Daily Reading for September 1 • David Pendleton Oakerhater, Deacon and Missionary, 1931

On Sunday, October 6, 1878, a little more than six months after Oakerhater’s release from Fort Marion, Making Medicine and the other three Indian students received Christian Baptism. The service was held at Grace Church in Syracuse, New York. Bishop Frederic D. Huntington conducted the services. The young men were baptized in the order of their age, with the oldest going first. At the time of their baptism, they received their Christian names. Making Medicine was the first to be baptized. His Christian name became David (from the Bible) Pendleton (in honor of the Pendleton family that had sponsored his education with Rev. Wicks). Paul Caryl (Zotom) was the second to be baptized, followed by John Wicks (Okestchei) and Henry Pratt (Taawayite). The reported appearance and conduct of the young men was deeply devout. Their answers in the Baptismal Service were clear and strong. Twenty days later at Paris Hill, New York, the four young men were confirmed.

Upon completion of the confirmation services, it was back to the same routine for David Pendleton. This routine was to continue for several more months until a telegram from Captain Pratt would put David Pendleton on a remarkable and quite unexpected journey. Interest in educating the Indians was beginning to develop a head of steam. The country’s conscience to the need to reform the treatment of Indians was beginning to emerge.

In 1878, Pratt had become aware of an industrial school near Old Point Comfort, Virginia, that he felt would provide the opportunity for the further education of some of the Fort Marion Indians. . . . Not only was Pratt made superintendent of the school, but he was also charged with actually going to the Dakota and Indian Territories to select the prospective students. Pratt suggested that he go to the Dakota Territory while sending someone else to the Indian Territory. Pratt’s thinking was who better to go than someone actually from the Indian Territory, having in mind two Fort Marion graduates—David Pendleton (Cheyenne) and Etahdleuh Doanmoe (Kiowa).

And so it came about that David Pendleton was summoned to Syracuse, New York, on September 19, 1879. Three days later he and an entourage started on the 1,500 mile journey for a month of missionary work among their respective tribes in the Indian Territory. Pendleton’s stay in the Territory was short. During the approximate one month that he was there, in addition to visiting with his family, renewing old friendships, and introducing the “new way,” he managed to recruit twenty-nine Cheyenne and Arapaho to return with him to the east to be enrolled at Carlisle. . . .

All seemed well in David Pendleton’s world. He had but a year to go before his studies in the East would be completed. His wife had been baptized and was being trained in how to be a good “Christian woman.” His son had been baptized and was being prepared for entry into Carlisle. His Indian marriage to Nomee had received a “Christian blessing,” being confirmed with a wedding ring. What had looked like a hopeless existence but a few years earlier, now held all the potential a person could ask. A faith born in prison was beginning to blossom.

But that faith was severely challenged in July of 1880. Just a little over nine months since being reunited with Nomee, she died in childbirth and was buried beside her baby in the Wick’s lot in the cemetery of St. Paul's, Paris Hill. Having lost his wife, Pendleton’s suffering was still not over. On April 19, 1881, after a long illness, his son Frederic Pawwahnee died at the House of the Good Shepherd. He was buried beside his mother at St. Paul’s, Paris Hill. What had appeared to be a road so filled with promise a year ago, was now strewn with the deaths of his wife and son. But the spirit that had allowed David Pendleton to overcome his bitterness and hatred of the white man while imprisoned in Fort Marion, also found its way in consoling and guiding him in accepting the deaths of those closest to him. Placing tragedy behind him, he was eager and ready to return to his people and begin spreading the word of Jesus and the “new road.” Bishop Huntington and Rev. Wicks agreed.

On Tuesday morning, June 7, 1881, (Whitsun Week), at Grace Church, Syracuse, New York, David Pendleton Oakerhater and Paul Caryl Zotom were admitted to the order of deacons. Within a few hours, he was headed to the Indian Territory. There was work to be done.

