Pilgrimages: Nazareth in Norfolk

Greetings!

I'm back from Glastonbury now and I've already started to write that one up. It's a moving place that I would recommend to anyone who's spiritually inclined. And so, whilst that is in the making and whilst the subject seems to be pilgrimages, this week's offering is my account of a trip I made back in 2009 to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk. Enjoy please!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to accounts of all my pilgrimages:

Pilgrimages: To the Holy Island

Pilgrimages: Nazareth in Norfolk

Pilgrimages: And Those Feet Did...

Pilgrimages: The Sacred Heart of Wales

Pilgrimages: Across the Sound

 

Nazareth in Norfolk

 

 

Our Lady of Walsingham

 

Like Lindisfarne the year before, this began with a journey. Long, long, through the night, straight from work, out of the gate, into the car and off! At first the going was slow as I struggled through the car-choked suburbs of Nottingham, but after Grantham it all changed. The roads became straighter and emptier and the landscape darker. It’s amazing how few people either live in or visit that vast arable swathe of Eastern England. Yet eight hundred years ago it was all so different; the east was one of the richest and most densely populated parts of the kingdom, and the visitors to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham were so numerous that our mediaeval forefathers christened the twinkling stars that we now refer to as the Milky Way, the Walsingham Way as they reflected the millions who made their way to pray there.

 

This pilgrimage, a modern day one to that ancient shrine, was to be different to that to the Holy Isle. I had changed in the intervening summer. I’d had two months off work with stress. Part of the problem was that I’d always tried to do too much and the Lindisfarne trip had been symptomatic of that, rushing around, never really sitting, contemplating and listening to the still, small voice. And yet is that not the primary purpose of any pilgrimage? But now I was back at work, another job in fact and enrolled on a meditation course with the aim of helping achieve that stillness and aiding that contemplation.

 

Different too was the destination. If Lindisfarne represents English Christianity’s beginnings – windswept, rugged and Celtic – then Walsingham is a symbol of her mediaeval flowering, pastoral, triumphant and also very Roman.

 

But some things remained the same. The long, long journey, from a profane world to a more sacred place and then, upon arrival, an incongruous step back into the profane. I was staying with Paul, an Irishman and a Catholic. And his first port-of-call was, naturally, the pub…

 

The drive up that sunny morning spoke of England, a mediaeval England. Small aged villages clustered around glorious churches, their lofty spires reaching up towards heaven and visible for miles around. Here was a homely, fertile country, a million miles away from the rugged wilds of the north. I felt that God was in both places but in a different way. As always, when confronted with the Middle Ages, my thoughts turned to my own village with its eight hundred year-old church, brick inn, green fields and stream.

 

We parked up in the village and visited the shrine shop. I wanted to get all the material aspects out of the way before the pilgrimage truly began. Then, after stocking up on rosaries, medallions and prayer cards, we walked out to the Slipper Chapel.

 

The road out was a lane, an English country lane. The village thinned out and we passed the ruins of a mediaeval friary, now overgrown. With hedges at our side and green fields beyond them and a babbling brook running beside us, we began to feel that we were in a special place.

 

In its heyday, when Walsingham was Europe’s fourth biggest pilgrimage site, there were chapels every mile along the road for the pilgrims to pray in. Now only the last one, the Slipper Chapel remains. Although greatly added to, the original chapel still retains its atmosphere. I knelt down at the altar and using the rosary as an aid, recalled all the holy places that I’d visited over the years – Lindisfarne, Canterbury, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Demir Baba, the Tomb of Daniel in Samarkand, the Tomb of the Mevlana in Konya – and what I had learnt from each one. Then, opening my eyes, I gazed at the statue of Our Lady, a mother, a mediaeval mother with child, surrounded by a glorious array of flowers. Then I realised what it was that Walsingham would teach me; a glimpse into the feminine side of God, into the God of the English countryside, my countryside. The flowers around her seemed so right. At Lindisfarne they perhaps wouldn’t have been, that was a masculine place where men battled against the elements and heathen to serve God. No, flowers would not suit that windswept isle, but here was where God gloried in His creation, in colour and beauty; where He touched the soul of a Saxon lady almost a thousand years ago.

 

The Slipper Chapel

 

In 1061 the local lady of the manor, Richeldis had a vision of the Virgin Mary. In this vision she was taken by Mary to be shown the house in Nazareth where Gabriel had announced the news of the birth of Jesus. Mary asked Richeldis to build an exact replica of that house in Walsingham. This is how Walsingham became known as England's Nazareth. The vision was repeated three times, according to legend, and retold through a fifteenth century ballad. The materials given by Richeldis were finally constructed miraculously one night into the Holy House, while she kept a vigil of prayer. And so it was that the house was built and the village became a site of pilgrimage, attracting paupers and kings in their droves until it was destroyed by the very last king to have prayed there, Henry VIII who had asked for his son to be healthy and strong. When that son died, Henry’s rage against Walsingham was greater than that directed towards all the other sacred sites that he levelled.[1]

 

The remains of Walsingham Abbey

 

