Sonnet for St Constantine (March 9)

Constantine was a Cornish king with a Roman name. Retiring from kingship at the death of his wife, he became a monk and tended the monastery grist mill until his identity was revealed and he was forced to take a “more suitable job”. This didn’t suit him, so he moved to Iona and then undertook missionary journeys; one one such trip he was martyred.

I take from his story a reminder that a good life is made of many chapters and episodes – some of leadership, some of followership, some of service and some of witness. We can be decision-makers, problem-solvers, menial task-doers, spouses and servants of God all in the same life.

Constantine, king of a forgotten land,
Monkish millwright dragged from loving labor,
To many sorts of lives you put your hand:
Warlord, and judge, and husband and father.
When widowed you abandoned worldly cares
For life by mill-stream, and rumbling stones.
Not knowing your fame, all watched unawares,
Until recognition brought abbots’ thrones.
What is the crook to one who wore the crown?
Iona took you in, then sent you out,
And you died at peace on some adventure
Doing the Lord’s work: make my life so broad,
that I go to my death praising my God.

Sonnet: Saint Senan (March 8)

Senan, possibly also Saint Sennan, was the founder of monastic communities in Ireland and Cornwall, including a monastery school at Land’s End in Cornwall. Why one would found a school at the edge of the earth is hard to guess at, but — from a druid’s perspective, and perhaps a teaching one as well — it’s a great place to observe the changes in the land and the world, and to get close to nature.  He lived about 544, which puts him at the time when the Irish were busy trying to save civilization — recording all the classical learning they could find while the old Roman empire unstitched itself into a great barbarian mess.  That makes his monasteries and his schools a kind of bulwark in difficult times, and a reminder that it is better to light many lamps rather than just one, if things seem to be getting bad:

Saint Senan, wandering with book and bell,
you lit candles in a darkening time,
not for exorcising demons to Hell,
but for ensuring survival of rhyme
and sweet reason into the coming age.
Few could predict how the years would play out —
first clannish troubles, then the Saxon rage,
then Viking invasion, and English clout.
No matter: your heart lay in founding schools,
and spreading education far and wide.
Lords ignored you, for a king’s ardor cools
when he sees no wealth. Yet you were a guide
for saving what could be saved of the old,
and lighting the lamps in the dark and cold.