Ancient Gifts for Modern Times
The Celtic Spirituality Conference 2010 was led by the Revd John Bell of the Iona Community who focused on three key themes of Celtic spirituality that can be used to transform today’s Church in positive ways:
- Nature should be nurtured so that it fulfils its part in praising God.
- Scripture should be lived experientially.
- The Church is a world-wide phenomenon.
“Celtic spirituality has developed an identity and is proving hugely attractive to many people as they explore and live the spiritual Christian experience,” he said.
“People are looking for a simpler way of understanding and the Celtic tradition may appeal because the fragmented nature of what we understand resonates with the way we experience our lives today.”
Mr Bell emphasized the participation of the laity in living a daily Christian witness and the anti-establishment form that Christian witness may take.
“When we look at the untidy stories that Jesus tells in the Gospels, his actions go against conventional wisdom and the established order and are often more in tune with the Celtic understanding of spirituality with its room for mysticism – and with our own way of thinking,” he concluded.
Mr Bell also considered the dynamic way in which the Celtic Church encountered the many aspects of God within its largely oral tradition, where images, books or sculptures were few, if precious. “The fragments that remain of early Celtic liturgy and Christian texts are notable for the many different views of God that they present. In the Book of Kells, Christ is represented as a red-haired, Celtic figure,” said Mr Bell. He pointed out that the absence of dominant images was good in allowing different aspects of the divine nature to be appreciated. “Christ is often presented today as either a babe in arms or a figure on the Cross, yet the Christ of the Gospels is gregarious and social, a storyteller, a teacher and so much more.”
The Celtic tradition has a strong appreciation of the relationship which God has with nature: “God addresses the mountains and asks them to be a witness to what He is saying to the people or doing. We find in the prophets that God forbids nature to deliver its good things if man has been cruel to nature,” said Mr Bell.
“The Celtic tradition says if God can enter into a relationship with nature then man also has to enter in to this relationship. Listen to St Patrick calling on the natural order to surround him as partner and defender:
“I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea around the old eternal rocks.”
An acknowledgement of the Church as truly global is the third aspect of the Celtic tradition that Mr Bell emphasized as being particularly important for today’s Church as it engages with the challenges of our world.
“The tradition of Celtic spirituality acknowledged the universal nature of the Gospel. It is a spirituality that thrives on engagement. If there’s nothing in it that directly challenges consumerism, or the Middle East, or Afghanistan, or the marginalization of people who are different in society, or challenges the cobwebs in the mindsets of the Churches, then it’s not Christian spirituality as Christ offered it,” he concluded.
Clergy robed for Eucharist - From left, Rev. Kiran Young Wimberly, Rev. Grace Clunie, Rev. John Bell.
