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November 4, 2025

Reflections from Iona

I have longed to travel to Iona, Scotland for 30 years, ever since learning about it while in seminary. When CBFNC’s Helping Pastors Thrive program offered a pilgrimage for a small group of clergy, I jumped at the chance. You expect breathtaking scenery and living daily as part of the Iona Community, but you do not expect how Iona comes to live in you when you return home.

Thirteen Baptist pastors from across North Carolina made this journey together. We were a delightfully quirky bunch hoping for renewal, refreshment, and meeting God anew. Once on the island, we joined other pilgrims with rich and varied backgrounds:

  • A young Irish novelist raised Roman Catholic and on a pilgrimage to discover if God was bigger than her childhood faith.
  • A longtime member of the Iona Community traveling with her adult daughter, who was finally ready to receive the experience in community she resisted years before.
  • An ELCA pastor and her spouse from Wisconsin.
  • An older gentleman from Cambridge searching for the faith he lost a long time ago.
  • ·A pastor from Holland, who spoke English fairly well, and his friend, who spoke very little English, seeking friendship and shared spirit.

We were old and young, exhausted and eager, confident and uncertain. During the week, we worshiped together, worked together, laughed, cried, walked and ate together. We discovered in one another a common humanity and experience – and the face of God. We came as strangers feeling isolated and insulated. We left as family.

Since returning home, many of you have graciously asked how my trip was. “Amazing” has been my response because I suspect spending time in that thin place and experiencing all the people I met has changed me in ways I haven’t yet discovered. The best description of my time there is one shared by our group leader, Scott Hudgins – “I’ve been asked about our pilgrimage and experience at Iona. I found myself hesitating a bit before responding simply because any description I offer seems to fall short of what we actually shared. How do you share the gift of community we experienced at Iona Abbey? It’s a bit like sharing the pleasure of the sticky toffee pudding at the George Street Fish Restaurant and Chip Shop in Oban…” For more information about the Iona Community, visit iona.org.uk.