The Window to the World ~ Celtic Advent Day 15

'Sacred Geometry ~ The Window to the World' by Jo Thilwind

Today, I want to tell you that magic happens. The painting above by artist & painter of mandalas of stunning beauty, Jo Thilwind of Dreamspace Art, arrived unexpectedly in the post a few days ago. I am humbled and astounded by the generosity of this gift, but when I read about it in the note she enclosed, I realised that the coming of 'The Window to the World' to the Hedgehermitage is threaded through with enchantment.

The painting was created as Jo's response to an invitation to take part in 'In All Its Glory', an exhibition inspired by the fabric of Chester Cathedral in 2016. It's based on a stunning stained glass window in the cathedral's refectory; 'The Creation Window', designed by Rosalind Grimshaw and dating to 2001.

The Creation Window, Chester Cathedral. Image: William Starkey

The window depicts the hand of God moving through the six days of Creation. William Starkey, who took the above photo, explains that the window depicts; 

"from left to right: God creates the heavens and the earth; Let there be firmament in the midst of the waters; Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit; Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky; Let us make mankind in our own image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air.

Amongst many features of interest in this wibdow are the pole or northern star and aurora borealis in the first panel, the earth viewed from space in the lower section of the second panel, and a developing child in-utero in the sixth panel. A representation of a brain scan is positioned at the bottom of the fourth panel - this actually depicts a scan of an individual suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The window's designer, Rosalind Grimshaw, was herself diagnosed with Parkinson's. What tender beauties then are held within the luminous panels of this window.

Creation Window, Chester Cathedral refectory, Mark Carline

And it was this window that Jo chose as the inspiration for her own painting; a painting which now hangs in our little house by the sea but once hung in Chester Cathedral.

Jo wrote in her letter that she thought of me as she painted it, and had meant to gift it to me for a very long time, but that it had gone into another exhibition after being in the cathedral and then went missing for two years! And then it recently re-emerged and came here.

Both the timing of the arrival of this painting and the subject matter of Jo's paintings for the exhibition have reminded me that threads of enchantment weave themselves under the fabric of the everyday in ways that we can barely imagine; Spirit on the move.

You may understand why when I tell you that her other painting was entitled, 'St Werburgh - The Goddess of Kindness to all Living Things'.

'St Werburgh ~ Goddess of Kindness to All Living Things'

At the beginning of Celtic Advent I wrote that the Advent season and Christmastide begin with a goose and end with a swan, that followers of Christ in these Isles on the wild edge have and do envisage the Holy Spirit as a Wild Goose, rather than a serene and gentle dove. And I wrote about St Werburgh, who is the protector of wild geese, in 'Resurrection, Reciprocity, and Rewilding'.

St Werburgh is also the patron saint of Chester, with Chester Cathedral as her major shrine. And here she is, appearing in a painting depicting the feminine hand of God amidst her elements, created three years ago with me in mind, exhibited in Chester Cathedral, lost for two years, and then arriving here in the midst of Advent and only a few days after I wrote about St Werburgh, who I had been meaning to write about for several years! I am in awe.

Writer, David Southwell, creator, or recollector, of Hookland, says that 'Re-enchantment is Resistance', an opinion with which I heartily agree. And the generous gift of this painting has filled me with wild enchantment. It has reminded me that we don't need to know or control everything, that we can never hope to do so. We need only to let ourselves go into the flow of Spirit, the river of God, in order to see wonders. All we need do is cultivate the ability to notice. Spirit rarely speaks to us through a burning bush or a column of fire. More often, it's through seemingly simple interactions between faraway friends, through the faint whisper of a bird's wing somehow heard above the traffic, a wildflower that won't quite leave us be; something incongruous, something everyday, something stunning, something real.

The arrival of this painting is, for me, an affirmation that Spirit is my, and our, companion in these quiet days of waiting; that the Beloved is speaking. And that gives me hope.

It will be treasured


References:

Read more about artist, Jo Thilwind here

https://www.saatchiart.com/rainbowjo

On Chester Cathedral's Creation Window

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3963993

On the 'In All Its Glory' exhibition at Chester Cathedral

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/15978260.free-exhibition-inspired-by-elements-of-chester-cathedral-building/

On St Werburgh

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werburgh

The Wild Hope of Goose Night ~ Celtic Advent Day 8

'Supposing Him to be the Gardener' by Barry Parman. Photo: Max Reeves.

