LISTENING
for the HEARTBEAT of GOD:
A
Celtic Spirituality
by
J. Philip Newell
I have always been interested
in Celtic Spirituality but never had such a clear book interpreting
the essence of why. Luke gave me this book for Christmas in 2018 and
it immediately began to put words, history, and theology to my
innermost feelings. I have come to see that at heart, I am more a
Celtic Christian than ‘Augustine’ for I believe in man’s innate
goodness that is lost when we are separated from the God that dwells
within us. (That statement would have excommunicated me from the
church or perhaps sent me to the stake a thousand years ago!)
I am using Celtic knotwork
for my prayers, with a ‘heartbeat’ image superimposed on each.
The background will be from my photographs of nature. (OK....some of them are off the internet!) Some of the
knotwork designs I have drawn myself!
I am going to try a "Celtic Chapter Cinquain" at the end of each chapter - a brief 5 line poem that summarizes the essence of the chapter (if it is possible to do in just 5 lines!)
I am going to try a "Celtic Chapter Cinquain" at the end of each chapter - a brief 5 line poem that summarizes the essence of the chapter (if it is possible to do in just 5 lines!)
CHAPTER 1: LISTENING FOR THE GOODNESS (Pelagius)
January 7, 2019-
The most typical mark of the spirituality of the Celtic tradition apparent in Pelagius’ writings is his strong sense of the goodness of creation, in which the life of God can be glimpsed. Everywhere, he says, ‘narrow shafts of divine light pierce the veil that separates heaven from earth’ (10)
January 8, 2019
-
Much of Pelagius’ teaching can be seen to stem from the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament. He saw Christ as the fulfilment of that tradition, as the perfect exemplar of wisdom and humility. (11)
January 9, 2019
-
It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is in becoming like Christ. (12)
January 10, 2019
-
Deeper than any wrong within us is the light of God, the light that no darkness has been able to overcome. (14)
January 11, 2019
-
The ministry of the Church is to liberate and free the goodness of God that is already at the very heart of all life… (18)
January 12, 2019
-
Jesus does not invite people to become his disciples for his own benefit, but to teach and guide them in the ways of goodness.(18)
January 13, 2019
-
Wisdom consists in listening to the commandments of God and obeying them. (22)
Goodness.
God-Light,
God-Given.
Liberating,
Revealing, Serving
Part
of us from birth
Heart.
CHAPTER 2: LISTENING WITHIN CREATION (Eriugena)
January 14, 2019
-
A distinguishing feature of Celtic spirituality includes an awareness of the goodness of creation and a sense of the company of heaven’s presence among us on earth.(24)
January 15, 2019
-
All created things carry within them the grace and goodness of God. (24)
January 16, 2019
-
Within creation there is something of the presence of the uncreated, that is, God. (25)
January 17, 2019
-
Christ moves among us wearing two shoes – the shoe of Creation and the shoe of Scripture. (34)
January 18, 2019
- There is not in the Celtic way of seeing a great gap between heaven and earth. Rather the two are seen as inseparably intertwined. (26)
January 19, 2019
-
God has not created everything out of nothing, but out of his own essence, out of his very life. (35) Eriugena
January 20, 2019
-
Listen for the living Word of God in nature as well as in Scripture. (34)
 |
| (Ginger Photo of Red Columbine) |
January 21, 2019
-
All that is visible comes forth from that which is invisible; all that is seen issues from what is unseen. (35) Eriugena
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Lily Pad Lake, Elkhorn Mts. Oregon) |
January 22, 2019
-
God’s divine goodness is the essence of the whole universe and its substance. (36) Eriugena
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Powder River, Baker City, OR) |
January 23, 2019
-
Goodness is not an attribute of being; rather being is an attribute of goodness. (36) Eriugena
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Trillium, Portland OR area) |
January 24, 2019
-
Grace is not opposed to nature, but cooperates with it, restores it, or releases it’s essential goodness. (37) Eriugena
Creation.
Divine,
Seen-yet-unseen.
Praising,
Revealing, Connecting
Heaven
and Earth intertwined.
God
Visible.