There was a tradition in times gone by for the pilgrims to walk the last mile of the pilgrimage barefoot and to both Paul and I that seemed like the right thing to do. So we took off our shoes and set off, the road surface ice cold and jagged underfoot, (although the tarmac of the modern lane was doubtless more comfortable than the rough track that the original pilgrims had to contend with). Walking barefoot heightened the experience; it brought us into direct contact with the earth, earth that countless thousands, sovereign to servant had trod centuries before.[2] As we walked the presence of the Divine seemed all about, the same feminine Divine that surrounded the statue of Our Lady in the Slipper Chapel. This feeling of joy, of communion with a very English pastoral God brought into mind a beautiful folk song that I’d learnt at primary school, based on a traditional myth that tells of Jesus journeying to Glastonbury during his childhood and on that cold January morning, walking down one of England’s green lanes, I sang it:

 

As I went a walking one morning in May
I met with some travellers in an old country lane
The first was an old man, the second a maid,
And the third was a young boy, who smiled as he said

“With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky,
And a bright sun to warm us wherever we lie.
We have bread and fishes, and a jug of red wine
To share on our journey with all of mankind”

So I sat down beside them with gay flowers around
We ate from a mantle spread out on the ground.
They told me of peoples and of prophets and kings
And they spoke of the one God who knows everything.

“With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky,
And a bright sun to warm us wherever we lie.
We have bread and fishes, and a jug of red wine
To share on our journey with all of mankind”
 

I asked them to tell me their names and their race,
So that I might remember their kindness and grace.
“My name it is Joseph, this is Mary my wife,
And this is our young son, who is our delight.

With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky,
And a bright sun to warm us wherever we lie.
We have bread and fishes, and a jug of red wine
To share on our journey with all of mankind”
 

We’re travelling to Glastonbury, through England’s green lanes
To hear of men’s troubles and to hear of men’s pains.
We travel the whole world o’er land and o’er sea,
For to show all the people how they might be free.

“With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky,
And a bright sun to warm us wherever we lie.
We have bread and fishes, and a jug of red wine
To share on our journey with all of mankind”
 

So sadly I left them, in that old country lane,
I knew that I never would see them again.
The first was an old man, the second a maid,
And the third was a young boy, who smiled as he said

“With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky,
And a bright sun to warm us wherever we lie.
We have bread and fishes, and a jug of red wine
To share on our journey with all of mankind”

 

As a child I’d learnt that although the legend was very nice, it probably wasn’t true but there, walking barefoot down that old country lane I realised that in one way it was very true indeed. Spiritually, mystically, walking down there I did meet Jesus and along England’s green lanes was where I always had met him, throughout my life, even if I hadn’t always realised it at the time. In the village of my youth, in the ancient churchyard of St. Margaret’s, in the fields and by the ponds, there many a time had I sat down with Him and dined on spiritual food, the gay flowers around. Walking to Walsingham, not Glastonbury, that song made sense and I could almost feel Our Lady walking down the road beside us two pilgrims.

 

 

At the shrine we made our way straight to the Holy House, our feet frozen and stinging yet alive. The museum and introductory video could wait; we were here for an altogether different purpose. As at Lindisfarne, sightseeing came second.

 

I mentioned earlier that I had begun a meditation course run by a local Buddhist organisation. My main aim had been to learn some patience and give more depth and focus to my prayer life. During the meditations however, I had found myself constantly drawn to an island. At first I was on a small sailing boat, waves lapping against its sides, a stormy sky above, travelling to the island, and then on a beach, focussing on the rounded grey pebbles. So it was that when I knelt down to pray in the dark intimacy of the Holy House. I was transported there again, this time with no effort of the mind and with far greater intensity and clarity of purpose than before. Then, as I knelt down in that sacred space, a new dimension was revealed to me, a small cave in the cliffside above the beach and in that cave a simple chapel, only a cross and icon, similar in size to the Holy House, utterly simple, utterly natural and utterly beautiful. How long I knelt there I cannot say, but I did not want to leave, returning to reality was a wrench. I recalled the title of an old Fairport Convention track which consisted only of soft, melodic humming.

 

The Lord is in this place.

 

Inside the Holy House

 

Outside the Holy House there were a priest and a nun with a family of Tamils[3] asking if anyone wished to be blessed at the holy well. Never one to miss a blessing I joined in. The ceremony was three-fold, the sign of the cross with water, anointment and then drinking. These performed solemnly, we trooped back into the Holy House and that done, to me the pilgrimage was completely and we could relax a little and enjoy the quiet dark church and all its treasures before I lit a candle for the congregation at St. Margaret’s and left the sanctuary.

 

And so that was Walsingham. True, we did not leave immediately, but looked through the displays in the museum, visited another shrine shop and then drove out to the ramshackle Orthodox church house in the old station building, but after praying at the Holy House and drinking at the holy well the ritual, the pilgrimage, was complete. Nonetheless, as we drove back to Norwich, that peaceful, holy place continued to affect us. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Paul, “but next time I need to come alone.” And whilst I enjoyed his company, I couldn’t have agreed more.

 

We went into Norwich to spend the rest of the day in what the guidebook described as ‘the most complete remaining mediaeval English city’.[4] Like with all mediaeval cities, Norwich is crammed with ancient churches and dominated by her cathedral, a majestic structure in honey-coloured stone, its beautiful spire soaring heavenwards, a beacon of faith. Closer to the ground however, things were less perfect. In a side street whilst we were looking for a place to park, a young lady, eyes glazed and mind befuddled by drugs, stood in front of our car and leered at us eerily.