I have been away over the weekend and so I am a little late with my posts for days 8 and 9 of Celtic Advent, but my journey was so full of the Wild Goose Spirit that lateness feels like a small price to pay. And that is because 23rd November 2019 was the 23rd Goose Night at Crossbones Graveyard.

Redcross Mary's shrine, Goose Night 2019

In Southwark, close to London Bridge station in one of the oldest, dirtiest, and poorest, parts of London, an extraordinary thing has happened. Where once there was only bare concrete a wild garden has bloomed, its roots threaded through the bones of the outcast dead. This is the Crossbones Graveyard, once known as the Single Women's churchyard. Here, in this most sacred earth, lie the bodies of sex workers and paupers, who were either refused, or too poor to be granted, burial in consecrated ground. From at least the 14th Century until 1853, when the graveyard was closed having become 'overcharged with dead', an estimated 15,000 people, many of whom were babies & children, were buried there in unmarked graves.

Marking the graves of the Outcast Dead

It is an irony indeed that the medieval sex workers buried there were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester, under an ordinance signed by Thomas Becket in 1161, to work in the stews, or brothels, of Bankside's Liberty of the Clink. These women became known as the 'Winchester Geese' & enjoyed a measure of protection from the bishop, who owned the land, whilst alive but were denied Christian burial at the end. The most brutal of judgements on women from whom the church had benefitted financially.

Having been closed, the graveyard was forgotten until the ground was disturbed by the building of an electricity substation for the Jubilee Line extension in the 1990s. This was when the bones of the outcast dead began to return to the surface of both land & memory. It was at this time that the lost history of the graveyard also returned in the visionary work of John Constable, revealed by the Goose to John's alter-ego, urban shaman John Crow, on the night of 23rd November, 1996.

A ritual drama, The Halloween of Crossbones, based on John's book, 'The Southwark Mysteries', and ending with a candlelit procession to the gates of the Crossbones people's shrine, was performed every year from 1998 to 2010. Since 23rd June 2004, a vigil to renew the shrine & to honour the outcast, dead & living, has been held at the gates every 23rd of the month at 7pm. Each November, in honour of the anniversary of the Goose's appearance to John Crow, the vigil is known as 'Goose Night'. You may wonder who 'The Goose' might be but the answer will perhaps be different for each person who stands at the gates; a muse, the spirit of a medieval sex worker, the Goddess incarnate. She is all these things & so much more.

"Oh, you don't know me yet, dear.
You will dear I promise you.
I am a tricksy tart.
My aim is to astonish you!"

(from 'The Southwark Mysteries' by John Constable)

And so, last night, we gathered once more in good company for Goose Night on the 23rd anniversary of her first meeting with John Crow. Black Swan border morris danced for us, John performed the 'Book of the Goose', and Frank Turner sang his song inspired by Crossbones, 'The Graveyard of the Outcast Dead'. How far her wild wings have taken us!

And, most tenderly and touchingly, after 186 consecutive monthly vigils, this was the last one to be personally conducted by John Crow. From now on a 'magical collective' will take the vigils into the future. Crossbones has always been about more than one person, and yet John Crow, and his 'ground control', Katy Kaos, have been fierce protectors of, & advocates for, the dead who had no voices; an extraordinary act of devotion. A completion.

And, what of Crossbones, her dead, and her wild garden? The people's shrine, hung with ribbons and other offerings, has been in existence for many years, and we have stood beside them imagining a garden as a permanent memorial to the Outcast Dead, sung to the greenman & to the spirits of the future children who might play there, perhaps never quite daring to believe that it would happen. The site belongs to Transport for London and is worth millions to developers. How could a tiny group of strange, raggle taggle, edge people, singing by some rusty iron gates to the spirits of medieval sex workers and the poorest of the poor, ever hope to stand up to that?

And yet, slowly, slowly, over many years, Crossbones began to appear on official maps, Southwark Council placed planters trailing ivy on the gates, a plaque was attached informing passers by that;

 'This is the Crossbones Graveyard. In medieval times this was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes or 'Winchester Geese'. By the 18th Century it had become a paupers' burial ground, which closed in 1853. Here, local people have created a memorial shrine. The Outcast Dead R.I.P'.

Even that is extraordinary but, behind the gates, something truly astonishing was happening. A security guard, living on site in a caravan had begun to create a guerilla garden from building rubble & findings, decorated with oyster shells, once the food of the poor, discovered there. And it was beautiful.

