St. Cuthbert's Way Day One: Beginning

One doesn’t go to Melrose half-heartedly.  Cuthbert, arguably the most important of the northern (striding) saints was a shepherd before he entered the monastery, and he journeyed to Melrose only after he’d had a vision of a bright light ascending to heaven and learned the next day that it must have been the soul of the Celtic priest Aidan, who’d founded the monastery at Lindisfarne, and who had died on the night of Cuthbert’s vision.  The heart of Robert the Bruce, the medieval chieftain who unified Scotland, is buried in the ruins of Melrose Abbey.  From Edinburgh I rode in the front on top of a double-decker red bus through the little towns and along streams, watching the beautiful country roll out on all sides of me, eager to be walking through it and seeing it all up close.  I’d longed for this pilgrimage for several years, but I’d been immobilized by an abusive relationship, by my own anxieties, and by my mother’s failing health.  My mother’ soul departed in May right as I was supposed to begin the walk, and, of course, I postponed it.  Now I had the additional burden of grief to carry with me to Holy Island.  I got off the bus and headed to the abbey after dropping my bag at the B&B.  I climbed the tower and looked out for the pig and dog gargoyle, but the sculpture that impressed me most was the open-mouthed face, hanging out over a corner molding, saying “OH!” in terror at the height, in awe at the beautiful landscape, or in song to the Lord of blue sky.  Though my feet were on the ground between the River Tweed and the Eildon Hills, my mouth was open just as wide.

           Melrose to Lindisfarne is not a traditional pilgrimage route like the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.  It was laid out in 1995 to commemorate important places in Cuthbert’s life as well as its progression from shepherding to entering the monastery to walking the hills to far flung settlements in the borders to preach the gospel.  Cuthbert lived the tension between serving and loving people to wanting to be alone with God; and Lindisfarne (cut off from the mainland by tides twice daily) seemed to symbolize life on the edge of eternity.  But even Lindisfarne, situated on trade routes, with its bustling monastery and entrepreneurial endeavors was too crowded for him, and he eventually withdrew to live in hermitage on the isolated island of Farne.  In preparation, I’d read two early biographies—one by an anonymous monk in Cuthbert’s community and the other by Bede—and was, therefore, familiar with stories that have become iconic:  Cuthbert’s vision of Aidan’s soul ascending; Cuthbert’s study of John’s gospel with his friend, the Abbot Boisil, who was dying of plague; Cuthbert’s ministering to an angel; his unconcern about food while walking great distances; the ways that animals—eagles and otters—tended to his needs; and, finally, his setting off for Farne in a December storm to be in hermitage before he died.  I set off from the U.S., touched down in the UK, and stepped off the red bus in Melrose, knowing some things but in the dark about so many more.  At best, I hoped to converse with Cuthbert, hoped that by walking in places he knew or maybe by just walking a long distance (something new for me that was perfectly normal for him), I would learn a way that would make me new and that could teach me something about he spirituality of this early Celtic Christian whose gentleness and affability made him the Church’s choice for spreading the new Roman rite.

            Stone crosses were erected all over Northumberland to remind people that the whole landscape was holy.  They gave a reverential tone to any and all journeys made on the big pilgrimage that we call life.  Cuthbert was one of the northern saints who spread Christianity by walking and teaching and celebrating mass (hence the pocket-sized altar that was buried with him) as much a part of his intimate belongings as an ivory comb or the small sized version of John’s gospel.  When he arrived in a settlement, people would assemble in tents to hear him read, teach, and heal them by his presence alone.  “But wasn’t he an awfully extreme personality?” asked a dentist I ran into along the Way, presumably thinking about the monk’s desire to live as a hermit.  I doubt this dentist knew the details:  for instance, that on Farne, Cuthbert built the walls of his cell high enough to close out even the beauty of his surroundings so as to concentrate more fully on God.  Despite all of this, I do not think of Cuthbert as extreme.  I feel rather an affinity for him.  He craved solitude.  He knew that there is a richness to solitary existence in which one is connected to trees, plants, hills, birds, and the Creator of all by silken strands of attention, thought, and feeling.  The earth seems to want to be seen and known.  Cuthbert was a witness.  The silent traveler moving through the Borders is also a witness.  Though there are no stone crosses, there are beech trees, butterflies, sweet peas, the Eildon Hills, bridges lost and found, and a hawk that fed me wisdom as surely as an eagle dropped dolphin meat on the seashore for Cuthbert.

