wfn.org | Presbyterians explore Celtic ways of faith

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Note #6349 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

26-January-2001
01027

Presbyterians explore Celtic ways of faith

Students find a "practical" brand of spirituality in ancient culture

by Alexa Smith

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- About 30 Presbyterians came here recently to learn
how the ancient Celts imbued daily life on the Western Isles with religious
meaning.

	The occasion was a weeklong class in "Celtic Spirituality" offered by
Columbia Theological Seminary's program in spiritual formation.

	The students learned, for example, that a Celt who banked a fire at night
was doing more than just keeping coals glowing for the morning: she was also
performing a ritual that symbolizing the rekindling of one's spiritual life.

	According to the Rev. Brad Kent, the course instructor, who also is
associate for spiritual formation at the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s
national office in Louisville, the ancient practice of "smooring" was an
exercise in tending to the divine flame within all of life.

	First the red-hot coals were arranged in three roughly equal piles,
representing the Holy Trinity, and covered with peat. The next morning the
coals were fanned to relight a fire that, tended carefully, might burn for
generations.

	Celtic mothers carried smoldering coals to the hearths of their newly
married daughters.

	"Some talk of fires that have been burning for a hundred years," Kent told
his listeners, "by bringing what's under cover to new life, restored."

	Kent pointed out that, because the Celts believed in the essential goodness
of creation, salvation meant liberating the divine spark within human beings
and restoring blessing to the earth.

	So the ritual, for all its practicality, had a deep theological meaning.

	That's what the students in the course were looking for: Theology, yes, but
theology with a decidedly practical bent. Theology they could use in their
daily lives. Theology that, they would say, isn't often taught in churches
or seminaries.

	 "The very oral tradition (among the Celts) is catechesis," said the Rev.
Lisa Mullen, of High Point, NC, a first-year student in the seminary's
certificate program who said she enrolled in the class in hopes of giving
her own spiritual life a jump-start, and of finding ways to deepen the
spiritual practice of her 1,100-member congregation.

	 Celtic ritual is helpful, Mullen said, because it teaches the tradition
through daily practice and gets beyond academics.

	"As the mother is stirring the fire, she's singing," she said. "When she
sends her child out, she prays ... and does so all through the day."

	The idea is that such prayers literally encircle loved ones with the power
of the angels, the saints and the apostles, as well, as a Christ and a
Trinity that are so immanent that its grace is above, below, beyond and
around the prayed-for person.

	The prayers are recited while turning in a full circle, arms stretched out,
to encircle oneself with the spoken words.

	"This is beautiful," Mullen said.

	She said she thinks "circle prayers" of this kind might strike a chord in
church youth who are just beginning to form ideas about the Trinity and the
spiritual realm.

	Practical tools like that are what churchgoers are searching for, course
registrants told the Presbyterian News Service.

	"Many people are searching for a deeper spiritual relationship (and) are so
hungry for tools to deepen their spiritual lives," said longtime Christian
educator Bonnie Jean Lamberth, now living in Atlanta in retirement. "We've
been great in the Presbyterian church about information. We've got lots of
good curriculum ... but it is a very intellectual approach to faith. And
people are intelligent enough to know that there's got to be more to this
than book-learning ...

	"They're hungry to learn how to pray, how to nurture a child in faith. ...
Older people are hungry to remember the faith they had as a child."

	That may explain why 500 people -- 360 of them at Columbia -- have
registered in the program in its first five years, despite the fact that it
awards a certificate that probably won't pay off in professional
advancement.

	Students sign on because the course work offers personal spiritual
enrichment, in classes with titles including "Prayer in Many Forms,"  "The
History of Christian Spirituality," "Earthy Spirituality" and "Healing and
Wholeness in the Christian Life."

	The faculty in the program includes notables such as Old Testament guru
Walter Brueggemann and church historian Roberta Bondi. The program, launched
under the supervision of Ben Campbell Johnson, has also enlisted the
resources other Presbyterian institutions , Austin and Pittsburgh
seminaries, who now offer certificates as well, and Whitworth College in
Spokane, Wash.

	The certificate program culminates in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or a
Celtic site, such as Iona, a restored monastery in Scotland now used as a
retreat.

	"It has given me a deepening awareness of the presence of God and the need
to continue to nurture that relationship," said the Rev. Rob Evans of Oak
Ridge, NC, who came into the program after more than 20 years in a ministry
that was starting to feel more like a job than a vocation. "I have, now, a
keener awareness of God in daily life, and the discipline (to) make time and
space for God with meditation and prayer -- as opposed to going to work and
running a church."

	Tellingly, the majority of the program's students are lay people who want
to know more about disciplines as diverse as Ignatian meditation (practiced
by some Roman Catholic orders), Taize chants (developed in France) and
Celtic ritual and mysticism.

	The Celtic tradition, which emerged on the North Atlantic's foggy sea
islands, is deeply mystical and not exactly orthodox.

	"Celtic Christianity in 'in' right now," said Kent, who lamented that it
has been taken up by New Age people who ignore its Christian roots. "It is
solidly within our tradition," he said, "but is just one of the roads less
traveled. It is not orthodox. It doesn't attempt to be. It developed outside
the influence of the Roman church and Augustine."

	In a break from strict Calvinism or classic western doctrine, the Celts
asserted that all of creation is good, imbued with God's life. They
celebrated nature as reflective of God's glory.

