Today, being rainy and windy, we postponed our planned walk along the beach in favor of visiting the Lindesfarne Priory Museum, a very up-to-date facility frequented by tourists and pilgrims who want to learn about the history of monasticism in Britain. To Americans that might seem like a lot of attention squandered on a minor aspect of the past, but the more one wanders about Northumbria and Scotland the more apparent it seems that without monks and monasteries, there would be no "past" for historians to investigate. On Holy Island, this statement is even more apparently true than at Melrose and other abandoned monastic sites. The first monkly presence on the island was that of Aidan , a member of another island monastic community , this one at Iona off the west coast of Scotland. Aidan's group was of the Celtic tradition, a form of catholic tradition that preceded any formal obedience to Rome, and that had evolved under conditions of social upheaval accompanying the collapse of Roman political and military authority. Under such conditions monasteries provided islands of stability and places of refuge from the harsh conditions of the times. No wonder such places were popular with the surrounding population and well-supplied with monastic recruits! No wonder they were the recipients of generous benefactions from the bloodstained hands of the local nobility, to the extent that, over time, they were in a position to build the kind of elaborate stone structures that survive to this day as museums and tourist attractions. No wonder their life style intrigues those who are seeking ways to navigate the confusion of our own times. Along with those who call themselves "new monastics", and the "emerging church", I wonder if Aidan and his companions have something to teach us. Not long after Aidan the leadership of the Lindesfarne community passed to a Saxon monk named Cuthbert. Among other saintly exploits, Cuthbert was known for his advocacy on behalf of ducks and his companionship with sea otters, establishing his credentials as a prototypical "green" saint. After Cuthbert's death in 687 his burial alongside Aidan on Holy Island created a magnetism for pilgrimage that people of those times could not resist. If the monastic life had its appeal, monastic death had even more. A double-barreled dose of spiritual power, accessible to any pilgrim willing to cross to Lindesfarne at low tide.