Then, slowly, slowly, Transport for London offered to lease the land for three years so that a 'meanwhile garden' could be created on site. It has been there for five. Hawthorn, crab apples, borage, pink yarrow, mugwort, foxgloves, mistletoe, hollyhocks, toadflax, and thyme, grow there. Dragonflies, honeybees, bright-eyed mice, and tiny, fierce wrens, make it their home. A meadow of flowers has bloomed on the bones of the Outcast Dead. And, in the summer, children play there, just as we inagined it.

I often ponder on what the geese would think if they came by. I wonder if any of them ever saw anything so beautiful. They certainly couldn't ever have imagined that it would all be there for them.

One day several years ago, a few of us were standing at the gates and a homeless man walked by. He asked why we were there and we explained who was buried there and that many people were working hard for them to be brought back to memory and honoured, for who they were and who they might have been. And he replied, "but they were just like me!", and then he cried, and we all cried, and then we hugged. Crossbones offers healing in all worlds, especially in the lost, lonely places of our raw and ragged world.

And each year, on Mary Magdalene's Feast Day, the Dean & clergy of Southwark Cathedral come in procession to perform a 'Service of Regret' for the way in which the Church treated the dead of Crossbones. We might stop and read those words a few times, reflect on them, let it sink into our own bones how astonishing that is.

Often I think that the spirits there have healed us much more than we have ever healed them, or the holy earth they lie in. I hope that the Church has found some forgiveness and been offered grace. This is a mending and a medicine for us all, much sweeter than honey, more precious than gold.

I share this for Celtic Advent because, for me, Crossbones, my favourite place on earth, offers incredible hope that the extraordinary, the unimaginable can happen when the Spirit of the Wild Goose is allowed to do her work, to spread her wings, to fly free.

Here is Mary's revolutionary Magnificat made real, no longer a call to what might be, but a praise song to what is. On a grey side street in Southwark the rich have been sent away empty and the poor filled with good things.

Redcross Mary's shrine

If that can happen at Crossbones, have hope that ANYTHING can change.

And remember...

For more on Crossbones Graveyard visit www.crossbones.org.uk, or
https://linktr.ee/crossbonesgraveyard, where you can also sign a petition to protect the graveyard for future generations.

St Werburgh: Resurrection, Reciprocity, & Rewilding ~ Celtic Advent Day 6

Stoke Festival's 'Werburgh Wander', 2019, Via Marg Hardcastle on Twitter

Over the next few days of Celtic Advent I thought that it might be nice to learn about two female saints with an intimate connection to the wild spirit of swans and geese. We have already learned that these water birds are more often found in relationship with the feminine and yet we tend to hear their stories in relation to male saints, such as St Martin and St Hugh. Instead, let's sink into the tales of St Werburgh & St Pega, both of whom have feast days during Christmastide. 

St Werburgh, whose Feast Day is at Candlemas on 3rd February, was an Anglo-Saxon princess born around 650 CE in Stone, Mercia (now in Staffordshire). Her father was the Christian King, Wulfhere of Mercia, & her mother St Erminhilda of Kent. She was a nun for most of her life & began her training at home with her mother and St Chad, later Bishop of Lichfield, who himself had been a student on Lindisfarne. Chad controversially followed the ways of Celtic Christianity, both before & after the Synod of Whitby which voted to place the British Church under the control of Rome. Later, Werburgh, who was instrumental in convent reform, followed in the wake of her grandmother & great-aunt as Abbess of Ely Cathedral. 

St Werburgh statue

Werburgh died in Trentham, Staffordshire & was buried there in 700 CE. It's said that her brother, Coenred, decided in 708 to move her remains to a more conspicuous place in the church at Hanbury, but I have discovered a tale which says that nuns from Hanbury stole her remains and took them home with them! It's said that at this time her body was found to be incorrupt, or preserved; a sure sign of saintliness. A year later, Coenred took holy orders and became a monk in Rome, which is when stories of Werburgh & her geese began to emerge.

The Goff Window, St Peter & St Paul's, Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire

The first was that, whilst living in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, she banished all the geese from the village & so protected the crops from damage. Interestingly, her distant cousin, St Mildrid of Thanet, is said to have done the same thing and was the protectress of wild geese in Kent. The geese were said to have done as she asked, a sure sign of relationship, rather than domination. 

