“There is a township in Northumberland, England, near Alnwick and Warkworth Castle, now called Hazon (or Hazen). In early records it was written Heisende and philologists believe it was derived from Hegges ende (sofetened to Heies ende), meaning end of the hedge. To this day there are miles of hedge by the roadside in the township.”

– The Hazen Family in America by Tracy Elliot Hazen, 1947

In April of 2007 during a Google search for “daily prayer book”, I found the Celtic Daily Prayer book published by the Northumbria Community. I bought a copy, and it quickly began to transform my devotional life. It wasn’t until a full year later that I realized the “NC” was headquartered in the same county that my ancestors hail from.

Interesting.

Cool.

I made contact with the NC through their online forum, and became a Friend of the community in 2008.

In April 2010 the NC was forced to find a new location for the “mother house” when the lease expired at Hetton Hall, their location for  many years prior. Literally thousands of people around the world were praying and many were working hard in various capacities to seek a new home for “Nether Springs” (the name of the mother house). “Interesting” and “cool” quickly turned to “awe-inspiring”, “humbling” and “transcendent”on April  6th, 2010 when I received the following message from Ian Corsie of the “NC” who actually lives in Northumberland:

“I’ve been dying to pass this bit of news on to you for months, Dan – the new Nether Springs will be located at Acton House – which is only about one mile away (to the south towards Felton) from Hazon! How about that!

I hope this information will give you great joy and make you feel even more connected with the Community. We look forward to being able to introduce you and your family to the new mother house and see you walk off across the fields to Hazon. – Ian

Seriously?!

149,000,000 square kilometers of land on the planet, and the place where my ancestor, Hugo de Heisende happened to lease 100 acres of forest in 1202, also happens to fall in the same ONE square kilometer as  the home of the life-changing community which “fell into my lap” through a Google search in 2007? I didn’t even connect the two for over a year! And the community didn’t even move until a year after THAT.

Seriously?!

149,000,000 to 1 odds.

After much planning, prayer and the end of a 2 1/2 year long journey of selling my late father’s house; my wife, daughters and I will indeed have the chance to “walk across the fields of Hazon” in just over a month from now.  We will also be visiting my mother’s family’s ancestral home (which is less than 100 miles from Hazon, by the way) and many other sights in the U.K.

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