Entering the Experience Trek to Cuthbert’s Cave
Entering the Experience
Trek to Cuthbert’s Cave
, teach me this mute language which says so many things.
Jean-Nicholas Grou
I sit on a boulder at the entrance to Cuthbert’s cave trying hard to make sense of the events of the last five days.
I think back to the beginning of our odyssey, when our British Airways flight touched down at London’s Heathrow airport Monday morning, September 10, 2001. Traveling with me is Glandion Carney, an African American Christian leader from Birmingham, Alabama. Glandion grew up in the San Francisco Bay area during the radical years of Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, and Eldridge Cleaver, author of Soul on Ice. “As I was growing up Newton and Cleaver were heroes,” Glandion explains, “icons of freedom and belligerence.” He tells me that he was three inches taller in those days due to his Afro hairstyle. Today, however, Glandion is bald and quiet-
spoken. Still, he retains that edge of social engagement I have always appreciated in him. Together we had come to England bringing a message of life and hope; we had no idea that a hellish message of death and destruction was only hours away.
Bright and early Tuesday morning our little group of five travels to a secluded retreat house in North Yorkshire. The nearest population center is the village of Masham. We stop so Glandion can get some “real English chocolate.” He buys five Cadbury chocolate bars and is roundly teased by the others for his purchase. St. Mary’s Church in the center of Masham was founded in the seventh century, and the present church structure is mainly Norman with fifteenth-century additions. Nearby is the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey. Founded in 1156, Jervaulx was part of the Cistercian order, one of the great renewal movements in history led by Bernard of Clairvaux. It was ravaged and pillaged in the Dissolution of Monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII, and all that remains today are these magnificent ruins perched among the rolling countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. The literature of the area tells me that the abbey has over one hundred eighty species of wildflowers tucked into its walls and crags.
Our destination is up a small lane, narrow enough that I am thankful no other vehicles are coming from the other direction. The five of us tumble out of the car and stretch. The other member of our team meets us at the retreat house. It is a spectacular day, one I have been looking forward to for a long time. For some ten years I had been watching events in Britain and Ireland and wondering if and when the time would be right for a British expression of Renovaré, our renewal effort. With each trip across the pond I had met Christian leaders and developed friendships, all the while waiting for the right time.
Now is that time. We have come to this small retreat house to sign the official papers making Renovaré Britain and Ireland a registered charity in Great Britain. Glandion and I are representing the U.S. expression of Renovaré. Four Brits are to become our founding board and ministry team: James Catford, soon to be our president; Joyce Huggett, a British author of some note; Roy Searle, a leader in the ; and Rob Warner, a Baptist church planter who has developed a creative ministry in Wimbledon.
The retreat house is cozy—just right for our group of six. The old, exterior stonework encompasses the retreat house, a caretaker’s apartment and a wooden paddle wheel no longer in use. The hills surrounding the retreat house are a rich green, perfect for grazing sheep, which I am told is the main industry in the area. The hills also render our cell phones completely useless. We can make no contact with the outside world and feel no need to do so. Conversation is warm and energetic. We are starting a new venture for which we have high hopes. We laugh about being just able to scrape together the ten pounds needed to register with the government. Worship is sweet and the planning is visionary. After a leisurely lunch of mutton stew, we spread the documents on the table. Glandion and I watch as the other four sign their names, establishing Renovaré Britain and Ireland. We sing the doxology and offer prayers of thanksgiving.
The next hours are filled with planning and dreaming the future. Dare we hope for a new renewal movement to sweep across the British Isles? We do dare and we plan accordingly. In the late afternoon we take a stretch break, and several of us determine to climb the largest hill in the region. Once on top James decides to see if his cell phone might have a signal.
There on top of a hill in a verdant valley of North Yorkshire we hear the first bewildering word of what has happened half a world away. It is beyond our comprehension and stands in stark contrast to the quiet, pastoral setting all around us.
The couple who care for the retreat house are gracious and invite us to crowd into their small apartment, and together we watch in silence the images of desperate men and women in business garb jump to certain death. Over and over the television plays the footage of commercial airliners slamming into the World Trade Center. Wanton devastation. Absolute horror. Utter shock. We stand there . . . still, dumbfounded.
