Saint Winifred's Beheading

Saint Winifred's Beheading

“Where’s your head at?” This is something my father asked me all throughout my childhood. Almost always when my head was somewhere it shouldn’t be. Continuing that line of thought, I’d argue that entire dissertations could be built upon contemplating the significance of just where exactly Saint Winifred’s head is at. Consider the chase. Caradog’s on the horse, sword in hand. The outside threat closes in with greater speed and force, as it often will. And Winifred was almost inside the church, wasn’t she? Her study and formal devotion to a life of faith was nearly complete. She almost made it fully in. It matters that her body collapsed just at the threshold while her head landed within the church. Recall that to the medieval Celts, the head was connected to the soul, the life force, the spiritual power of a person. So, Caradog’s outside. Winifred’s head landed inside while her body remained beyond the door. Beuno and the community are inside, and it’s from inside that they prayed for her. The well and Caradog’s fate are interesting too, aren’t they? To the Welsh and the Celts, spirituality was not confined to our thoughts, or some internal life of the mind. Fidelity to the Creator influenced creation itself. That’s why I’d argue that Winifred’s story is not merely a virtue anecdote. Her Wales was a world of mutual relationship among people, the earth, spiritual devotion, ancestry, stories, ritual and community. There’s much in our own present we’d do well to revive ourselves. Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe [https://pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Robin Hood on Whitsun

Happy Whit-Sunday! When I was growing up, Memorial Day marked the official start of the crazy season. The lake would be full-on packed, my car’s A/C would break down and there was no way I’d not be getting overtime every week until Labor Day. This one, though, had me thinking of the other holiday this weekend, and a story that I like to return to in lieu of older community gatherings. I’ve a better audio version [https://buymeacoffee.com/jameshart/extras] of this that’s far more polished if you’d like to check that out. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy this during your weekend comings and goings. Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe [https://pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Lugaidh's Son

Hear the story first, before we get to what’s below: There’s an old Anglo-Saxon word that would be helpful in a conversation such as this. We don’t know it anymore, but you can find it in the first lines of Beowulf. Þrym. We say it means something like “glory”—that’s how it’s often translated, anyway—but the real meaning is much harder to pin down because we don’t use words in the same way we once did. Instead of treating it as a concept, it’s more helpful to consider it a kind of feeling. Þrym is the sensation you get standing feet away from an entire army marching into battle. It’s also something you might feel while looking up at the Sistine Chapel. Ever meet a celebrity you were a huge fan of and get star-struck? That’s þrym for you, too. Fionn mac Cumhaill certainly had þrym; there are plenty of stories that bear that out. Me? Eh, I’m not exactly Lugaidh’s son (although in my younger years you’d probably have a hard time telling us apart). I’m more like the guy walking up the hill to talk to Fionn about Lugaidh’s managerial style—the one so unassuming and non-central to the tale that he doesn’t have a name. Not a complaint, just an observation. There’s a lot of peace in freedom in being that guy. I often wonder what I’d say if I were Fionn, though. What I might tell my younger self to help him improve his aim a little. If it were me and I had the opportunity, here are some things I’d probably say: * You’re not wrong in your assessment of the world—it’s just that you only know half the story. There are reasons why things are as they are, and no one’s the villain of their own story. So speak to the exiled hero in them; ignore the ever-present villain. * Faith doesn’t have to be an intellectual exercise. Columba got neck-deep in freezing water to recite the psalms. People thought he was a little nuts perhaps but hey, look at him now. * Your grandmother wasn’t quirky, she was right. Know the names of every flower in your yard. Regarding the animals and the birds who frequent your home, give them your own names and regard them as your neighbors. Learn how to listen to them. * This world is long on reason and short on intuition. The latter you will need to work on. It has important things to tell you that can’t be learned elsewhere. * You’re going to want to define yourself by the things you love the most. Pursue them by all means, but they can’t ever be an identity. Humans live in the Contraries, not within their definitions. * Your world lives almost entirely in Winter North with the occasional Summer South vacation. But being a human being requires learning the lay of Autumn West and Spring East. Your culture won’t take you to those places. (There’s no money in it.) * Walk barefoot more often. * Practice starving your ego. It’s helpful for getting things done, not for empathy or understanding. (Don’t worry, it’ll always come back.) * If you’re looking for some home decor, might I suggest a sign in the mud room above the front door that says “don’t judge and stop worrying so much.” * Architecture lies to you. There is no “In Here” versus “Out There.” It’s all Out There. As Gary Snyder tries to tell us, the mountain is sitting past the forests and the hills. The mountain is also hoarding acorns on the sidewalk. The mountain is pumping gas. Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe [https://pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Saint Melangell of Powys