From “He Goes First: The Story of Episcopal Saint David Pendleton Oakerhater” by K.B. Kueteman. Found at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Oakerhater/bio.html

Daily Reading for September 2 • The Martyrs of New Guinea, 1942

What did the contemporaries of the early martyrs think about the events of their time? Perhaps the complexity of the factors in an historical situation, their own closeness to the events, and even their lack of personal courage prevented them from seeing the significance of occurrences that today seem so clearly to have been heroic testimonies to faith in the Lord. It is a fact that a consensus with regard to what is happening before our eyes is always more difficult to reach; this is because present events, unlike those of the past, are not situated in a world that we regard as idyllic and that we envelop in golden legends. Present events form part of our own universe and demand of the individual a personal decision, a rejection of every kind of complicity with executioners, a straightforward solidarity, an uncompromising denunciation of evil, a prayer of commitment. . . .

According to the very earliest Christian tradition the blood of martyrs gives life to the ecclesial community, the assembly of the disciples of Jesus Christ. . . . Fidelity unto death is a wellspring of life. It signals a new, demanding and fruitful course in the following of Jesus.

From We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People by Gustavo Gutiérrez (Orbis Books/SCM Press, 1984).

Daily Reading for September 3

The expression “bearing one’s cross” has become a feeble, pious commonplace, a trite metaphor for resigning oneself to some unavoidable burden or misfortune. . . . The image of taking up the cross was not some esoteric symbol for Jesus, but a horrible reality of daily life in an enemy-occupied country. No one could travel about Palestine for very long without coming across pitiful processions of condemned criminals, naked, bloody, dragging the crossbars to the places of execution. . . . Why were the condemned forced to take up their crosses and drag them through the streets on the way to the killing fields? No doubt it intensified their degradation to be subjected to the abuse and loathing of the passersby, and it also gave the public an opportunity to disown the victims. As they pelted the victims with filth and jeers, the law-abiding populace could be strengthened in their own sense of rectitude. In this way, between the criminals about to be nailed to the crosses and the decent citizens going about their business a great gulf was fixed.

On the road to Caesarea Philippi Jesus told his disciples that if they wanted to know who he really was, they had to accept that he was the Son of man who was going to suffer. He intended to cross over the gulf, to leave once and for all the company of the upright and decent and to join those under sentence of death. Peter reacted as if Jesus had kicked him in the stomach, and Jesus came back at him with equal vehemence: “Get behind me, Satan!” If Peter tries to hold him back from this crossing over, he will become the very devil—Jesus’ adversary, not his disciple. So they had better get this right. It was not for Jesus alone; anyone who wanted to follow him into true life had to cross over, too. Anyone who wanted to be identified with Jesus and find life with him had to join him in the procession of the condemned, the dying, and the rejected.

Six days after this bombshell Peter, James, and John had the experience we call the Transfiguration. Three days after Jesus actually had crossed over, crucified on Skull Hill with two criminals, God raised him from death, confirming once and for all that the business of crossing over, of taking up one’s cross, is the real way into life.

From “Crossing Over” in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation by Martin L. Smith (Cowley Publications, 1995).

Daily Reading for September 4 • Paul Jones, Bishop and Peace Advocate, 1941

Christ, no one on earth really wants the pain and horror of war.
We do not want to kill or be killed, to hurt or be hurt.
But we all see injustice,
and sometimes it makes us angry
and we see no other way to right the wrong
except by war.
Christ, teach us the ways of peace!
Calm our angry hearts
and grant to all peoples and their leaders
patience in the search for peace and justice.
Help us to be ready to give up
some of our comforts and power and pride,
so that war will leave the face of the earth
and we may work for you in peace.

“Teach Us the Ways of Peace” by Avery Brooke, in Plain Prayers in a Complicated World (Cowley Publications, 1993).

Daily Reading for September 5

Monasticism tells us something important about the structure of our humanity. Almost every single one of the major world traditions has developed some form of coenobitic life. Just as some people—at all times and in all cultures—have felt impelled to become dancers, poets, or musicians, others are irresistibly drawn to a life of silence and prayer. . . .

The monastic life demands a kind of death—the death of the ego that we feed so voraciously in secular life. We are, perhaps, biologically programmed to self-preservation. Even when our physical survival is not in jeopardy, we seek to promote ourselves, to make ourselves liked, loved, and admired; display ourselves to best advantage; and pursue our own interests—often ruthlessly. But this self-preoccupation, all the world religions tell us, paradoxically holds us back from our best selves. Many of our problems spring from thwarted egotism. We resent the success of others; in our gloomiest, most self-pitying moments, we feel uniquely mistreated and undervalued; we are miserably aware of our shortcomings. In the world outside the cloister, it is always possible to escape such self-dissatisfaction: we can phone a friend, pour a drink, or turn on the television. But the religious has to face his or her pettiness twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If properly and wholeheartedly pursued, the monastic life liberates us from ourselves—incrementally, slowly, and imperceptibly. Once a monk has transcended his ego, he will experience an alternative mode of being. It is an ekstasis, a “stepping outside” the confines of self.

