Day 6

We were greeted by Catherine at Acton House last night. What an absolute joy to see her in person again. Catherine and Pete have born various titles with the Northumbria Community over the years, but whatever their role, being with them just feels like home.

Catherine gave us the quick once around of changes since we were last here in 2016. We saw the storied Story tree, and got the rundown on new endeavors undertaken by the Acton landlords (no more cattle: Alpacas!) and we paused in the Lean-to Chapel for a moment. There, Catherine displayed her giftedness as a shepherd as she lit a candle for each of our daughters and their husbands, and prayed for them.

We had the whole place to ourselves after that (which was a bit surreal) but we’ve been placed in a cozy room above the offices with a view of the alpaca paddocks (THAT’S fun to say). Brenda did her magical un-packing job and everything is in it’s place for the foreseeable.

This morning dawned crystal clear and cold once again. The number of daffodils blooming is approaching lewd. We have a couple of old style upholstered chairs in front of our window, and I chose one to plop into after my shower and begin my morning routine. I’ve been following this regimen since November: take a 2 minute cold shower. Get coffee and sit down in my spot. Breathing exercises. Yawning exercise to wake up mirror neurons. A tapping exercise to engage my parasympathetic nervous system and relax (turns out the effectiveness of this is a little controversial…but it seems to help me). Then I engage in praying through some joy memories. Sometimes I add an additional breathing exercise, and then I’ll I recite the Sermon on the Mount. I don’t get to every component every day (while traveling, it’s been hard) but I think I found my spot to do this at Nether Springs. And the water is plenty cold!

While Brenda did her morning thing, I went down to the dining room and got some breakfast that the team were so kind to leave out for us.

I spent a little time writing and thought that, even with the house empty, we could still say Morning Office. Brenda joined me and we began to settle in when Sarah Hay popped in. She was in the office briefly and had the same thought. It was lovely to see her again, if only briefly, and what a privilege to pray The Office in the Nether Springs chapel again.

Brenda and I saddled up and walked into Felton. About a 2 mile trek. We retraced the last bit of our pilgrimage 7 years ago, but this time the broad beans and wheat are only inches high, where as in August of 2016 they stood to our waists.

Felton was very familiar, but there have been changes. A brand new housing estate borders the walking path, for example. Like so many other things, there is a close parallel to circumstances in the US, but it’s just different enough. These were all detached, 2 story homes arranged in a density similar to that in Marysville. No yard to speak of. But they are of course brick; 1 car garage and I would estimate that the average square footage is less than 1500.

Lunch at the Running Fox and a brief peek over the bridge at the Coquet River and we returned home. A quick trip into Alnwick for a few essentials (had to perform a proper merge back onto the A1 for the for the first time in “The Benz”…YEAH, BABY!) and I’m going to wander over to the Chapel now to say a solitary Compline.

Whoever you are…you’re being prayed for.

It’s very good to be here. And all the better to be here with Brenda.

Day 6

Brenda and I will be saying so-long to Joyce as we steer “The Benz” south to Nether Springs this evening. Joyce will remain here and welcome some other friends tomorrow. We will meet up again (and at least part of the time) right back here on Holy Island: The Upper Springs.

The three of us split up again for most of the day. I needed to get in an extended walk and so headed for a portion of the Island I did not have a chance to explore on my last 2 visits. The North side. Uninhabited and winward, it’s largely solitary.

Another gorgeous weather day and it in fact proved to be almost solitary. Walking past herds of sheep and encountering increasingly sandy soil, spooking the occasional bird from a grassy roost, all indicators that I was moving away from the activity of the village and castle and into the wilder part of the island.

As I crossed the dunes heading north toward the beach, my soul kind of settled. My internal pace slowed and I felt that gentle click as my mind, body, heart and soul reintegrated. I sat in the dunes, watching the distant waves roll over the expanse of sand. It was in so many a familiar sight, like Long Beach or Ocean Shores, Washington. But this is the North Sea and it’s 5000 miles from home…yet still home.

It occured to me as I took up my walk again, that to maintain this slower pace and to experience this part of the island to its fullest, I would deploy a short term rule: “Stay left”. I had begun circumnavigating the bulkiest part of the island in a clockwise direction, and so by staying left, I would encompass as much of the island as possible, not cutting through or across land and thereby missing parts of the coastline.

A grey seal accompanied me for a hundred yards or so, popping his head up through the waves to stare at me for a moment, then dipping back beneath the water. This whimsy was offset by a slowly dawning realization as I tried to (literally) walk my “rule”. I’m deeply impatient. Here’s how it worked. There are two lovely crescent, sand beaches along the north side (Cave’s Haven and Sandham). While traversing these beaches, I kept an eye out for the left-most trail as I approached the closing headland. I found that, as I approached, I lost track of the scenery while scanning the sand for previous footprints indicating where the trail might be. I continually looked up to perceive where the trail penetrated the dunes or cliff side. Both times, upon climbing up from the beach and on to the top, I noticed that I could have “stayed left” longer…there was another trail further down the beach, but I was compelled to take the first exit available to me. Rather than follow the rule and “stay left” I was, without thinking, following a different rule: “take the visible path”. The reason? I’m just always in a f*cking hurry. Period. I’m so impatient.

Furthermore, as I traversed the headlands after having made this realization, no less than three more times when confronted with a choice to follow the left-most path or a just slightly inland but more traveled path, I had to say out loud to myself “STAY LEFT” and in one case, backtrack a few feet because I was already moving to the right! Turns out that I’m impatient AND stubborn. Maybe even a little thick in the head.

For the last 1/3 of the walk, I managed to stick to the rule (but still with effort) which brought me back to the extreme eastern part of Castle Point and a sort of tidal moraine made of moderate sized rocks where visitors are in the habit of constructing cairns.

Is that what drives us to be so hurried? So busy? So anxious and achievement/goal/purpose/mission/profit/change/transformation oriented? Just to make a statement that “I was here”…that I mattered? Countless people have walked out to castle point as far as they can walk, and there, at the easternmost point of land, spent time and energy to mark the spot for others to see. Humans have been engaging in this for a long time albeit using various media, from chiseled stone to spray paint. But as I contemplated the motivations of my own impatience and seemingly constant drive to “get somewhere”, I was moved when, without warning, one of the cairns tumbled with a musical crash. The wind and sea eventually have their way. That person’s efforts to be known now lay in an unremarkable pile along with millions of other stones. No one’s presence is marked for long. Yet so much effort goes into the marking.