Cemeteries, Turkeys, St Aidan of Lindisfarne
I took some time away from this website and project over the summer for discernment, other tasks, and to let some simplifying of creative efforts happen.
You can read about experiences from the Wild Indigo Guild ministries over the summer by following the link. I really enjoyed seeing the way youth and adults alike encounter the presence and love of God in the created realms, from trees to turkeys to worms, the dead and the living, peace and wonder.
And I especially delight in following them into those places that light up for them and inviting them to dwell there, and let their minds discover, learn, think, stand in awe, and tell of what they see, and can help others to also see.
Writing at Wild Indigo Guild, Summer, Cemeteries, Turkeys and Trees
I intend to be in the workshop more this fall as I finish a plywood canoe with a friend, and build two new scrappy coffee tables. These will be a join-up of lovely black cherry and salvaged pine, finished with linseed oil, and stenciled with alchemical insignia of Christ’s love, aka PA Dutch Folk Art. They’ll be for sale about November.
And we commemorate Aidan of Lindisfarne on Aug 31st.
“It is said, that when King Oswald had asked a bishop of the Scots to administer the Word of faith to him and his nation, there was first sent to him another man of more harsh disposition, who, after preaching for some time to the English and meeting with no success, not being gladly heard by the people, returned home, and in an assembly of the elders reported, that he had not been able to do any good by his teaching to the nation to whom he had been sent, because they were intractable men, and of a stubborn and barbarous disposition. They then, it is said, held a council and seriously debated what was to be done, being desirous that the nation should obtain the, salvation it demanded, but grieving that they had not received the preacher sent to them.
Then said Aidan, who was also present in the council, to the priest in question, ‘Methinks, brother, that you were more severe to your unlearned hearers than you ought to have been, and did not at first, conformably to the Apostolic rule, give them the milk of more easy doctrine, till, being by degrees nourished with the Word of God, they should be capable of receiving that which is more perfect and of performing the higher precepts of God.’
Having heard these words, all present turned their attention to him and began diligently to weigh what he had said, and they decided that he was worthy to be made a bishop, and that he was the man who ought to be sent to instruct the unbelieving and unlearned; since he was found to be endued preeminently with the grace of discretion, which is the mother of the virtues. So they ordained him and sent him forth to preach; and, as time went on, his other virtues became apparent, as well as that temperate discretion which had marked him at first.”
from the Life of St Aidan, Bede, A History of the English Church and People
Statue of St Aidan, Churchyard, St Mary the Virgin Parish, Holy Isle
By Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13951717