From Karen Armstrong’s Introduction to A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor (New York Review of Books, 1982).

Daily Reading for September 6

What does it mean to bear the cross? The phrase may refer to the practice of actually marking people with the cross. This ancient practice of marking people on the forehead was well known. The prophet Ezekiel put a mark on the foreheads of those who groaned and sighed for the abominations committed in Jerusalem before the slaughter of the idolaters (Ezekiel 9:4), while in Revelation 7:3 the servants of God were sealed on their foreheads before the day of destruction. To be a Christian is to be signed with the mark of the cross, the baptismal mark of incorporation into Christ. To bear the cross in solidarity with Jesus is not to endure some mysterious kind of suffering which is thrust upon us, still less is it a way of describing an interior psychological attitude or orientation. It is a path freely chosen, the social reality of committing oneself in this world to the values of the world to come. This is clearly a call to lose one’s life for the sake of the gospel. It is not a call to imitate Jesus as a figure from the past but to follow the risen and present Jesus of today. Christians do not maintain the memory of a dead Jesus: grieving over the body was prevented by the very large stone which was rolled away from the tomb before the grief could get under way (Mark 16:4). To respond to the cross is to follow, to share; it is to be a disciple. It is to respond with a new and amazing relationship of co-operation with God which is utterly different from the relationship of slave to master. We are sealed not as slaves but as children, as inheritors of the Kingdom of God.

From We Preach Christ Crucified by Kenneth Leech. Copyright © 1994, 2005. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for September 7 • The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The image of division haunts the church. It is the image of the eucharistic sacrament. Yet the church resists. The ideal community, according to the prevailing definition, is a group of like-minded people representing organic and institutional unity. The basis for community—the common bond that holds people together—is, at best, any agenda promising common benefit. Shared self-interest, common gain, is the adhesive of most human community. . . . Fragmentation is the very image of sin. Division is an expression of our weakness. Because we fail to build unity into a massive organic whole, we have failed in our mission. But have we?

As he matured in his faith, Paul saw fragmentation creatively. Fragmentation could be God’s gift to the church, even God’s will for the church. After all, in the broken body of Jesus the two very different peoples—Gentile and Jew—found a way to be together in their differences. Could it be that the very Spirit of God spoils our designs for homogenization in order to build the church of God’s own vision? . . .

The mark of God’s church is fragmentation, the eucharistic mark of brokenness. We are the body of Christ, and our ministry ought to look like him. For the sake of unity and for the making of a new humanity, this body—the church—may find its ministry in rending that forever breaks down walls and rips the Temple veil.

The unity God seeks and the new humanity God is making demand a place where all sorts and conditions can meet and be reconciled. To be that place, in this world, we shall have to be broken. We shall have to be torn from the idols of our own ideals. Our orthodoxy will be ruined, and our purity will be sullied. The stones of our walls of division, the rocks with which we have routed the sinner from our midst, will be reduced to sand. The banquets we have made of our resources and by which we have fed ourselves to fatness will be reduced to crumbs. And not to decide may be the hardest decision of all.

The good news, then, may be that those energies we have given for so long to the vain dream of building sanctuaries of sameness may now be given to meeting one another in all our myriad differentness, where we may know the Christ, who “came and proclaimed peace to [those] who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to [God]” (Ephesians 2:17-18).

From Conflict and a Christian Life by Sam Portaro. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for September 8

Prayer is the fundamental activity of the Christian; to be in the image of God means to communicate with God. Many people are intimidated by prayer, believing that there is a right and wrong way, and thinking that they will somehow offend God or make fools of themselves if they do it wrongly. It is helpful to know that our monastic ancestors were convinced that prayer is natural to us, like breathing, if we only discover it in ourselves. It is something we do, but even more, it is a gift of God to us. We do not even have to enter God's presence in prayer, because we are already in God's presence. It may be helpful to think not of entering God's presence, but rather of making ourselves accessible to prayer. Prayer shapes us and transforms us. It centers us in God and at the same time in ourselves. It is always changing, as we are always becoming new in God.

