The Soil of the Soul

What an amazingly beautiful Sabbath today is! I've been outside since early morning, first just to sit on the patio to simply be. The breeze was cooling, the sun not yet warm, and the sky an incredible clear blue. After finishing a second cup of coffee, I decided to do a little straightening up to make my patio into the outside living area it is supposed to be. The construction is now finished, the  new roof is on, and so items can be placed as I want them.

The madevilla is very showy in its spacious green pots at each corner of the patio. And the color of the blossoms accentuates so well the new red door going into the house. I spent some time reading about it on the Clemson Extension website only to find out it needs a lot of care in transitional times, and I will have to bring it inside in the colder months along with the philodendron and the palm plant on the front porch. I think my daughter may be right when she says that her dad and I live in a jungle. I do love having green and flowery plants around me.

In my new garden out back, I have planted a lot of purple items. First, there's an azalea, but I actually don't know what color those blossoms will be. Then, there are the irises that I transplanted. I know they are purple, but they haven't bloomed in a few years because they weren't getting enough sunlight. They won't have that excuse now! Then, there's the butterfly bush that I placed in the center of the bed. It's definitely purple and is already attracting butterflies. Today, I put another little shrub out there that I had in a pot. It was root bound, and I thought it might like to try life in a garden instead. The trees got a new dose of mulch and everything is getting water as I write this entry.

The garden of our souls needs just as much love and care as the gardens in our back yard. I have a vision for my garden, and I'm slowly but surely achieving that vision. Our souls need a vision as well. They need pruning, weeding, watering, and good fertilizer. They are the delight of God with whom we share the light of Creation and the light of life. To me, the key ingredient of a healthy soul is expressed in the tension between Sabbath and community. We need time to be alone with God, and we need a community of believers who can support us with prayer and fellowship.

On September 24, Michael and I are going to try an experiment. We're going to begin a house church. We don't really have much of a clue about how to do this, but we've invited our friends to join us, and we'll see where it goes. We know we want to follow a Celtic spirituality format, to include silence and study, and we want people to be able to worship God in a safe, non-institutional setting. I'm looking forward to the experience. If you have an interest in joining us, please feel free to contact me about particulars.

For now, I continue to weed and water, prune and enjoy the bounty of God's love. May you, too, have that abundance of love from the Creator God who sustains us from within and without.

What Happened to the Bull?

Just what kind of God do you believe in?

I'm afraid for most people, God has become an amalgamation of an angry Zeus hurling lightening bolts, an IRS agent knocking at the door, and an abusive parent. On the way to meet a friend for dinner tonight, I saw a sign that read, "God WILL settle all accounts." Such an attitude toward God makes me sad and just a little queasy.

The God who comforts me and gives me inner strength to meet each new day is not a God to fear. There is no doubt that evil is part of our universe. We confront evil, both personal and cosmological all the time, but it is not our natural state. I do not believe that a God who loves me as part of Creation requires sacrifice to make me acceptable. Although animal sacrifice has shown up in almost all cultures and religions, we do not know that such a practice was any more than a way to make people feel better about their choice to do wrong—which ironically comes from humankind’s own freedom to choose. In fact, I would like to suggest that repentance is the most important prerequisite of any ritual whether it is sacrificial in nature or not. Hosea 14:3 reads, "Take with you words, and turn to the Lord. Say to Him, forgive all iniquity and receive us graciously, so we will offer the words of our lips instead of calves."

In the Psalms, God asks, “Do I require the blood of bulls and of goats?” The answer is a rather definite NO! Rather, God says through the Psalmist, “Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me." (Psalm 50:14-15).

Celtic spirituality celebrates the goodness of Creation. Humans are part of that Creation, and God is very pleased with that Creation. God does not need to settle accounts, nor does God need to judge our every motive and behavior because ‘sin, death, and unhappiness are not from God’. (1) We are created free.

John Scottus Eriugena’s seminal work was Periphyseon. In it he states, “God is the beginning, middle, and end of the created universe. God is that from which all things originate, that in which all things participate, and that to which all things eventually return. (Periphyseon III.621a-622a). Thus, Eriugena rejects any divine predestination to evil by an appeal to God's unity, transcendence and goodness. (2)

Eriugena’s mysticism “allows God to be truly God, utterly free of all limiting human notions of space-time, distinct entities, finite relationships and other constraints which have more to do with ignorant human conceptions than the actual Divine nature.” (3)

Human nature, however, wants to believe we are bad. I for one, want more of the God of Monty Python who unequivocally states, “Stop that groveling!” And remember that God really did say, “It’s good!”

