Campfires and Wellsprings in Surprising Places
Anne McPherson and Peter Millar, Wellspring Community

This is a book which every reader will be very privileged to have in their hands.

It is a book that invites us to overhear a conversation between two people deeply involved in living — in life and death. It is shaped by Celtic spirituality in general and by the spirituality that saturates the Iona Community in particular.

As soon as one mentions “spirituality”, however, we need to sound a warning.

It is not the glib, popular stuff you can buy as cards and rocks and feathers in sweet-smelling candle-lit shops.

It is about being in relationship and sensing the presence of the sacred or divine in the ordinariness of life; something which is “never abstract or detached from the everyday realities of this life” as co-author Peter Millar puts it.

It’s putting into practice on weekdays what was said and sung about on Sundays, as George MacLeod used to say.

It is also a book which will bring back memories. It did for me: memories of my time on Iona in Scotland 18 years ago and of my nurturing within all-things Celtic in my own Presbyterian upbringing.

And it is a book of glimpses into a particular community and some of the stories which helped to shape its life, inspired by both Anne and Peter — a particular community which experienced both campfires and wellsprings.

A gentle and worthwhile read.

Rex A. E. Hunt

Campfires and Wellsprings is available from Wellspring Community, 9868 5915, or annemcp@bigpond.net.au.