In the summer of 1965, not far short of fifty years ago, I
hitchhiked with a friend from London to Iona, a small, somewhat featureless Hebridean
island off the west coast of Scotland. It had been the place in the seventh
century that the Irish monk, Columba, had brought Christianity to Scotland. In
the graveyard are Macbeth, Duncan and several other Scottish kings.
The monastery that had stood there for centuries
had fallen into disuse and ruin by the late 1930s, when George McLeod decided
to set up an ecumenical centre there, rebuilding the abbey church, and
establishing a new sense of Christian mission coupled with social justice. “The
great sin, the sin compared with which adultery is a bagatelle,” he said, “is
failure to forgive.”
It was an extraordinary experience to be there, to meet him,
and to have the opportunity of participating, albeit briefly, in the life of
the community. As a man, McLeod was an apparently paradoxical mixture –
patrician and socialist, decorated First World War soldier (Ypres and
Passchendaele) and pacifist, spiritual but practical, modest yet charismatic.
His vivid presence lives with me to this day.
During lunch in the refectory on Sunday, we guests were invited to
stand up and speak. On any subject we chose. For two minutes maximum. When that
time had passed, McLeod rang a handbell and we were on to the next brief oration.
I was too nervous to speak myself, marvelling at the sequence of articulate,
passionate offerings that followed one after another.
I realised, among many other things, that, if I was to make any mark in the world at all, I should need to develop some competence in public speaking.
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