St. Cuthbert's Way Day 6: Immersion

            I arrived at dinner with a backpack full of gear for swimming.  I grabbed a hotel towel, a tank top and leggings, hoping to swim after supper.  Having walked seventy miles in Cuthbert’s footsteps, I wanted to follow him further, by mimicking his devotional bathing practice.  I’d imagined it as a kind of baptism into a new life, transformed by walking the Way.  I whispered my desire to one of the Swedes, who said matter-of-factly, “not now.”  People were a deterrent to a full and complete understanding.  And why not take the full-body plunge.  The whole pilgrimage was an embodied form of faith, moving forward into the natural world and into the supernatural world in a physical way.  Swimming at night or just standing still and singing with the seals would have completed that experience, but it was not to be.  Not for me.  Not then.

            I followed Robin back to the hotel while the women went further into the night.  I’m not sure why I did that except that he intrigued me and I felt the pull of kindly nature.  Saying goodnight, I turned the key into my room and drew a bath.  I plunged into the water and lolled,  plump with dinner but not judging my own body seal-shaped.  I lay in the pristine white bed linens while the curtains breathed in and sighed out.  My sleep was light.  So much to think about and listen to as the wind stirred and a storm brewed.  Had I known that the keening sounds across the water were seals, I would have listened for them, but I wonder if unconsciously I hadn’t recognized the siren voices calling me back to the elements and even my element.  A lover in the past thought that I was a selkie—a woman who had been a seal but who, because her skin was stolen, was trapped in a life on the surface when she longed for the depths.  I knew but blocked the knowledge that this particular man was the one who stole my seal skin and used me for his own pleasure while my naked skin dried out and I nearly died.  Here on Lindisfarne, there are pelts for the taking.  Even scholars, who study the evangelists’ pages in the Lindisfarne gospels—pages that pair each gospel writer with his signature animal—notice that Saint Mark’s lion is a credible beast with a stylized but hairy pelt.  My walk had been a journey home, and so it was fitting that here (finally) I heard the cry of my own soul, externalized as seal—come out, come out, go deep, dive with us, play.

            Up at 6:00 the winds were so strong that using an umbrella was impossible.  Bundled up in my rain poncho (my only worry being my iPhone), I headed for the sand dunes and the empty coastline on the north side of the island.  There were no houses, no fishing boats, no people.  There was nothing but rolling hills of sand, stormy skies, and gray surf in the rain that was coming down so hard that I could barely raise my eyes to look around.  But very small rabbits hopped about dunes that were pock-marked with coney-caves.  I didn’t realize that rabbits dug holes and made dens in sand banks.  When I got out to the beach, I watched sandpipers (or birds like sandpipers) scurry along in the tracks of receding waves.  The paths through the dunes were also full of plant-life, but the one flower I remember were yellow asters, but there were others that hid themselves—purple loosestrife, heal-all, and flowers with white starlike blossoms (white gentians?).  Rabbits, sea-birds, and yellow-asters.  Dune grass waving.  

One line of Shakespeare played repetitively in my mind, “there’s not any bush or shrub to bear off any weather at all and another storm brewing.  I hear it sing in the wind.”  “I hear it sing in the wind.”  These lines are spoken by the fool, Trinculo, who believes he is the sole survivor of shipwreck and is stranded on the magical island of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Lindisfarne was supposed to be a magical place, but I was experiencing it in one of its rougher, elemental moods.  Cuthbert, in my reading of his life, heard and responded to the call of wild places and withdrew further and further out to sea.  Lindisfarne, in his time, was a bustling island with an industrious community of monks.  What’s more, it was on the ocean trade routes.  Cuthbert moved his cell to a little island off-shore where I’d left a plastic rosary yesterday evening.  Years later, he felt the need to go further away from people to battle demons and talk to God, retreating to Farne—an island he shared with eider ducks and probably seals.  Today, they bask on the rocks of Cuthbert’s private island.  At the end of his life when he was sick, he had no qualms about taking a boat alone in a storm and heading out to his island.  (Nick Mayhew-Smith argues that Cuthbert and other northern saints need to confront, exorcize, and redeem the elemental forces of Nature, 143.)  Knowing these stories, it is no wonder I felt the need to leave my soft bed and cups of warm coffee.  My need to swim had to be satisfied and was by total immersion in an early morning storm.  Hallelujah!  I was neither the sole survivor of a shipwreck and was far from being a saint.  But the rabbits were enjoying the morning, unfazed by the rain.  Cuthbert feared no storms but seemed to relish them.  All I had to do was follow their examples to get back on my Way.

            Dripping wet from my walk, I headed to St. Mary’s Church just next to the Abbey.  Through the old stones in the churchyard, I could see the castle which was almost obscured by the mist and rain.  There was a white rose bush by the entrance to the church.  I thought of Gabrielle Mary’s gift of the white, thornless rose, pressed in a book in my suitcase.  I looked for Maria and Christina.  We agreed to meet for Holy Eucharist.  Better this bread than the toast we’d eat later.  I left my wet things in the back of the dark church and, looking like a drowned rat (or a sleek otter), was ushered toward the choir stalls.  My travel “friends” came in and slid in next to me, and together (bonded by shared experience) we watched middle-aged and old local people and visitors arrive.  In her brief homily, the elderly minister spoke about prayer as the way to continue our pilgrimages once we left the island, and the service ended with a blessing of all those who had walked Cuthbert’s Way.

Minister:

To the prayers of our Island Saints we commend you.

May God’s angels watch around you to protect you.

May the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen you for all that lies ahead.

May Christ Jesus befriend you with his compassion and peace.

Pilgrims:

Lord, be a bright flame before us.

Be a guiding star above us.

Be a smooth path beneath us.

Be a kindly shepherd behind us.

Minister:

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord

Pilgrims:

Thanks be to God

            Wrapping ourselves up in ponchos that looked like trash bags, we made our way through the weather back to the Hotel where the host gave me “loaner shoes” since mine were soaked and covered with pirri pirri burs and offered to dry my wet clothes.  The male walkers were in the dining hall.  I hurried to my room to put on dry clothes, and when I came back downstairs, Robin greeted me and said, “I heard someone go out early this morning and wondered who that wild woman was.” 

“That would be me,” I said, glowing with warmth of having come in from the cold.