The Green Heart of the Snowdrop

Kate McIlhagga was a minister and a member of the Iona Community until her death in 2002. Her intimate, insightful prayers and poems are loved and used by people far and wide for both personal and group prayer and reflection. The Green Heart of the Snowdrop presents the best of her work in one collection. It includes poems and prayers of gathering and beginning; creation and self; Advent and Epiphany; Lent and mothering; Easter and Pentecost; pilgrimage and endings and blessings.

The green heart on the underside of the tiny snowdrop flower, which so captured Kate’s imagination, symbolised for her an aspect of God’s purpose for our lives, as did so much else in her surroundings. Her passion for the integrity of creation and right relationship with the environment, in city or countryside, and with one another clearly provided inspiration for her writing. The wonderful inclusiveness of her work reflects an ecumenical outlook in the truest sense.

O God, give us a well of tears
to wash away the hurts of our lives.
O God, give us a well of tears
to cleanse the wounds,
to bathe the battered face
of our world.
O God, give us a well of tears
or we are left, like arid earth,
unsanctified.

(From ‘Lord of the Morning’)