            On my pilgrimage, Cuthbert functioned as a guide, a human waymark.  The majority of people in the secular West are not capable of affirming real experiences that connect us to the natural world and its inhabitants.  I could not post on Facebook that I’d met an angel, that sweet peas cheered me on, that I saw my mother’s hands in the moss-covered gnarled roots of an ancient beech near Lilliard’s stone, the tree dead and alive at the same time.  But walking with Cuthbert gave me someone who had had similar experiences.  I could set my own against the stories others told about his and felt less crazy or less alone.  Maybe you are laughing or feeling skeptical.  If so, consider that most Americans fear being alone with their thoughts for more than six minutes.  Few would walk 70 miles alone in wild places and like it.  And most are frighted with the false fires of distraction.  “He will heal all those in need” read the window in the tiny church in Maxton.  A woman I met contacted the pastor of a tiny stone church that was legendarily established by Cuthbert; and Reverend Sheila opened the church so I could see the Hebrew inscriptions I’d read about.  In one of the windows was the verse, “he healed them that had need of healing.”  “The key word is need,” said the woman I’d met.  Most people are not aware that they need healing and help.  She is right.  Wrapped up in our comforts with the whole world seemingly available at the touch of a button, we really don’t need anything.  In America you hear people say as a matter of course that we live in our own private “bubbles.”  A sign on the pub door in Fenwick said “Turn off your phone and talk to your neighbor.”  The first step of any walk is to become aware that you need something whether it’s as little as clarity, fresh air, relaxation, the sensory awareness of your body in motion or as much as connection and inspiration.

            The map I was using indicated that the first day would be the longest day.  Melrose to Jedburgh is 15 miles, and the way passed through many small villages and made many twists and turns:  up the Eildon Hills, along the River Tweed, and finally down the meadow path that followed the old Roman Road to another river and bridge.  How would I manage it?  On top of that, it was showering just before I started off.  “What will I do?”  “Bring an upbrella,” quipped the husband at the B&B who’d cooked my breakfast.  “Got one,” I said.  “No, I’m jokin.  Not a tough lady walker like you.  No.  That’s just not done.”  So stuffing my rain poncho in my pack, I set off and the rain stopped.  The first real difficulty I faced was psychological:  leaving comforts and security.  A warm, dry B&B and my big duffel bag that contained dry clothes for all occasions and an extra water bottle.  Without it, I had to make do with what I had.  Looking up into the misty, dark, conical Eildon Hills, I set off.  The whole steep ascent, step by step, I was getting used to the tingle of fear and letting it become excitement.  I was finding my walking rhythm.  I was opening my eyes and ears to all that was going on around me.  Straight up the red path into hills that were once, in the ancient past, volcanoes but are now heather-covered, I passed fireweed, a lone foxglove, protective ewes with their big lambs.  I began to see heather but kept my eyes on the summits and imagined the legends I’d read about fairies that lived under these hills.  My mind began to loosen up with my muscles, and I was growing less self-conscious with each step.

            On the back side of the hills, I descended into woods and heard a chorus of birds.  At first I thought they were mourning doves, but the song was four-noted and energetic:  Hoo, Hoo, hoohoo.  I heard the flap of wings.  These were large blue-gray birds with white rings around their necks and white bands on their wings.  I supposed they were a kind of pigeon but so very different from the grimy birds at home that scavenge in cities.  These were fat, wild-looking, and choral!!!  Listening became my practice.  Listening and noticing and so long as I was engaged I was no longer frightened, and I was aware of how good it felt to travel without the burden of a bag even if I got wet or ran out of water or needed food.  I began to trust that what was in my small pack would suffice.  Happily, I took all the detours one of which was to Dryburgh Abbey, and along the way—a detour within a detour—I chanced upon a “Temple to the Muses” constructed to honor James Thomson, the Borders poet born around 1700, who loved the natural world and who, according to the plaque, is considered a proto-Romantic.  Also on the plaque was an excerpt from his poem, “Spring” (1728):

                                                            Thus the glad skies,

                                    The wide-rejoicing earth, the woods, the streams

                                    With every life they hold, down to the flower

                                    That paints the lonely vale, or insect-wing

                                    Waved o’er the shepherd’s slumber, touch the mind,

                                    To nature tuned, with a light-flying hand

                                    Invisible, quick-urging through the nerves

                                    The glittering spirits in a flood of day.

