The wooden poles stretch across the sands, guiding pilgrims to Holy Island, Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England. It is a three mile walk at low tide. At times you can stride out on firm sand, taking in the view and enjoying the sun sparkling on the wet sand and far off sea. But at points it is slippy and boggy, requiring eyes-down care.
This Pilgrim’s path across the bay marks the end of the 60-mile St Cuthbert’s Way. It also marked the end of my three-month clergy sabbatical, a time of study, spiritual renewal and personal development. It was something I had long anticipated through the months of preparation and then the sabbatical itself.
Walking a path from the mainland to an island that in eight hours would again be under water seemed also something symbolic, encapsulating all that had been at the heart of the sabbatical: exploring aging and liminality, especially the threshold of our sixties, this late generative period of life. What emotional and spiritual tasks need to be addressed to age well, or as Alice Fryling says, faithfully?1
Geoff Read
As is often the case, it is in the doing that so much more emerges than we anticipate and not just in that crossing, but in the whole pilgrimage. Or I should say, pilgrimages. For I ended up walking not only the St Cuthbert Way – itself in the liminal, historically contested border area between Scotland and England – but also the Luxembourg Pilgrim’s Way, one of the many Camino feeder paths that run south through Europe to the start of the way to Santiago.
At the Mauritshuis Art Museum, The Hague, Netherlands
I also wove in another pilgrimage, this time by train to Amsterdam, The Hague, London and Edinburgh to visit four late self-portraits by Rembrandt. He is the master painter of aging, but how does he portray himself in the face of his own aging? Exploring his life as each was painted – multiple bereavements, yielding popular acclaim to be true to his artistic innovation, and the loss of his house and possessions through insolvency – the paintings seem to me to chart not just that same journey of aging, but his pilgrimage to faithful resolution.
The heart of pilgrimage, for me, is caught in the Pilgrim’s Credo, especially how it begins and ends:
I am not in control. I am not in a hurry. I walk in faith and hope. I greet everyone with peace. I bring back only what God gives me.2
I was never in danger. Of course, I always had the safety net of a Visa card. But there is something about pilgrimage, rather than just going on a long walk, that involves an invitation to growth in risk, faith and humility. Not only did cultivating an attitude of not being in control lead to unexpected kindnesses along the way, but I gradually came to realise it played into my questions about our sixties. Try reading this Credo with the transitions of aging in mind.
- Fryling, Alice; Aging Faithfully: The Holy Invitation of Growing Older; NavPress, USA; 2021
- Bodo, Fr. Murray; The Road to Mount Subasio: Tau Publishing, USA, 2004
Images courtesy of Geoff Read
