CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
Healing Heroes Through History
What can a 4th-century Scottish hermit, a beheaded North African bishop, and a 12th-century German abbess teach us about healing today? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Journey with us through the lives of three remarkable saints celebrated this September: Ninian, Cyprian, and Hildegard of Bingen. Each represents a fascinating thread in the tapestry of Christian healing tradition, from Scotland to North Africa to the heart of medieval Germany.
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Coffee Pods, a podcast of the Acorn Christian Healing Foundation Exploring what's happening in the world through the lens of Christian healing. Well, hello, lisa, hello, welcome back. We're here again, surprise, surprise.
Speaker 2:Something very quickly.
Speaker 1:I look forward to these times honestly I do.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to share, though, because you said hello when I was living in america and some of the americans would try and do an english accent and they would say hello.
Speaker 1:It was always hello, yeah everybody tries to be dick van dyke. It's. It's so weird. They step in time, step in time, come on. It's so weird too because, um, and I know people listen to our podcasts in america there's quite a few and and, uh, I always say it's so funny that you think it's americans typically think it's funny to immediately stereotype the british accent and say something about the queen and say something about fish and chips and you're just like, yeah, there's so much more to the uk than than that.
Speaker 2:But it is, although the fish and chips are usually pretty good you know, we've got a local here.
Speaker 1:That is just unbelievable and I saw where the. There are two chippies in London, one that I have frequented in the West end which just won some big award for being like the best in the country. So I'm excited to go back and try it. And last time I went into the, my local um, he looked at me me and he says have you ever had a battered sausage? Honestly, I never had, because I always just get the fish and chips, you know, and so he's like here, have this while you wait. So he gives me a sausage while I'm waiting for my fish to cook and, uh, he's become like my good buddy down the road. I really enjoy him. I've heard his stories he's from iran originally and hearing stories of um of his upbringing and the hardships recently with the bombings in iran it affected his family. And this is beautiful to meet people and eat good food and break bread. And you know, live, live your best life yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, so tell us a little bit about what you're up to recently. You're heading off to the states, aren't you?
Speaker 1:yeah, when this podcast, when you're listening to this podcast, I will actually be uh, gathering with friends in the mountains of north carolina. I have a funeral and also a 40 year class reunion. I, I'm getting old. Lisa and all my friends are going to come together and they're going to go. You're fat and bald what? Happened to you, man, but I'll look at them and say you're wrinkly and old too.
Speaker 1:That's right, we're all in this thing together, you know, trying to get out of this thing alive. You know, yeah, my dad used to say old age ain't for sissies. So it's tough and um, but I'm looking forward to that. And uh, of course, there's been a lot of crazy stuff in the news of late from all corners of the earth, so it's a strange time to to be traveling, so people will be listening to this and I'll be looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains and hopefully drinking wonderful clean water from the tap at my mother's house. Mountain water is amazing, so I'm looking forward to that. And then I'll be back for a few days in London and then I'm off to Sweden, so I'm bouncing around. I come back to Sweden, so I'm bouncing around. I come back to London. We have there's a West End chaplains thing at the Actors Church in London.
Speaker 1:And then I'm off to Gothenburg and getting ready for the next Academy, which will be on the 4th, and then I'm speaking in Gothenburg the two Sundays in October, and then I'm back and then I'm off to Northern Ireland. Woo-hoo, then my accent really will change. I remember playing rugby with a guy from Dublin and you just couldn't help but start sounding Irish when you would tell him stuff on the pitch Isn't that funny that that happens Come on, we bind together, you know, and suddenly you're like what's going on to my accent?
Speaker 1:You know, I'm just talking to my friend, you know, but it's really weird how your brain does this stuff.
Speaker 2:It is, it is he taught me?
Speaker 1:he taught me a lot of things that I probably shouldn't have known. When I played rugby we we, we did some damage. My nickname, rugby, we, we, we did some damage. Um, my nickname was yankee the tanky when I played rugby yankee the tanky and it was because the first time I ever played rugby I caught the opening kickoff and, not really know much about rugby, I just took the ball and ran straight down the field and ran over people and they were like look at that yank go, he's like a tank. I became yankee the tanky but I enjoyed rugby until my wife said you can't keep playing rugby unless you can come home and not moan and it just tore me up my ears and my head and I was usually partially concussed every time I played. So it's just like I think I'm done yeah and 40 years later, I'm an
Speaker 2:old man well, why don't we, why don't we think about old people?
