The Hedera
The hedera fleuron — from the Latin hedera, meaning ivy — is one of the oldest typographic ornaments still in use today. Encoded as Unicode U+2767 (❧), it descends from Roman stonework and the hand-copied manuscripts of the medieval scriptorium, where scribes used it to guide the reader through sacred texts. We chose it as our mark because it holds, in a single character, six layers of meaning we believe in — six threads woven into one quiet, persistent emblem.
Eternal life — the evergreen promise
Ivy is evergreen. Through the harshest winters — when the maples have surrendered their leaves and the meadow has gone brown — the ivy stays alive. It clings to old stone walls and silent trees, and it stays green. Early Christians, watching this small persistent miracle, recognized it as a living emblem of the resurrection. They carved it into the walls of their churches and onto the lids of sarcophagi.
Where death strips the world bare, the ivy remains. It is a quiet witness — older than any of us — to the promise that death does not have the final word. The mark we carry is, first of all, a promise: that what looks like winter is not the end of the story.
"Death is swallowed up in victory." — 1 Corinthians 15:54Faithfulness — clinging to what endures
Ivy grows by clinging. It wraps itself around what is solid — a tree, a wall, a trellis — and it refuses to let go. Its tendrils anchor into stone. Once it has chosen a thing, it stays. This stubborn, patient growth is why the ancients took it as an emblem of fidelity: to a spouse, to a covenant, to a faith.
In a world that prizes the new and the easily abandoned, the ivy makes a quieter argument. It says that lasting things are made by long clinging — by faithfulness across seasons. The hedera is the mark of a love and a faith that will not be shaken loose by weather.
"Whither thou goest, I will go." — Ruth 1:16God's provision — thriving in hard places
Ivy needs almost nothing to flourish. It grows in shade. It thrives in poor soil. It pushes up through the cracks of abandoned walls and along forgotten foundations — exactly where conditions seem least hospitable. It is a small, daily picture of providence: that life can be sustained in the leanest seasons, and often is.
We believe healing and nourishment are not luxuries reserved for comfortable families in comfortable times. They are available to every household, in every season, through what God has already placed in His creation. The hedera reminds us that the soil does not need to be perfect for something good to grow.
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." — Matthew 6:28Ancient knowledge — the scribe's mark
Long before the printing press, before paper was common, before most people could read at all — there were scribes. In Roman stonework, in medieval scriptoria, in the illuminated manuscripts of monasteries, scribes used the small leaf-shaped hedera as a paragraph divider, a quiet visual rest that guided the reader through sacred knowledge. You can find it in the Dead Sea Scrolls' typographic descendants, in the Codex Sinaiticus tradition, and in the first edition of the King James Bible.
To carry the hedera, then, is to carry a tradition: the patient work of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. That is, at its heart, what an educational program should exist to do. We did not invent this mark. We are simply the next ones to copy it forward.
"One generation shall praise thy works to another." — Psalm 145:4Healing from creation — Hedera helix
The connection between mark and mission is not merely symbolic — it is botanical. Hedera helix, English ivy, has been used medicinally for centuries. Its leaves, properly prepared, have served as an expectorant for respiratory ailments, an anti-inflammatory for joint pain, and a poultice for wounds. Modern herbal pharmacopoeias still list it.
It is, in other words, a plant you might actually encounter while foraging — wild, freely given, and waiting to be understood and used wisely. Genesis tells us that God gave us "every herb bearing seed." Biblical herbalism is not a fringe idea; it is older than medicine as an industry. The hedera is our small bow to that older inheritance.
"Every herb bearing seed... to you it shall be for meat." — Genesis 1:29The forager's vine — wherever you walk
Ivy is not a cultivated garden plant. It is wild. It runs along forest trails and threads up the sides of old stone walls. It carpets the forest floor in shaded woods. It is the kind of plant you start to notice when you are walking with your children, basket in hand, learning together to see what God has already placed in the world around you.
That is the life we want to teach. Less screen, more soil. Less algorithm, more observation. The hedera is the forager's vine — common, resilient, useful, and everywhere — and it ties our name to the life we believe a child should grow up inside of.
"The heavens declare the glory of God." — Psalm 19:1Six meanings, one mark. Six threads, one rope. Eternal life and faithfulness; provision and ancient knowledge; healing and the forager's vine. The hedera holds them together quietly, the way ivy holds together an old wall — without announcement, without effort, simply by clinging and refusing to let go.