Tag: Gill Henwood

Special places, Special people

St Aidan window on Holy Island Church (St Mary the Virgin) detail.

In many journeys of faith there are special places that have spoken to us vividly about God.
The Celtic Christians called these the ‘thin places’ where the membrane which separates our world
from the world of heaven is so thin that it is easy for heaven’s spirit to burst through,
catching us up in a breathtaking experience of God’s nearness.
For me one very special ‘thin’ place will always be the Holy Island of Lindisfarne,
off the Northumbrian coast  between Bamburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed.

It was to this island that St. Aidan came in 635AD.

He nearly didn’t come at all!
When King Oswald won back his Kingdom from the pagan king of Mercia,

he immediately sent to Iona for a monk to teach his people Christianity.
Oswald had spent many years in exile on Iona and there embraced the Christian faith.

His desire was that his people would also find a love for Christ.

The Abbot of Iona sent a monk who soon fell foul of the local people whom he branded as barbarians
and un-teachable. Returning to Iona he told his brethren what he thought and a gentle monk admonished him.
“I think, brother, that you gave them the meat of the gospel when what they needed first was milk.”

 Wise words but as so often happens, those who criticise (however gently) must be prepared to serve!  
Aidan was sent to Northumbria! There he set up his base in the place which, twice a day became an island—Lindisfarne.

Here he built a monastery and founded a school in which he taught 12 boys amongst whom
was the future St Chad, and his brother, St. Cedd as well as their two other brothers.

From this island a great mission began which was to take the Christian Gospel throughout the North and the Midlands and to Essex.

Because, initially, Aidan couldn’t speak the language, King Oswald went with him on his missionary journeys
to act as interpreter. One of the earliest examples of the co-operation between Church and State.

Lindisfarne remained a Christian centre until Viking raids led to the withdrawal of the monks.
Today it is once again a centre both of pilgrimage and prayer.

The local Church set up a Christian house for pilgrims known as Marygate House and it was here, in 1974 that I first came across Aidan and the spirit of the Celtic saints.
I have returned many times since and more than once I have experienced the sense of God’s nearness and presence. It truly is a ‘thin’ place.

Some, reading this will know exactly what I mean and will have their own ‘thin’ or special places (associated often with special holy Christians).
They are places where faith comes alive in a unique and special way. Such experiences carry us through the more mundane parts of our Christian journey.

What marks such places is that they are, in the words of the poet T.S.Eliot, places ‘where prayer has been valid’ – where prayer has consecrated them to God.

It strikes me that we should not have to travel far to find such places.

It is often the sincere prayer of ordinary Christians which makes a place holy.

One of my personal criteria when I visit, or worship in, a church is whether I can find God easily there.

A place where God can be found is a holy place, a thin place. It certainly needn’t be a church nor a place of special pilgrimage.

One of the holy and thin places I discovered is a slight bend in the rough hewn road which leads down from the Parish Church on Holy Island
to the shore which is opposite the crossing to Cuddy’s isles.

One day, when the island was clothed in a mist, I walked down this road and quite suddenly and totally unexpected, I found I had a companion.
I knew that it was St. Aidan whose simple presence touched me.

I knew at that moment I was on holy ground. I was at the thin place which is extraordinarily the meeting point between earth and heaven.
I can’t (and don’t want to) explain it in any other way.

Yet, whilst people like St. Aidan seem to be extra-holy, he would probably argue that he did nothing that all Christians can do,
which is to allow God to love them until they are on fire with God’s love.
That can be true for all of us and where it is then we become the ‘thin’ place where others can find God.

Photo: Gill Henwood

Aidan

You came on the flow tide
blown in, full of hope and zeal.
You carried the milk of the Gospel
but in your satchel, the firm, solid Good News waited to be heard.

The waves revealed the pilgrim way to Lindisfarne,
for its first journeying companion of Christ.
Those waves, a sign of what your Lord achieved through you:
first, lapping the hearts of those aspiring to know God,
then rushing in, hurrying to swamp the land with love:
a sea boiling with joy and hope and message.

Milk, then meat.
Quiet ripples, then mighty waters of God’s love and grace.

You were sent, Apostle to the North.
You came: a gentle breeze inspiring others,
awakening in them the wind of the Spirit.
Because of you, they stormed the Gospel message,
opening others to grace and truth,
to joy and love.

Mr G. | St Aidan’s Day, 2020

Stitched together by God

Here is a response, from my friend Gill Henwood, to the recent posts on darkness and light.
The photo above relates to the reflection below.
There are many ways we can express  the insights of Scripture, and using crafts like needlework or quilting are two such powerful ways. So often the study of God’s word to us are expressed in a cerebral way, yet, throughout the ages reflection on Scripture is often expressed though art, music, sculpture, crafts, to name but a few. Gill offers an insight about this.

Gill’s reflection.

I recently was part of an online workshop ‘Sutura Dei’, led by Miriam Jessie Fisher from New Zealand. Miriam shares her stories of women in the Bible and the inspiration they are to us in 2022. Her work is presented through stitching including quilts and poetry. After reflection on the hiddenness, exile and journeys of Eve and Hagar (in Genesis) expressed in beautiful quilting, we were invited to use stitching ourselves.

I had found an old curtain – a Laura Ashley fabric c 1985 – and cut off a piece, and some rather worn lining from the back. I only had three thread colours: black (which became my wanderings), white (God’s presence), and cream (the Spirit blowing where it wills).

