NeuroDivine

I wrote the hymn in English first.

It came out of lived places. Hospital corridors. Strip lighting. The hum of machines. Motorways. Rain over stone. The strange ache of being surrounded and alone.

It wasn’t theory. It was my nervous system on paper.

There are days when my brain feels like too much input and not enough filter. Light presses. Sound drills. Thoughts overlap. Even prayer can feel like one more demand.

So I wrote: I rise today…

And I wrote it again.

And again.

Because repetition steadies me.

When I recognised the echo of the old Irish lorica prayers—mapping Christ before me, behind me, beneath me, above me—I felt something click. Those prayers create orientation. A perimeter. A held space.

Structure, for me, is not confinement.

It is containment.

Translating the hymn into Latin became an act of grounding. Eight syllables per line. No more. No less. I counted obsessively. Seven? Fix it. Nine? Cut it. Start again.

It wasn’t about being clever. It was about needing a grid when my mind felt like weather.

The Latin version gave the hymn bones.

But then something unexpected happened.

After shaping it into strict metre—after tightening every line until it held—I rewrote the English again. This time not freely, but as a translation of the Latin.

And the English changed.

It became leaner. Clearer. Less flooded.

The images were still there—the hospital wards, the motorway noise, the ancient stone—but they stood inside a frame.

It felt like my brain on a steadier day.

And now I’m wondering about the next layer.

If this hymn belongs to this island — its rain, its rock, its round towers and hospital wards — then perhaps it should live in the languages spoken here too. Irish. Ulster-Scots. Not as a political statement, but as an act of honour. As a recognition that prayer can cross boundaries the way wind crosses the fields.

Maybe the next challenge is to let the words find new shapes again. To feel how metre behaves in Irish. To hear how it lands in Ulster-Scots. To discover what shifts, what tightens, what blooms.

There is something profoundly neurodivergent about that impulse — the desire to see how the same truth refracts through different systems. Different grammars. Different rhythms.

The knot of grace doesn’t erase my wiring. It doesn’t make the world quieter or my body simpler.

But it does hold the threads.

And sometimes, the most healing thing is not to silence the noise—

but to give it metre.

Surgo hodie per terram,
Per paludem atque saxum,
Per imbrem caelum iungentem,
Per pectus insulae meae.
Montem tergo meo ligo,
Fontem sanctum atque iter,
Ventos super Mons Mis altos,
In luce Dei ambulo.

Surgo hodie per vias,
Per celeres telas volvo,
Per urbem densis nubibus,
Per turbam solus ambulo.
Christe, vox in aure mea,
Super strepitum meum,
Verbum vetus filum secat,
Rubus est ignis Brigidae.

Surgo hodie per imbres,
Per saxum durum Antrimi,
Per saxa mortuos signant,
Per turres rotundas altas.
Esto mecum nunc in aula,
In valetudinario,
In susurro ferri duri,
Deus quem ossa sentiunt.

Ante me, Christe, maneas,
Post me, Christe, dux meus es
Sub me, Christe, sustenta me,
Super me, Christe, semper es.
Iuxta me nunc in foro sto,
Intra me panis et vinum,
In amicis, extraneis,
Nodus gratiae manebit.

Advoco litus Skelligi,
Carmen monachorum vetus,
Codex Cenannensis sacer,
Evangelium vivens nunc.
Contra noctem hunc diem nunc,
Trinum atque Unum ligo,
Spinam, regulum et humum,
Surgo, Deus, duc me domum.

Today I rise across the land,
Through marshy bog and over stone,
Through rain that joins the earth and sky,
Through the breast of my island home.
I bind the mountain to my back,
The holy well, the path I tread,
High winds that blow on Slemish hill,
In light of God I walk ahead.

Today I rise through city ways,
Through spinning looms I turn and wind,
Through streets within the heavy mist,
Amid the crowd, alone in mind.
O Christ, a voice within my ear,
Above the noise of all my strife,
The ancient Word shall cut the thread,
The burning bush is Brigid’s fire. 

Today I rise through falling rain,
Through Antrim's stone so hard and cold,
Through markers for the silent dead,
Through towers high and round and old.
Be here with me within the hall,
Within the ward for those in pain,
In whisper of the frozen steel,
The God whom bones can feel again.

Before me, Christ, may You remain,
Behind me, Christ, You are my guide,
Beneath me, Christ, uphold me now,
Above me, Christ, You here abide.
Beside me in the market-place,
Within me now the bread and wine,
In friends and in the stranger’s face,
The knot of grace shall ever shine.

I call upon the Skellig shore,
The ancient song the monks would sing,
The sacred Book of Kells so pure,
The Gospel now a living thing.
Against the night I bind this day,
The Three in One I tie to me,
The thorn, the bird, the earthen clay,
I rise; God lead me home to Thee.