Nevertheless, this discussion of introspection and prayer and overcoming the passions in order to love might suggest that the primary reason we pray has to do with transformation. This is misleading, however, for while prayer makes us who we are, we do not pray in order to become new any more than we marry the person we marry primarily in order to become somebody else. We pray, first of all, to be with God. Secondarily we pray knowing that God has promised good things which we can expect through prayer. If we let prayer be only a means to something else we want, however, it will not be for us what it can be, and we will not be who we can be.

From To Love as God Loves: Conversations with the Early Church by Roberta C. Bondi (Fortress Press, 1987).

Daily Reading for September 9 • Constance, Nun, and her Companions, 1878

Oh sovereign God, in your bountiful creation,
Rain falls on the just and the unjust,
Signifying life’s Infinite Mystery.
I cannot know your ways;
there is much I will never understand.
Yet still, I bow in humble worship
To a power greater than my own.
And even in the darkness,
I choose to live faithfully and to celebrate life.
Hear me, Oh Lord, and be with me,
Now and forever. Amen.

A Prayer of Celebration by Barbara Bartocci, quoted in Grace on the Go: Quick Prayers for Compassionate Caregivers by Barbara Bartocci. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for September 10 • Alexander Crummell, 1898

We have seen today, the great truth, that when God does not destroy a people, but, on the contrary, trains and disciplines it, it is an indication that He intends to make something of them, and to do something for them. It signifies that He is graciously interested in such a people. In a sense, not equal indeed, to the case of the Jews, but parallel, in a lower degree, such a people are a “chosen people” of the Lord. There is, so to speak, a covenant relation which God has established between Himself and them; dim and partial, at first, in its manifestations; but which is sure to come to the sight of men and angels, clear, distinct, and luminous. You may take it as a sure and undoubted fact that God presides, with sovereign care, over such a people; and will surely preserve, educate, and build them up.

The discussion of this morning teaches us that the Negro race, of which we are a part, and which, as yet, in great simplicity and with vast difficulties, is struggling for place and position in this land, discovers, most exactly, in its history, the principle I have stated. And we have in this fact the assurance that the Almighty is interested in all the great problems of civilizations and of grace carrying on among us. All this is God's work. He has brought this race through a wilderness of disasters; and at last put them in the large, open place of liberty; but not, you may be assured, for eventual decline and final ruin. You need not entertain the shadow of a doubt that the work which God has begun and is now carrying on, is for the elevation and success of the Negro. This is the significance and worth of all effort and all achievement, of every signal providence, in this cause; or, otherwise, all the labors of men and all the mightiness of God is vanity! . . .

With all these providential indications in our favor, let us bless God and take courage. Casting aside everything trifling and frivolous, let us lay hold of every element of power, in the brain; in literature, art, and science; in industrial pursuits; in the soil; in cooperative association; in mechanical ingenuity; and above all, in the religion of our God; and so march on in the pathway of progress to that superiority and eminence which is our rightful heritage, and which is evidently the promise of our God!

From “The Destined Superiority of the Negro” by Alexander Crummell, quoted in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for September 11

The spiritual or moral history of our species could be written as a struggle not to kill or run away from what is different—how we learn to treat those with whom we cannot identify. “Remember that you were strangers once,” Moses reminded Israel. Writing to the Christians of Ephesus, St. Paul begs that we lead a life worthy of our calling, "with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The apostle is up against nature, and he knows it. He asks us not to assume that anybody else has motives worse than our own. It is especially important to be “lowly and meek” when we are sure that we are right. This is true in part because there are other people in the room who know they are right, too.

Forbearing one another in love is a religious way of saying that because we value one another we don’t crush one another. . . . Paul wants us “eager” to maintain the bond of peace. . . and in Paul’s mind it is the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is one of the reasons Jesus told his disciples to share his body and blood: you can’t easily eat with people you reject. . . . An even bigger gift of the Spirit is to come to difficult discussions eager to help people work things out, to find a way. Such eagerness, for me, is religion at its best.