Speaker 1:I've before we do. I found a really good story and it was kind of tied into last week's 9-11 stuff 9-11 in New York City. There's always a remembrance of the great catastrophe there, with the Trade Center coming down and everything. And I love dogs I have two dogs and you have Boise the Wonder Dog and I thought here's a wonderful story about dogs because there were dogs involved in the rescue effort after 9-11. And I was always intrigued because there were a lot of dogs that died from breathing in cancerous stuff and we have lots of people that died, but there were lots of dogs rescue dogs that died and I was reading a bit about these animals and I'm just totally intrigued at how amazingly brave these dogs are Because they just went into the rubble pile finding people.
Speaker 1:And the one guy wrote about these rescue dogs and said that the dogs became really depressed Because they almost always were finding bodies. They weren't actually finding people alive because it was such a terrible, terrible tragedy. And so the one kind of happy story that I read about this was that to keep the dogs happy, they staged victims in different parts of the rubble pile with firemen and other people so that the dogs could actually find people and be happy. And so when they found these videos of the dogs locating the living people and the dogs are so happy because they did a good job and they found somebody, because deep inside these animals they wanted to rescue, they didn't want to be recovery animals. And so when I saw that story which, um, you know last week all the activities around 9-11 and remembrance and stuff I thought I always try and think of one new thing about 9-11 that I didn't know the year before, and so this year it was learning about rescue dogs.
Speaker 1:And so I just thought I'm going to share that little tidbit, because isn't it cool to think that they wanted the dogs to be happy, because the dogs wanted to find people alive it points to the depth of the tragedy, but it also kind of shows a level of humanity and it makes me love my dogs even more they're amazing, aren't they? Thank you so yeah, old people gosh back to old people me and some older people.
Speaker 1:Because I thought we would talk about the, the saints and feast from this week, because this is one of those, one of those banner weeks where we go from the feast of the holy cross, which is this past sunday right and then we have three saints kind of back to back to back, because you have saint ninian, saint cyprian and saint hildegard and they're back to back. So thought, why don't we just talk about each one of those saints? Yeah because I'm not sure how much people even know about who these people are, and I thought this would be cool to to just talk about the, the saints and feast for this week.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I'm intrigued, chris, because this is something I've not really ever looked into, known about in my background and in my faith, so I'm looking forward to finding out a little bit more about these, so should we?
Speaker 1:and you said that that um acorn has this history of heroes um some videos of heroes of the faith, yeah and we had talked yesterday about the possibility of making some new videos.
Speaker 2:That would be great.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't be surprised if a St Ninian or a St Cyprian hero video might be worth making. So this might be a precursor to something that we can do a little bit of a deeper dive in, because I think I think we do have a blessing of lots and lots of people who've done amazing things that have impacted the growth and life of the church yeah, and sometimes I don't even think we're aware of the impact that their ministry has on what we do today yeah, and it's really good to find out what that is actually.
Speaker 1:So I let's go all the way back to the fourth century.
Speaker 2:So who are we looking at?
Speaker 1:first saint ninian. Why don't you read the notes and tell me about saint ninian?
Speaker 2:saint ninian. So the background is 360 to 432, widely regarded as the first christian missionary to what is now scotland, particularly among the pics, which is the ancient celtic people, late iron age and early medieval period in scotland, um so romans gave the name from the term picty, referring perhaps to their being painted with body paint or tattoos.
Speaker 1:I thought that was kind of an interesting little factoid to share yeah, that is interesting um this is just north of Hadrian's Wall down in the southwest corner of Scotland. So if you're a golfer, this is kind of golf country.