	Some argue that the roots of Celtic thought run back to the more
contemplative, intuitive spirituality of St. John, and found a home in the
British Isles because they were far enough away from Rome to escape
domination by the Holy See.

	As in the theology of the eastern church (which had its own problems with
Rome), Celtic doctrine is strongly trinitarian. Just as the Celts did not
impose strict barriers between heaven and earth, they did not assign
specific roles to the persons of the trinity. Each person is involved in
creation, redemption and sanctification, each in concert with the other.
That's a departure from the western tradition, which puts its Christology
foremost.

	The realm of heaven?

	The Celts believed that the angels and saints are close at hand, because
the spiritual realm and the material world are inseparably interlaced, bound
as tightly as a Celtic knot, which has no beginning or end. They also
believed in evil, which in their view seeks to damage human souls and spoil
the goodness of creation.

	While acknowledging the reality of evil, Celtic theologians held that
humanity, although bound by powerful forces, is not, as Calvin held,
"totally depraved," but still bears, deep within, the image of God.
Therefore salvation requires the liberation of the divine within.
(Interestingly, that results in a very inclusive brand of evangelism,
because if Christ is believed to reside innately in all human beings, it is
harder to find reasons to exclude them.)

	Celtic theological notions led to a clashes with Rome in 416 and 418 A.D.,
when two Vatican councils upheld Augustine's doctrine of cosmically
inherited sin, passed from Adam to every human being, and the belief that
restoration is possible only through the church and its sacraments.
Pelagius, a Welch theologian, argued otherwise, and lost.

	In another formal church council in 664 at Whitby, England, the Roman
church again rejected the stance of the Celtic mission.

	What's that mean now?

	To someone like the Rev. Mary Beth Lawrence, of Marietta, GA, whose small
group in Daytona spent a lot of time and energy trying to decide what is
heresy and what is not, it is just a matter of perspective. Lay people
tended not to get hung up on theological intricacies.

	"Yeah, well, Galileo was a declared a heretic, too," said Jequita Bailey, a
lay woman from High Point, NC. "And if I'm not mistaken, so was Martin
Luther."

	Lawrence was more subtle.

	"You say 'to-may-to,' I say 'to-mot-toe; it's just a different accent
mark," she said. "Was it necessary, (as Pelagius contended), to be redeemed
from the power of sin? Yeah. If you read Genesis 1 and 2 in the Bible, it
says we're made in God's image. Most orthodox Christians would say yes to
that."

	Lawrence said she joined the program to learn how to be what the Celts
called an anamchara, or "soul-friend" -- someone to whom Christians may turn
to talk about deepening their relationship with God.

	"When I was in seminary, we used the pastoral care/therapeutic model," she
said. "Healing took place on a clinical basis ... not too far removed from
the medical world."

	She said many parishioners want a "soul-friend" to walk with them
spiritually, rather than a therapist to make a diagnosis. "That's what
they're asking for," she said. "A soul-friend. They're looking for someone
to be real with them, someone they can be real with ...

	"And I think they're comforted when I suggest things like lighting a candle
to remind them that Christ is present in their home, or that Jesus is here
with us in my study.  They're moved to know that the holy is very close, not
as far away as they felt it might be."

	That's really what is at issue here -- finding the holy.

	Ann Jordan of Sacramento, with her husband, Tee Jay, helps coordinate
prayer-partners for folks in their California church. It is not what she
expected to be doing, but after Tee Jay took his first course in
spirituality, he started getting up at 4 a.m. to pray -- and she saw him
change as a result.

	After one course with Brueggemann, she was hooked, too. Since small-group
prayer is often part of a course, she wanted a full-time prayer partner in
her church, and quickly found one.

	After a week of immersion in things Celtic, Jordan said she's found the
language she needed to talk more concretely about things she couldn't find
words for before. "When I read the books (on Celtic spirituality), I could
recognize my own orientation, my own faith, the way I understand and see
God," she said. "Now I can put a name to it, know that it has a history
behind it." Jordan is quick to point out that the Celtic experience of
seeing God's power in nature has striking similarities to the Psalms in the
Hebrew scriptures.

	Bailey said the course has helped her gain a new understanding of
scripture.

	Always a Bible reader, she learned, even as a laywoman, to be an exegete of
sorts. "Now, I can just read and let the Spirit speak," she said. "I still
have to do Bible study. But that is totally different (from) reading the
Bible." Touching her temple, she said, "It's not up here."

	For Lawrence, who will take her pilgrimage to Iona in May, the Celtic
world-view is a liberating one. This was her fifth course. She devoted her
spare time during the conference walking on the beach with colleagues,
listening to the gulls, watching herons.

	"Of the classes, I've taken, this one has been the most fun, the most
holistic in some ways," she said. "It embraces the five senses. You go to
the beach and hear the gulls … and our voices join with theirs in praising
God. You hear the waves slapping on the shore ... and our voices join with
that in praising God. It's not just a head thing; it is all-embracing."

	In her parish, Lawrence said, she sees folks who are tired of paying bills,
doing laundry, going to work and wondering why there is no joy in life.
Church activities, such as choir rehearsals, special holiday services and
session meetings, can add to the stress.

	"With 'An Invitation to Sabbath,' which the denomination is calling for,
we're being encouraged to take a small step toward where our Celtic
ancestors were," she said. "The Celts weren't big on Sabbath. They felt
every day was holy.

	"But we're ready to start small ... with just one day."

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