And did these feet?

The first precious thing to happen last week was at church on Sunday. There was a baptism, and a particular sense of joy and peace. Someone mentioned the baptism of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and words from God were heard: ‘This is my beloved Son.’ And when I heard this, I sensed, at some level much deeper than mere mental knowing that I too was a child of God, beloved.

Sunday 9^th June was St Columba Sunday. This year is the 1450^th anniversary of Columba’s voyage from Ireland to Iona in 563AD.  Columba means ‘dove’ – it’s the name he was given at baptism. His birth-name was Crimthann, meaning ‘fox.’

Born into a royal Irish family, he was destined by his parents for the church. Columba served Christ long and well, a strong, stern yet tender, prophetic presence. We sense his struggles to balance Christian vocation and political allegiance, to live as a Christian in a culture of druidism, to choose the way of the dove rather than the fox.

Our knowledge of St Columba’s life is sketchy. This has allowed different groups of Christians down the centuries to reconstruct his life story, claiming him as the spiritual forefather of their own particular strand of Christianity. In recent years, for instance, charismatic Christians have seen their emphasis on the miracle-working God reflected in Columba’s work, while those who draw encouragement from Celtic Christianity have seen themselves as walking in his footsteps.

At work the other day I was sitting in the office in Ardross Street, Inverness wrestling with IT problems. On the rooftop outside the open window a woodpigeon perched, cooing lethargically, speaking peace to my heart. I remembered Jesus’ words about the lessons birds teach – don’t worry about tomorrow, focus on being what God has made you to be, entrust yourself to God, make music.

Yet it’s OK for woodpigeons to be calm and untroubled, but surely the challenge human beings are called to is to grow, to overcome adversity, to embrace difficult tasks? Thus Columba travelled, founded monasteries, copied manuscript, led the bustling community on Iona, and travelled north east to Inverness, climbing the steep path up to Craig Phadraig to explain Christian faith to King Brude.

How can we both live in the moment and plan for the future, both rest in God and embrace action-filled days?

I have two thoughts on this. The first is that we should be who we really are. It seems to me that not only do we reconstruct historical figures like Columba, but we also reconstruct our own lives. Our living can be shaped by other people’s expectations of us, or by our own powerful drives. I know I’m driven to achieve, to be significant, to have a legacy, to count. I am aware that I tend to serve these drives, and that serving them makes me less the person I am meant to be.

When I recognise what’s driving me, and realise that the only power these drives have over me is the power I give them, then I am set free to be the real John, blossoming in the moment, serving only Father God.

And the second thought is that, like Columba, we need to have a rhythm in our lives – time for activity, but time too for being still in God’s presence. Time apart which Columba created in his commitment to prayer and his solitary retreats on the unidentified island of Hinba.

Adomnan’s Life of St Columba, written a century after Columba’s death contains many accounts of miracles, healing and supernatural knowledge associated with the saint. We are right to be sceptical of some of these accounts, but not of them all, for Columba seems to have been one of those people in whose life the kingdom of God breaks through. His was a God-filled life. Adomnan quotes St Paul: ‘He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.’

The other precious thing last week came when I was talking to my dear friend Andrew who has Asperger’s, and lives in Shetland. Perhaps because of his condition, Andrew finds that sermons rarely connect with him. But he taken one of his long walks, and told me that in the flat landscape, the heaving ocean, and in particular in the fragile reality of the seabirds with their lively movements and sharp cries he sensed the presence and beauty of God.

We need the insights into faith which the words in the Bible give – words well known to Columba and his fellow-monks. But ours is the God who came down in the dove, who whispers through the whole of creation in ways each can understand: ‘My beloved child.’

In Columba the dove of Christ set foot in our land.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 13th June 2013)