Holy Island: Lindisfarne

An explanation isin the text.

 

Holy Island: Lindisfarne – Free Verse.

 

 

Misty above a diamond sea on this jewel-bright day

   rises Lindisfarne.

       Strange to see a fortress and an abbey church

            So well fit together

 

But they were stormy days,

     when even Christian kings like Oswald and Oswi fought

           their own warring crusades for Northumbria

From Bamburgh, across the bay,

      Then sent Irish monks to tread the lanes

           and preach the Gospel of Peace.

 

Now, we too tread the causeway sands,

      held back or beckoned by tides’ swirling flow,

           picking out ancient Celtic crosses,

                 arches, mighty walls and statuesque monk,

 

St Aidan,

 

looking to the sea

      whence he came.

             And to Bamburgh where reigned his king.

                    His earthly, Christian king,

 

 

  Oswald.

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Island: Lindisfarne: Nonet.

 

 

In mists beyond a distant sandbar

Aiden’s mediaeval Holy Isle’s

shimmering vision rises.

Night’s dark era ended;

Christ treads lanes of

Northumbria;

gospel rich,          

as monks

walk.

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Island: Lindisfarne – Sonnet.

 

 

See yonder distant islet out to sea

Whence come the monks that walk our leafy ways?

‘Tis said they speak to mortal men like we

And tell the news of what our Saviour says.

One day, I’m told, one gave away a horse

In order that he might speak eye to eye

With common folk like us, and maybe worse,

That we may go to heaven when we die.

 

All misty and mysterious is the isle

It’s said that good king Oswald gave it grant

And Aidan is his man for yet a while

Possessions, riches, goods to him are scant,

 

For what he seeks, the good Lord to impart,

Is how to reach the sanctum of man’s heart.

 

 

 

 

Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne,

 

An Island on the North East Coast of Northumbria, England.

 

Abridged article by the Reverend Canon Kate Tristram.

The first person whose name we know who lived here on the island of Lindisfarne was St.Aidan. Stone Age Man was here from about 8000BC. During the Roman Empire, Britons had a village here. In 635AD, Aidan, an Irish monk from the monastery St.Columba had founded on the island of Iona, chose the Lindisfarne for the site of his monastery. The Britons had been Christian before the Irish, since Britain, though not Ireland, was part of the Roman Empire. Some of the missionaries who first took the faith to Ireland were British: St.Patrick was the most famous. Oswald, the second son of Aethelfrith, grew up determined to re-gain the throne of Northumbria and to let the pagans among his people hear about Christianity. In 633 he fought a successful battle and established himself as king, choosing Bamburgh, a natural outcrop of rock on the North-East coast, as his main fortress. He then invited the monks of Iona to send a mission and eventually Aidan arrived with 12 other monks and chose to settle on the island the English had renamed Lindisfarne. They went out, using Aidan's only method as a missionary, which was to walk the lanes, talk to all the people he met and interest them in the faith if he could. His monks visited and revisited the villages where he sowed the seeds and in time local Christian communities were formed. One story tells that the king, worried that bishop Aidan would walk like a peasant, gave him a horse but Aidan gave it away to a beggar. He wanted to walk, to be on the same level as the people he met, to look them in the eye. Aidan had to ensure that his efforts did not die with himself and his Ionian monks. What was needed was an English leadership of the English church. He had to educate the next generation of leaders. Irish monks were very keen on Christian education, which required the new skills of book-learning, reading and writing and Latin - the language in which all the books they could obtain were written. Once the essentials of literacy had been grasped the expansion of mental horizons must have been amazing. Books could bridge the natural restrictions of time and space! They began with the 150 psalms (in Latin) and then went on to the four gospels (in Latin). These were the essentials. After 16 years as bishop, Aidan died at Bamburgh in 651AD. We do not know his age. What he had achieved may not have been clear to him at death but subsequent history showed the strong foundations and lasting success of his mission. The missionaries trained in his school went out and worked for the conversion of much of Anglo-Saxon England.

If we must choose one man to be called Apostle of England it has to be claimed that Aidan is that man. "Apostle of Northumbria" he certainly was.

Abridged article by the Reverend Canon Kate Tristram.

 

 

Reviews

[R J Askew]

I find this sequence evocative having been to Lindisfarne a couple of times. I can picture all you describe. of the three poems here I prefer the sonnet as it is more dramatic, in a gentle way, that the other two and brings to life how things might bave been through a witness. The monks must have seemed odd in their ways to the pagans.

[Gandré]

What a country you describe here, I never knew without you: the North-Thumberland, yes? Hm... This was a lucture into history, poetically embraced. It was something fantastically packed with an almost improbable erudition during the centuries..."Holy Island: Lindisfarne � Sonnet." ----this part was my favorite; this is a descriptive breathtaking read. exquisitely researched, my respect. This was really difficult writing.
***
thanks, also for your kind words, when reading/reviewing my piece MUSIC. I wrote it for a contest.
be well and still it is dancing in the layers of my metaphysical question in the state of my mind.