We ate cake at church this Sunday. I think many churches did – it’s always nice to celebrate birthdays with cake, and this Sunday was Pentecost after all. But at my church, we also celebrated our saint’s day. Which, of course, calls for balloons, baking and historical reflection – in good Presbyterian fashion.
St Columba, patron saint of floods, bookbinders, poets, Ireland, Scotland, and my church in central London, is a bit of a new find for me. Before September, Columba was a name I knew, but I knew nothing about the man. If you are in the same boat, I will say very very briefly that he’s the founder of the monastery on Iona, and a significant personality in mission work to the Scots. (For more biographical detail, look here.)
Iona was more familiar. The church where I grew up has a wonderful mural of Iona painted on the wall in the lower hall. I remember being sternly warnedas a child not to lean on it, and being utterly haunted by the knowledge that the woman who had painted it was dead. It must therefore have been absolutely ancient, I thought. Merely standing too close would make me quake. But after many junior choir practises in that hall, pointing voices up and out and looking smilingly ahead, the shapes of the painted hills are forever, unflakingly recorded in my mind.
When I was a backpacking theology student, I visited Iona with two historically-inclined hiking friends. We didn’t spend much time in the abbey, a bit daunted by the crowds of day-trippers. We headed for the hills, climbing over fences and walking through muddy fields. But from the top of the island, you can see for miles. The sea stretches out around you, the islands like rising waves, the light bright on the hills. It felt ancient and important. We imagined the huddled monks watching the rough sea, the moving skies, and prayerfully planning their next missionary adventures. And later in the day, inside the abbey, we felt that we understood how those early monks could decide to root themselves on this windy island, finding grounding amid these rocks.
Of course, the abbey now on Iona does not date back to Columba, though the site is the same, and so is the spirit of the place. Columba established Iona not as a conventional monastery, but as an equipping place. In the words of Ian Bradley, it was a “collection of cells and huts which housed [Columba’s] followers as they rested briefly between their travels and their scholarly labours.”
I like that idea of brief rest for pilgrims and missionaries. St Columba’s Church in London has offered me that spirit of rest. Since starting this blog last May, my family has done a lot of travelling. We left Ottawa, our hometown, and journeyed through a peripatetic summer on the west coast with the in-laws, then traveled back across to Ontario to pack the rest of our bags and relocated over to Britain where, so far, we’ve been through two London flats and umpteen hours of commuting, like everyone else in this enormous city. We’ve certainly felt like pilgrims. But we’ve also felt at home. The church has been a wonderful spot to rest. And, of course, to work – as only those who love the church do. Church work offers strange hours and strange tasks indeed. (And baking. ) It has been wonderful for me and my family.
And I’m sure that you can read my tone here – there is an announcement coming. We’re packing our bags again. The Spouse, clever and keen, has landed a plum PhD position at the University of Edinburgh. So life will get redefined and reinvented again. The Spouse will finish the last stages of his degree here, and Beangirl has a school year to polish off, but then we head north to Edinburgh, Presbyterian heartland and home of John Knox.
Before I leave London, I promise you a summer full of photos. There is still so much to see, so many things on our essential London list. My table will be messy with to-do lists between now and the move. And I will probably still find time to get the baking done. So, here’s the recipe for yesterday’s cakes: do bake, enjoy and think of pilgrims.
I was given this recipe by one of the ladies of the congregation – it’s a British recipe, so we’re dealing with weights, but please do pull out your scale. This makes lovely light chocolate cupcakes.
Ingredients:
6oz butter
6oz sugar
3 eggs
6 oz Self-raising flour
1 oz cocoa
Few drops vanilla
Method:
Cream butter & sugar, add eggs one by one, beating each one in with a little of the flour. Fold in cocoa, rest of flour and vanilla. Add scant tablespoon of water and fold in. Drop in spoonfuls in cake cases. (Don’t over fill – they rise up beautifully.)
Bake at 350˚ for 10 mins or so.
Makes about 20.