Speaker 2:Yeah and this is quite a place of pilgrimage, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he was really the first mission north of Hadrian's Wall. It was kind of no man's land north of Hadrian's Wall with the Romans, and so it did become a place of pilgrimage and there's a connection to the Isle of Iona and St Columba and that whole era of the growing monastery there. But the thing that I thought was cool, lisa, was he was known for miraculous healings and something that was called encircling prayer.
Speaker 1:And so he would come with his stick, his staff. He lived like a hermit in the corner of a, in a cave near a place called Whithorn, and he would actually take his stick and draw a circle around the livestock and say prayers and he would call for the safety of all those things which were inside of his circle.
Speaker 1:And that was something that he did, and what was the prayer? Oh Lord, like St Ninian, let us become torchbearers of your word, bringing light into darkness. But he was a big preacher of healing through presence, nature and prayer. And so, even though he kind of lived a hermit's life and way out there on the edge, I think he probably had a greater impact than we realize, because people went to see him and people received prayer from his devotion and then they went back into england and took the gospel and the holy spirit with them from that. So there's still some practices like praying for livestock and things which I'm sure come from from ninian yeah, I would imagine.
Speaker 1:So yeah so saint ninian. I guess that's monday or tuesday that that we celebrate saint ninian on the 16th. Yeah, yeah and then, uh, the next day is saint cyprian saint cyprian. Now we go from. We go from southern scotland to northern africa.
Speaker 1:Scotland to Northern Africa, North Africa similar time period a little bit earlier. Saint Cyprian was in 258, and he was the Bishop of Carthage and he really was a pivotal figure in the early church. I know at the Academy we talked a little bit about this period, developing theological ideas and writing it down, and he was a martyr. He was actually murdered at the hands of the Romans during what was called the Valerian persecution and it was because he refused to make sacrifices to the gods, the Roman gods and he was actually beheaded.
Speaker 1:He was the first bishop martyr in Africa.
Speaker 1:But you know, I made some notes about him because he was born into a wealthy pagan family and he was a lawyer and a teacher before he became a Christian when he was in his 30s, and he actually led the reconciliation of Christians who had lapsed during what was called the Decian persecution, and so one of the things that's interesting is he was a real big early advocate for something called penance and restoration for people who had basically rejected Christianity because they had to save their necks.
Speaker 1:You know there was a lot of if you don't renounce your faith, they're going to kill you, and so there was a lot of this going on, and so people would renounce and then they would feel really bad about that, and so he led this effort to help people find their way back into the church. And what was? I pulled a quote from him you cannot have God for your father if you do not have the church for your mother. If we are the sons of God, let us be lovers of peace. So I think he's known really for healing through forgiveness, through the unity of the church, and also for courage, because he got murdered and so a lot of people talk about Cyprian when they talk about restorative justice and things like that.
Speaker 1:Truth and Reconciliation Week is this week in Canada, 10 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Report inada. Um, I don't know if you remember the stories there about school and forcible taking of something like 150 000 kids. Pretty horrific story of of uh colonial colonialism yeah and so this truth and reconciliation commission?
Speaker 1:um, they have a week each year, and it happens to be on the same week as you celebrate St Cyprian, which is very fitting, not that dissimilar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from South Africa, which is more widely known from 1995 with Archbishop Tutu and all the things that happened there with the new president Mandela who was recently freed, and so it's all about forgiveness and finding your way back to the right relationship with God.
Speaker 2:Which is something we do see in our hubs, isn't it? People wanting to receive prayer for forgiveness to help with their healing.
Speaker 1:We carry a sack full of stuff and I'm going to talk about that at the next academy. We're going to explore a little bit more about how to find a way to let God carry some of that burden. So let's go from North Africa to Germany. So we've gone from Southern Scotland to North Africa. Now we're in the heart of Western Europe, and the century is the 1100s, the 12th century. And St Hildegard of Bingen Isn't that a great name, Hildegard? You don't hear many Hildegards born these days.
Speaker 1:It's one of those great old names so who were they like?
Speaker 2:what was their? Uh no, I was gonna say genre. Genre is not really the right word like tell us a little bit about them well, you tell me.
Speaker 1:Then read some of these notes and inspire me with wow, because hildegard deserves to have a woman speaking her truth to the podcast.
