I’m Michelle of Heavenfield, that is my name and I’m sticking to it. It has a nice medieval ring. I’m just a Gen-Xer trying to find her way through a very busy life, juggling jobs, church, and graduate school again, in pursuit of a diversion here, on a perpetual pilgrimage to Heavenfield.
About Heavenfield
Heavenfield is a real place, a place where heaven and earth met on a summer day in 634 as King Oswald dedicated his people to God and marched upon his enemy beginning the Golden Age of Northumbria. It was this moment that the venerable Bede chose as the fulcrum of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the moment when the English became the people of God. As he wrote,
“Oswald, when he was about to engage in battle, set up the sign of the holy cross, and on bended knees, prayed God to send heavenly aid to His worshippers in this dire need…This place is called in English Heavenfield (hefenfelth), and in Latin Caelestis campus, a name which it certainly received in days of old as an omen of future happenings; it signified that a heavenly sign was to be erected there, a heavenly victory won and that heavenly miracles were to take place there continuing to this day.”[1]
Heavenfield feels like the right name for this space. Here, the topics up for discussion are early medieval northern Britain, church history and spirituality, and the continuing commemoration of the early medieval saints and their spirituality today.
[1] McClure and Collins, eds. 1994. Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford. p. 111-112.
Heavenfield 