Finding Your Voice

The story of Caedmon, the first documented poet to compose in the English language in the late sixth century, is about an ordinary man whom God took aside from his busy everyday activity and from his own limited sense of who and what he was, and spoke to him in the quiet of the night.

Caedmon worked as a lay brother in the community of Abbess Hilda of Whitey. The singing of psalms and hymns played central role in the community, and at a feast it was an accepted tradition that all should sing in turn.

It bothered Caedmon so much that he knew no songs and could not sing that whenever this began, he would quietly slip away.

Once frustrated by his inability to contribute to the songs of praise to God, he left the gathering and went to the stables, falling asleep among the horses.

As he slept, he dreamt that someone addressed him by name saying, “Caedmon, sing me something”. He answered “I cannot sing” that is why I left the feast and came here…. The voice insisted. “Nevertheless you must sing”.

Feeling strangely compelled to obey, Caedmon asked, “What shall I sing” And was told: “Sing. His hymn was new, pouring from his heart: “Now we must praise Heaven kingdom’s guardian/ the maker’s might and his mind’s thoughts, the work of the glory-father as he established the beginning of every wonder. He first shaped for men’s sons. Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator; then middle earth mankind’s guardian, eternal Lord afterwards prepared for men the earth the Lord almighty”

Walking from his sleep, Caedmon remembered all that he had sung in his dream. He went to his superior and told him of the dream. His superior took him to Hilda, who recognizing the grace of God at works, instructed Caedmon to set aside his secular clothes and to take monastic vows.

She received him into the community and ordered that he should be instructed in sacred history and the scriptures. He learned all he could by listening to the lesson, and then”…. Memorizing it and ruminating over it, like some clean animal chewing the cud, he turned it into the most melodious verse, and it sounded as sweet as he recited it that his teachers become in turn his audience”

He composed more verses in the same manner, “praising God in a worthy style”, and went on to become a creative and dynamic force in the spiritual community a poet and a beloved teacher.

It was Caedmon’s fear of not measuring up – maybe to his standards or to those of those around him – that held him back. It was his trusting the ‘voice’ that allowed him to make that first attempt.

Even if only just one of Caedmon’s poems survives, that it is still in publication some 1,300 years after his death and continues to touch us, speaks of how even a small legacy can have a huge impact.

Caedmon’s story tells us too of our ordinary selves, afraid to find our true voice; but by heeding the call of ‘the other’ – divine prompting, - we can give voice to out previously withheld beautiful creativity  - whatever shape or form this takes.