January 25, 2019
-
For generations, parents had been teaching their children prayers whose origins stretched back beyond living memory. (40)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Peaks of the Dolomites, Italy) |
January 26, 2019
-
Prayers were used in the most ordinary contexts of daily life and not within the four walls of a church on Sunday. (40)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Tucson, AZ sunset from Shalom Mennonite parking lot) |
January 27, 2019
-
The life of God was viewed as being deep within Creation as well as being distinct from it. (43)
January 28, 2019
-
This tradition also includes the practice, typical of many of the Psalms in the Scriptures, of seeing our voices as joining the voice of the whole universe in giving praise to God. (46)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: ) |
January 29, 2019
-
To look to God is not to look away from life but to look more deeply into it. (48)
January 30, 2019
-
To look into the face of a newborn child is to see the image of God. (49)
January 31, 2019
-
God’s gift of grace is regarded not as planting something totally new in essentially bad soil, but as bringing out or releasing the goodness which is already present. (51)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Matterhorn, Switzerland) |
February 1, 2019
-
Death is a river that is hard to see or a place of black sorrow that is difficult to cross; the angels of God are guiding us over to a goodness of unimaginable glory. (57)
Celtic
Prayers
Almost
Forgotten
Morning.
Evening. All day long.
Passed
orally from generation to generation.
Carmina
Gadelica
Chapter 4: LISTENING WITH IMAGINATION - George MacDonald
February 2, 2019
There
is much in the Western tradition that has discouraged us from
believing and hoping that, even in the midst of terrible wrong and
evil, deeper still, buried maybe, at the core of every human being is
the image of God. (60)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Anthony Lake, Elkhorn Mts. Oregon) |
February 3, 2019
Geo.MacDonald’s
works of the imagination strove to recover the inner faculty of sight
whereby God may be seen within us, among us and in all the things of
creation. (61)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Lake MacDonald, Glacier National Park, MT) |
February 4, 2019
One of
MacDonald’s best-known novels, The
Princess and the Goblin (1872), a work that was later
profoundly to affect the spirituality of men like GK Chesteron and CS
Lewis, reflects the continuing themes of Celtic spirituality. (61)
February 5, 2019
MacDonald
and Alexander John Scott saw God as immediately present in the whole
of life in opposition to prevailing Calvanist doctrine. (62)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Elephant Heads, Hoffer Lake, Elkhorn Mts., Oregon) |
February 6, 2019
Everywhere,
Scott maintained, can be found the ladder that connects heaven and
earth, God and humanity, with angels of the eternal light ascending
and descending upon it. (62)
February 7, 2019
The image
of a staircase or ladder leading unexpectedly from the most ordinary
of contexts into an opening into the eternal was a favorite of
MacDonald’s, similar to CS Lewis’s Narnian wardrobe. (63)
February 8, 2019
The Spirit
of God is impregnated throughout the whole of creation. (64) - Scott
 |
| Ginger Photo: Skogafoss, South Coast of Iceland |
February 9, 2019
The gift of
imagination, which in a child is still uninhibited, allows creation
to be a lens through which we may fleetingly bring into
focus aspects of the eternal. (65)
 |
| (Ginger Photo of Columbines from front yard garden) |
February 10, 2019
Just as we
join creation’s voice when we give praise to God, so the movement
and color and sound of creation’s elements can be the voice to
which we listen in prayer. (66)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Mountains of Berner-Oberland, Switzerland) |
February 11, 2019
Creation is
a transparency through which the light of God can be seen. (66) -
Scott
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Unknown waterfall) |
February 12, 2019
Scott urged
us to hold a Bible in one hand but also to study God in ‘that other
volume’, namely the great and holy book of Creation. (67)
 |
| (Ginger Photos: Anthony Lake and Oregon Coast Trail forest) |
February 13, 2019
As
pervasive and fundamental as evil appears to be, the recurrent hope
in Celtic spirituality is that the darkness cannot overcome God’s
essential light. (68)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Sunset at Bandon, Oregon) |
February 14, 2019
As early as
the 1840’s, Scott contended that God is not merely present beside
the human, but IN the human. The Church in Scotland did not even
accept that God loves all people, let alone that He is the life
within all life. (70)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Cascade Pass, Washington) |
February 15, 2019
In Scott
and MacDonald, the Celtic stream of spirituality was taken into the
realms of literature, education and political concern, but for the
most part it was still a spirituality without a church, without a
clearly defined religious home. (72)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Rural church on west side of Iceland) |
February 16, 2019
It was
MacDonald’s novels that had the greatest impact in both England and
Scotland...and opened a side door for Celtic spirituality’s
re-entry into the Church. (73)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Mt. Shukskan, North Cascades, WA) |
Imagination
MacDonald
and Scott -
Challenging,
Writing, Educating
Brought
Celtic Spirituality back.