Often these relationships were reciprocal, as in one story of St Cuthbert on the remote Farne Island. One day, a group of ravens flew down and began to gather straw from the thatch of Cuddy’s roof. He chased them away but, three days later, one returned as he dug his garden and bowed its head to him with wings outspread in apology. Cuthbert told the raven that they were welcome to return and on their next visit they brought with them the gift of a lump of lard, which Cuddy kept and encouraged visitors to use for the purpose of waterproofing their shoes. So many of the stories of our wild edge early Christian saints are grounded in respect and sharing with non-human family. What I particularly love is that this isn't a paternalistic interaction, where we are the pinnacle of Creation beneficently choosing to care for 'lower animals'. No, in these stories the other-than-human beings have agency and a will of their own. We negotiate, rather than impose. We accept having a little less for the good of all. And it works. So it is with the geese of Mildrid & Werburgh.

Wild goose on the Thames, Jacqueline Durban

The other tale of Werburgh & geese is extraordinary, as her most famous miracle concerns her resurrection of a cooked goose.

Werburgh discovered one day that a large flock of geese was destroying her growing corn by feasting on it. To prevent this she gathered them up and began to keep them as though they were domestic geese. In the morning, she called them to send them out for day but discovered one missing. When she found that the goose had been eaten by her servants she demanded that the feathers and bones of the bird be brought to her.

When they had been gathered together she prayed over the remains and commanded that the goose should live; much like La Loba, Bone Woman, singing over the bones of dead creatures in Clarissa Pinkola Estes' 'Women Who Run With the Wolves'. The geese were, of course, delighted, cheering and crying out at the return of their lost sister. Werburgh quieted them & asked that no goose should ever enter that field again. On gaining their agreement she set them free to become wild geese once more and, from that day to this, their promise has been kept.

Here is a mutual contract between humankind & the wild, one which at its heart carries the requirement to share what we have without resentment, rather than believing that everything on the Earth is here for our own benefit, or fearing that we might suffer a lack. The wild geese of Spirit remind us.

Werburgh & Her Geese by Dru Marland https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/DruMarland

And here is also a story of rewilding. At first, Werburgh thinks to control the geese by safely cloistering them in her convent. When she realises that she can't guarantee their survival she liberates them, because it matters more that they live than that she guarantees her own security. This is a reminder of how delicately balanced our relationship with all other-than-human beings can be, and that, especially in this age of climate change, our decisions must be based in mutual benefit for all beings, not just for us (and only a small number of us at that!). We aren't only individuals, a society, or even a species. But we are a community; part of a web of wellbeing and co-operation. The saints remind us.

From pinterest.co.uk

Earlier I told the tale of Werburgh's body being stolen by the nuns of Hanbury & taking them back to be buried there. And there they remained until the Viking raids of the 9th Century threatened their safety. Then, they were relocated to within the walls of the city of Chester. By the 11th Century, Werburgh had come to be considered the patron saint & protector of the city. During the Middle Ages a badge of a basket of geese was given as proof of having made a pilgrimage to her shrine. 

15th Century St Werburgh pilgrim badge, via https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/424565

 

St Cuthbert's remains were also moved due to the Viking raids. Having died on 687, his body was buried on Lindisfarne. In 875 Danish raiders took over the monastery & the monks fled, taking Cuthbert's remains with them. They wandered for seven years before finding them a resting place in Chester-le-Street. In 995 a further Danish raid prompted their removal to Ripon. There the saint 'revealed' that he wished to remain in Durham, and so he has.

Once, the bodies of saints mattered. It seems perhaps superstitious to us now but I find here an echo of prehistory when we believed that the ancestors became part of the land, when our barrows & stone circles held their bones and marked their passing, and, even further back, the time when our beloved dead were buried beneath the floors of our homes, part of life that included death. Once, we knew to keep the dead close. We have become so removed. And we understood that resurrection was a natural part of being, were reminded each spring in the return of green and living things, each autumn with the return of the wild geese. The monks of Lindisfarne didn't carry St Cuthbert's remains with them for nothing, and the nuns of Hanbury had reason to steal the body of St Werburgh. Once, we knew that there was power in bones; they anchor us, root us in place, remind us that we live on holy ground, whilst the wild beauty of life continues to spin and shine around us. 