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1http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/

2-3 http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/John_Scottus_Eriugena.html

The Light of Christ is in the World

This time last week, I was experiencing Sabbath with a group of pilgrims on retreat at Roads End Retreat Center near Fleetwood, NC. We gathered there on Friday afternoon to learn more about Celtic spirituality. On Sunday morning, we found ourselves in the Chapel of the Ark for morning prayer and meditation, experiencing worship together, and beginning the day with time to enjoy God’s presence in our midst.


Celtic spirituality has a number of characteristics commonly identified with it. These include, but are not limited to a love of nature and a recognition of the untamed and wild places that are a part of God's gift to us, or a connection between the natural and supernatural. In fact, the belief in thin places or boundaries between sacred and secular is a Celtic idea. There is a distinction between thin places and holy sites because in most religious traditions the site is holy because something happened there—i.e. a prophet ascended to heaven, or a miracle happened at that site, or someone was martyred there. With Celtic spirituality, the place is thin because something is happening right now—God is present in a very powerful and visceral way when we find ourselves in a thin place.

The most important concept for me that I tried to help us all explore in this retreat is the difference between the Celtic belief in human goodness and the Augustinian belief in human depravity. Too often in our Western religious tradition, we have been taught that sin is at least as strong as God’s grace—that light must come into our being to drive out the darkness. Quite the opposite is true in the Celtic mindset. We are, in fact, filled with light that must be “liberated from the heart of creation and from the essence of who we are” (Newell, 12). This idea is fundamentally opposed to the one that says we are infected with original sin and that God had to come into the world to take away that sin so that we could receive the light of life. Yes, sin is real, but it is not our created state. “Rather the light is held in terrible bondage within us, waiting to be set free” (Newell, 12).

This idea originated with John Scottus Eriugena whose theology explored the idea of liberating the light from within. God is present within each of us, and that is where the focus on redemption takes a lovely turn. It’s not some outside force coming into us to make us righteous, but rather, a connection to what already lies within. The light of Creation, the light of life, and the light of Christ are all one and the same. Our very selves are thin places where God’s work is accomplished.

The question then arises as to why we want to believe that we are inherently bad. The answer harkens back to that idea of original sin postulated by Augustine of Hippo and others who were in the hierarchy of the Church of Rome. This idea says we are all born sinful and are in need of redemption. Because of this belief, the people who “won” the day at the Council of Nicaea and the church soon became inured of crusade and conquest.

When we change our attitude about our stance in God’s eyes, we come to realize that God said something very important in Genesis 1. And God said, “It’s good!” How can we be good at the same time we are impossibly flawed by sin? The light of creation is the light that is within us and as Newell says, it needs to be liberated so that we are walking in the fullness of our potential.

How does one do this? It is in the incarnation of Christ that we find the answer. Celtic spirituality is orthodox, especially when it comes to the Trinity. Christ is a part of the Trinity from the beginning, and it’s that Christ that we should pay attention to. I’ve heard more than one person quip that Christ was not Jesus’ last name. Christ is what we are to become. It’s our potential. It’s what Jesus of Nazareth did, and it’s in his life that we have our model for how to become Christ.

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John Philip Newell, The Story of Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Spirituality

Just Who Are YOU?

Regular readers of my blog will quickly discern that I am on a John Philip Newell kick these days. I just bought four new books by this inspirational teacher on Celtic spirituality, and I am deeply immersed in attempting to understand his work and how it relates to other writers and theologians who have preserved this remarkable Christian tradition for us. One thread that has recently caught my attention is woven into the writing of Pelagius, the first great Celtic theologian—and a man condemned as heretic by the Roman church of the time. That thread is the idea of all of creation being a theophony or a manifestation of God. Celtic spirituality believed that creation came forth creatio ex Deo, and as such is a showing forth of the goodness of God. In fact, some Celtic theologians go so far as to believe it is possible to live a perfectly good and sinless life. Because we are part of the divine word, we have encoded in our spiritual DNA, if you will, a blueprint for holiness and righteousness that excludes the necessity of human depravity and original sin.

