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A reflection and prayer to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Mark Clavier, Residentiary Canon of Brecon Cathedral.

Good morning. Every inch of earth is sacred, or so the New Testament tells us. You’re as close to God standing in a rubbish-strewn alleyway as you are kneeling before the altar in a cathedral. The veil between heaven and earth is everywhere diaphanous—or at least ought to be. That’s the thrust of Gerard Manly Hopkins over-quoted line: ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’.

If you can believe that after standing in the cramped shrine of St Melangell, then you’re a better person than I.

My wife and I visited there on a late autumn’s day. It’s an evocative place: drenched as much in Welshness as it is with holiness. Melangell is among the most pleasing of saints; a hermit venerated for sheltering a hare from hounds while a hunting party watched on in awe. We stood by her shrine prayerfully as the world outside echoed with the repeat of rifles blasting pheasants in the surrounding fields.

What are we Christians to make of such places? Few of us have the eyes of saints. We may know that every inch of the earth is sacred, but we can’t easily discern that. We certainly don’t act like that is so. But places like Melangell’s shrine remind us that when heaven and earth coincide even in the gentle action of a woman protecting a defenceless animal, then God is powerfully present…even to two visitors 1,500 years later.

On this her feast day, I can think of no better lesson as we seek to respond to an ecological crisis of human making.

God the Creator, teach us to share your creation and to care for every inch of it as holy, so that we may continue to delight in its grandeur and encounter your presence among us. Amen.