I traveled as a herdsman for several years, during which time the scrolls became a burden to me and I burned them for fuel. There were times of illness and rough challenges. Once a bear knocked me down from behind and sat on me, breathing on my neck with breath that was warm and foul as though the beast had its own feces as a meal. It left me unmolested, but I dreamed that night that it spoke to me and said that I had best go north again. I left those remote and wild parts with visions that I still return to for comfort. Those lands rumble with a large beauty of varying colors and heights. I cannot see that any religion is true that does not recognize its gods in the green wave of trees on a mountainside or the echo of a bird’s song that makes ripples on a shadowed pool. Even in the quick snap of a hare’s neck and the gleam of living in the eyes of the fox whose mouth is full of the hare’s fur, there is God, even though He is not understood. This land is full of holiness that I cannot describe. Brigit knows this. Brigit to me is the wisest of all the saints. She knows the value of ale and the comfort of poetry.

~ Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun (147-148)