Saint Hilda's Tide Down Under

Hilda became a Christian through colonial settlers. But their form of faith, she felt, was too colonial and not indigenous. Then she met people who had embraced an indigenous form of Christianity. They humbly modelled Jesus’ ways among the people, and allowed the people to express Jesus’ presence in ways that were natural to them. Hilda lived this  humble way of following Jesus.

A split between post-colonial and pre-colonial peoples dominated her society. She was known as a merciful mother by people on both sides, who became her friends and sought her advice.

She discerned that God had given an uneducated cowherd the gift of composing and singing songs about the Creator of the earth. She refused to ‘steal’ him for the colonial style church training, which required people to learn the foreign language of Latin. She invited him to make himself at home in their extended monastery accommodation, and freed him to be himself. He became the first pop singer among the ordinary people of songs about Jesus.

People who are inspired by Hilda today seek to ‘release the song in every human heart’.

Australia: the time is ripe for new as well as old song-lines to fill the land.