Speaker 2:I think what's interesting here. So you saying, uh, a mystic, composer and doctor of the church. Um, I'm intrigued by what that means, chris, because those words all seem a little bit unfamiliar for me.
Speaker 1:So she was an abbess which is kind of the it's the female equivalent of an abbot. So she was an abbess which is kind of the it's the female equivalent of an abbot. So she was the head woman at the nunnery oh okay. So a convent would have someone who's in charge. So she's the boss.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A mystic is somebody who is known to have had visions, mystical experiences. They heard the voice of God, and so she wrote a lot of this down and you can read. I've got a book on my shelf from St Hildegard. She wrote down some of her visions where she felt God was telling her some things. The cool thing is she not only was a mystic, she also really loved music and was a composer, and so we actually have some of her early music. And she's known as a doctor of the church. That's a title that's given by the church to kind of recognize her scholarship that she was actually very, very intelligent and a learned person. So you have people who are known as doctors of the church because of their scholarship and the contribution they make with their writing and their education. So she trained up loads and loads of other people who, and then they grew the church and deepen the gospel.
Speaker 2:She sounded like a really interesting and influential person.
Speaker 1:She's. She's actually I mean, it's kind of an interesting collision of worlds but she grew up in this place called Bermerschein in Germany, which it's near the town of Alzey, which is the region that's usually known as Rheinhessen when people pull it up on their maps or something history. But the thing about it that I find kind of neat is that it's really close to Worms, which when a lot of English people look at it they say worms. Is there a place called Worms? But the Diet of Worms is the famous you know again, right near where Hildegard lived and served God All these years later. So what is that? 12, 13, 14, 300, 400 years later, in 1521, you have Worms, or Worms is the place in Germany where they held the great Diet of Worms, which was Emperor Charles V, who called the Diet of Worms, basically to get this guy named Martin Luther, who was a monk who had just nailed up a bunch of theses on the church door to come and stand before the emperor and answer for it.
Speaker 1:You know it's like you gotta. What do you mean saying all these things? You're, you're a heretic yeah so, so we know of forms more for martin luther, but just down the road was hildegard of bingen and, uh, the things that she did. And so you know, 342 years roughly, hildegard is doing her thing before Martin Luther gets these ideas to reform the church, and Pope Benedict canonized her in 2012. So it's not that long ago that she was canonized, made a saint and declared a doctor of the church in the same year.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting.
Speaker 1:The other thing about her that I thought was really intriguing is that she was really known for her visions, but then when she wrote, she blended theology, medicine and ecology. So when you read her writings, there's this wonderful mix of theological ideas and medicine, because, again, this is the early days of discovering how the human anatomy works and things, and she also was really into the plants and the trees and the flowers and the birds and things like that. And I did find a quote from her let's see, holy Spirit, you are the salve that purifies our souls, you are the ointment that heals our wounds, and she's known for healing through creativity, through music and through holistic wisdom. Wow, so there you go. So she's, you know, as we said, she's famous for her mystical visions, for her music.
Speaker 1:She wrote she actually wrote 70 songs, 70 liturgical songs, and she also this is good for my theater people she wrote the first known morality play ever to be written, called Ordo Virtutum. I found that random bit of information in the internet, but the that she actually wrote a morality play, um, and and I think that it's probably cool if we could find some of these songs recorded somewhere. Yeah, a cool way to um to actually celebrate her memory and um yeah, so those are our three saints for the week, our three old people, our three old people.
Speaker 2:Would those songs be ones that were the liturgical songs, be ones that people would sing now, or would you have to dig around to find them?
Speaker 1:I'll be perfectly honest I don't know, but there's lots of ancient music.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think the one thing I did see was that her music is known for sort of being soft and ethereal and mainly for female voices, and she's really one of the earliest female composers in Western music history.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things. People don't actually think hildegard of bingan and they don't think music. But um so so, yeah, maybe it's worth doing a deep dive to find out just like old gregorian chant and there's ancient music out there that you can find some groups that that do recordings of these really old pieces of music. They're usually not complex and tricky, it's not like Mozart or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, sometimes the ancient music can awaken a place within us, just because we're realizing that these musical notes were written in the 12th century and you and you go wow, somebody was writing music to go with these words from a psalm in the in in the 1100s.