 

We eventually parked near to the cell of St. Julian of Norwich, one of England’s greatest divines and despite the name, in fact a female. As at Walsingham, the cell and the church attached to it were not originals but twentieth century rebuilds although this time the culprits were not Henry VIII’s men but Nazi bombs. Despite the lack of antiquity however, the church was peaceful and felt sacred and I for one was glad that we went in and knelt at the place where seven hundred years ago a simple had visions of a god who told her that despite all the woes of the world, ‘All shall be well’, although we did not linger as it was icily cold in there!

St. Julian’s Shrine

 

In the city we ate at an excellent American-style establishment and whilst there a fellow diner, spotting the glorious red and white stripes of Stoke City informed me that we’d beaten Manchester City 1-0 whilst I’d been praying at Walsingham, proof indeed that this was a day of great blessings!

 

And following that we sought a drink, walking through the narrow streets past church after church until we reached the great cathedral itself. Just beyond that was our destination, a temple of a very different kind, Norwich’s oldest pub, the Adam and Eve which is only a little newer than the cathedral it stands next to. It was a fine pub too, cosy, friendly and with good beer, but Walsingham had affected us both too much and strangely, we were not in the mood. After but one pint we left to return home.

 

The Adam and Eve

 

It was a Sunday and we’d both decided that we wished to attend Mass. Outside the cathedral the night before we’d read that there was Sung Eucharist at 10:45 but when we got in we found that it was Matins instead, the Eucharist having been moved to the evening it being the occasion of Candlemas. To be fair, whilst the singing was heavenly and the sermon good, matins is not really the service for me, there being virtually no element of active participation in it. Paul however, was transfixed by the setting, choir and pageantry and also by that Anglican custom of sharing a cup of tea together when it had all finished. Apparently no such custom exists in Irish Catholicism, nor too do mediaeval cathedrals as glorious as Norwich. At the end, after tea and biscuits with no less a personage than the Bishop of Thetford he pronounced the choice of service and venue the correct ones although both of us agreed that awe-inspiring and majestic though the cathedral was, it had not the sacred feeling of the simple shrines at Walsingham.

 

 

Norwich Cathedral

 

Return is just as important as the outward journey on a pilgrimage. It is a time to reflect on one’s experience in the sacred world and prepare for re-entry into the domain of the secular. I did this by stopping off at a number of places. The first was a Saxon cathedral that I’d seen signposted on the journey coming. I thought it fitting considering the theme of the trip but I ended up driving straight past it by accident and stumbling on an even better find entirely by accident: County School Station. A mile or so past the elusive cathedral was a preserved railway station, straight out of the 1950s in peaceful countryside. Built, as the name suggests, to serve a nearby public school, it currently served naught beyond tea and sandwiches, (and even the tearoom was shut when I visited), but a notice on the wall spoke of plans to extend the Mid-Norfolk Railway to its platforms once again, making it the terminus of a seventeen-mile long preserved railway. Whilst not a religious place in the strictest sense of the world, it did demonstrate what a dedicated group of people can achieve when they put their minds to it and I did wonder if a higher power had not perhaps directed me to that spot?

 

North Elmham Cathedral, when I did find it, was less impressive than the station but of interest nonetheless. It was now a set of unimpressive ruins and even in its heyday before the Norman Conquest it had never been a large building like Norwich, but the information boards described it as the first and only cathedral in all of East Anglia until superseded by Thetford in 1075[5], and then later Norwich in 1094, making it the mother church of Walsingham and Norwich. Once again, as on the Lindisfarne pilgrimage, more pieces of the English Christian jigsaw were falling into place.

 

An artist’s impression of North Elmham Cathedral in its heyday

 

Kings Lynn, my next stop, was described in the guidebook as having ‘grown out of an unlikely combination of staunchly pious citizens and wild and woolly sailors’, a description that I thought would be fitting for most Dutch towns. And indeed, on spirit-level flat land, and with brick houses next to a wide river, it felt almost Dutch as I wandered past its fifteenth century merchants’ houses down to the harbour where I watched the muddy water of the Great Ouse flow out to the equally murky Wash. But there again, the Netherlands are not so far from these parts, a short trip across the choppy North Sea. I paid my respects to the town’s pious side in the grand but incongruent church which is dedicated to St. Margaret before returning to my car parked by the ruins of Greyfriars. There I was reminded once again how pilgrimage alters one’s outlook on the world: England is littered with the ruins of abbeys and friaries yet seldom have I given them much thought save to consider how romantically pretty some are, yet with the eyes of the pilgrim being wrenched back from the mediaeval to the post-modern age, they are a tragedy, a senseless and heart-breaking desecration of piety, culture and holiness. They make one ashamed to be a Protestant.

 

St. Margaret’s, Kings Lynn

 

When I arrived in Peterborough, the harsh realities of my world smacked me full on in the face. I parked in a grimy multi-storey and – as I had at York – walked through a modern-day Cathedral of Commerce, this time the soulless Westgate Shopping Centre, in a stunned daze. What was most shocking however was to be passing by people of all colours and creeds – Blacks, Orientals, be-turbaned Sikhs and fully-veiled Muslims. I couldn’t believe it, I, who works in the most multi-racial of establishments, who has travelled the world, who is married to a foreigner and who has a mixed-race son, was walking through an English city shocked at the racial and cultural tapestry that is twenty-first century Britain! But the fact was, for several days, I’d been out of it, in a different world. East Anglia is almost totally white and with my mind being half in the times of Lady Richeldis and St. Julian where different races had no presence[6] and different creeds were punishable by death, then it all came as something of an almighty shock!

