There’s been nothing here for a while, as frankly I haven’t know what to write. At the end of September the resident group were hit by a ‘re-calibration’ and the consequences are still reverberating. Iona is still a good place, but working for the IC has certainly changed.

One actual redundancy, one person given a new job description (me), one vacancy not filled, a reduced management elite, and everyone having to cover up the gaps. Also, a lot of nonsense about ‘working smarter not harder’ and a complete shattering of trust amongst the resident group. Bad things were said by many, and certain personalities didn’t exactly help.

Since then, there’s been some healing – thanks be to God. An apology for hurt caused from some IC members whom I respect helped me with that. There’s also been a fair bit of blind panic and muddling through for all of us. A demanding Christmas showed me that unless major changes are made, the centres are no longer sustainable to run. There’s no sign of those major changes yet.

So what now? What next for 2011? Well, it’s all been a bit of an eye-opener for me. I no longer have any respect for those running the show here. That’s interesting because I can now see that I left the UAS for the same reason, and St Hilda’s (+boredom admittedly), and similarly the Ashmolean. I no longer have any faith in management.

So 2011? If you can’t beat them… I’m looking for a IT management job elsewhere.

Here’s a few more mystery plants from my gardens:

There’s a shubby thing, which has long drooping branches and some largish flowers from spring onwards:

There’s a bushy thing. Quite tall (~2.2m)and dense with pink flowers at the top (now just going over).

There’s a spectacular flower, which has thick leaves, and a tough rhizome just underneath the ground. The flower stalks are about 1.3m long.

There is a small creeping thing:

Another small thing which I think is ever-green:

A silvery thing:

A tall perennial daisy-like thing, with lots of tall (1- 1.8m) stalks:

A less tall perennial flower, with lots of stalks (0.3-0.8m):

If you have a look at my Flickr page then you’ll see a few more detailed pictures…

We begin by going around the room, asking folk to tell us their name, where they’ve travelled from, and the answer to an inciteful question (this week was favourite flower, last week was favourite desert). It’s then necessary to give permission for people to forget names – and to keep asking through the week as few people can learn all 44 names in 6 days. I also explain that we don’t do name badges, as names are far too important for that. Asking a name is a gateway to a better conversation – name badges prevent this and make the place feel like a conference centre. This week it was a little more sensitive – one group had arrived wearing name badges – I asked them to remove them and they complied!

That leads nicely onto explaining that we’re not a conference centre – our aim is to build full relationships that are broader than a conference ever would. We’re also not a retreat centre, as it’s very difficult to find peace and queit in our busy environment and routine. We’re most certainly not a hotel either – no fluffy white towels here.

What we do here is, week after week, we build community and celebrate it.

But our community is unique – I’m not sure there is anything else like it in the world. It’s unique because it’s always changing. The guest part of the community changes every week. The volunteers stay for 6 weeks at a time, but there’s always someone coming or going, and the resident staff too come and go.

That leads me nicely into talking about the three groups, guests, vollies and ressies, and how they each have their roles to play in different ways. When all three groups come together in the middle (I sometimes draw a Venn diagram) are the three keys to building community:

- Eating together
- Working together
- Praying together

Which leads onto explaining how those are the things which we expect from everyone here, as they are the most important things for us. We expect everyone to come to mealtimes, we expect everyone to get stuck into their assigned housekeeping tasks, and we hope everyone will attend worship. There are of course practical reasons why we expect everyone to be at meals, and to do their tasks.

Following that, I (or someone else in the programme team) explain the pattern and rhythm of the week. Which is pretty much as I blogged, but we try and do it without the wearied cynicism.

After that I reckon they’ve had enough of being talked to so we get them to do something silly with geese. I ask them to take a moment to consider what their hopes are for the week. Once they’ve had a moment to think I hand out some outlines of geese and get them to write on it the hope, or draw it if they like. We then stick the picture of geese onto a map of Iona. It’s a bit silly but the idea is that just like wild geese we’re all on a longer journey, and we stop of on Iona for a short time to rest and get fed. The wild geese are supposedly an ancient celtic symbol of the holy spirit – but there’s also a chance that George MacLeod made that up.

We finish with a few practical details of life here (don’t fill hot water bottles with boiling water!) and then insist that they ask questions if they have them.

With any luck, that equips people for a week in community with us!

Since January, we’ve been living in a cottage called Shuna. We had to move out of the Abbey because the new influx of staff changed the distribution of which staff needed to live where (very complicated – many variables to juggle).

So now Shuna is home. It’s a cottagey sort of house, on the village street which looks out over the sound of Iona. It has a front garden which runs down to the shore-line and a back garden which has a building called ‘Cul Shuna’ built in it. Cul Shuna is where 15 of our volunteers sleep during their time here.