From “Beating the Inner Reptile” in Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less by Paul V. Marshall. Copyright © 2008. Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for September 12 • John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, 1830

Let a regard for the honour of the Church, and for the glory of God who delights in order in his worship, awaken the zeal of every member of the Church. Let him preserve silence in the parts of the service performed by the minister, joining in them not with his voice, but with sincerity of mind and heart. Let him, however, consider it as a sacred duty to repeat aloud the parts in the service assigned to the people. He will thus have the satisfaction of performing his share in the important and honourable duty of worshiping God. Confession will be rendered more lively, supplication more animated, and praise more ardent when the people join in the service with their voices as well as with their hearts. Both minister and people thus faithfully performing the respective parts allotted to them, the service of the Church will be exhibited in all its majesty, beauty, and affecting solemnity; and the worship of the Sanctuary will ascend as acceptable incense to the Lord of Hosts.

From ‘A Companion to the Book of Common Prayer’ by John Henry Hobart (1805/1827), in J. Robert Wright, ed., Prayer Book Spirituality. Copyright © 1989. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for September 13 • Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258

In the mid-third century, the church led by Cyprian was defined by its opposition to a new kind of “demonically deceptive imitation” that was identified by its relative leniency toward penitent sinners and the authority granted to martyred saints and confessors. Although the defining issues emerged in the context of the extreme threat posed by the Decian persecution, the outcomes were generated by a clash of competing authorities and either rigorous or lax attitudes toward those who had fallen into the grave sin of idolatry. At first the two competing groups were the confessors [who had survived torture] and the clergy, but soon the groups comprised at least two different church bodies, each asserting that it was the one and true community and each claiming the exclusive power to condemn or absolve sinners and to transmit the Holy Spirit through its sacraments. Individuals staked their eternal salvation on the hope that they had been baptized by the right bishop and in the right church. . . .

The African position, as articulated by Cyprian, recognized baptism as valid only if inside a community under the authority of the duly consecrated bishop. By the end of the persecutions of the mid-third century, the power to cleanse a new convert and to confer the Spirit was limited to those who were within a single, unified body established by Christ when he conferred the power to forgive sin upon the apostles. No other community, clergy, or prophetically inspired individuals could claim to have access to this power, since the Holy Spirit did not reside within them. The flock could have only one shepherd. There could be no halfway position. One was either within the ark of salvation (the true church) or on the outside drowning in the flood. For Cyprian, there could be only one fountain of living water, and that was inside an enclosed garden:

“That the Church is one is declared by the Holy Spirit in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of Christ. ‘My dove, my perfect one, is but one; she is the only one of her mother, the favourite of her who bore her.’ And the Spirit again says of her: ‘An enclosed garden is my sister, my bride, a sealed fountain, a well of living water.’ Now, if the bride of Christ (that is to say, the Church) is an enclosed garden, then it is just not possible that something which is closed up should lie wide open to outsiders and aliens. . . . And if it is the one and only well of living water and it, too, is found on the inside, then it is just not possible for a man who is placed on the outside to be given life and sanctification through that water; they and they alone who are on the inside are granted permission to drink of it or to make use of it in any way” (Letter 69.2.1).

From “Baptismal Rites and Architecture” by Robin M. Jensen, in Late Ancient Christianity, edited by Virginia Burrus, volume 2 in the series A People’s History of Christianity (Fortress Press, 2005).

Daily Reading for September 14 • The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

If there is one fact about which New Testament scholars are agreed, it is that 'the good news of the Kingdom of God' was the heart of Jesus' preaching. Take away the references to the Kingdom in the gospels, and there is no gospel at all. Yet it is common to hear what passes for Christianity preached without reference to the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God was a phrase with a history. It was the heart of the prophetic hope for a new age of justice and mercy when the earth would be filled with the glory of God and when all common things would be holy. It is a deeply Jewish hope, rooted in a Jewish understanding of God in history. Outside of this Jewish approach to history and the world, Jesus makes no kind of sense: this is why the anti-semitic strand of Christianity which blames the Jewish people for his death is so dangerously mistaken. More than any other figure Jesus vindicates and affirms the Jewish religious vision--the vision of spirit embodied and manifested within a community of men and women who seek justice and holiness together, and who realise that it is only within such a community of commitment that justice and holiness can ever be found. . . .

