Under A Changing Sky

Listening with the mystics

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

Low Week, the quiet days after Easter, brings a liturgical lull after the intensity of Holy Week, offering a deep exhale as the church returns to itself and life settles.

Holy Week is a time for gathering, for welcoming the marginalised and the confident, the uncertain and the curious, the broken, the atheist, the agnostic.

All are welcomed into grace.

In Holy Week, we move through humble foot‑washing, descending into the lament of the cross, rising again into candlelit waiting and the fire of Easter sunrise. And then, beyond resurrection, we gently readjust to life’s familiar rhythms.

But something has changed.

Resurrection is not a single miracle consigned to our past. It is the universal pattern of life, of the seasons, of loss and renewal, death and resurrection. In the stillness of Low Week signs of new life stir, the hesitancy of blue sky, blossoms loosening on branches in early spring warmth.

And as the rhythm slows, I turn again to the mystics, resting on the 12^th century mysticism of Hildegard of Bingen and her eco‑spirituality, her conviction that the sky itself bears divine truth, that God burns in the sun and moon and stars, that creation is not backdrop but revelation:

‘I am the fiery life of the essence of God;
I am the flame above the beauty of the fields…
I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars.’

The sky, with its chameleon moods and vast unspoken presence, has offered visceral companionship in the moments that altered the course of my life, bearing witness to grief, despair, and yet hope.

In the weeks after my mum’s death, a flicker of dawn crept across the sky in scarlet and gold fingers peeling back the surface to reveal a hollow darkness. I held my breath. At nine years old, I believed in the sky’s prescience, that its contours foretold danger, devouring all I held precious.

Thirteen years on, the night my brother died, a sky heavy with heat. Pockets of light clung to a humid June night, twisting and slipping into the abyss, a horizon dissolving, my life folding unknowingly into shadow.

Later still, after my cancer diagnosis, this time a cosmic sky, a velvet canvas strewn with stars from distant galaxies. This sky cleaved open hope, hinting at life without end, and a cosmos offering more than fear.

Now, as the earth draws breath, I look upward once more, as the heavens stretch into the luminous.

Hildegard believed the sky bore spiritual truths, that stars scatter sparks of divine life, that the sun carries divine power. Radiance, she taught, is God made visible. Light itself is blessing:

‘And I saw a great light of a spherical shape,
shining with a gentle brightness…
and in that light burned a fire of great power.’

And in that lies truth.

From the chaos of Holy Week to the unhurried pace of routine, I return again to the holiness of the ordinary, the slow work of resurrection, the small mercies of beginning once more.

Perhaps this is the invitation for us in Low Week, to look up, to notice billowing clouds and blossom, ‘shining with a gentle brightness.’

And to give thanks.