Church.
George MacLeod
February 17, 2019
The
figure who most clearly reunited the two ways of seeing, torn apart
for centuries, was George MacLeod, part of a ecclesiastic dynasty in
the Scottish church. (75)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Fall colors along Steven's Pass, Route 2, Washington) |
February 18, 2019
“We are
in touch with God every moment that we live for the simple reason
that God is life; not religious life, not Church life, but the whole
of life...God is the Life of life. (76) (G MacLeod)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Bandon, Oregon shoreline rocks) |
February 19, 2019
MacLeod was
both a Celtic mystic and a Presbyterian minister and proud of it!
(77)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Sunset off the Kona Coast, Hawaii) |
February 20, 2019
MacLeod
constantly used laughter to show others a new way of seeing,
particularly the perception that God is the Life of the world and not
merely some religious aspect of it. (77)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Hoodoos at Kodachrome Basin State Park, Utah) |
February 21, 2019
MacLeod,
quoting George MacDonald, affirmed ‘Whatever
wakes my heart and mind, thy presence is, my Lord.’ (78)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Sunset from Bandon, Oregon) |
February 22, 2019
The first
major tenet of Celtic spirituality is the essential goodness of
creation and of the image of God in humanity. (86)
 |
| (Rick Photo: Winter Wonderland atop Dooley Mountain, Oregon) |
February 23, 2019
The second
major tenet of Celtic spirituality is the belief that although
creation is essentially good, the world and each one of us is also
streaked with terrible darkness. (87)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Elkhorn Peak, Baker County, OR....View from our soon-to-be-built new home!) |
February 24, 2019
Salvation
means being liberated from the evils that dominate us in order that
our essential goodness, and the original blessing of the Earth, might
be set free. (89)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Field of poppies near Kalispell, Montana) |
February 25, 2019
The third
characteristic of MacLeod’s Celtic spirituality was his sense of
the immediacy of the spiritual realm, of God’s presence in the
whole of life. (89)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Clark's Nutcracker near campsite at Craters of the Moon Natl. Monument, Idaho) |
February 26, 2019
In G MacLeod
the stream of Celtic spirituality found new expression; most
significantly, it was an expression that came from the very heart of
the established Church. (91)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Sunrise over Swan Mts. of Montana. Flower drawing is Bitterroot, Montana State Flower) |
CHAPTER 6: Two Ways of Listening -
John and Peter
February 27, 2019
The
tragic outcome of the Synod of Whitby was not that it chose the Roman
mission of Augustine (and Peter) but that it neither made room
within the Church for both ways of seeing or declared that both were
firmly rooted in the Gospel tradition. (94)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Hayden Lake valley in the NE corner of Idaho near Yellowstone Park) |
February 28, 2019
Celtic
Spirituality is a tradition that can stand free of the four walls of
the Church, for the sanctuary of God is not separate from, but
contained within, the whole of creation. (95)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana) |
March 1, 2019
The two
traditions have often been pulled apart, but they are much stronger
together, as evidenced by the creative tension of the two crosses
side by side on Iona of St. John and St. Martin. (98)
 |
| (Internet Photo: Iona Abbey and crosses of St. John and St. Martin) |
March 2, 2019
In the area
of man’s sinfulness, we must recover a balance in our spirituality,
believing and hoping in our God-given goodness on the one hand and
being wise and alert to sinful leanings on the other. (104)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: On the trail to Ice Lake, Glacier National Park, MT) |
March 3, 2019
To combine
the two ways of seeing is to combine the LOVE of others with the law
of righteousness. (105)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Cabinet Mountains south of Libby, MT) |
March 4, 2019
The Church
was the poorer for forcing Celtic spirituality underground, so that
for centuries it survived primarily on the Celtic fringes of Britain,
among people unsupported in their spiritual life by clergy. (106)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Salt River Canyon, Arizona) |
March 5, 2019
The Church
cannot shut itself off behind four walls, but should become a side
chapel for the cathedral of God in the whole of creation; we might
then more fully rediscover that God’s heartbeat can be heard in the
whole of life and at the heart of our own lives, if we will only
listen. (107)
 |
| (Ginger Photo: Crypt Lake, Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada) |
Church
Side
Chapel.
Releasing,
Balancing, Loving.
Listen
for God’s heartbeat in ALL.
Creation.
I am finished with the book!!