 

Peterborough is a modern, multi-cultural city but when one passes through the cathedral gate, the Middle Ages return, all be it only temporarily. Here, one of England’s greatest mediaeval cathedrals – and like Norwich, a former abbey church – was where I would end this pilgrimage. I wandered around and decided that I liked this cathedral more than most, largely because there was no screen dividing it up and so the sense of space was more impressive. I paid a visit to the graves of Mary Queen of Scots and Catherine of Aragon, (where some Spaniards were gathered), before then visiting the Chapel of St. Oswald, one time home of the relics of that great Northumbrian king and Christianiser who I’d already encountered at Lindisfarne the previous year. Then, I sat down in the nave and prayed, giving the pilgrimage a ritual end. As I closed my eyes I returned to that humble cave that I’d first visited in the Holy House at Walsingham and after I meditated on  that for some time I opened them and drank in the full glory, size and splendour of my current surroundings. They reminded me of childhood imaginings of the Entrance to Heaven, through which one walks before kneeling at the Throne of God. Then I closed my eyes again and returned to that small simple place and meditated on the different facets of God’s nature; the glorious and majestic King of Kings and the humble and simple son of a carpenter in a poverty-stricken village. Such is the Lord, one and yet many at the same time, intimate yet unfathomable.

 

Towards the Throne of God, Peterborough

 

My pilgrimage had ended; I walked out of the cathedral precincts and back into the secular world of now. I stopped for a curry and then got in my car and drove out of the multi-storey, onto the ring road, past the large, new mosque and into the dark, English night whilst the stars of the Walsingham Way twinkled overhead.

 

Copyright © 2009, Matthew E. Pointon

Written Ash Wednesday, 2009, Jerusalem, Israel…

 

Next pilgrimage: And Those Feet Did…

---

[1] http://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk/the_shrine/the_story_so_far.htm

[2] Past pilgrims include Henry III, Edward II, Edward III, Henry IV, Edward IV, Henry VII and Henry VIII.

[3] Walsingham is a huge place of pilgrimage with Britain’s Tamil community. However, after questioning several Tamils who have visited Walsingham, (both Hindus and Catholics!), none could explain why Walsingham was so important to them.

[4] Lonely Planet Great Britain (6^th edition), p.472

[5] Hence the existence of a Bishop of Thetford, the present incumbent of which we’d shared tea with that morning. After Thetford was replaced as the diocesan seat, the title was retained for the Suffragan Bishop at Norwich.

[6] Well, save for Jesus and Mary of course, although our mediaeval forebears suitably Anglicised them too!

Pilgrimages: To the Holy Island

Greetings friends!

This weekend I'm off on a pilgrimage to Glastonbury and Wells. I try to go on some sort of pilgrimage every year and always find it a fulfilling experience although quite different in character and feel from any of my other travels even though I often visit holy sites whilst on these. Travelling is so often a journey of the mind and never is this more true than when on a pilgrimage.

To commemorate the event I've decided to post my account of my first ever pilgrimage, undertaken a few years ago to the holy island of Lindisfarne in the north-east of England. Lindisfarne is the place from which my country was Christianised and it's a wild, desolate place full of immense spiritual energy, getting cut off from the mainland every high tide. I recommend a jaunt there to anyone and to encourage you to make that trip, here's my account to whet your appetite.

As always, comments and criticisms most welcome.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to accounts of all my pilgrimages:

Pilgrimages: To the Holy Island

Pilgrimages: Nazareth in Norfolk

Pilgrimages: And Those Feet Did...

Pilgrimages: The Sacred Heart of Wales

Pilgrimages: Across the Sound

 

 

To the Holy Island

 

Copyright © 2008, Matthew E. Pointon

 

Prologue

 

It was in the April of 2008 that I embarked upon my first pilgrimage. Strictly speaking, that statement is not true; I had been on plenty of pilgrimages before – Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, the monastery at Montserrat, Canterbury Cathedral – but this was my first proper pilgrimage. The others were more trips to places that happened to have some religious significance whereas a true pilgrimage is as much a journey of the mind as well as the body. I know this because the book that I took with me entitled ‘Spiritual Journeys’ told me so. My aim during those three April days was to travel from my home to the Holy Island of Linsdisfarne and back, but more importantly, to try to concentrate on the divine during the entire period. Besides these aims I had made no plans. One might almost say that I put myself into the hands of God…

 

Anointment

 

My head thou dost with oil anoint

And my cup overflows.

