Sidetracked

Best of Travel in 2011

January 4, 2012

These are my personal favorites travel moments of the last year. What was your favorite travel moment of 2011? State: Hawaii I have traveled to 45 countries and I have experienced unbelievable natural beauty. For years, I’ve been told Hawaii was the ultimate paradise. I was skeptical until my wife and I took a holiday [...]

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The Traveling Casket- St. Cuthbert’s Post Mortem Journey

December 21, 2011

Upon his death in 687 A.D., Cuthbert was sealed in a stone casket and buried in the sands of Lindisfarne. Eleven years from the day he was buried, the brothers raised his casket so pilgrims might come near his bones in a newly built crypt. But the brothers were in for a shock when they [...]

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Celtic Church Clash- The Story of St. Cuthbert

December 14, 2011

As Aidan was establishing his monastery at Lindisfarne, an Anglo-Saxon boy named Cuthbert was born into a world filled with violence, warfare and mayhem. It was as if the world cried out for peacemakers and Cuthbert was an answer to that cry. Cuthbert’s parents, who were some of Iona’s first converts, raised him as a [...]

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Lindisfarne is Born- The Story of St. Aidan

December 7, 2011

There are many holy places that sit just out of our reach. Lindisfarne, also known as the Holy Island, is such a site. I had wanted to visit the Holy Island, but it was always just out of reach in my travels to England and Scotland. Fifteen years after I had first heard about Lindisfarne, [...]

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Exotic Animal Mayhem

November 2, 2011

By far, one of the strangest stories of October 2011 was the exotic animal invasion in Ohio. Terry Thompson, 62, got up one morning and decided to end his life. Run-ins with the law that included jail time, a broken marriage and mental health issues led to a final act of defiance and desperation. After [...]

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The Story of St. Faith

October 12, 2011

The story of the life-size oil painting on the altar wall of St. Faith’s chapel is both inspiring and heart wrenching. I was curious to know the story of this girl who inspired a number of chapels to be built in her honor throughout the 13th century. Governor Dacien, Consul of Aquitaine, ruled his small [...]

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A Barely Discovered History

October 10, 2011

Westminster Abbey’s monastic foundations are still recognizable as one walks through the current tourist-icon. In Westminster’s earliest foundation the space between the church and the chapter house was called the slype, a bare room that was used as a passageway. The chapel was certainly one of the oldest sections of the Abbey. During the ever-practical [...]

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