Speaker 2:I mean it's really wild, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's astounding. I think it's marvelous, I really yeah, it really is it's like reading prayers written by a saint, you know in scotland, you know it's, it's um. It just helps me to get closer and closer to jesus, because these things simply bring us closer to the, the time of jesus walking the the earth yeah, that's, that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:so then, the other thing was that the past sunday was the feast of the holy cross, wasn't it, which is the true symbol of healing and redemption? Again, this is quite a new thing for me, chris. Can you help me and others understand what the Feast of the Holy Cross is about?
Speaker 1:So the church has always had these designated days to celebrate different things. I have a book on my shelf called Feasts and Fasts and it's basically celebrations in the calendar, so that you have this orderly way of following through the calendar, and there's some high holy days and there's some low days, and so the cross became one of these high holy days where we set a Sunday aside to remember the cross of Jesus Christ. It becomes it's not idolatrous, it's not like you're celebrating wood Today, we celebrate trees but it's the celebration and the remembrance of this symbol. It's a death penalty symbol. It's one of those weird things. I said that to someone once. I said you realize we've taken the electric chair and we've made it something that you can put on a necklace. Imagine someone wearing an electric chair.
Speaker 2:Gold pendant on a necklace.
Speaker 1:But the cross is just that. The idea of the cross is this is a place of death, but it's a place of victory. And so the church globally um, most traditional churches will celebrate it on the same day that they stop and they remember the cross as the symbol of suffering and the symbol of hope, it's the cross not being a sign of defeat but a sign of redemption. So if you look at that cross and think, oh gosh, a person died here, you're kind of missing the point of the day. Here you're kind of missing the point of the day Because the idea is that, you know, through surrender and transformation and divine love, we find resurrection, hope, and it all starts with the cross. And so I mean I'll let me give you a little aside, because I think when, when we think about the cross.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I walked the Via Della Rosa, which is the way of sorrows. It's the street in Jerusalem where you walk the way that Jesus walked on his way to Golgotha, and so I'm with a group of people and we're walking. In the first place, you come to all the different stations of the cross which you remember what happened, and you read the scripture and you're reminded that he was flogged and his clothes were taken and that he falls down and the women of Jerusalem wept. And we got to this one place. It was right after thethere's one part in in his journey to Golgotha, where he falls down, anda and an African man comes and helps pick the cross up because the burden of the cross is too heavy, and so it's one of those interesting parts of the story. And there's a chapel there, on the Via Dolorosa, commemorating this moment where the cross is carried.
Speaker 1:And you turn the corner at the street there, the road literally turns right and just as you go around this corner, there's an old, ancient rock wall that would have been the same wall that was there 2,000 years ago. So many of these places are a combination of 2,000-year-old street tiles and walls and then contemporary stuff all mixed in. You're walking through market squares and things, but you turn the corner at this one place and there's this spot on the wall. It's a very interesting, unique spot and people who have been there will will know what I'm talking about. You turn the corner and there's a handprint on a stone wall and it's about three inches recessed into the wall and it's worn and marked and the color of the stone is kind of an orangey color because 2,000 years of pilgrims have walked the way of the cross. And when they get to that corner, this is the place where the tradition tells us Jesus fell against the wall and his bloody handprint was on the wall at that spot.
Speaker 1:For 2,000 years people have come so desperate to touch the hand of Jesus and to be close to the story that pilgrims have put their hand. They haven't rubbed it. There's been no sandpaper. They haven't rubbed it. There's been no sandpaper. 2,000 years of pilgrims putting their hand against this rock wall and it is now three inches of erosion, of solid stone from hands touching the hand. Touching the hand. That was where Jesus' bloody hand was on the day he walked to Calvary.
