The Kentigern Way - book review by Steve Matthews

Stephen Wright came to live in the Northern Fells 25 years ago. He lives in Mungrisdale and it is from that lovely simple church in the shadow of the fells that his pilgrimage begins.

It is a pilgrimage that is both physical or topographical as he traces a circuit around the Northern Fells and one that is inner and spiritual as, in the course of his walking, he stops and contemplates the landscape he is walking through, the course of his life, and the nature of his faith and spirituality. In so doing, he invites others to share in his experience.

St Mungo was the pet name for St Kentigern. It is a Brythonic name meaning ‘little darling’ or ‘my dear one’ and it is the “kind of words anyone might say on seeing a new born baby”. They are the words that St Serf, the Abbott of Culross, is believed to have said when he baptised the infant Kentigern. The name Kentigern might mean the leader of the hounds.

The existence of Kentigern is uncertain. “If the stories about him are true, he was born in what is now Scotland in the early decades of the 6th century and died in the opening years of the 7th.”

What we do know of him, in so far as it can be believed, is to be found in a manuscript written by Jocelin of Furness some 600 years after his supposed existence. Jocelin suggests that at times “Kentigern would have ‘great intimacy with the Beloved’ when ‘he poured out his heart as water before the sight of the Lord his God’ and purging himself of earthly things, he gave himself wholly to the divine above man.”

Stephen’s pilgrimage follows a path that connects the churches bearing Kentigern’s name. If the saint left no written record of his life, there is a record in the remembrance of him in the places he visited.

Stephen walks from St Mungo’s in Mungrisedale to the beautiful white church in Castle Sowerby. On the way, - he is walking in January – he notices the robins in the bare hedgerows. St Serf is said to have had a pet robin which was killed by his fellow monks and St Kentigern supposedly brought it back to life again. In the church Stephen suggests: “Bring your hopes and wishes here, open yourself up to the Beloved and allow yourself to be uplifted and informed.”

It is in a similar spirit that he continues on his pilgrimage through the nine stages of his route, through the churches of St Kentigern in Caldbeck and in Grinsdale, St Giles in Great Orton, St Mungo in Bromfield, St Kentigern in Aspatria, St Mungo in Dearham, St Kentigern in Crosthwaite, to return to the church in Mungrisdale.

It is a spiritual journey, but a journey that illustrates how even the most remote of historical periods has left its mark on the landscape. a mark that can still speak to the receptive today.

In his Foreword, the Bishop of Carlisle, James Newcome, writes: “I challenge anyone not to be inspired and intrigued by the thoughtfulness and love that have gone into researching and producing this unusual and compelling work.”

n The Kentigern Way from Bookends, 19 Castle Street, Carlisle and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com