The Iona Community
When I graduated from St. John's (almost exactly one year ago, I can't believe it), Aunt Sue and Uncle Red sent me a book of daily readings and meditations compiled by the Iona Community. I was not familiar with them at the time. They are a group of incredibly ecumenical Christians based in Scotland (on the isle of Iona, no less) that focuses on communal living, prayer, and social justice. It's a pretty amazing blend of traditions, and they are quite progressive. I sort of go through the readings in fits and starts, but with all of the insanity of my last term at Cambridge I've really made an effort to read a bit of the book every day. The quotations, anecdotes, and reflections recorded in its pages, brief though they may be, have really changed my outlook as a person of faith.
Here's an especially strong passage that I read today:
JUSTICE AND PEACE
But does that mean politics?
It is a matter which is at the root of the spiritual, if the Incarnation is to have its central place in our thinking. Our spirituality is tested in how we handle the material. But does that mean politics?
The issue was clarified for me on the Howrah Bridge, Calcutta. A young man was running through the traffic, pulling a rickshaw in which two adults were seated. The sweat poured down his face and his bare feet slapped out a rhythm on the hot, dusty road. He was a beast of burden; our host said he would die at a young age. Elsewhere in Calcutta, poor people died on the pavements.
Many, many people in the world have no home, little food, no money, few clothes, no bed. They die of disease of malnutrition at an early age. The rickshaw wallah pounding the streets of Calcutta, pulling fellow human beings for a few rupees, must make God cry. Of course you "know" this intellectually; but it is different from seeing, feeling, smelling, touching. And when you look into the eyes of the poor, you become aware of your own complicity.
What to do? Living paralysed by guilt is no great help to the poor. Love demands nothing less than a re-ordering of the world's priorities: a new economic and political order. I can only glimpse what that might mean: a part of me is afraid to look any further at the implications. Justice is at the very heart of the faith, not an optional extra. And God's justice in the present situation is transformed into a word of prophetic judgment, whether we like it or not.
Charity is not enough. The work of Mother Teresa in caring for the dying is beautiful - but if nothing is done to change the overall arrangements of a world dominated by the "Christian" West, the poor will die in the gutters of the Calcuttas of the world for all time.
Prayer is not about turning one's back on all this. Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic monk who went into a monastery to escape the world, found himself in the silence addressed by a God who cares about the oppressed. Reflecting on the Christian collusion with structures of injustice, Merton pointed out that the Pharisees knew how to arrange things in such a way that the poor would always be with them. We are challenged today to a deeper prayer and a tougher political analysis. If prayer is divorced from the hard-nosed politics of Christian love, it becomes self-indulgent, navel-gazing deep breathing. It will be an abomination to a free God who shouts, "Take this away from Me!" Politics on its own is not enough, either. If it is uprooted from the forgiving justice at the heart of God, it becomes hard, vengeful, unreformed and ultimately tyrannical.
Justice cannot be separated from peace, any more than prayer can be separated from action. The cost of fueling the arms race is one million dollars each minute of the day - and while this is going on millions die of malnutrition. The price tag of this kind of "peace" is too high and it is being paid in the blood of the poor.
- Ron Ferguson
Really heavy, and really powerful. Reading this stuff has moved me in ways that regular church-going rarely has. And their point isn't that this is better, or more important, but that one needs to compliment devotion with real-world application. What's the point if you don't? God obviously thinks that the real world is important; otherwise He wouldn't have created it. Too many people of faith (myself included) spend too much time worrying about their own dilemma, and what's coming next. Of course your own spiritual fulfillment is important, but a vital key to finding that sweetest of sustenance could be the realization that you're a part of a much wider set that is in at least as much turmoil as you. And if you're reading this on your own computer, a considerable percentage of that set is certainly under much worse material conditions. Doing something to change this might bring the spiritual satisfaction that no amount of inward or even immediate concentration could.
Of course I've heard this same basic message an untold number of times, but the context is hardly ever so convincing. Resident members of Iona are no joke. They live very simple communal lives, but they are not hermits. They host groups from the outside all year, leading them in workshops, prayer groups, and informations sessions. They donate a considerable amount of their income to the type of social action that they preach, and encourage members and supporters to go out and experience all of this first-hand. And they take anyone. Their membership knows no bounds, at least within the worldwide community of Christians. I'm sure they have no qualms with working with other groups of believers either. That would go against their ethos, which is based on justice for all of God's creation.
Sometimes I feel the same way about academia. A lot of people I've heard at seminars and conferences this year sound like they have no idea about anything that's happening in the real world. They've been cooped up in libraries for too long. Don't get me wrong; they finest (and the true) academics have been out in the field. They understand that theory needs to be married to practice in order for it to mean anything. But a lot of people get caught up in the ecstasy of discourse along the way and seem to have trouble finding their way to the other side. I'm not going on to a Ph.D course next year, and in some ways I do feel left out. At the same time, however, I'm excited to turn all of this schooling into more than just personal edification. If a doctorate is in the cards for me, it'll come somewhere down the road when my shoes have gathered a bit more dust. Some of the best graduate students I know are the ones who worked outside the academy for a while.
If I hadn't shackled myself to thousands of dollars of loan debt this year I might have considered getting involved with Iona on a very serious level. It's quite an inspiring organization. I definitely want to at least visit the island and see the community. It's in the Inner Hebrides, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Tons of Scottish/Celtic heritage tied up there too. The site of the ancient Iona Abbey (which is still in use; the Community has it as their base of operations) was where St. Columba founded his monastery 1500 years ago. Oh well. Here's hoping that I decide to actually make something out of all this.
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