing stamps!
It's quite warm this afternoon, and so I've trailed away less than five feet farther to the sands of the shore--how sunny and warm and delicious it is! Some teenagers have rolled up their trousers and are dipping their feet in the sea while their travelling groups wait on the pier above for the ferry. You can see other islands, and they're quite close across the azure-and-dusky-blue waters that are still choppy from storms this morning.
Tonights there is going to be a ceilidh in the village hall. From a previous experience at such an event, I know that it's a social gathering with lots of dancing that's obviously the cultural ancestor of square dancing. Since I'll be coming right from work, I won't be able to dress up, but maybe that's for the best, as everyone might just be going casually.
Just walked to the post office, only to remember that today's a bank holiday, so no post, and no purchasing stamps!
It's quite warm this afternoon, and so I've trailed away less than five feet farther to the sands of the shore--how sunny and warm and delicious it is! Some teenagers have rolled up their trousers and are dipping their feet in the sea while their travelling groups wait on the pier above for the ferry. You can see other islands, and they're quite close across the azure-and-dusky-blue waters that are still choppy from storms this morning.
Tonights there is going to be a ceilidh in the village hall. From a previous experience at such an event, I know that it's a social gathering with lots of dancing that's obviously the cultural ancestor of square dancing. Since I'll be coming right from work, I won't be able to dress up, but maybe that's for the best, as everyone might just be going casually.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The Sky Cries; So Do I
Sunday 30 April
Amazing communion service this morning-- lots of good versions of the liturgy from Africa, and Lauren, I discovered, has an awesome presence when leading any part of worship. Tea afterwards in the cloisters (a sheltered area of stone corridors around an open courtyard); I'll have had enough tea to drown a sheep by the time I'm done, I think.
Speaking of drowning, today it finally rained. Since it's been clear from our arrival on Wednesday ("our" as in mine along with the other new vollies), everyone has been telling us to appreciate it being dry while it lasts, and now it's more than clear why. The temperature seems to drop 10 degrees, the wind freezes your skin, and the gravelly paths become like soup under your feet. Returning from my evening shift at 7:30, it seemed as though the sky and the gulls were crying along with me in my loneliness. I've so much wanted a hug-- someone to hold, to hold hands with. Everyone else was off getting ready to drink or meet their own friends or gossip and giggle and talk about their favourite music groups and clubs. I want a mutually affectionate touch unhampered by the briefness dictated in social correctness. I wan a hug. I need love frrom someone in friendship, not just in universal welcoming. Is it not possible that I could be loved for the person I am uniquely and truly?
My deepest fear: not that I am powerful beyond measure, but that I am not enough to warrant real love.
God, how can I know your love truly if I can only experience it cerebrally? Why can I not feel it in another way? Am I barred from ever having a lasting and thoroughly loving relationship ever again?
Amazing communion service this morning-- lots of good versions of the liturgy from Africa, and Lauren, I discovered, has an awesome presence when leading any part of worship. Tea afterwards in the cloisters (a sheltered area of stone corridors around an open courtyard); I'll have had enough tea to drown a sheep by the time I'm done, I think.
Speaking of drowning, today it finally rained. Since it's been clear from our arrival on Wednesday ("our" as in mine along with the other new vollies), everyone has been telling us to appreciate it being dry while it lasts, and now it's more than clear why. The temperature seems to drop 10 degrees, the wind freezes your skin, and the gravelly paths become like soup under your feet. Returning from my evening shift at 7:30, it seemed as though the sky and the gulls were crying along with me in my loneliness. I've so much wanted a hug-- someone to hold, to hold hands with. Everyone else was off getting ready to drink or meet their own friends or gossip and giggle and talk about their favourite music groups and clubs. I want a mutually affectionate touch unhampered by the briefness dictated in social correctness. I wan a hug. I need love frrom someone in friendship, not just in universal welcoming. Is it not possible that I could be loved for the person I am uniquely and truly?
My deepest fear: not that I am powerful beyond measure, but that I am not enough to warrant real love.
God, how can I know your love truly if I can only experience it cerebrally? Why can I not feel it in another way? Am I barred from ever having a lasting and thoroughly loving relationship ever again?
Monday, May 15, 2006
So Much Awesomeness I Had to Make a List
Saturday 29 April
Hard work again today. I need to be better about getting up earlier for breakfast. Otherwise I'm famished at lunch. Today's was really good-- leftovers including roast pork and shepherd's pie. I miss having meat.