Speaker 1:I still remember standing there and I put my hand on the wall and I said this is real, this is not a made up story. This is an actual place where a man who I believe was the son of God, walked and turned the corner and he put his hand there, and so I put my hand there and all the people that were with me, we each put our hand there, and so I put my hand there and all the people that were with me we each put our hand there. Put your hand in the hand of the. You know there's a song. And then we walk the rest of the journey to the city gate, which is where we were told in the Bible that there was a plaque hanging that had King of the Jews, Because when anyone was going to be crucified in Jerusalem, they would usually have a plaque that had their sins on them and they would nail it to the city gate.
Speaker 1:And so, as he, was exiting the city gate with his cross on, you can actually still see this place, where that would have been nailed on the wall, and you walk down the hill to the beautiful church of the Holy Sepulcher, as it is now, but back then it was just outside the gate, this rocky hill and his cross. He was nailed upon the cross and put there, and that wasn't the end of the story, thank goodness.
Speaker 1:And so, all these years later, we think about these holy people who've also had a passion and believed in the story of Jesus. We ourselves are confronted with this guy in North Africa. He believed in Jesus and he died. There's a woman who had mystical experiences and heard the voice of God in the middle of Germany. Experiences and heard the voice of God in the middle of Germany. And 300 years later, martin Luther stood up to the institutional corruption of the church and followed Jesus. And Ninian, in 400 AD, in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, is drawing circles on the ground and calling upon the Holy Spirit to come. And here we are today.
Speaker 1:And that worn wall with its hand-shaped hole, continues to grow, because the story continues to captivate the hearts of the world.
Speaker 1:And so maybe that's the purpose of our podcast is just to help people to grow and deepen in their faith and to shine like a light on a hill hill, you know, not to put their their candle under a bowl, but to let the whole world see, um, to see the hope that that we have in jesus christ yeah, there was um a quote, a thought that came up um about glimmers, and I actually saw this on instagram the other day, and it says that there's a term called a glimmer, which is the opposite of a trigger and glimmers are those moments in your day that make you feel joy, happiness, peace, gratitude.
Speaker 2:Once you train your brain to be on the lookout for glimmers, these tiny moments will appear more and more, and I think that's a really fantastic hopeful that actually we can look for these glimmers and just hearing these stories of these people, um, I think they've expressed some glimmers. They've shown the hope of christ, haven't they, uh, in their lives, and it kind of then makes you go, oh, how am I? How am I doing that? How am I living my life as hopeful in Christ?
Speaker 1:What a great way to finish the podcast. To be people that glimmer in a time like last week was kind of a dark week. It felt dark and heavy and there was war and famine and there still is, and there's troubles, but there's glimmers in the midst of it and maybe that's. The good news of this week is that we can shine. There's a passage of scripture, and I don't even know where it is right now. Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a depraved generation, we should shine like the stars of the universe. Never has that been more true, and maybe we should translate that we should glimmer we should glimmer today and tomorrow I love it.
Speaker 1:I want a shirt. I need a shirt that says glimmer oh, get it done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, design it for you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. That's really a real blessing. So, um, I think, as we, um as we close today, why don't we use a collect? Um there's a collect which is it's another one of those fancy church words cult, um collecting prayer okay, and people call them collects because there's actually a prayer set for each Sunday of the church's year.
Speaker 1:They're like set prayers that you can use if you choose to use them. I know a lot of people like free prayer, but if you have trouble finding the words for prayer, the collect is always a good go-to for an easy prayer. And I thought why don't we end today with the collect of the Holy Cross which is set for it was this past Sunday's Collect, which in more traditional churches and Roman Catholic churches they will have potentially read this prayer in the front of the church, because I think it kind of captures this notion of healing, redemption, transformation and glimmering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let me read that, and this will be our kind of closing today Almighty God, whose Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself. Mercifully grant that we who glory in the mystery of our redemption may have grace to take up our cross and follow him, who lives and reigns with you in the holy spirit. One god in glory, everlasting amen. Well, let us go forth and glimmer some more today. That's it. I'm with you. Have a have a great week and I'll see you soon. And I'm excited about, uh, all the things coming. We've got northern ireland and sweden and uh, in the united states. Gosh, it's a busy time and it's a good time.
Speaker 2:yes, it is, and uh, don't forget to like, follow and subscribe and subscribe.