This past week, my husband and I celebrated twenty-eight years of marriage by driving to one of our favorite spots, checking into a local B & B, and spending most of the time outside. We’ve chosen to give up tent camping, but we still enjoy being in places that bear the imprint of wilderness on them. Pisgah Forest is a personal haven and holds wonderful childhood memories for me. Michael and I have often taken a Saturday and driven up Wagon Gap Road to Mount Pisgah, and we especially love the part of the drive from Brevard to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We’ve had the opportunity after many trips to discover some hidden spots including “our” own swimming hole, a favorite place to picnic, and several trails that lead to outstanding views both of the mountains and of the flora and fauna that inhabit these mountains. During this past trip, we drove into Pisgah Forest to eat sandwiches at a roadside table in the early evening. The stream was gurgling, and birds were calling to each other in preparation to end the day. I could not help but be struck by the smoky shafts of sunlight piercing the heavy forest canopy—heaven no longer separated from earth. That image has stuck in my memory as a visceral reminder that God is everywhere—inside, outside, and alongside me. In fact I, too, am a theophony because I am created in the spirit and image of God who said, “Let us create humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

The trip to celebrate our married life reinforced for me the sense of closeness and immanence between the natural and supernatural. God is present in the forests and gardens that we preserve and create. I am present to God in those places as well because I am created and re-created in such a setting. Celtic practitioners speak of thin places, and I do believe such places exist especially when one is out-of-doors in the beauty that was not unlike the first home of our first parents.

Being aware of God’s presence in nature and each other helps us to reach a place of healing and deep peace. May you experience that deep peace as you continue your journey to awareness of who you are in the God of All.

Glendalough in Wind and Rain

I'm in the throes of preparing to lead a retreat on Celtic spirituality, and my mind has drifted to my two visits to one of the key sites of Celtic monasticism. That site, Glendalough, is the village built by St. Kevin in the 6th century. In 2007, my husband and I visited Glendalough on a day trip by train from Dublin. As with any Irish day, the weather was very unpredictable, and while the sun was shining at Connolly Station in Dublin, it was certainly not shining in the Wicklow Mountains. We were semi-prepared for rain—at least we had wind breakers and hats—but there were occasional downpours and we were walking the two mile trail from the lough (pronounced 'lock'—Celtic for lake) down to the monastic village. There was a sense of wildness in that walk. Lashed by the driven rain, I had a difficult time keeping up a good pace, and there was a growing sense of self-pity because I was quickly becoming weary of what appeared to be more of a physical challenge than the perfect holiday.

This past June, I returned to Glendalough with my mother in tow. This time, I was most certainly on a 'tour,' and while I enjoyed the historical features pointed out by our guide, I missed the wildness that I had experienced the first time I visited. Glendalough somehow seemed almost tame under the experienced hand of the guide who took us through the various buildings explaining their functions while commenting on the life of the Celts who dwelled there. I tried to imagine the people milling about, much like we tourists were milling about, on their way to the market, or to choir offices, or out to the fields to plow, but this Glendalough did not give the same sense of mystery by showing forth the power of the elements that I experienced in Glendalough when I was soaked to the skin with rain.

I think it's that wildness that called up the Celtic spirit in me on the first trip. At first, I thought the trip had been a wash—literally—that we hadn't seen the real Glendalough, but when I returned the second time, I realized that we had, indeed, experienced Glendalough as a holy Celtic site, a place of elemental force and a stage for the power of the natural world.

John Philip Newell gives credence to the wildness of creation by connecting it to our inner stirrings. In The Book of Creation, he says, "A roaring fire under open sky with the wind catching its flames high into the air makes a profound impression on us, and can release a sense of identification with the elements" (21). He goes on to connect those inner stirrings with "desires, emotions and creative urges [that] surge up from our depths like whirlwinds" (21).

This unsettled feeling gives birth to creativity, just as the driven rain gives birth to roiling streams and lush green spaces. Newell also states that "The Celtic tradition deeply affirms the unbounded side of life" (22). As holy people, we have to let go of the fear of the wild places—the unchartered seas—and be willing to sail even beyond the end of the known world. It's in these wild, untamed places that God's gracious spirit blesses us with creative insight and power to heal ourselves and others.

