Greenwood
“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Isaiah 12:3
This is Greenwood: an oakwood, a hillside, a shoreline and an ancient well on the Ardnamurchan peninsula.
We have three cottages, a chapel and a family home.
Greenwood is a place of rest and renewal. Our rhythm of prayer, study, work and hospitality shapes a community rooted in Jesus.
We welcome locals, visitors to the Peninsula, and retreatants to join us for:
Holy Communion:
Sunday, 6 pm
Contemplative Prayer:
Tuesday, 9.30 am
The road
You will not arrive quickly. The distance is part of the gift. See the journey as a pilgrimage and seek the Lord as you travel. “What is it that you are looking for?”
The route west carries you along winding roads past lochs and mountains. The last nine miles from Salen along the B8007 cause you to slow down, literally and figuratively. This tar macadam teacher invites you to reflect on why modern life has to be so rushed. As the road folds back on itself, hugging the coastline of Loch Sunart, you become quieter, and you will probably arrive later than you first thought. Many guests do.
Jesus went out to desolate places to pray, and going out was part of the prayer. You can join him in that desire for a quiet, still place where your spirit can open, to learn to see what the Father is doing.
The cathedral of oak, alder and ash.
Greenwood sits among seventy acres of protected Celtic temperate rainforest, the thin ribbon of Atlantic oakwood that survives along this coast, cradling rare lichens that thrive here because of the air quality. The silver light of the west coast spills down between the trunks in columns. People lower their voices as they stand in glades of old trees, reading from the book of creation.
More than one guest has returned from the woods asking, who was singing? It’s the sound of sustained chords and building harmonies. We can’t offer an explanation. We simply leave the story with you.
The well
An ancient well flows on Greenwood’s land. It is marked on the Ordnance Survey map; every local on this peninsula knows it, and you would drive past it without a second glance. The water comes out of a wall and down into the ditch. Humble, nondescript, still flowing. It is called St Columba's well, and it was a sign that led us here, and it continues to teach us.
Adomnán, writing on Iona a century after Columba died, tells it plainly. A child was brought for baptism while Columba was travelling; no water could be found, so he turned to a nearby rock, knelt, prayed, blessed its face and the water came. He baptised the child there.
Then he prophesied over the boy's life that he would live to a very great age. He would give his youth to the desires of the flesh, and afterwards he would devote himself to Christ until the end and die in a good old age. The boy's name was Lugucencalad, which appears to mean hard head, and his people were of Ardnamurchan.
Three things we hold dear are gathered at one small opening in the ground. The Scriptures are there: Moses struck the rock at Meribah for a thirsty people, and Paul, looking back at that water, says the rock was Christ. The sacraments are there, in the water poured over a child. The gifts of the Spirit are there, in the miracle and the prophecy.
If you wish, you can walk up to the well on a path through the forest that runs parallel with the road.
As you climb, recall your own baptism. Maybe you can’t remember the day, that doesn’t matter, since what you are remembering is a new reality about yourself: You were named, adopted, buried with Christ and raised with him. The old has passed and the new has come, you are a new creation in him. Everything of his was made yours before you had done anything to deserve it. You will spend the rest of your life marvelling at his ever-deepening life in you.
The table
Greenwood has a chapel called The Dwelling Place. Its name is a prayer, and the Lord has taught us how to linger here. We have Holy Communion every Sunday.
A pastor's wife, close to burnout from caring for people week after week, sat after receiving the bread and the wine and felt Jesus come and sit beside her. He asked her a question. Would you let me be your shepherd? She was surprised at first, then understood that he would not have needed to ask if she was open to him in the first place. “Lord,” she said, “that is all I have ever wanted.” To this response she sensed him offering to take hold of her hand and to lead her into his rest.
People have been healed at this table. Others have smelled roses in rooms where no rose grows. We stage none of this, and we can promise you none of it. There is no hype here. We simply set the table, open the Scriptures, remember God’s name and his ways, making a space for him to dwell with us.
The hillside and the shore
Twenty minutes uphill on foot puts the expanse of Loch Sunart and the Sound of Mull beneath you and shows you the weather fifteen minutes before it arrives. Further up, off in the distance, the volcanic plug that is Ben Hiant surveys it all with you. Below the wood is Camas Bàn, the fair bay, where the tide takes back what it lent and returns it changed.
For Columba and those who came after him, the sea was the road rather than the wall; we invite you to walk the edges here, the space between land and sea, and earth and heaven. You are further out here than you have been in years, and closer in than you expect.
The place continues to teach us
We came with a vision for the Way of the Beloved and assumed this land would house it. It has done more than that. Greenwood has been amending the plans since the day we arrived, and we have learned to let it.
We intended short gatherings for large numbers. The road argued for fewer people staying longer, and the road won. We meant to fill the days. The wood grows at its own rate, the tide keeps its own hours, and the water rises when it rises, and none of them was impressed by our timetable. So the hours here are unhurried, the numbers are small, and the seasons decide a good deal of what we do. One core value is woven through it all: make plenty of time and space for the Lord to meet with his people and refresh them in his love.
We think the well is a sign of what we are here to do. It is humble and small, easy to walk past, yet it goes down a long way.
That is the shape of the life we want to help you find here. Deeper down into the Scriptures. Deeper into the sacraments, and the sacramental life of the church. Deeper into the gifts of the Spirit. Through all three into the mystery of Christ, in whom your life is already hidden.
Teresa of Ávila once lamented that had she known what a great King lived within her, she would not have left him alone so often. Most of us keep to the front rooms of our own souls, yet the quiet you are searching for is not somewhere else, and the depth you suspect exists is not out of reach.
So come to him who offers you this living water. Stoop down and drink and live.