The Secret Monks

Every morning, except on Mondays, at 0930 prayers are said at the URC St Cuthbert’s Centre, it’s beauty is in the simplicity as we share the concerns of island visitors as well as the more worldly events that brings forth spoken and as well as private prayers. One morning we had a reading about ‘salt and light’, from Matthew 5:13-16:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”

On this journey I have not started from a view point of knowingly referring to a Bible passage, but I know that there are some reflections that will attract a text or two, by the time these images and contextual soundings go to print, there will be some tidying up and additions made. (This seems to be the process that all books go through before printing.)

The monks bearing their precious load of St Cuthbert’s coffin can be found in St Mary’s Parish Church. The sculpture, made of elm, is by Fenwick Lawson and is called, ‘The Journey’. It depicts the monks carrying the body of St Cuthbert away from the Island, on a journey across the North during the time of the Viking raids: there is a bronze copy in Durham’s Millennium Place.

Walking around the church where these monks of elm so gracefully stand in continual movement, marking the spot until journey’s end, can at certain times during the day be an almost eerie sight. Just walking around the sculpture, in the stillness of one evening, trying to catch a small movement out of the corner of my eye and if it moved, then my imagination was surely working, for it seemed to me to have life energy. Looking at the monks, each were different, none the same, each bearing their load in turn. Looking forwards, in reverence they would have walked on the journey. Looking and almost caressing the sides of the coffin as they walked in silent prayer. Looking, sensing their surroundings as they moved, heads slightly bowed, carrying the saints relics to safety. Not fearing to tread where God’s leads, bearing the load as Jesus did on that another journey some 875 years before.

I spent a lot of time here that evening, trying to get a sense of the place. There was a sea mist this evening that had shrouded the Island in an even light of wonder and mysticism and rightly so. For this island is a place to quietly lose one self in a walk with God. Coming here as part of my sabbatical was as much an unknown as going to Quarr Abbey and even to Iona a a few weeks times. Unknowns bring guarded concerns, but also non-agendas, because the journey is also about seeking what God is asking of you as a person, but also as a Christian. Many a theologian has sat where I am and tried to put this “unknown” in to words and like myself; I may not accomplish this at all well.

“Oh My God” is an expression which in the modern world of english has been over used possible for all, the wrong reasons. For me, as a Christian, I cannot suddenly verbalise the expression and yet, when you walk into this church where the journey started back in 875AD, (when the body was first move) the expression escapes my lips, albeit silently, before I realise the important of what has been said. However, standing here with these elm monks looking at the detail of the carved individuals and the tenderness of how they carried their beloved saint’s body from the Island, one begins to get a better understand of the importance of why the original life-like sculpture remains here in Lindisfarne.

Equally there is something of me remaining on all the islands I have visited so far. Not in sculptural form, but in the images and the reflections along the way. I cannot help but feel that tomorrow, the last full day here, God will throw up some surprises. That God, with his well oiled sense of humour, just might bowl me a googly (a deceptive spinning delivery by a leg spin bowler which spins the opposite direction to the stock delivery. For a right-hander bowler and a right-handed batsman, a googly will turn from the off side to the leg side.) that I was not expecting.

Lindisfarne brought the light into the world. An Island built on a hill, surrounded by sea, cannot be hidden, unless by mist. Neither did the monks light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it in its stand in a church where the light could radiate outwards, and it gives light to everyone in the house and to the world.