I meandered through the Abbey, talked to everyone I met.  Along the Tweed, I stopped to sketch the Eildon Hill that I’d walked around, and in a kind of ecstatic state, I jotted down my own simple “poem.”

I ate the fruit of the forest

I felt light rain on my skin

Heard the rhythmic chant of wood doves

My soul is alive again.

The only time I felt lonely was going into a coffee shop in St. Boswell’s where the colognes and fine clothing of people out with families and friends on a Sunday afternoon accented the wild mess I’d become.  I took my soup and juice and fled to the riverside.  Finding a bench along the Way, I befriended a cat, and then, along came a equally odd looking woman all in blue, veiled, carrying a white cat, who she called “Elijah,” in a sling.  A chocolate lab walked next to her. 

            Because the pilgrimage felt, in part, about finding a way to have a voice and finding a way that responded to a call, I marveled at the fluent prophecies that poured effortlessly forth from this very odd young woman if woman is what she was.  “Yes, he [speaking about Elijah’ has eyes of two different colors.  That’s for Elijah and Elisha and because God wants us to join together.  She spoke about covenant and Mary as the arc of the new covenant who birthed Jesus, who is returning soon.  There have been signs in Jerusalem:  three extra stars in Leo, and next year is 2020.”  She told a story about swimming to the bottom of the Tweed and pulling up 12 stones and carrying them in her rucksack—“for the twelve tribes of Israel and because Scotland must be unified.  And it will be, she predicted, “because (it’s a secret) but Robert the Bruce’s heart has been dug up and reburied in Jerusalem.  This is the only way for Scotland to be renewed.  I have given my whole self to Jesus.”  When I asked her about the Hebrew inscriptions in the parish church in Maxton—along the route, she gave me her cell number and said to call when I arrived.  She would ring up the Reverend Sheila and see if she would open the church.  When we parted ways, she prayed that God would open my eyes and ears and that my spiritual pilgrimage would be fruitful.  As I continued pushing my way through the grasses and tangled plant life along the river, I thought about Cuthbert.  When he decided to enter the monastery at Melrose, the first “job” he was given was to offer hospitality to strangers.  On one occasion, a worn-out man arrived and was fed, his feet washed, and he was given a place to rest.  Overnight it snowed, and the guest arose and departed early, leaving no tracks in the soft snow.  Cuthbert felt—“felt” is too weak a word—he knew with his heart that this was an angel.  I wondered about Gabrielle Mary. 

            The path eventually wound round behind the gray stone church, and I could see two women (one veiled with a blue scarf—Gabrielle!—and another with bright gold hair almost like a halo).  They were obviously waiting to welcome me.  I called, but they didn’t hear, and I walked along the wall and entered the gate.  Gabrielle came forward holding out a white rose whose stem and leaves were wrapped in a blue bag.  “It’s a thornless rose.”  It is Jesus saying something about you.”  “St. Cuthbert’s Church at Mackistun” first appears in the records some 500 years after the time of Cuthbert, but like several of the auld kirks on the way, it could have been served from Old Melrose and maybe even by Cuthbert himself.  The Hebrew writing on the way—way up high—are verses from the psalms:  “Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound” and “Come let us worship and bow down.”  The women didn’t know what the inscriptions meant, but Gabrielle—ever sensitive to names—talked about my name Mary Jo … “Joseph, John, mercy.”  She said that Sheila was connected to the Hebrew word, “shelah” (I think it is really “selah”), but she understood it to mean “pause, pause, take it all in” and told a funny story about immersing herself in a pool on top of Mount Sion and being watched by a proper rabbi (or was it a hermit) who called to all passersby, “shelah, shelah!”  When we parted, she kissed me on the lips, and I left, clutching my white thornless rose.  Was this some kind of annunciation?  I felt I was being called to look and listen very closely—to see all phenomenon as gifts, signs, or messages.  The angel Gabriel approached Mary with a lily, and all annunciations are invitations to trust in something that sounds impossible or preposterous.  “Let it be done to me.”  Later that evening, I texted Gabrielle (she’d given me her cell number) to thank her for the kindness, but she never replied which, once again, made me wonder about who or what she was. 

