Saint Modumnoc - 1998

A few years ago I was invited to spend some time in Wales. One day I was introduced to a poet, and we spent hours tramping the commons area around "Arthur's Seat." I had my dowsing rods along, and was sharing earth-healing energy and information with my new friend. It was an amazing day, and so full I was quite exhausted. In fact, I was somewhat tired to begin with, having stayed up late watching videos with my hosts. After they retired I had held out until three a.m., pulled to re-watch Brother Sun, Sister Moon - and I had found myself suddenly bursting into tears during parts of it.

Those episodes of bursting-into-tears during movies about saints of any religion, I've come to realize, are calls from my soul. "Pay attention!" So - I'd been called the night before, and the next installment of the call was soon to materialize.

After a full day of traipsing the commons, my poet friend and I got into his Land Rover. He was driving us along those narrow country lanes the way the Welsh do: very fast, ready to swerve into the bushes should another vehicle with a bigger cow-catcher come around the one-lane curve head-on. I can laugh about that now. That style of driving definitely kept me awake, tired as I was. My friend very much wanted to show me just one more thing: the site of some ancient healing springs. Wearily, I consented.

We drove up to park outside a fenced churchyard. The moment we stepped inside the gate, my arms felt a little strange: sort of lit-up and buzzy, from fingertips to elbows. I mentioned this to the little old lady who was greeting people by the door of the stone church. People in the British Isles are fairly cheery about psychics, intuitives, and healers, whereas, in the more puritan USA, people like me are thought of as odd or exotic. In the British Isles they're simply trained and licensed, and put to work helping folks. So I was not worried about mentioning the strange feelings around my forearms to this lady. And she was not the least bit put off by my words. She simply said, "Oh! Maybe that's the old Vicar."

I must have looked puzzled. She explained that the Vicar had passed away some thirty years earlier; but he used to keep bees, and would sometimes walk around with "bee gloves" - with bees covering his forearms, that is. As soon as she explained this, the funny feeling went away. I'd been given my official "welcome" by the old Vicar and his bees.

My poet friend took me down the little hill to the ancient healing springs. He said they'd been used long, long before the Christian church was built on the land. I ended up doing some more earth-healing around the energy of the springs, removing ancient curses and so forth.

Soon the little old lady was motioning us to come up to the church. My friend was not happy with that prospect, since he had negative feelings from other lives when he'd been persecuted by religious torture. I had some such memories, but I also am an ordained Christian minister and a refuged Buddhist, and had quite positive feelings about the church, especially after the Vicar's warm bee-welcome. So up to the church we went, just as a local ceremony was about to begin.

The moment I stepped into the church, my hat got too small for my head. I know that sounds strange, but the intuitives among you will easily relate to this experience, especially if you're empaths like me! The hat I'd been wearing on and off for the last three days suddenly felt so small and tight I had to take it off. Somebody big - BIG - was merging with me.

My friend and I found a seat in an ancient rough-wood pew near the front, and the service began. I had a bit of a hard time paying full attention to the service, since the spirit who had merged with me was so intriguing. It was male, a large man, and a monk. I could feel the rough robe, and the haircut - the monk's tonsure. And more than that, I could feel that this was a saint. How did I know that? This is how: the woman leading the service said something like, "You might want to consider the trials you've been through earlier in your lives - notice how they've strengthened you for other later tests and trials...", and the monk, the saint, who had merged with me, glowed. I could feel that glow so hugely and so intensely, that I had a terrible time not bursting into tears! The glow was quite lovely, but really overwhelming. It happened several times.

As the service went on I found out who this saint was. The youth group put on a little play about an ancient monk, one of the very earliest Christians in the British Isles, Modumnoc by name. Modumnoc had been in Wales, and then God called him back to Ireland. He set out in his coracle to cross over to Ireland, and halfway over he was joined by a swarm of bees. When he set up his mission in Ireland, he taught not only basic Christian principles, but beekeeping. As I heard that, of course I wondered whether perhaps St. Modumnoc had influenced the old Vicar!

After the service was over, I found the woman who had been leading the event, and told her about the monk and the glow. In a situation like that, it's not considered appropriate to get excited about such happenings, since that excitement may lead to spiritual egotism. I understood that, and was grateful for this woman's sensible grounding energy. She helped me come back-to-earth. I asked her what denomination this tiny village congregation in this ancient stone chapel was. She told me they were "Third-Order" Franciscans.

AH! St. Francis - Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and the tears of the call the previous evening.

I inquired further, and she explained that Franciscans now fall into three categories: First-Order Franciscans are those who lived and worked with Saint Francis himself. Second-Order Franciscans are the order founded by Francis, and taken over by the Catholic hierarchy. Third-Order Franciscans are of the ordinary people: not ordained by the church so much as directly called by the saint.

That day, in a sudden flash, I considered my life so far - including the book I'd been reading on the plane over from the USA. It was a book about the Atlantean metaphysical way of seeing / being in the world. With all my shamanic studies, trainings, and practice, and rememberings from past lives, I comprehended that way of seeing things easily. But, I realized, after my call from St. Francis and my anointing by St. Madomnoc, that the Atlantean way of thinking and analyzing no longer engaged my heart's desire. In this life, I realized, I wanted the gift of the simplicity that comes from complete devotion to the love of God-in-all-beings. Because I had been allowed to feel what it feels like to be a saint, now nothing else but to travel the path towards sainthood would do.

I understood, during that merging with St. Modomnoc that the reason holy people don't need much in the way of material stuff, is because every teen-tiny good thing feels so incredibly great - indeed, so overwhelmingly fine and beyond that - way, way beyond - that to have too much stuff is unbearable. Who needs it?!