My favourite parts of today:
-singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" with Matty while folding laundry
-singing South African song called "Ameni" at evening service with the staff choir
-listening to two Brits sing "Loch Lomond" in the kitchen
-having discussion of history and culture with Daniel, a vollie from Germany
-being comforted by Claire, one of my fantastic roomies
Hard work again today. I need to be better about getting up earlier for breakfast. Otherwise I'm famished at lunch. Today's was really good-- leftovers including roast pork and shepherd's pie. I miss having meat.
My favourite parts of today:
-singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" with Matty while folding laundry
-singing South African song called "Ameni" at evening service with the staff choir
-listening to two Brits sing "Loch Lomond" in the kitchen
-having discussion of history and culture with Daniel, a vollie from Germany
-being comforted by Claire, one of my fantastic roomies
Your Official Iona Tour
Friday 28th April, 5:15 pm
An up-and-down sort of day was this, my first full day of bed, easy to cheer myself singing while working, quick the fall of spirits when I realise I don't know my place among the people here, and slow my contentment to build when work is over and relaxing can begin.
Right, so for convenience's sake:
A British-American Guide to Translation on Iona
trousers=pants pants=underwear (to) frank=to put postage on
polishing=dusting hoovering=vacuuming uni=college A-levels=SATs
vollies=volunteers (an Iona phrase)
So. . .a descriptive tour of Iona. After the ferry to the Isle of Mull, the bus from Craignure (the landing point) to Fionnphort (pronounced Finn-a-fort), and the ferry from thence to Iona, you step off onto this island that's three miles long and one mile wide, but teeming with grassy hills and old stony ruins. Less than a hundred people live here, they say, and no wonder: only the ferry can get you back to its neighbour island, and then another ferry back to the Scottish mainland. If there's an emergency, you call the coast guard.
In less than a mile, you approach the Benedictine Abbey built in the 1100s for monks, and now it's the spiritual centre of life in the Iona Community. In it are a church, cloisters, a refectory (dining hall), meeting rooms, and guest rooms (the last two were added in the 20th century). If you continue on up the path, passing sharply rising mounds of earth and green fields filled with wandering sheep, you'll come to the MacLeod Centre, where I live. Everyone calls it the Mac. In my room, which I share with three other vollies, I have a bed with some storage space, and I share a toilet and sink with the other girls. The shower's down the hall.
Some of the other vollies live in a residence called Cul Shuna (Gaelic for "behind the cow"). I eat all my meals in the Abbey refectory, since it's the place I work, and the vollies who are "attached to" (work in) the Mac eat there.
There's two services every day in the church-- one at 9 am, one at 9 pm-- and each contains a few hymns, contemporarily worded liturgy, and unique worship features depending on the theme of the service. I work seven hours a day and get a day and a half off per week; my work consists mainly of cleaning rooms, corridors, bathrooms, dishes, clothes, floors, and laundry throughout the Abbey. Hard work, but worth it because it means I get to be here.
An up-and-down sort of day was this, my first full day of bed, easy to cheer myself singing while working, quick the fall of spirits when I realise I don't know my place among the people here, and slow my contentment to build when work is over and relaxing can begin.
Right, so for convenience's sake:
A British-American Guide to Translation on Iona
trousers=pants pants=underwear (to) frank=to put postage on
polishing=dusting hoovering=vacuuming uni=college A-levels=SATs
vollies=volunteers (an Iona phrase)
So. . .a descriptive tour of Iona. After the ferry to the Isle of Mull, the bus from Craignure (the landing point) to Fionnphort (pronounced Finn-a-fort), and the ferry from thence to Iona, you step off onto this island that's three miles long and one mile wide, but teeming with grassy hills and old stony ruins. Less than a hundred people live here, they say, and no wonder: only the ferry can get you back to its neighbour island, and then another ferry back to the Scottish mainland. If there's an emergency, you call the coast guard.
In less than a mile, you approach the Benedictine Abbey built in the 1100s for monks, and now it's the spiritual centre of life in the Iona Community. In it are a church, cloisters, a refectory (dining hall), meeting rooms, and guest rooms (the last two were added in the 20th century). If you continue on up the path, passing sharply rising mounds of earth and green fields filled with wandering sheep, you'll come to the MacLeod Centre, where I live. Everyone calls it the Mac. In my room, which I share with three other vollies, I have a bed with some storage space, and I share a toilet and sink with the other girls. The shower's down the hall.
