Patron of Strivers

One morning in the late eleventh century, after a particularly violent storm on the coast of Lincolnshire, near what is today the town of Spalding, a young man went out to see if he could find anything worth retrieving from what the night’s rough swell had abandoned on the shore. He would have been hoping for something useful, perhaps the detritus from the wreckage of a ship. Instead, the young man discovered three beached dolphins, one dead and the other two dying. Not wanting to waste their valuable fatty flesh, he cut several “chunky pieces” from the dolphins. Just then the weather took a turn and the coast began to flood again. Godric pushed on, praying all the while, and returned safely to his parents’ home with the dolphin blubber. So ends the great conversion scene of the riotously itinerant and spiritually complicated St. Godric of Finchale: merchant, sailor, hermit, saint.