The cross and the Kingdom are intimately connected because the Kingdom of God can never come by gentle progress. Only by tribulation and crisis can the new world emerge from the ruins of the old. The cross stands as a perpetual symbol of the truth that the world system is organized against the Kingdom of God, and that religious powers are just as likely to resist its demands as are the political ones. . . . It was for judgement that Jesus came into the world. The gospel is itself a crisis, a dislocation of order. The language of the tradition is filled with words for change—the proclamation of the Day of the Lord, the descent of the New Jerusalem from heaven to earth, the call to repentance, to a total renewal of life. Redemption is a process which takes place within the framework of distress and chaos, the collapse of institutions and power structures, the disruption of earth and seas, the shaking of the powers of heaven, with people’s hearts failing them for fear. It is when such things occur that we are to lift up our heads because our liberation is near. It is against such a background of upheaval that we are called to ‘bear the cross.’

From We Preach Christ Crucified by Kenneth Leech. Copyright © 1994, 2005. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for September 15 • Holy Cross Day

Listen, I’ll tell the loveliest of dreams,
what I dreamt in the dark of night
after reason-bearers lay at rest.
It seemed I saw a wondrous tree
led aloft, wound in light,
the brightest of beams. That beacon was
all covered with gold. Gems stood
fair at the ground’s surface; likewise there were five
up at the crossbeam. All beheld there the Angel of the Lord,
fair through eternal decree. There was no felon’s gallows there,
but holy spirits beheld him,
people of earth and all this glorious creation.
Rare was this victory-beam, and I stained in sins,
mauled by misdeeds. I saw glory’s tree,
graced with garments, shine with joy,
girded with gold. Gems had worthily covered the tree of the wild.
Yet through that gold I could glimpse
the old war of wretched ones, for it first began
to bleed on its right side. I was all driven with sorrows;
afraid I was of the fair vision. . . .

I have few friends
powerful on earth, since they have departed
from the world’s joys, sought wonder’s King,
and live now in heaven with the high Father,
dwell in glory. And every day
I look for that time when the Lord’s cross,
which I once beheld here on earth,
will fetch me in this fleeting life
and bring me where the bliss is great,
joy in heaven, where the Lord’s hosts are
seated at the banquet. Endless bliss is there.
It will set me where forever I will
dwell in wonders, taste well
happiness with the holy. May the Lord be my friend,
he who earlier suffered here on earth,
on this gallows tree for our trespasses.
He redeemed us and returned our lives,
gave us a heavenly home. Hope was renewed
among blessings with bliss for those who suffered burning there.
The Son, mighty and successful, was victorious
in that quest, when he came with many,
a host of spirits into God’s glorious kingdom,
the almighty ruler, to the bliss of angels
and all the saints who earlier dwelt in glory
in heaven, when their Creator came,
almighty Lord, back to the land of his home.

From “The Dream of the Rood,” quoted in Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, translated and introduced by Robert Boenig, in the Classics of Western Spirituality series (Paulist Press, 2000).

Daily Reading for September 16 • Ninian, Bishop in Galloway, c. 430

In the year of our Lord 565, when Justin, the younger, the successor of Justinian, had the government of the Roman empire, there came into Britain a famous priest and abbot, a monk by habit and life, whose name was Columba, to preach the word of God to the provinces of the northern Picts, who are separated from the southern parts by steep and rugged mountains; for the southern Picts, who dwell on this side of those mountains, had long before, as is reported, forsaken the errors of idolatry, and embraced the truth, by the preaching of Ninias, a most reverend bishop and holy man of the British nation, who had been regularly instructed at Rome, in the faith and mysteries of the truth; whose episcopal see, named after St. Martin the bishop, and famous for a stately church (wherein he and many other saints rest in the body), is still in existence among the English nation. The place belongs to the province of the Bernicians, and is generally called the White House, because he there built a church of stone, which was not usual among the Britons.

From A History of the English Church and People by Bede, translated by Leo Sherley-Price (Penguin Books, 1968).

May the King shield you in the valleys,
May Christ aid you on the mountains,
May the Spirit bathe you on the slopes,
In hollow, on hill, on plain,
Mountain, valley, and plain,
May the Three in One bless you.

An early Hebridean blessing, quoted in Lord of Creation: A Resource for Creative Celtic Spirituality by Brendan O’Malley. Copyright © 2005, 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com