In the Footsteps of the Ancients

A number of years ago now, I looked at the personality characteristics, shared across human cultures and spiritual traditions, which positive psychologists have identified as critical to human mental health and wellbeing. Of these, one that has always stuck out to me is one they variably labeled ‘awe’ or ‘appreciation of beauty and excellence’ — in other words, experiences of transcendence. Over the years, I’ve noticed that transcendence comes in many shades: in addition to beauty and excellence, there is immensity, isolation or extremity, age and history, and the numinous. On my recent trip to England, nowhere did all of these come together more than in Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island in the North Sea, close to the English-Scottish border, and accessible from land only during low tides. It features a charming village, an early modern castle dramatically situated on a rocky promontory, and the ruins of a monastery. Originally founded by St. Aidan, the monastery was also the home (and original resting place) of St. Cuthbert, and was famous for its scriptorium which created beautiful illuminated (that is, decorated) manuscripts, such as the famous Lindisfarne Gospel. Its horrific sack at the hands of Scandinavian raiders in 793, though not the first such attack in Britain, marks the traditional start of the Viking Age — and was why Cuthbert’s relics were dug up and eventually taken to Durham. The present remains are not of the original Anglo-Saxon monastery, but a later one built on its site during the Norman period and which was active until the dissolution of the monasteries at the hands of King Henry VIII. It is unquestionably a beautiful spot, isolated against the vast North Sea, pregnant with history, and pervaded by a sense of holiness. Transcendent through and through.

We made our pilgrimage to Lindisfarne on my second full day in the UK, and it culminated the actual sense of pilgrimage that had been building, from Saturday’s long and involved travel, to Sunday’s time in Durham visiting the shrines of Sts. Cuthbert and Bede, and finally now to Lindisfarne, home of Cuthbert’s own monastery and the place of his original burial. And nowhere on the trip did I have a greater sense of walking in the footsteps of the ancients than here. This is true certainly of the faithful as I walked through the ruined priory and contemplated St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert’s ministry and lasting impact, and the generations of pilgrims ancient and modern who have come to visit the site. Their energies and the energies of God working in and through them were palpable. But it’s no less true of those who came with less than holy aims: I couldn’t look out onto the sea without thinking of the terror an approaching longship would have wrought upon the island’s inhabitants, and the castle stands as a reminder that politics and world affairs do not stop even in holy places.

I wonder if this is what makes Lindisfarne such a powerful place: not simply the holy legacy, but the juxtaposition there of joy and terror, creation and destruction, healing and violence. In that way it feels like a microcosm of the human experience, bittersweet as it notoriously is.

Merciful God, who called Cuthbert from following the flock to be a shepherd of your people: Mercifully grant that we also may go without fear to dangerous and remote places, to seek the indifferent and the lost; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.