The Last Post: Holy Island

 Two visits, a week apart, but somehow making a whole. We've been on holiday in Amble, and so it's not a long journey - although of course, as a Tidal Island, every trip there has to be planned!

The Pilgrim Route

The first one was one that I'd been thinking about for some time: walking along the Pilgrim's Way, barefoot across the sand to Holy Island. I went with a group guided by Ray from Hidden Heritage - and I can highly recommend it if you're at all worried about the route, although it isn't hard to follow so long as you are sensible and do a bit of research about tide times and the like. Ray does this walk pretty well weekly, so you've got someone that knows the route and can take the guesswork out of the timing; he also can tell you some of the history, of Aidan, King Oswald, and Cuthbert, and he gives you a lift back over the Causeway after some time on the island too.

Footprints in the sand...

It was pretty windy that day, although it sort of worked to our benefit - we were walking across the sands with it at our back. Sand, Mud, Seaweed, Samphire, some pebbled sections but nothing too harsh on my bare feet. If you've watched the series of Pilgrimage that was on earlier this year you'd have seen Ashley Blaker doing this barefoot - it somehow felt appropriate, given how many of those who have made a pilgrimage here over the centuries would have done so barefoot, to follow his example and theirs. 

There was something special about approaching this way; as we watched as the causeway route diverged from ours, as the noise of the cars faded into the distance, as we strained against the wind to hear Ray talking of times more than a thousand years ago, you couldn't help but wonder what had brought our disparate group together. Like the pilgrims Jack Hitt met on the road to Santiago de Compostela in Off the Road, we were all walking for our own reasons - whether sacred or secular - but for those couple of hours we were bound together. Someone took a group photo before we split up - we in all likelihood will never be together again, but it still felt right that they did.

A week later, I journeyed across the causeway by car, because Sam wanted to take some pictures. We walked towards the castle, had lunch, then headed to one of the places I often visit on the island: St. Mary's Church, with the original, wooden, version of Fenwick Lawson's sculpture "The Journey" - a life size representation of six monks carrying the coffin of St. Cuthbert, part of the long journey from Lindisfarne, felt no longer safe due to the Viking Raids, to what became Durham Cathedral - where the Bronze of the same sculpture can be seen. 

And then, through the churchyard, and out to a small beach with the old Lifeboat House; and just off that beach, a tidal island off a tidal island, a cross standing visible. 

Sometimes called Hobthrush Island, it's more commonly called St. Cuthbert's Island. Cuthbert became Bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, but reluctantly: his heart was by this time much more in being a solitary hermit, and for some years he had lived on Inner Farne. It is said that before he removed there, he spent time on St. Cuthbert's Island, but the fact that people could visit, or shout across from the shore, meant he preferred to be a little more remote! It was on Inner Farne that he died in 687; nevertheless, for those walking St. Cuthbert's Way, the journey finishes for many not at Lindisfarne Priory, but in picking their way over the rocks, getting their feet a little wet, until they reach the cross and the low walls that are all that remains of an old chapel.

There, at the foot of the Cross, some have marked their journey. Painted stones, messages, a small painted cross; mementos of those who have passed from this life. For those who have reached here, this, it seems, is journey's end: the destination, the place they have been striving to reach. And they have touched that cross, or the ones that have stood there before; some have left a tangible reminder of their journey.

I looked, I contemplated, I asked that God may journey on with them.

And then, as they must have done, I squared my shoulders, turned away, and began the journey home.

A Poem:

Gravel gives way to road, gives way to sand

Waymarks stretching up into the sky

Leading from one shore to another

A path for pilgrims, journeys long planned

How many have walked this route before?

Alone, or together just for this journey

We few today follow the way trod by many

By hundreds, thousands, or even more

In the footsteps of Sinners and Saints we go

In the footsteps or Aidan, Oswald, Cuthbert

We traverse the sand and mud and shells

Step through water once deep but now shallow

There are no footsteps to mark the place

For the sands are washed clean twice a day

Just as the marks left by sin and shame

Are washed clean by a rising tide of grace.

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

 There will be one more post after this, but as my Sabbatical draws to its close one of the things I thought it might be worth doing is to give an idea of some of the media that I have travelled with over the last few months.

One of the early things is actually something that I came across in the Library at the Northumbria Community; it was mentioned while I was on retreat there, and one of those on the retreat with me took the time to find it. It's a Thesis for an MA, called "Pilgrimage: Wild Goose Chase or the search for Home?" by Eileen Inglesby, in 1995. Quite how it ended up there is a bit of a mystery; no-one seems to know anything about the author. It isn't as far as I know available anywhere else - but it was an interesting read, and introduced me to another key resource. If Ela, who found it for me, is reading this - thank you!

Jack Hitt's "Off the Road", his account of following the Camino Pilgrim Route in the early 1990s, was featured heavily in that dissertation. I listened to it as an Audiobook and found interesting and entertaining. He's not a Christian, did it for his own reasons, but his insights into the community he found himself part of, of how everyone's motivations for a Pilgrimage can be different and yet valid, were ones I found informed parts of my own journey. 

Another Audiobook I listened to, based on a recommendation, was "On this Holy Island" by Oliver Smith. It's narrated by the author, and I have to say I struggled with this - it's perfectly competent, and visits several places I have been to over the years, but there was a real sense of melancholy that had me worrying for him at points - he wrote this after being made redundant from his job, and there are sections where I really thought he must be quite seriously depressed. It might be better in book form rather than audio, but I really didn't connect with this one at all.

"The Way Under our Feet: a Spirituality of Walking" by Graham B. Usher (currently Bishop of Norwich) has travelled much of the way with me, and is looking somewhat dog-eared as a result! I haven't finished it, even though it's a short book, but what I have read has had an impact - it's the sort of book that benefits from reading one of the short chapters, and then taking time to reflect. 

As I was getting ready to go on Sabbatical, the thing many people asked me about was the BBC Series "Pilgrimage", in particular as the one they were showing at that point was primarily in and around North Yorkshire and the North-East. So I made a point of watching as Ashley Banjo, Patsy Kensit, Ashley Blaker and the other members of their party went from near Whitby to Holy Island, passing through Durham and the Northumbria Community on the way. You do wonder how much of it is re-shot for the camera, but I don't doubt that they are all walking together; pity the camera crew that must have done pretty much every step with them! It was interesting to watch as the different viewpoints of the party came together, and interesting to reflect as well that it felt that while they all got something out of it, the journey itself didn't necessarily radically change any positions so much as deepen their understandings of their own faith (or lack of) and respect for those of the others in most cases. As they walked over the sand to Holy Island, I resolved to do the same.

Finally, another book that I've been carrying around for months was one that although it involves journeys, was just for entertainment. Meg lent me a copy of "The Magic Walking-Stick" by John Buchan, a Children's Book that I have enjoyed. Growing up, I was massively into some of the Enid Blyton books - the Famous Five, Secret Seven, Magical Faraway Tree, the Wishing Chair and many others; rather dated and sometimes problematical. In some ways the Magic Walking-Stick is in a similar vein, as a Boarding-School boy from a wealthy family in the 1930s buys a Walking-Stick from a mysterious old man, and discovers that it can take him anywhere in the world. Pure escapism!