Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm sitting on a greystone right beside the Ludbrook.
It's a stream that rushes down off the hillside here on Dartmoor all the way down eventually to meet up with the river and follow its way into the ocean.
And today's reflection follows on from yesterday.
There are three days we're looking at.
Yesterday was marking the festival of Samhain.
We call it Halloween.
But reflecting on that today,
I'm reflecting on All Saints Day and tomorrow it will be All Souls Day.
So All Saints Day is a Christian festival.
But if you know me,
Then you'll know that I have a foot in the camp of Christianity.
I was raised a Christian,
But also deeply moved by the natural world and the cycles and seasons of the natural world.
So for me,
These three days,
Yesterday,
Today and tomorrow,
Are a mixture of the Christian and the natural world and new rituals that I am creating and bringing to life to mark this time of year.
So the question to reflect on today are what qualities are you being called to honour?
And I am looking at a couple of saints as I reflect on the qualities that I feel I'm being called to honour.
Now you might look at saints that you know of if you're a Christian or you might look towards people that inspire you.
What are the qualities that you see in others that you are being called to honour?
I'm going to tell you about two Celtic saints and they're quite close to my heart because when I walked last year through Cornwall as I started my pilgrimage,
Seven-week pilgrimage,
I walked through two places St.
Burian and St.
Creda,
And these two places are named after female saints,
Celtic saints,
Saints that were on the land before the Roman Catholic Church swept across the land.
So let me start with St.
Burian,
And she is thought was the daughter of a king of Ireland,
So a princess,
And she crossed the water,
The Irish Sea,
From Ireland to Cornwall and set up at this place,
Which was then subsequently named after her,
St Burien.
She set up an oratory,
So this meant she just set up somewhere that she could minister from.
She was a healer and she was also a hermit.
And for me,
I want to just reflect on the qualities that I imagine she had.
Of course,
She's lost a history and there is no real written record of who or what she was.
But I'm imagining that as a hermit she would have looked inwards.
So I want to honour those qualities in me,
That ability to be on my own,
To reflect inwards and to reflect on who I truly am.
She was also a healer.
Now St Burien was a healer,
A physical healer.
For me,
I see that the healing in me comes from my ability to listen to others,
To be present,
To listen to myself,
To listen to my intuition and wisdom,
And be moved by a spiritual essence.
So for me,
This sense of being a healer manifests more in the way that I can connect and be present to others.
So from St.
Birian,
I'm getting this sense of looking inwards and also being a healer through my listening.
And then there's St Creda,
And the church at St Creda is one of the places I visited.
And she created a sisterhood of nuns on the banks of the River Fowl.
And I feel very drawn to this idea of gathering women,
Women who are moving into their third chapter of life,
The next chapter,
A transition,
Moving towards elderhood,
Who feel that life is shifted and is different and are noticing this rise of intuition and wisdom within them.
So for me,
It's about connecting with these wise women,
These women that are coming into their own,
That have so much to offer,
But there isn't much in our society that provides an outlet for the gifts that these women have.
So from St.
Creda,
I'm taking this idea of creating a sisterhood,
Of bringing women together.
So the question for you today are what qualities are you being called to honour?
For me,
From Saint Burian,
It's about looking within.
It's about being a healer through my listening.
And from Saint Creda,
It's about creating a sisterhood,
About connecting and supporting other women.
So let me know your reflections on that question.
What qualities are you being called to honour,
Whether you're looking towards the saints or whether you're looking to those people that inspire you?
And for me today,
By this stream,
I'm going to just honour today and the ritual I feel drawn to create today.
Is to dab some of the water of the stream on my forehead as I make my way back home.
But what qualities are you being called to honour?
Let me know your reflections.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow.