            When I think about my experience placed next to Cuthbert’s, I have to wonder what enabled him to feel that the guest he welcomed was an angel.  Certainly, there could have been naturalistic explanations for the lack of footprints in the snow, yet Bede researched the life and the incident stands as one of the first stations in Cuthbert’s holy life.  When I stood with Gabrielle and Sheila in Maxton Church, she spoke about angels.  “They are all around us.  I saw a huge one once just before a storm when I was trying to visit my mother.”  I asked the two women if they’d heard the thunder.  I’d been hearing it all afternoon in the clouds over the river.  Thunder but no rain.  “I didn’t hear thunder.  Listen, God is speaking to you,” was what Gabrielle said.  But there was actual thunder, and it was confirmed by several trout fishermen I passed.  Still, there was the moment a white bird with an enormous wingspan took off just as I’d passed under the branch on which he was perched.  There was the fact that I’d somehow made it on foot 20 miles to Jeburgh just before the hostess of the B&B was going to call the police because “it’s nearly twelve hours since you set out, and you are walking alone.”  Things happen.  “There are things happening all around us and we don’t know what they are.”  This observation made by my skeptical dentist friend serves as a kind of secular credo and mantra for my journey.  Neither he nor we know anything much about the natural let alone the supernatural world, and my feeling, my strong feeling, my faith is that these levels of experience interpenetrate.  Didn’t God “prepare” a great fish to swallow Jonah?  Didn’t he speak to the gourd to enlist its help in teaching his prophet a lesson in mercy?  Maybe the early and medieval Christians were wiser than we in reading the created world as a book or a story.  If so, how poverty-stricken we moderns are who don’t even read books anymore. 

            To read the world’s book, you must step out and walk.  A story unfolds.  The walker must tell it or sing it, but it is a joint creation that is both yours and the world’s.  The anonymous Life of Cuthbert gives us a tiny glimpse of a musical procession along the banks of the Tweed.  Cuthbert had been invited to the village of a man called Sibba who lived somewhere beside the river.  He arrived “with a company of people,” singing as they walked.  They were singing psalms and hymns.  A few years later, in 680, a herdsman called Caedmon would begin composing beautiful hymns in Old English, much to everyone’s surprise, including his own.  Cademon was one of those people who are convinced that they can’t sing.  Whenever party pieces were called for, Cademon would slip away.  One night, he went out to the byre to feed the beasts and fell asleep there.  A man came to him in his dreams, called him by name and asked him for a song.  “I don’t know how to sing,” said Caedmon, “that’s why I left the feast.”  “But you shall sing for me,” said the man.  “What shall I sing about?”  “Sing about the Creation of things,” said the man.  And Caedmon began to sing—in his own voice—a song he had never heard before.

            I wandered into Jedburgh shattered on a Sunday night.  It was dark and raining lightly.  The pubs weren’t serving food and, worst of all, I’d forgotten the name of the place I was staying.  Panic set in.  My bag had been delivered to the B&B whose name I’d forgotten.  How would I find it?  But my confusion—delirium even—came out of a total loss of concern about where I’d sleep or what I’d eat.  And it was, I think, a sign that I was really truly on the way.  There had been a moment along the old Roman road when I wanted to lay down in the deep grass, under the sacred protector tree (whose name remains a mystery) and pass the night in wonder.  Perhaps I was living the parable of hidden treasure from Matthew 13:  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”  Even on my first day out, I knew that there was something challenging but immensely valuable about the project of pilgrimage, and it was even linked in some way to Jesus’ use of the parable as a teaching tool.  What is the treasure hidden in the field?  How is it comparable to the kingdom of Heaven?  Jesus, who Cuthbert followed closely, walked, walked everywhere; and he, too, sought places of solitary prayer and contemplation.  Perhaps even Jesus’s teaching grew out of the ecstasy of dreaming on foot.  And maybe the kingdom of Heaven is knowing the field from the inside out … the topographic sublime.