Our starting point is Lindisfarne, or Holy Island.

The island is off the coast of Northumbria and connects to the mainland by a causeway that floods at high tide. Much of its early history is known only through Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. In 635 King Oswald granted the island to Bishop Aidan to found a monastery. A cult grew around the king following his death in battle against the heathen Mercians in 642. Bede writes that people began to collect dust from where the king had fallen with which to cure sicknesses in themselves and their stock.

The Briton found that piece of earth valuable because the color and beauty he saw signified something more. The depth of color and quality of that patch of grass had moral magnitude because the earth, nature, and its workings were affects of divinity.