And so I set off from Stoke-on-Trent one chilly morning. My first stop was St. Peter’s in Forsbrook, the sister church to St. Margaret’s in which I was raised and call my spiritual home. I would have preferred St. Margaret’s in a way, but that weekend was a special mission weekend and the two congregations had joined for a Sunday service presided by no less a personage than the Bishop of Lichfield who presented myself and others with certificates for a ministry course that we’d attended two years before, (the Church of England, is not a swift mover in such matters). The theme of the sermon was our individual spiritual journeys, which was apt; so too being the anointment by the bishop that proceeded. However, I must confess that overall the service was a little too happy-clappy for my catholic tastes but perhaps one truth that all pilgrims must learn on their journeys is that the world is made up of lots of people quite different from themselves, yet who travel beside them. After it had finished I began my journey…

 

The Journey Begins

 

Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be...Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.”

Erich Fromm

As I drove along the river of concrete the green fields of England on either side reminded me of the mediaeval pilgrims who had made journeys of faith through these very fields to York, Canterbury, Holy Island and Walsingham centuries ago. Although my mode of transport and speed of travel were vastly different to theirs – like the life that I live when not travelling – I felt a connection with them. At that moment my journey truly began.

Right Thought

 

Wonderful, indeed, it is to subdue the mind, so difficult to subdue, ever swift, and seizing whatever it desires. A tamed mind brings happiness.

Let the discerning man guard the mind, so difficult to detect and extremely subtle, seizing whatever it desires. A guarded mind brings happiness.

The Dhammapada

Near to Derby I saw a sign for the Tara Buddhist Centre. I hesitated momentarily – after all, wasn’t this supposed to be a Christian pilgrimage? – but then remembered that we live in a multi-cultural world these days and there is a lot that the Christian can learn from other faiths. Besides, they had a café and so I broke my journey and had a cup of tea in peaceful surroundings, reading some of the Dhammapada as I sipped. After reading each chapter, I tried to meditate on what it had told me. Several of these chapters were concerned with the importance of right thought, something that I often fail at. I made it my mission to try and keep my thoughts focussed and righteous over the following days. Oh well, no pubs then… I then went into the prayer hall to pray but found the angry Tibetean deities off-putting rather than a focus. Nonetheless, as I left, I considered the stop far from a wasted one.

 

Evensong

 

Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,

Your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace,

Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray,

Your love in our hearts, Lord, at the eve of the day.

Anglican hymn

As the afternoon wore on I drew near to York, second only to Canterbury in the Anglican Tradition. Since I felt that a pilgrim has a duty to be as eco-friendly as possible, I used the Park and Ride and pulling into the out-of-town car park I was confronted by a quite different, more profane sort of temple.

Materialism is the faith of our age and out-of-town shopping complexes are its cathedrals. They are such soulless, ugly and wasteful places yet even on a Sunday afternoon this one was teeming with people lost in a world of spend, spend, spend. Whereas the ancient pilgrims valued the arduous as penance for their sins, these places aimed to make it all as effortless as possible. Wrenched from my solitary, mediaeval godly musings, I felt like a visitor from another planet. But I couldn’t be too harsh; after all, had it not been my choice to stop off at this Shrine to Shopping?

York Minster is truly one of England’s – if not the world’s – greatest churches. It towers above the city, a mediaeval symbol of the power and majesty of God. When I arrived Evensong was in progress and so I joined the congregation for the latter part of the service. As I entered Psalm 23 was being sung and the words seemed to speak to me personally:

My head thou hast anointed (that very morning!)

And my cup overflows (indeed I have lived a full and blessed life).

I wandered around afterwards marvelling at the space and stonework but somehow, something wasn’t quite there for me although I couldn’t put my finger on what. Time too was ticking and so I moved on.

The Pilgrim Way

 

God over me, God under me,

God before me, God behind me,

I on thy path, O God,

Thou, O God, in my steps.

Carmina Gadelica

Leaving York I followed the signposts and almost circumnavigated the entire city on the ring road. I was reminded of the Muslims on their pilgrimage, the Hajj, circling the Kaaba. That day, the grey towers of the minster were my House of Abraham.

Then I was onto an old Roman Road – the A19 – to Thirsk, a route that countless mediaeval pilgrims once trod. Once again I felt a connection with the religious past of my land. Then that connection grew deeper; on a hillside to my right I saw a giant white horse carved out of chalk. Was that not a connection with a faith that existed before Christ, with the Pagans who held sacred the animals, plants and features of the natural world all around them. I felt myself as but the latest drop in a river as old as time, a river of faith composed of humankind.[1]

At a service station on the old Great North Road I came across a family of Hassidic Jews travelling in a people carrier. As the sun set one of them started praying, rocking back and forth by the side of his vehicle, his prayer book in his hands. Outside of churches, that was the only praying that I observed during the entire pilgrimage.

 

Angel

 

Sometimes even the flight of an angel hits turbulence.

Astrid Alauda

                     

As I approached Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the city’s modern symbol reared up in front of me, the colossal Angel of the North. I had long wanted to view this enormous rusting statue with a wingspan greater than that of a jumbo jet but up close, whilst dramatic, I thought it somehow ugly. What intrigued me most though, was in this supposedly secular age, why had the artist chosen such a religious image?

I stayed in a youth hostel in Newcastle and that evening I decided to explore a little of the last major English city totally unknown to me. I enjoyed wandering down by the riverside, over the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and through the elegant Georgian streets, but somehow it seemed strange, even wrong, an invasion of touristdom into a sacred time.