Late Wednesday afternoon was not a time for phones or wallets. The cottonwoods were already shedding, sprinkling the air with motes as weightless as the late day sunlight. You can’t catch their linty stipples; snatch as fast or as stealthily as you like, they just pass around and through your fingers on their descent toward the creek. The whole span of the water was awash in their fluid bokeh. I don’t think I was ever aware that locust trees could smell like this. Had they always? I leaned closer to a flower to check if it was indeed their fragrance I was picking up. Their sweet traces followed me up the path as I shuffled toward the Detour. Mr. Wendell was up there, making the neighborhood rounds on his lawnmower. There’s an easy way to tell the town locals from the part-time renters and corporate homeowners: the latter two would always hire an overpriced, underpaid landscaping team to cut their grass while the locals called Mr. Wendell. He saw me and gave his standard two-finger salute as he rounded the next corner. I took the lane leading off the Detour so I could take another look at the Narnia lamp. Some people think Lucy met Tumnus by a lamppost in Aslan’s land, and certainly that’s the case, but it’s here, too. Just past the road that will take my daughter home from school. The lamp looks different in the mid-day light. I tell my daughter to go visit it after the sun sets. The time to check for fawns is dusk, I remind her, always in the dusk. The forest was as welcoming as always, and I was thankful for that. I was, however, having trouble keeping myself to myself. The prior insanities of the day kept encroaching onto the lane, insisting they walk with me. Sometimes that’s okay. It’s important to let them have their say from time to time. But they’ve been altogether too chatty as of late and I was here to seek some solitude. I didn’t get it. In my first few crumpled leaf-brown footsteps down the trail, I came across a robin. I love robins. Their unfinished songs remind me of early spring mornings in the house that grew me up. I’d wake to robin calls and look out my window. Watch the bright spring sunlight throw a kaleidoscope across the dewy leavings of the previous night’s frost. Robins were the sound of cold kitchen mornings and my mother smiling at the window because it was Saturday. The robin doesn’t fly away, though. He forages in the leaves, takes two steps forward and stays there. I take a step myself, careful to give him space. Again he picks at the ground, hops forward along the path and again I follow. It goes on like this for ten yards or so. Twenty, then thirty. He turns his head, then starts again, always down the path and never off it. Sixty yards becomes a hundred. He and I share the walk for the better part of a mile. He only flies away when we reach the terminus: another robin screeches and reminds him of their avian property lines. My friend flies toward the water and I hope he knows that I owe him now. We’re travel companions, he and I. Some say Saint Melangell’s story is just an allegorical teaching tool meant to explain her spiritual significance and based on a Welsh fairy tale. It’s not meant to be taken literally. What I say is that the more I encounter this kind of flat attention, utterly insisted upon throughout our world’s housing developments, strip malls and offices, the more I understand why she sought her green martyrdom in the first place. Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe [https://pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Fionn and the Old Man's House

As I mentioned at the start, this one’s a real beauty of the Fenian Cycle. So much to unpack in just a few short minutes. The story does of course take place in an older Ireland, before Christianization. Some folks might be quick to judge the story on those grounds. I understand the impulse, but some things I’d point out before we toss it out: * It’s precisely because of Irish Christians telling these stories to themselves over the years that they were able to survive to the present day. They obviously saw a value in them beyond entertainment, or like other entertainments, they’d have been forgotten as soon as we figured out television. * These stories span the length of Christianization in Ireland. In fact, they tell that story explicitly. Ossian’s discussions with Saint Patrick are hard not to read as a discussion between Pagan and Christian Ireland, trying to get to know one another. Honestly, I wish I was privy to what they discussed when I was younger; it would have helped clarify a lot of confusion with questions I had myself. * For this story, as with any good poetry, the images are the thing. My master’s advisor warned us once that there will come a day when you realize that who you see in the mirror is not the fullness of who you are. That you’re going to wonder where those other yous went. If they’re still in there somewhere, behind who you’re facing now. The first time that happens is roughly how this story makes me feel. For folks of a Christian persuasion, it’s my personal feeling that belief doesn’t hide us from that moment, but puts it into a better context. Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe [https://pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]