Why do we go on pilgrimage? To be expanded.

I have just come back from a pilgrimage to Holy Island and Durham Cathedral. It was so lovely to go into the massive scale of the Cathedral, and to find the shrine to St Cuthbert behind the choir and to pray peacefully there.

I was only away for 4 nights but can feel a peaceful change within myself, filled up with wide horizons and seascapes. We visited the Farne Islands, where Cuthbert lived towards the end of his life, and saw the thousands of guillemots and puffins, stacked high on jagged cliffs, skyscrapers of birds like a packed city. I felt some of the tensions and compressed living of this last year relax within me, and I filled up with spacious sky and sea. I could feel why people have been drawn to Lindisfarne, cut off each day from the mainland by changing tides.

Along the causeway to Lindisfarne there is a refuge hut on stilts, for people to find shelter if they are caught out by the rising waters. It reminded me of Cambodia, where many houses are on stilts, to manage the seasonal flows of water.

I had heard that you could hear the seals singing on Lindisfarne, and was very curious to discover if this was true. And I can now confirm that it is true – on our first evening, we went down to the seashore near St Cuthbert’s Island. If you stand and listen, you will hear the curious groaning singing of the seal colony, from the thousands of seals who lie basking on the sandbar between Lindisfarne and the mainland. If you are feeling brave, you can go for a swim, and a friendly seal may come and join you out of curiosity.

What can I say? Go on pilgrimage, let your heart be filled with peace.