NeuroDivine

Sometimes the most unexpected conversations become the doorway to something sacred.

At a recent family gathering, one of my father’s cousins pulled me aside with a spark in her eye—the kind that says I’ve just discovered something, and I need to tell someone who will understand. She and her husband have begun learning about the history of their church, Great Malvern Priory, and the stories that shaped it. Not the polished, brochure‑ready history, but the human threads: the hermit Werstan, the springs that sustained him, the hills that sheltered him, the quiet courage that seeded a community.

For many neurodivergent people, stories like these don’t sit politely in the background. They resonate. They echo. They become part of how we map meaning onto the world. A place isn’t just a place—it’s a sensory landscape, a memory‑carrier, a narrative that helps us understand our own.

Hearing her talk about the Priory’s beginnings stirred something in me too. It nudged a hymn into being—a way of honouring Werstan’s witness and the Malvern hills that held him. Writing it felt like tracing the contours of a mind that sought refuge, clarity, and purpose in the natural world. A mind that, in many ways, feels familiar.

The hymn became a way of saying:
The landscape shapes us. The stories sustain us. The quiet ones matter.

Great Malvern Priory still stands because someone once trusted the whisper of a spring, the shelter of a ridge, the call of a place that felt like home. And now, generations later, someone in my own family is rediscovering that story—and passing it on.

There’s something beautifully neurodivine about that: the way meaning travels sideways, through unexpected conversations, through the people who notice details others overlook, through the ones who feel history in their bones.

Suggested tune: Kingsfold DCM

On Malvern’s heights you called him, Lord,
where ridge and valley meet;
where North Hill lifts its steadfast spine
and springs run cool and sweet.
By St Ann’s Well he learned your grace,
your presence calm and near;
the woodland paths became his home,
his refuge from all fear.

Through danger, exile, loss, and threat
your faithful love held fast;
the Wyche’s windswept pass became
his shelter as he passed.
Yet from his martyr‑witness grew
a place of prayer and song;
and still the Priory’s ancient stones
proclaim your love is strong.

O Christ, whose glory crowns the hills
with quiet, holy fire,
renew your church on Malvern’s slopes
with courage to aspire.
Where pilgrims pause on Beacon’s rise
let living springs restore;
and teach us, as you taught your saint,
to trust you evermore.

So lead us on through shadowed ways
to hope’s enduring light;
as Werstan walked by faith alone
through danger, grief, and night.
May we find holy ground again
in every place you guide;
till all creation sings your praise
and heaven’s peace abides.

Text copyright 2026 Michael McFarland Campbell. All rights reserved.