The secular invasion however, continued – out of necessity – the following morning. I went back into town as I had an important letter to post. On the Metro going in I sat opposite a Muslim lady wearing a full face veil. Such attire has long intrigued me; it must be irritating to wear and yet what more visible sign of faith – and separation – is there? But there again, is not faith itself a separation? Had I not felt alien and distant from all my compatriots in the shopping centre the day before? But conversely, is not the word ‘religion’ based on the Latin term ‘religāre’ which means to ‘bind or tie together’?

Just out of the railway station I came across an ancient church dedicated to St. John the Baptist. I stepped inside for a moment to pray and found a delightful place of quiet, a million miles away from the bustling streets outside. Being on pilgrimage I decided not to delve into its history first as I normally do when entering a strange church, but instead to concentrate on the Divine. The churchwarden however, had other ideas and decided to point out several items of interest including a window to a anchorite’s cell, (the cell is now gone, a victim of later alterations). This directed my prayers in another direction, musing upon the lives of the anchorites who sentenced themselves to life in a miserable gaol. Was it madness or holiness? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this extreme route to the Divine? As I prayed I thought of the mediaeval pilgrims en route to the Holy Island who perhaps stopped here on their way and asked the unkempt anchorite for his or her blessings…

 

The Holy Island

 

For with the flow and ebb, its style

Varies from continent to isle;

Dry shood o'er sands, twice every day,

The pilgrims to the shrine find way;

Twice every day the waves efface

Of staves and sandelled feet the trace.

Sir Walter Scott

The Holy Island was much further north than I’d expected but once it appeared into view the whole trip became worthwhile. Crossing the causeway from the mainland was like entering into another world, one where calm, quiet and nature reigned supreme. Was that perhaps why so many holy sites were on islands, the physical barrier to the world representing a spiritual separation as well?

The monastery of St. Cuthbert however, came as something of a slight disappointment. It was an unspectacular set of ruins but worse than that, there was no obvious place to pray. When one thinks of pilgrimages, one imagines them being fulfilled when one sinks to one’s knees in front of the altar and gives thanks to God. Here however, there was no altar nor anywhere that would serve as one. True, there was the place where the original altar had once stood but I felt somehow silly stood in the middle of a lawn praying towards a wall. In the end I just wandered around the ruins a little, before falling into a conversation with an Australian who was touring Europe in a camper van.

At St. Cuthbert's Monastery, Holy Island

Next to the ruins stood the parish church which although mediaeval, post-dated St. Cuthbert, St. Aidan et al. Even so, it had an altar and so was the best that I was going to get. And so it was that I knelt before it and prayed the rosary.

And after praying the whole trip seemed to change in meaning. It was as if what I had come for was now accomplished and I could now get on with some sightseeing. I realised that all that concentration on spiritual things had been hard and I now wanted a break. So I wandered about the isle more a tourist than a pilgrim now, taking in the islet where St. Cuthbert had once dwelt, Bamburgh Castle in the distance, (the seat of King/St. Oswald who had invited Aidan to establish his monastery on Lindisfarne), and viewed an RAF Rescue helicopter fly over Lindisfarne Castle and rescue some careless swimmer. It was strange, but with the burden of pilgrimage passed, I now felt lighter and began to appreciate the windswept beauty of the island and its long spiritual history far more.

And in Lindisfarne’s history I found some of my own. In the fifth century AD England was pagan and King Oswald of Northumbria – who had converted to the Christian faith during his youth spent in Ireland – wished to establish a monastery at Lindisfarne to help spread the new faith throughout the land. The first man that he picked, an Irish bishop named Cormán turned out to be unsuited for the job and so he journeyed back across the Irish Sea and in his place came Aidan, another Irish bishop who had been a monk at the monastery on Iona in Scotland. Unlike Cormán, he proved to be most successful and the monastery was established in 635 and thus the story of Holy Isle had begun. Its most famous saint however, was not Aidan but Cuthbert who was elected Bishop of Lindisfarne in 684. He was a Scottish shepherd who had a vision one night of Aidan being carried to heaven by angels and so joined the joined the monastery at Melrose in the Border Lands. Later he moved to a monastery at Ripon before returning to Melrose as the Abbot and then coming to Lindisfarne. He soon became renowned for his piety, aestheticism and gifts of healing and after his death was renowned as a miracle worker. There were however, many more saints at Holy Island besides Cuthbert and Aidan. Amongst St. Aidan’s pupils were four brothers – Cedd, Cynibil, Caelin and Ceadda (Chad) – who all became great religious figures of their day, but particularly relevant for me is St. Chad who later in life became Bishop of Mercia and established his monastery at Lichfield which is now the cathedral of the diocese to which my church belongs. And too, whilst never a resident at the Lindisfarne Monastery itself, we must not forget the Venerable Bede, Britain’s first historian, who wrote the biography of Cuthbert and in doing so preserved the Holy Island’s story for posterity.

 

The Road Back

 

If a man set out from home on a journey and kept right on going, he would come back to his own front door.

Sir John Mandeville

After I left the Holy Island the secular continued to invade. I drove into the Northumbria National Park, ostensibly to appreciate God’s handiwork yet realistically to do some more sightseeing, (but then again, are the two not one?)> Whilst there though, I came across a real gem: I saw some ruins in a valley below and went down to investigate. That’s how I found enchanting Edlingham with its castle with a leaning tower and its beautiful church. Ancient (Norman) in construction, inside it was Spartan and humble yet full of warmth. Here at last, was the church I’d been looking for, reeking of the spirit of early English Christianity, a fitting shrine to a carpenter’s son. In that simple place I connected with God better than anywhere else I’d been on the trip. Edlingham was my little gem, on no tourist itinerary yet pure magic.