While we are still trying to wrap our minds around what has happened, the BBC broadcasts the words of Prime Minister Tony Blair: “There have been most terrible, shocking events taking place in the United States of America within the last hour or so including two highjacked planes being flown deliberately into the World Trade Center. I’m afraid we can only imagine the terror and carnage there and the many, many innocent people that will have lost their lives. I know that you would join me in sending the deepest condolences to President Bush and to the American people on behalf of the British people at these terrible events. This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of the world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and to eradicate this evil completely from our world.”
Soon we hear the special notice issued by the FAA grounding all U.S. flight operations: “Effective immediately until further notice flight operations in the national airspace system by United States civil aircraft and foreign civil and military aircraft are prohibited except for medical emergency, U.S. military, law enforcement and emergency evacuation flights.”
What does it all mean? And what has become of United Airlines flight 93, which disappeared from radar somewhere in Pennsylvania? Confusion and questions abound. For us one thing is certain: Glandion and I will not be returning to the U.S. anytime soon.
We continue with our planning for another day and a half, but the tragic events in New York City and Washington, D.C., are never far from our minds.
Rather than return to London, Glandion and I decide to take a train north to Northumberland, specifically the small island of Lindisfarne. In the early days of Celtic Christian mission penetration into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Lindisfarne served as the nerve center. In fact, the stories of mission exploits emanating from here so impressed the popular imagination that eventually Lindisfarne began to take on another name, “Holy Island,” and so it is called to this day.
Holy Island is forever linked to the names of St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert. Aidan was the first great missionary leader, coming from Iona on the west coast of Scotland and establishing Lindisfarne on the east coast of England as his base. The most dramatic feature of the island today is the large statue of Aidan holding in his outstretched hand the torch of the gospel while a Celtic cross stands like a wreath behind his head. Cuthbert eventually followed in Aidan’s footsteps and, having grown up in the region, he in some ways made an even more dramatic impact than Aidan. I stand on a rocky promontory on Holy Island and nearby I can see a much smaller island known as St. Cuthbert’s Island. When the tide is low a land bridge connects Holy Island to Cuthbert’s Island and this was where Cuthbert would retreat to when he was seeking complete solitude.
On earlier trips I had gotten to know the Northumbria Community, a vigorous expression of Christian faithfulness in Northumberland that has arisen in recent years. I always feel at home and refreshed anytime I can be with this unique group. The Northumbria Community is a gathering of folk from eclectic backgrounds: Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, unchurched and others. They consciously seek to embody “the ancient paths” of Christian faithfulness that seem to be etched into every stone and rise out of the soil of the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland. They attempt to find a practical modern expression of a new monasticism rooted in the vows of “availability and vulnerability” and hold an uncompromising allegiance to the imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount.
The Northumbria Community is, by intention, a geographically dispersed community. However, the nerve center is close by at Hetton Hall, a sprawling house with a stone-enclosed prayer garden, two tiny “Poustinias” for private prayer, and the community chapel. Hetton Hall is where Glandion and I stay for the next few days as we wait for international travel to resume. I relish especially the large kitchen area with its weathered wooden dining table that could probably seat two dozen if need be. There is always work to do at Hetton Hall . . . and ample opportunity for conversation and prayer.
Nestled high up in the Kyloe Hills above Hetton Hall is Cuthbert’s cave. I had read the stories surrounding this cave but had never seen it for myself. Even as I write these words I have in front of me a small watercolor of Cuthbert’s cave that reminds me of my sojourn there. The painting was given to me by one of the companions of the community, Brenda Grace. It is Brenda who volunteers to take me to see the cave. I drag Glandion along even though he complains that a long hike for him means going from his car to Starbucks for coffee.
In 651 the shepherd boy Cuthbert used this cave as a shelter for the night as he watched over his sheep. One night he saw a stream of light piercing the darkness and choirs of the heavenly host coming down to earth and taking with them a soul of great brightness. The next morning Cuthbert learned that Aidan, bishop at Lindisfarne, had died at the exact hour he had his astonishing vision. Immediately Cuthbert left his shepherd duties and set out for the monastery at Melrose where he offered himself for training for Christian ministry. He would eventually take the place of Aidan and further the Christian cause immeasurably.
Brenda drives us up into the Kyloe Hills until the road ends. We park the car and follow a trail that winds through lush grasses and verdant pines. I let Glandion and Brenda walk a little ahead; right now I long for the quiet of the forest.