When I think about the possibility of a third trip to Glendalough, I know that I will want it to be the wild and tempestuous experience it was the first time I journeyed there, and that I will be cognizant of the power of storm, rain, and wind as a metaphor for the mystery of God that lies at the root of all that is holy, creative and positive in this life.

For the Well-being of the World

John Philip Newell has a new book out called Praying with the Earth: a Prayerbook for Peace. The book is a book of liturgical prayers, and as such, is meant to be prayed instead of simply read. We'll use this book on August 5-7, 2011 when we gather for a Celtic Retreat at Roads End Retreat Center near Boone, N.C. I invite you to join us if you feel led to celebrate Celtic spirituality, to learn more about it, or simply to enjoy the out-of-doors that prompted so much of the Celtic way of being.

On a recent trip to Ireland, I noticed more than anything how moved I was by the landscape. Ireland is known for its lushness and green, yet there seem to be few forested areas. Instead, the Island is a mystical collection of fertile grasslands punctuated by lakes, seashore, streams, rivers--and sheep. To travel around the countryside means to meander the inlets of the sea that hugs the land. It means to wander through villages, to confront mountains and valleys, and to pass through rain, fog, and a few bright days as well. All the while, my eyes could not get enough of the natural beauty that has been preserved in a land that has been inhabited since long before the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain.

The landscape holds sacred secrets not unlike our own inner depths. I believe we have an inner landscape that is punctuated by the promptings of our wiser selves, that speaks to us in our dreams and in the very essence of our breathing. When we grasp the concept of our Christ self or true consciousness, we become like the landscape that is full of greenspace, flowering plants, and water that in due season becomes fully evolved. It is also incumbent on us to protect that deeper space that exists below the "public" eye, to keep it safe and private from the collective until it's the right time to use our potential--our creative energy.

The Celtic people were in tune with nature and with human nature. May God help us to be so like-minded.

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If you would like more information on our Celtic Retreat at Roads End, please visit http://anamcarasmantle.org/celticretreat.html. Also, John Philip Newell will be in North Carolina at Lutheridge in Hendersonville, N.C. in December 2011. For more information, visit http://www.awakeningsoulpresents.org/.

My Garden

This is the season of fledglings. There are no less than eight birds’ nests around our home, and I have delighted in watching (from a distance) the little birds craning their necks upward, mouths wide open as they wait for mama bird to return with some tasty ground up worm or bug.


When we first moved here, our gardens didn’t exist. The houses in the subdivision were built on land that was once an orchard, but in the haste to create homes during the bubble, the land was denuded and what topsoil there was washed away. We have more than once complained of having to toil as Adam and Eve must have had to toil once they were cast from their paradise, but we have managed to create a bit of spacious beauty on our almost acre of land. Even though I always thought of myself as having a green thumb, I realized rather quickly that when it came to creating a garden I was certainly a neophyte, not unlike my little bird friends living in the trees that my husband and I planted six years ago. Of course, we’ve endured at least three summers of severe drought, and the red, rocky clay makes it all the more difficult for anything to thrive. I don’t think I’m likely to give up, however.

I’ve tended plants, pruned shrubs, pulled weeds, and watched my prized irises burst forth in color each spring. Last fall, I tried my hand at a rose bush. I’ve succeeded somewhat in producing blooms in the spring and fall, but the summer heat distracts it from much growth. There’s always something to do in the garden. As the birds in the nests build their strength and will soon take flight, I am going to begin to lay a path in the back garden. I’ve put down straw to mark my way, and I’m going to connect the bed with the fig tree to the new flower bed that was the vegetable garden last year. I want an English garden look, and the soil we have there must be good since we had a bounty of green beans, squash, and tomatoes this time last year. Being away for two European trips caused me to not be able to do much with that plot already this year. I’m hoping sunflowers will grow there; maybe I'll begin with zinnias and lavender. I think we’ll have to put in some azaleas up near the fig tree and perhaps some Adirondack chairs. Yes, I like that idea. Oh, and don’t forget the bird feeders. I want to encourage the chicks to hang around once they are on their own.

Whatever activity we find ourselves engaged in, we must recognize that there is always that neophyte stage when we don’t feel like we know much of anything. It’s then that we rely on others, our own insight, and the graciousness of the Universe to guide and direct our journey. In the words of poet, Mary Oliver,

“And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?”

May we tread lightly, learn wisely, and give generously as we explore the world outside.