The following day I aimed to drive back, (to Manchester, not Stoke as I had a Union training event to attend), slowly and carefully. And so it was that I stopped off in Durham and utilised another park and ride scheme.

Durham Cathedral is regarded as one of the finest in England. In my opinion, it is the finest. It may not have the size and detail of York but it possesses a solidity and firmness that the others lack. It is somehow friendlier and earthier and its chunky pillars in particular are a delight to behold. I had visited before, en route to Stoke from Hexham some years previously but for this pilgrimage there was a special significance in visiting for Durham Cathedral was itself founded by followers of St. Cuthbert, refugees from Lindisfarne following the Viking raid that burnt the monastery to the ground. After the Vikings sacked Lindisfarne in 875AD, the homeless monks carried the beloved (and miracle-working) body of the saint (which they’d managed to hide from the raiders) across the north for decades until they eventually found a suitable home for it on a promontory above the River Wear around which they built their church which later evolved into the magnificent cathedral that stands on the spot today. Laid to rest here beside Cuthbert was the Venerable Bede, Cuthbert’s chronicler, and near the altar was the head of King Oswald, Lindisfarne’s patron. Throughout the Middle Ages these sacred relics attracted thousands of pilgrims and as Lindisfarne declined, Durham effectively took over as the holy hotspot of the north.

Indeed looking back, one of the great things about this pilgrimage was how it helped me to understand my own country’s spiritual roots. I had visited Melrose Abbey the year before, (where Cuthbert had lived as a monk), and St. Chad, the evangeliser of Mercia may have even preached in my own parish and his cathedral is the mother church of my diocese. Throughout the trip the interconnectedness of all these seemingly unrelated places and figures seemed to fall into place and I felt closer with my mediaeval (and pre-mediaeval) forefathers in faith.

If Durham Cathedral represented traditional Anglicanism, in the market square I encountered its modern brother. The church there, evangelical and forward-looking, had a fair-trade shop and was running a coffee morning. I popped in for a mug of tea and read a book by Nicky Gumble, the leading light of present-day Evangelical Anglicanism and founder of the Alpha Course which I myself had attended years ago. The book was on the relationship between Christianity and other religions and in it Mr. Gumble argued compassionately yet forcefully, that Christianity is the only way to God. Chad, Aidan, Cuthbert and Bede may have agreed, but I was far from sure…

 

The Empty Tomb

 

They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.

The Gospel According to St. John

I left the motorway at Ripon intending to visit Fountains Abbey, but it was raining and the road signs informed me that Ripon is a cathedral city so I decided to visit there instead, arguing that the grounds are the main attraction at the abbey and that the cathedral was more likely to have a roof.

Ripon Cathedral is far humbler than either York or Durham but it is just as old and full of character. Once again another piece of the Saxon Christian Jigsaw fell into place: Ripon Cathedral was dedicated to and founded by one St. Wilfrid, another product of Lindisfarne. Wilfrid was a nobleman who received a vision whilst on a pilgrimage to Rome. He returned to England to found his cathedral and propagate the faith but he is best remembered for steering the English faith away from Celtic traditions and towards those of Rome; a move that to this day unites such diverse groups as Low Church Anglicans, Methodists, Pagans and Orthodox Christians in condemnation. On a more personal level, Wilfrid also replaced the more Celtic Chad (yes, he of Lichfield) as the Bishop of York on the orders of the Romanising Archbishop of Canterbury.

The most memorable part of Ripon Cathedral however, was in fact not in it but underneath it. By the side of one of the pillars some tiny stone steps led down to a small chamber, completely bare, before climbing out again up stairs on the opposite side and emerging beside a pillar across from where one went down. That chamber was built as a replica of Christ’s tomb in Jerusalem and I found it moving. Even though I have been to the real tomb in the Holy Sepulchre, (which is nothing at all like the one at Ripon), historical accuracy is of no importance here and instead we are in the realm of faith, and in that empty, bare space, I felt that I could imagine the reality of the empty tomb in Jerusalem far more vividly.

Emerging from the cathedral I was feeling hungry but a little short on money and time, (Id’ only put an hour on my parking ticket, not expecting to get waylaid by Christ’s tomb), so I popped into a homely establishment called ‘The Warehouse’ for a bowl of homemade soup. When she found out that I hadn’t the change to pay for an accompanying drink, the proprietress sent me over a free cup of tea. I found the act of kindness touching and left all my remaining change as a tip. Downing both tea and soup in a hurry, I got back to the car just in time. Then it was back on the road…

 

Retreat

 

Doubt is part of all religion. All religious thinkers were doubters

Isaac Bashevi Singer

It was several months before, at the commencement of Lent that I first had the notion of going away for religious purposes. My original idea had not been of a pilgrimage, but instead a retreat. I’d left the booking too late though and dithered over which kind of retreat to go for and so in the end a pilgrimage was the only realistic option. Even so, the idea of a retreat still intrigued me thus it was that I drove across the beautiful Yorkshire Dales to the Scargill Retreat in Kettlewell in Upper Wharfedale which a member of the congregation of St. Margaret’s had recommended.