At the cave Brenda is eager to take us farther, up atop the rocky promontory that overlooks Holy Island and, in the distance, the Farne Islands, all made famous by Celtic exploits. Once we reach the top, the North Sea wind tugs hard at us, and I can tell that Brenda is eager to return to Hetton Hall. Glandion would like to stay longer, but without Brenda’s car the walk back will be a considerable distance. I resolve his dilemma by explaining that I am planning to hike for some time along the trails on the ridge and will be staying at the cave late. Immediately Glandion decides to return with Brenda, a decision I welcome, for right now I crave solitude.
They leave and I do indeed hike along the ridge overlooking the North Sea. The ridge is literally packed with heather for as far as the eye can see. I have heard stories about “the heather on the hills,” but nothing prepares me for the sheer beauty of its purple splendor. Time after time I feel obliged to stop and kneel just to gaze at the exquisite bell-shaped flower that the heather produces. There are multiplied millions of these flowers and their very mass overwhelms me, so looking closely at one plant or even a single tiny bloom helps me to absorb its loveliness.
Finally I arrive at the cave itself. I am completely alone; no tourists or visitors disturb my time here. At first I explore the physical aspects of the cave: the gray granite with mosses clinging, the lush ferns and rose-tinted flowers along its edges, the simple handmade cross resting in a crevice in the rock. There is graffiti in the cave, howbeit proper British graffiti—mostly dates neatly carved into the rock. The older dates are too worn for me to read, but I jot down some of the more recent dates—recent, that is, by the standards of British history . . . 1818 David Doucle . . . 1819 W. H. W. . . . 1849 . . . 1861 . . . 1890.
However, I’ve not come here to explore a cave but to pray. I have brought enough backpacking equipment to stay the night; however, earlier in the day I learned about a gathering of several community companions this evening and the assumption is that I will be joining the group. So my time here is, of necessity, shorter than I had hoped. Still, ample time and space are mine to enter into the prayer of Dag Hammarskjöld:
a pure heart—that I may see Thee,
A humble heart—that I may hear Thee,
A heart of love—that I may serve Thee,
A heart of faith—that I may abide in Thee.
Hammarskjöld’s prayer leads me into my own experience of meditative prayer.
It has been four days since the horrific events of September 11 when towers and fortress fell. My mind replays over and over the unbearable images of commercial airliners transformed into missiles of devastation and of the Twin Towers first ablaze and then collapsing, entombing thousands.
At this pivotal point in American history I am away . . . away on a distant shore, away from homeland, away from family and friends and fellow citizens. And yet while away I am also there . . . there in Manhattan and D.C. I too feel pain and anguish and utter disbelief.
The juxtaposition of the horror scenes playing in my mind’s eye and the quiet serenity of Cuthbert’s cave is surreal. I consider how blatant evil, once unleashed, will by its very nature produce more evil. Terrible as the scenes of the last days have been, they may well be only the beginning. Unrestrained evil seems so powerful, so overwhelming right now. What can I . . . what can anyone . . . pray at a time like this? Only the timeless cry of the heart: Kyrie eleison; Lord have mercy.
This pastoral scene, this quiet cave, seems far removed from the terror of twisted, burning steel; of families suddenly ripped apart; of fathers and mothers never returning home; of anguished cries and disbelieving stares. Then I remember that long ago during the Viking reign of terror it was to this very cave that many fled, carrying with them Cuthbert’s body in the hope of preserving it from desecration. Suddenly, without warning, whole villages were razed, men slaughtered, women raped, children taken into slavery. This place too has known the horrors of raw evil. Truly, there is “no hidin’ place down here.”
Then, right in the midst of my musings, I hear a sound of hope, a sound so unexpected that it startles me. It is the song of a meadowlark. Did I really hear it? This is not the time of year nor the place I would expect to hear a meadowlark. But there it is again, the unmistakable clear, whistling song. So simple, so clear, so strong. It sings to me of beauty, of hope, of a future beyond all evil and devastation. Perhaps it is, and by faith I take it to be, a word of encouragement from the loving heart of God. And so the song of the meadowlark frees me to begin praying that the ocean of darkness that seems to engulf us today will, in God’s time and in God’s way, be overcome by the far greater ocean of God’s light and life.
May it be so. Amen.