Out of my first messy black dark wilderness wandering stitches in exile, I found God had been there, when I threaded the white –  through all the twists and turns, and, through knots in the cotton at points he had held me safe. 
The lining scrap was my grubby self, still connected but loosely – discarded litter but almost a kite, ready to fly… I found myself threading the cream and black into the needle together. The loose chain stitches linked my journey with the Spirit’s. I left the needle in because the story and the journey are yet to unfold….

I realised at the end of the quiet stitching time that the fabric was an underlying paradise garden that had been there all the time. I glimpse hints of paradise often out in the fells of the Lake District and in gardens. These glimpses are  gifts when the Spirit stirs, bringing light into my darknesses. 

Yes, I’m the rough lining, utilitarian and dull, but glorious paradise is intimately near, and we are stitched together through hiddenness, exiles and journeys.

May God be present with us in darkness still, till light dawns and paradise is glimpsed anew….

Gill xx

Dispelling darkness with Light

Candle on the table of darkness

My friend Gill Henwood sent me a thought to ponder over. It was about how the light of God’s love wraps itself around both the dark places of our world and also the darkness which afflicts most of us from time to time. This is what she wrote:

“Secular leadership techniques and management may have led the churches astray from the pastoral care and self-emptying service of the gospels’ witness to Jesus. The presence of God’s Spirit may have been squeezed out by our institutions – yet is still searching our hearts and calling people to God’s Love given in Jesus.
I wonder if the world’s  gathering darkness will be a time of deep testing and eventually renewal – when through hardships we remember God is Love and turn from our human preoccupations with power and competition…
Just a thought, but maybe a recognition that in the darkness Gods light burns clearly, bringing hope, calling us to love and filling us with the Spirit’s power in our human frailty. “

After reading what Gill had written, I was in conversation  with  another friend, Sister Rosemary SLG . She suggested that when we find difficulty sensing the presence of God because we are in a dark place, that is when, often, God is nearer to us than ever.

This reminded  me that, hopefully, this applies to the dark situations in our world at present. It may not be easy to see God’s love at work in the darkness of Ukraine, or Yemen, Afghanistan, the Holy Land and so many other places but it is a truth to which we should cling. That can be hard to do.
I don’t doubt God’s existence but in the face of all the demonic wickedness in our world , it is easy to feel  a sense of  futility; of  powerlessness, darkness, emptiness.
And it hurts because I love God and I am loved by God but I also wonder whether God is letting us  down somehow.

Where is God in all this?

It’s a question to which I have found an answer from an unusual source but which is, for me, very  helpful.
It comes in a book by Elie Wiesel.
Many know of him and of his story. He managed to survive Auschwitz but not without the marks of the trauma remaining with him all his life. He wrote a book which he named Night. A clear reference to both the outer and inner darkness which the Nazi’s created in everyone held captive by them, not least the Jews, Gays and Gypsies.

In his book, Elie Wiesel told of a day when some prisoners had tried to escape. Though they were recaptured, reprisals took place. A group of men and a boy about Elie’s age, were strung up on Cross-like gallows. All the camp were forced to watch as the men died before them. And the boy? He was too light for the rope to end his agony and he hung there a long time.
The question was murmured around the camp – Where is God? Where is God?

Where was God as this dreadful agony unfolded before them?

Elie Weisel, just a boy himself, then  pointed at the child. He said movingly, Where is God? He is there, hanging on the Cross with that boy!

It was a deep and insightful answer. For Christians it has a profound meaning and Elie was a Jew. Francois Mauriac, the French novelist, wrote in his introduction that when Elie came to him with his manuscript, he wanted to draw out the similarity between the child and the young Jew who, as a demonstration and sign of the love of God, died on a cross. But all he could do was to embrace Elie, weeping.
As we try to come to some kind of meaning about all the things that are afflicting our world, it isn’t always easy to see much hope. However, the story Elie  Weisel told  contains  a truth which I want to hold on to. God’s love  will never leave us and is embedded in our souls as we struggle, either personally or globally.

Where is God?

He is in each one of us. He suffers with us and yet he also transforms  that suffering with costly, self-sacrificial love.

The Lord will light my candle so
That it shall shine full bright;
The Lord for me shall also turn
My darkness into light

[Mr G]

Summer Solstice

Photo of Red Screes, Lake District taken by Gill Henwood

My dear friend Gill Henwood has sent me this to help us celebrate the Longest day or Summer Solstice. *

“Here’s a photo from yesterday evening of Red Screes, the fell between Ambleside and the Kirkstone Pass to Ullswater. The midsummer sun setting at its furthest NNW reach casts a shadow only seen for a few evenings, showing the steep face of the screes’ far side. On the saddle under the deep shadow lies the Kirkstone Inn – bathed in glorious sunlight all day but deepest shadow under the great fell.

It seems a parable of contrast – dazzling glory is heightened by deepest shadow. And the darkest shade has piercing light beyond.

It reminds me of a story that in a night time barn or hall, a huge space, it only takes one candle to give us light. God illuminates us in the Light of Christ, shining in the deepest dangers of our troubled world.”

[GH]

Dear God
Thank you for light and warmth. 
Thank you for the sun.
Thank you for the gifts of nature and for the annual cycles and seasons.
Today, give us grace to see you as the Creator,
the One who lifts us to the light.

Amen

* A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21.