En route I passed through a village named Grassington. Under the sign someone had written, ‘Twinned with Paradise’. A nice sentiment and not far off the mark either.

Scargill’s setting was equally heavenly. The centre describes itself as ‘non-denominational’ but seemed rather evangelical to me. I was shown around by a friendly lady but at the end left wondering if it was what I was after. Yes, it was beautiful, peaceful and relaxing, but I could get that elsewhere. What I’d hoped for were daily services so as to give a framework to my sacred time but this offered no such thing. Once again I was reminded that not everyone seeks God in the same way.

Crisis

 

The courage of his choice will honour those

Who taught the pilgrim everything he knows

Farid-ud-din Attar

The weather had perked up now so I drove down to Bolton Abbey, the last stop on my Tour de Foi. Pulling into the car park however, I made a terrible discovery: my wallet had disappeared! I’d had it in Ripon at that café, that I knew, but since then I’d stopped twice by the road as well as at Scargill and in could be in any of those places! Bolton Abbey was beautiful and it was nice that the parish church occupied the ruined abbey’s nave but in truth my visit was spoilt by lost wallet worries. Still, at least my prayers there had a definite focus…

I went into Skipton to contact the police but the station was closed. By the door was a phone to be used in such eventualities and that put me through to Ripon before inexplicably cutting off. I tried again and this time got Harrogate until they cut off too and on the third attempt it was back to Ripon. The lady on the end of the line explained that North Yorkshire ran a system whereby I could phone a friend who wouldn’t mind subbing me and if they went into a police station near their house, I could collect it from the police station where I was. The only drawback was that it was only available from Ripon and that was some thirty-odd miles away. Oh yes, and I had only a dribble of petrol in my tank and four quid in change. I asked if there were not somewhere in a more Manchesterly direction to which she replied that they were a different force and she couldn’t guarantee it though there might be. The choice was mine.

I got off the phone and thought. Chances were that the Lancashire Constabulary did operate a similar service and the fact was that Ripon was over thirty miles away in the wrong direction. Thirty miles that I may not even be able to make in my petroless car. So then, which direction to take? South towards safety or north, away from my destination and towards the prospect of running out of fuel on a lonely Yorkshire Moors. All my better instincts said south but a small voice insisted on Ripon. For reasons that I don’t understand at all, I chose north.

I spent my last few pennies putting a couple of litres into the tank and coasted down every hill. With the warning light on and the needle at empty I rolled into Ripon and sought out the police station. The lady handed me a phone and asked whom I wished to call. The choice was between my mum or my brother: mum was the sensible option, she was likely to have money and a phone that was switched. Conversely however, she would be judgemental and scold me for having lost yet another wallet yet again and will I never learn and… Pride is a powerful temptation and I succumbed to it, dialling my brother’s number safe in the knowledge that he too regularly loses wallets and other important things. And besides, I could justify the choice to myself by the fact that he lived near to a police station.

And so I phoned him and of course, his phone was switched off. And so, heart in mouth, pride forcibly swallowed, I rang my mum:

“Matthew! Is that you? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day? Where are you? You’re mobile’s been switched off…”

(Call it a laudable rejection of unnecessary intrusive technology or the lamentable sign of a disorganised Luddite, but I had deliberately not taken my mobile so as not to disturb my spiritual state, (read: forgotten it).).

“Well, your wallet has been found!”

(And pray tell me, how on earth do you even know that it was lost, mother dear?)

“I received a call from a woman; she found it and called me after finding my number in the wallet.”

(Wife put that in there in case I ever lost my wallet. I told her at the time that it was not necessary. I do not lose things).

“Anyway, she’s got your wallet.”

(But where mother, pray tell me where? Is it in Scargill, Skipton or on some lonely Yorkshire Moor?).

“Ripon. You left it in a café there. Now, what have I told you about losing things? You never learn, you really don’t and…”

Of all the places! Was it chance that made me be so short that I was forced to resort to the police? Was it chance also that connected me to Ripon first time? And chance also that the only place in North Yorkshire that operating a subbing system was Ripon? Chance too that my car just managed to make it over the hills?

Or was it perhaps not chance at all, but the answer that I’d been waiting for throughout the entire pilgrimage…?

And they all lived happily ever after…

 

On the long drive down the M62 to the bright lights of Manchester I laughed long and loud. Perhaps it was due to a release of all that pent-up energy caused by several days of spiritual reflection and several hours of worry over a lost wallet?

Or perhaps it was because the lesson that I’d learnt from my pilgrimage was that above all the God that I adore is a God with am wicked sense of humour…

Lindisfarne: holy

 

Next pilgrimage: Nazareth in Norfolk

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[1] All very romantic and spiritually stirring perhaps, but alas, also quite inaccurate. The white horse in question is the Kilburn White Horse which dates only from 1857! Apparently, it was carved on the initiative of one Thomas Taylor, a native of Kilburn who had attended celebrations at Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire in 1857 and decided to give his village a similar example. That horse however, dates from around 1,000BC and is thought by some scholars have had some religious or magical significance, so the spiritual stirrings were perhaps, not entirely misplaced.