Some of the other vollies live in a residence called Cul Shuna (Gaelic for "behind the cow"). I eat all my meals in the Abbey refectory, since it's the place I work, and the vollies who are "attached to" (work in) the Mac eat there.
There's two services every day in the church-- one at 9 am, one at 9 pm-- and each contains a few hymns, contemporarily worded liturgy, and unique worship features depending on the theme of the service. I work seven hours a day and get a day and a half off per week; my work consists mainly of cleaning rooms, corridors, bathrooms, dishes, clothes, floors, and laundry throughout the Abbey. Hard work, but worth it because it means I get to be here.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
26 April
12:10 am
Pretty darn exhausted. After allowing myself the luxury of relaxing at the hostel--a little reading, some TV--I realised it was getting late, so I checked out and bolted back the few blocks to Euston station. By the time I located Platform 1, had walked four minutes or so along the train to reach my coach, and stowed all my bags overhead, I collapsed into my seat, sweaty and out of breath. I feel like a clumsy idiot, but at least I'm now on the train and headed north.
9:20 am
On the second leg of the train ride now, having switched trains in Glasgow. A nice man on the street spontaneously offered to help me with directions to the station (I had to walk from one to the other), and everyone else I've asked questions of has been kind and friendly. And it's a good thing, too--otherwise this trip and my time here so far in the UK would be more difficult.
Scotland is visually breathtaking. The landscape is vast, sparkling with lochs and its craggy mountains sprouting tall pines like some eccentric man's wild eyebrows. It seems most of the country is quite rural, and the towns well-scattered. "Welcome to the best (small) country in the world" a sign at Glasgow Central's station reads. And as I look at the broad landscape jammed with rocky, piny hights and run through with creeks and lakes and waterfalls, I'm inclined to believe it.
I realise what I'm looking at now-- Loch Lomond! As in, "the bonny, bonny banks of"! The song's not lying--gorgeous, vast water and wild, rambling mountains rising from it--this truly is beautiful.
The signs in Scotland, firstly in English, are supplemented by a language that is definitely Celtic, perhaps Gaelic. I'll have to ask.
"Eileanan an Aigh" (Islands to Inspire)
So, Tombermory: not a bad place to get lost, really. Had I not been in this situation, I wouldn't've stopped for a healthy-sized early dinner and gotten to try a pale ale brewed with chocolate malt! And Iona's not mad about the mix-up: they understand.
I still stick out like a sore thumb as an American with tons of very literal baggage, but no one's laughed yet (quite possibly they've felt sorry for me, though).
12:10 am
Pretty darn exhausted. After allowing myself the luxury of relaxing at the hostel--a little reading, some TV--I realised it was getting late, so I checked out and bolted back the few blocks to Euston station. By the time I located Platform 1, had walked four minutes or so along the train to reach my coach, and stowed all my bags overhead, I collapsed into my seat, sweaty and out of breath. I feel like a clumsy idiot, but at least I'm now on the train and headed north.
9:20 am
On the second leg of the train ride now, having switched trains in Glasgow. A nice man on the street spontaneously offered to help me with directions to the station (I had to walk from one to the other), and everyone else I've asked questions of has been kind and friendly. And it's a good thing, too--otherwise this trip and my time here so far in the UK would be more difficult.
Scotland is visually breathtaking. The landscape is vast, sparkling with lochs and its craggy mountains sprouting tall pines like some eccentric man's wild eyebrows. It seems most of the country is quite rural, and the towns well-scattered. "Welcome to the best (small) country in the world" a sign at Glasgow Central's station reads. And as I look at the broad landscape jammed with rocky, piny hights and run through with creeks and lakes and waterfalls, I'm inclined to believe it.
I realise what I'm looking at now-- Loch Lomond! As in, "the bonny, bonny banks of"! The song's not lying--gorgeous, vast water and wild, rambling mountains rising from it--this truly is beautiful.
The signs in Scotland, firstly in English, are supplemented by a language that is definitely Celtic, perhaps Gaelic. I'll have to ask.
"Eileanan an Aigh" (Islands to Inspire)
So, Tombermory: not a bad place to get lost, really. Had I not been in this situation, I wouldn't've stopped for a healthy-sized early dinner and gotten to try a pale ale brewed with chocolate malt! And Iona's not mad about the mix-up: they understand.
I still stick out like a sore thumb as an American with tons of very literal baggage, but no one's laughed yet (quite possibly they've felt sorry for me, though).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
