An unappreciated history

The shy has returned to being overcast today. I posted the YouTube link to WhatsApp when I woke up at eight, sent Amanda a birthday greeting, then got up for breakfast. Clare went into town shopping and I worked on completing this week's 'Sway' before driving to Danescourt to give Communion to Sandra. 

By the time I got back Clare had returned with three pounds of very ripe strawberries from the Market, and was cooking sausages for our lunch. After we'd eaten, we sat at the kitchen table together and detached the fruit from their greenery, ready for cooking. The house was graced for a while by the sweet scent of strawberry jam being made.

I went for a walk around Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields, from the riverside path through the woods, I saw an egret on the opposite side and nearby a pair of goosanders which seems to be fishing often this far up river this year. Maybe they've established a new nesting site a half a mile further up than in previous years. Though most of the blackberries have been picked or withered away, there are still some that are ripening now and evening a sprinkling of flowers in the briar patches. I've not noticed this pattern before, but it may be due to the unusual summer weather conditions I guess.

When I returned, Clare was eating an early supper hastily as she was going out to another choir rehearsal at seven in Conway Methodist church with the local community choir. After eating I settled down to read, but then realised that the second half of Dan Snow's documentary 'How the Celts saved Britain' was being shown on BBC Four, this time telling the story of Saint Columba, the rise of Iona and evangelization of Scotland and Northumbria. The story of Saint Aidan and the founding of the missionary monastery on Lindisfarne was old. Very timely for viewers in West Cardiff Ministry Area, wondering about the place where Mother Frances will be working from now on. 

The story ended with the Synod of Whitby, and the end of the wave of Celtic Christian missionary initiative which transformed anarchic violent pagan Anglo Saxon Britain into a cultured civilized society. The dispute over the adoption of the Latin date for Easter as opposed to the Celtic, was resolved when King Oswiu adopted the Latin date, and Latin rite liturgical worship prevailed over the more diverse Celtic tradition which had much in common with Eastern Orthodoxy. After Whitby, the influence of Iona declined, Viking incursions decimated Celtic monasteries in Ireland and northern Britain. 

As Dan Snow reflected in conclusion. The Celts christianized the English, and then the English turned away from those to whom they owed their civilisation and their faith. Western Latin Christianity prevailed throughout the British Isles and Ireland thereafter. The Celtic fringes, as well as their local sanctuaries and saints, have reclaimed their own ethos and languages for worship, though somewhat overshadowed sadly, by dominant English culture and its Latin western roots.

After the programme, I read 'Battle for Spain' for an hour, and started nodding off, tireder than I realised.