The Inspirations of Saint Hilda on Her Feast Day

Today is the feast day of Saint Hilda of Whitby (614-680).  For a more factual essay on her and why we should remember her, see this post on my theology blog. 

For those of us who are English majors, we might be most grateful to Saint Hilda for her encouragement of Caedmon, one of the earliest English poets who makes it into anthologies; some call him the first British poet. Many give her credit for encouraging the stories from the Bible put into song and spoken stories in ordinary language of the people who would hear it.

But Caedmon is only the most famous artist she encouraged.  There were surely more that we have never heard of.  She created institutions in the form of monasteries that were centers of education and the arts.  She had keen administrative skills.

And she also had the ability to reconcile groups that were not in a mood to be reconciled.  It's a vitally important skill to have if one wants to run a monastery.  But she was also able to use those skills in the larger culture, as England transitioned from pagan beliefs to Christian ones, as Christians tried to decide which traditions to keep and which to cast away.

As with so many of the ancient saints who found monasteries, abbeys, and other types of communities, I'm in awe of her--she did so much, in a harsh landscape (both literal and metaphorical), and her resources were more limited than mine.

Last night, some whisps of a poem came to me as I slept, but I don't have time to do much with them today.  But let me record them for later.  They had to do with being in a tropical climate, thinking about an ancient saint on a faraway shore.  Was I also thinking about the skills of reconciliation being so important to us both?  I look at ancient church disagreements--Roman vs. Celtic, Roman vs. Orthodox--and I can't fathom why people are fighting.  Surely our descendants will feel the same way.

In many ways, Hilda was far from the important power structures of her day.  As I write, I realize how little I know about this time period.  After looking at some Internet sites, I realize I knew even less than I thought.  

Hilda was born about 140 years after the collapse of the Roman empire--did she feel the threat from the Vikings across the sea?  It's likely because of those invaders that we know so little about her, as they destroyed all that she had built.  She lived during a time of Muslim expansion, although she wouldn't have known about that.  

So yes, she was far from power structures, although it seemed to have been a time of crumbling power structures--that concept is not foreign to many of us.

Let me let these ideas percolate and see what bubbles up.  Poetry Goddess, I am ready to receive!

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