AShuna is built of pink granite from Mull, and has a bit of recent local history attached to it. It was lived in for most of its time by a couple called Alec and Euphemia Ritchie. It may have been built especially for them in 1896.

To the rear of the house, presumably on the site now occupied by Cul Shuna, Alec Ritchie had a workshop where he produced wood work silver work and other metal work to his own Celtic designs. As well as doing this, Alec was the official custodian of the nunnery and abbey ruins, the carvings of which he copied and adapted in his own work

The couple sold their designs (it seemed to be a joint enterprise as they’d met at the school of art in Glasgow) from a hut within the grounds of the nunnery, and respect for their skills spread rapidly. The silver-work in particular is still highly sort-after.

Alec and Euphemia lived in Shuna until 1941, when they both died within a few days of each other. They left their legacy in the house in the decoration around the place. Each door has a brass push plate with intricate knotwork, all different. In the living room is a carve wooden fire-surround which features two mythical beasts adapted from a carving in the abbey. Above the fireplace is a huge mirror, again with a wooden carved surround. Within it are the words ‘better a gud fame than a fine face’

Shuna is a nice place to live, warm and cosy, and nicely detached from the workplace. Unfortunately it is a few minutes walk away from the Abbey where I’m spending most of my time at the moment. I’m fed-up of the walk, which means I spend time at my desk rather than go home between things. It makes for long days sometimes leaving at 8:30am and not returning home until 10pm. However – I’m going to get a bike on Friday which will make it much quicker and easier to get home for a cuppa!

From the looks of things it must have been last summer – lots of coaches!

http://threeyearsoniona.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/whats-this/

And I now have an answer: Escalonia

Just like last spring, the work-weekers are proving to be very useful, both in terms of labour and knowledge!

For a few years we have both been excited about skiing, having been to La Plagne in the French Alps, and Banff in Canada in the past. With a more restrained budget, and less inclination to travel, we thought we’d give Scottish skiing a go this year. Looking ahead it seemed like Cairngorm would have the most reliable snow of the five Scottish resorts to choose from. Well, there was certainly no shortage of snow. We left Iona on Thursday morning, aware that there had been a pretty bad storm in the highlands. We drove across the county, all the roads were fine, but once we were on the mainland we found the hills around us totally covered and very pretty. Once we arrived at out hotel in Aviemore that afternoon we found the carparks only partially clear of snow, with huge piles of snow taking up the rest of the spaces. We eventually found out (cranky hotel internet) that up the mountain there was a more serious problem. The access road had drifts upto 15ft deep, which meant that nobody had got near the ski base station for a few days. Heavy plant was working to dig through it all, but we weren’t going to be able to get there for a while.

So we choose to drive to the nearest ski resort that probably was open – The Lecht. The drive over the hills was a bit hairy, with some snow on the highest roads, and we got within 4 miles before the police closed the snow gates just in front of us. We killed the rest of the day drinking coffee and driving back to Aviemore. We asked two nice gents in the tourist information what we should do, and they suggested…

Cross- Country skiing! We had a morning lesson being shown how to move in the skiis – which were quite different to downhill ones. Then the guy let us loose in his back garden which consisted of a forest full of trails. It was hard work and I got a blister on my heel, but at least it was a snowsport.

The next day we got word that The Lecht was definitely open and the weather was good, so we drove the hour to get there again and found the place heaving. I’d been clever and got the ski hire elsewhere so we were able to get onto the slopes pretty quickly. It took a while for me to warm up and remember what to do, but after that it was great. The lifts were all a bit more basic than those we’d used before, but they did the job.On our way home we saw a few mountain hares, which was fun!

The next day, we finally managed to get upto Caingorm to have the lessons we’d booked. It was great even though most of the mountain wasn’t yet open as they were still digging out the lifts. The instructor was great and I soon got confidence back that i was lacking a bit at the Lecht.

The next day was our final day skiing, and the weather was atrotious once we got to the top of the hill. Nethertheless our lesson continued with the winds blowing ice crystals into our faces. It was a bit extreme but people say – if you can ski in Scotland you can ski anywhere.

We stayed in the ‘Isles of Glencoe’ hotel – nice but a silly name.

We did a few little walks – and took a silly picture:

Following this picture, we wanted a cup of coffee so attempted to go the ski resort at Glencoe, unfortunately it was closed so we couldn’t. So much for the ‘food available all year’ sign. Instead we went to a nearby hotel the name of which I forget. Not only did they have coffee, but also a very fluffy dog. It was a very old and lazy Newfoundland and took up most of the corridor.

We also managed to have lunch and dinner in the Clachaig Inn on the same day – lovely.

The return journey after dropping off the out-laws at Fort William station was a bit interesting as we worked out we needed to get from Fishnish to Ffionniphort in 1 hr 15. I did it in about an hour, which I wouldn’t recommend!