Iona Abbey, Sat 22 – Fri 28 Sept 2012, leading a week long exploration on the theme: The Pilgrimage of Life. Booking details on the Iona Community's website.

 This week will be an exploration of some meanings of pilgrimage. It will ask from the Isle of Iona a deepening sense of meaning and direction in our lives, especially for those who are committed to social, environmental and/or spiritual transformation. Life has been described as a journey of ‘departure’ on the journey, ‘initiation’ through the trials and ‘return’ to feed life back into the wider community. How does pilgrimage help? How might the sacred places, stories and traditions of Iona open doorways that can strengthen the articulation, or flow, between the inner and the outer life? Participants coming to this course are encouraged to read and bring with them Adomnan’s ‘Life of St Columba’ (Penguin Classics). If they wish to familiarise themselves with the work of the week’s leader in advance, the recommended read is either Soil and Soul or Hell & High Water, but a meditative browse through Adomnan is the priority.

 Alastair McIntosh represents the Quakers on the Iona Community (advisory) Board and was a patron of the Growing Hope appeal. His books, which include Soil and Soul and Rekindling Community, have been described by George Monbiot as ‘world-changiing,’ by the Archbishop of Canterbury as a source of ‘inspiration,’ and by Thom Yorke of Radiohead as ‘truly mental.’ He has contributed to the programme of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature on sacred natural sites and lives in Greater Govan where he is a founding director of the GalGael Trust, partly inspired by the witness of George MacLeod. He is currently writing a book about a pilgrimage through the Hebridean Isles of Lewis and Harris where he was raised.