Metropolitan United Church

    We watched the nine o'clock ferry depart this morning. Our New Zealander was on board and we waved her off in our particular Iona way, (the "stadium wave", cartwheels delivered by the especially robust, and the mock flight in formation down the ramp to the water). All the while, one of my team-mates was whispering, "It's our turn tomorrow." 

    Our turn tomorrow! The work is over, the friendships made, enjoyed and acknowledged. It is funny how you just know when it is time to go. The community moves on. The work proceeds. Plans and made for the next day, the next weekend, the next season, but you won't be there. When one of my Iona friends is conducting worship in the Abbey this Friday evening, I shall be starting my descent into Toronto.

    So, the island seems small today, cut off from the rest of my world. It is beautiful, but like a painting or a scene from a fantasy. The roads I so recently walked with a sense of excitement are now familiar roads affording me but a place to gather myself as I wait to go. The mid-morning ferry has landed bringing new seekers to these shores. I noted the gleam in their eyes and the excitement their voices, but for me the adventure here is complete. 

    I assume that these changes I feel here apply everywhere else, to places and work-sites and even to relationships. Each has a beginning, a middle and an end. To stay too long is to dull the shine on the thing. To deny the change is to stop the process, the learning, the very journey of our lives. There does come a time for everything

     A good goodbye, then, complete with all the feelings, is as important as anything that precedes it. The flow of life is always forward. The invitation is always to something next, something new.

     Goodbye Iona, you Celtic gem. I have breathed your air and shared something of your life. Now we shall see what such breathing and such sharing will portend.