Trading Altars

I found myself smiling inwardly and outwardly as I made my way around the Old Course in the shadow of the Royal and Ancient Club on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in St. Andrews. The constant grin was motivated by two feelings: 1) I was on golf’s most hallowed ground, the site of the most recent British Open earlier this summer and also official “keeper of the game” at the R & A. It just reeked with tradition and here I was on a tour walking across the famous 18th hole footbridge; and 2) The irony was not lost on me that in many ways, I had just swapped one altar for another, having traveled from the holy island of Iona just the day before. It all depends on who/what you’re going to worship...

Early Saturday evening I crossed the Forth River, skirted around Edinburgh and headed south to the Scottish Borders. The scenery was fantastic and the light glowing as I drove past miles of idyllic countryside only to experience the inner photographer’s frustration of nowhere to pull off on these narrow roads to capture the moments. The next morning I unexpectedly encountered a group of young rugby players in training who caught my attention (and lens) and provided a delightful prelude to the first of the Border Abbeys I was to visit in Melrose. Sort of the local version of MSI.

Melrose Abbey captivated me as I learned the story of this besieged monastery and church whose roots go back to St. Cuthbert in the late 6th century with the remaining structures (and composite layers)dating to 1136. For several centuries, the Cistercians, an offshoot of the Benedictine Order, were a flourishing community here and at its peak, Melrose Abbey housed hundreds of monks and double the number of lay members who worked the fields, carved the stones, and prayed alongside them. Originally begun as a reform movement (the Benedictines had gotten too liberal and lax for their tastes), they ironically became victims of their own success. Through the generosity (and nueroses -- what better way to insure your salvation than to endow a side chapel?) of many powerful and influential benefactors, the order acquired a great deal of wealth (a practice they had earlier critiqued) and this proved to be part of their downfall. Melrose, Dryburgh, and Kelso I visited the other two later in the day) were also done in by English/Scottish border skirmishes and the fervor of kings and religious leaders taking on the “corrupt” symbols of “fallen” Roman Catholicism, and the result was a lot of beautiful, though badly damaged, restored, burned again, restored, crumbling buildings.

I was particularly moved by one of the descriptions of the monasteries as “factories of prayer.” The rhythm of their days had the monks praying the hours beginning at two o’clock in the morning (Nocturns) and closing with bedtime prayer at 7:30 pm (Compline). While I greatly admire the devotion and can appreciate the powerful role the monastic movement had in preserving and developing Christianity, not to mention the example of daily devotion to God, I always find myself wrestling with a form of spirituality that is so cloistered from the rest of the world both literally and figuratively. I need my faith to be rooted in the broader community, integrated into the flow of “ordinary” life, expressed in everyday encounters with family, friends, and neighbors. And quite frankly, that’s the model I see in Jesus – to retreat for a time for silence, prayer, and renewal, but not a lifetime. That, and I really like to sleep in past two in the morning.