NeuroDivine

This hymn grew out of listening rather than certainty. It brings together two women who never met, yet somehow recognise one another across time and land. Saint Agatha, standing her ground in the hard stone world of Rome, and Saint Brigid, whose holiness took root in hearth-fire, field, and care for ordinary people. One knew the cost of saying no to power; the other knew the daily work of saying yes to life.

For me that meeting feels close to home. Many neurodivergent people know what it is to be asked to bend themselves into shapes that don’t fit, and what it costs to remain truthful and kind all the same. This hymn honours both courage and gentleness—the strength to stand firm, and the wisdom to tend wounds, one by one.

It imagines God not only in grand gestures, but in quiet places: in bog and birch, in roads walked slowly, in fires that warm rather than consume. As we pray or sing these words, we ask not for glory, but for mercy—for the grace to guard the vulnerable, to resist violence, and to trust that God’s light is wide enough to hold all our differences, and patient enough to meet us as we are.

O God of Rome’s first faithful ones,
whose love no sword could break,
you strengthened Agatha to stand
for truth and mercy’s sake.

Before the prefect’s marble seat
she held her ground with grace;
your Spirit crowned her steadfast heart
and shone upon her face.

Yet here in Kildare’s quiet fields
your gentle presence stays;
your whisper moves through bog and birch
and lights our pilgrim ways.

As Brigid’s fire in darkness glows,
so burned her Roman faith;
and healing rose within her wounds
like spring on Slieve Bloom’s path.

O Christ, who walked the ancient roads
where martyrs learned your peace,
teach us to guard the weak with love
and let all violence cease.

O Trinity, whose timeless light
unites all lands as one,
 let Agatha’s bright witness shine
till earth and heaven are done.

Copyright 2026 Michael McFarland Campbell.