Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm out and about daily just reflecting on things and today I'm reflecting on the lost voices of women.
I'm out on a rather mucky old art moor.
Last week the ground was absolutely rock hard and concrete with ice.
It was iced through and through and today,
Well just see if you can hear this.
Can you hear that?
I'm actually sploshing my way through a sort of boggy peaty mud on my way down to the stream which I'll take and then wind my way back home.
And today is being sparked because I've been reading back in my journal.
I'm writing my journal up as a book.
This is a journal I recorded when I was walking from Cornwall to Norfolk following the Mary and Michael energy currents.
And these currents went through different sacred sites,
Churches.
And when I was walking through Cornwall I noticed that there were many unusual saint names.
I'm used to the saints like St Paul and St Peter and St Andrew,
St Mary,
St Michael.
But the saints in Cornwall are not saints that I am aware of like St Neart or St Austell or St Just,
A great name,
St Cuby.
They're all these different saints that are from a different era.
They're called the Celtic Christians.
And it seemed to me as I was writing up my journal and reflecting on it,
I began to think,
Gosh I wonder who these people were and what happened to them.
And it seems to me as though before the Roman Catholic Church sort of swept across Europe,
There were these individuals,
Often hermits,
That would take up residence somewhere and they were seen as holy people.
And a congregation would gather around them.
People would come and seek advice or healing or mentoring.
And it seems as though the community,
The church,
Was built around eventually the saints that maybe established themselves in a particular spot.
And the two saints I was particularly interested in in the energy currents went through the churches.
One was St Creda and St Burian.
And in both of these places I passed through,
These were actually female saints.
And it occurred to me that there aren't many female saints I know of these days.
So these would have been hundreds of years ago,
Probably the first few hundred years of Christianity taking hold in Britain.
These were people that saw something spiritual and decided to live in a spiritual way.
And these were women that were seen in their own right as spiritual people and were sought out for their advice.
And it just occurred to me that there are so many voices,
And I'm particularly interested in women's voices,
But it's like women's voices over the years have been silenced.
And I love this idea of the wisdom of women and what it is that women have to offer and might say.
And I felt a real tingle and thrill when I was reflecting back on these Cornish saints,
Particularly the women,
Wondering what their lives were like and what it was like for them as women in the world,
Leading a spiritual life,
Often a life on their own,
Where they made a stand for their faith,
Their Christian faith.
What was that like?
What wisdom did they share?
And what have we lost?
So for me today,
I'm reflecting on the wisdom of women's voices and really wanting to be curious and encourage women to find that wisdom and express their voices and express and articulate what feels important for them.
So I'd love your reflections on this for you as a woman,
Or for you as a man listening to this.
I'd love to encourage women to really start to deeply listen to that inner wisdom within themselves and to find a way of expressing it in the world.
It feels as I look across this landscape,
It's quite an open and you could say bleak landscape here up on Dartmoor.
But as I look across this landscape,
I feel quite deeply stirred at the voices that we may be silenced in our culture and wondering what they might say if we were actually able to listen to them.
And I'm curious,
What would you say?
What do you feel is your wisdom to give to the world?
