Iona Community: Rooted In Hope Lived In Community
With Ruth Harvey
October 15 - 18, 2026
Date: October 15 – 18, 2026
Time: Arrival starting at 4:00 PM on October 15 until 1:30 PM on October 18
Cost: Starting at $735.00 for single occupancy and $565.00 for double occupancy, including accommodation, meals, and program fee.
Naramata Centre is pleased to host the Iona Community for a reflective and spiritually grounded retreat celebrating Ruth Harvey’s pilgrimage across Canada. We invite participants into a shared journey of hope, prayer, and community.
The Iona Community has been experimenting with the power of faith-based intentional community since 1938. We do this through welcoming guests to share a ‘common life’ with us at our residential centres on the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona. And we do this, as a dispersed, global Membership community, through meeting monthly in one another’s homes. We pray, sing, listen, laugh, and learn with one another about what it means to work for the justice and peace of Christ’s gospel today.
Founded in a time of war and the rumour of war, we boldly assert that in the face of all that is fractured in our world, there is hope in community. There is the hope of new life nestled deep within all that is wrong. This is not a naïve hope. This is an active hope, that points beyond a fingers-crossed optimism. This is an active hope that calls us to transformation.
Drawing on her experience of a life lived in Christian community, Ruth will help us gently explore the fractures facing our world today. We will dig deep into Scripture and other sources of wisdom, including rich resources from the world of conflict transformation, to reveal hope beyond optimism. And we will look at models of intentional community to learn from one another about how to live well now for the good of all.
About Ruth Harvey
Born and brought up in Scotland, with stints in Glasgow, Iona, Stirling, South India, Aberdeen, Germany, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh, Ruth now lives in Cumbria, NW England with views of the northern fells and Ullswater, where she swims when she can. Having been brought up in faith-based intentional community, Ruth is passionate about the power of community, gathered and scattered, to model that hope to which we are called in the face of so much fracture.
This early immersion in community led Ruth to train as a mediator. She worked for many years in faith-based conflict situations and continues to volunteer with Place for Hope as a Practitioner/Mediator, facilitating large and small group mediations. Ruth is also an editor and a writer, contributing prayers, poems, and liturgies regularly to Wild Goose Publications and other outlets.
In 2023, Ruth took part in a nine-week listening pilgrimage across the lands now called Australia with the Wellspring Community, and in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She met over 30 Indigenous Christian leaders and explored with them questions about creation care, climate justice, and First Nations Indigenous rights. You can read her pilgrimage reflection here.
Ruth is an ordained Church of Scotland minister and a Quaker (Religious Society of Friends). She enjoys paddling a canoe and walking in the mountains.
A full agenda will be available closer to the program date.
Registration closes on October 5, 2026. Please contact bookings@naramatacentresociety.org with any booking questions.
About the Program Leader
Ruth Harvey
Born and brought up in Scotland, with stints in Glasgow, Iona, Stirling, South India, Aberdeen, Germany, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, Ruth now lives in Cumbria, NW England with views of the northern fells and Ullswater where she swims when she can. Having been brought up in faith-based intentional community, Ruth is passionate about the power of […]
Learn more about Ruth HarveyCategory : 2026 Adult Programs