And, just a little aside to perhaps reflect upon. There was a time when 'goose' became euphemism for a sex worker. In the medieval period sex workers, licenced by the Bishop of Winchester to ply their trade in the Liberty of the Clink in Southwark, were known as the 'Winchester Geese'. As my friend, Christina Zaba pointed out, wouldn't it be powerful to imagine that the 'goose' in St Werburgh's resurrection miracle was a sex worker instead. And it would put quite a different slant on the story of St Martin, who hid amongst geese when he was trying to avoid being made a bishop and was given away by their cackling! 

The Goose spirit may be even wilder than we realise!

Misericord at Chester Cathedral depicting scenes from the life of  St Werburgh, via: http://orthochristian.com/77344.html

References:

St Werburgh

https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/…/st-werburgh-and-goose…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werburgh

https://www.weedonbec-village.co.uk/uploads/walk-3-general-text-qr-9.pdf

https://wikimili.com/en/Werburgh

https://www.bathandwells.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/February-2016-Special-Places-shrine-of-st-werburga-chester.pdf

http://pilgrimsandposies.blogspot.com/2013/02/st-werburghs-day.html

http://pilgrimsandposies.blogspot.com/2013/02/st-werburghs-day.html

http://orthochristian.com/77344.html

https://www.festivalstoke.co.uk/werburgh--the-wild-goose.html

St Mildrid  

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/80901.html

https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/…/st-mildred-of-thanet-…

La Loba 

https://www.wilderutopia.com/…/la-loba-wild-woman-luminous…/

St Cuthbert

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert

The Spirit is a Wild Goose ~ Celtic Advent Day 2

Greylag goose, Jacqueline Durban, 2013

We come to Celtic Advent Day 2.

The 'Wild Goose', an Geadh-Glas in Gaelic, Geif Gwyllt in Welsh, is the name that Celtic Christians are said to have given to the Holy Spirit, perfectly embracing the untameable, free, & unpredictable nature of our connection to the indwelling Divine. There is little proof that the name was used before the 1940s but, for me, that doesn't discount the symbol. Christianity comes from a land of dry desert & wide open spaces where, perhaps, things are more obvious. Here, it finds itself responding to a landscape of green misty valleys & sea fog, of ever-changing tides & sheets of grey rain. Nothing is obvious here. Rather, like the Grail, it is only half-glimpsed before it's gone and we are lucky if we can catch a feather or two to reassure us that it was here at all. In the goose, Spirit is embodied in the form of a wild bird bridging water, earth, & sky, and that image is a vision of both God & land.

For our ancestors their goose would probably have been a Greylag, like this one encountered in my canal days. The Greylag is the ancestor of our domestic goose, having been domesticated as early as 1360BCE. The connection of the goose to the Divine is long. She is associated with the Sumerian healer Goddess, Gula, the Egyptian Sun God, Ra, & the love Goddess Aphrodite of Greece, where goose fat was once used as an aphrodisiac.

At Advent we await not a tamed & domesticated God but one who is destined to accompany us as we stand against entrenched power, a God who sought wisdom in the wilderness of desert & mountain. The goose, who in the winter comes to our shores to find sanctuary in the marshes, estuaries, & edge places, is a perfect reminder that we wait for a Wilder God, freed from a year of watching the Church both speak out against, & enable, many injustices in the world, made new in the pure starlight & biting cold of Midwinter, born outcast to call us back to the holy edge.

Great Spirit, Wild Goose of the Holy One.
Be my eye in the dark places;
Be my flight in the trapped places;
Be my host in the wild places;
Be my brood in the barren places;
Be my formation in the lost places.

Ray Simpson, Community of Aidan & Hilda, Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

On this second day of Advent we might also consider a daily devotion which could be gently adopted as a reminder of the journey we are on. I love the Celtic Advent Calendar from Contemplative Cottage. I have also set an alarm to chime every 3 hours from 9am to midnight each day until Christmas Eve. I love this practice because it echoes in part the monastic Liturgy of the Hours. When the bell rings I spend a few moments in mindful contemplation of the starlit dark, even if that only means taking a few deep breaths. I hold expectation gently. As Susan Forshey of Contemplative Cottage says, this is an opportunity to practice grace.

Celtic Advent Resources ~

https://contemplativecottage.com

including the Celtic Advent Calendar 2019

https://godspacelight.com/blog/

https://www.faithandworship.com/Advent/Advent_Celtic_Christian_Celebration.htm

'Celtic Advent: 40 Days of Devotions to Christmas' by David Cole https://www.eden.co.uk/celtic-advent/