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Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the path that leads to life, and only a … Continue reading
My journey begins at five in the morning, my Bonneville has already been packed up over night, so wheeling the bike out of the back gate onto the road, I turn the engine over and off I go. The darkness is just beginning to lift as the first rays of morning twilight pierce the eastern horizon. The morning star is low and alive in my eyes leading me forward towards Newhaven docks. I relax into the ride and allowed my thoughts to drift over my next two days of biking through France and onto Assisi via Bobbio in Italy. The sunrise that morning is an intense, deep magenta, orange and red. The Divine artist is very busy this morning.
As soon as arrive in Newhaven I know something is wrong. There is no ferry, no cars, no people, nothing. I check my ticket to discover ‘numpty head‘ (that is me for the non-english) has booked his ticket in reverse. I am booked on the 6am ferry from Dieppe France to Newhaven. Once I sort my ticket out, I have a few hours to kill before the midday ferry so I wonder down to the beach.
Newhaven Beach
The quintessentially English Newhaven pebble beach neighbours a still becalmed English channel. Flashing silver mackerel are leaping in the early sun and behind me in the white chalk cliffs, doves are trilling and intoning low songs, the perfect accompaniment to my morning office of Psalm 63 and Daniel 3.
The road to Bobbio.
I have wanted to visit Bobbio for years. The final resting place of St Columbanus the famous Irish missionary of the late 6 and 7 centuries, he founded his final monastery at Bobbio in circa 611. It seemed a fitting location to overnight as many Franciscan scholars believe that St Francis spent time in his early years at the monastery in Bobbio. I have always been intrigued by the similarities between the Celtic and Franciscan charism. The eremitical contemplative spirituality beautifully balanced with missionary zeal, the establishment of praying focused communities and their closeness to nature.
Dawn breaking on the summit of Monte Bianco
Riding through France was glorious; warm sunshine, open roads, miles of sunflower fields, the lush Loire Valley, past Taize and into the Alps speeding towards Mont Blanc. Snaking up the Mont Blanc pass towards the tunnel it began to rain, a symbolic baptism preparing me for the encounter with Columbanus the following morning.
St Columbanus
For a road is to be walked on and not lived on, so that they who walk upon it may dwell finally in the land that is their home. St Columbanus, Sermon v
It seemed natural to encounter the great Peregrinus of the Celtic Church so far from his beloved Ireland. His shrine was in the crypt of the Basilica named after him and stepping down the few flights of stairs I saw the simple tomb, softly lit by candles and I felt a huge surge of emotion and connection, a feeling of being discovered by a friend again whom you have not seen for many years. These mystical encounters defy language and transcend emotion. I had walked into a thin place, pregnant with potential that was not of my making. I knew I was on holy ground and holiness demands silence of those who would stand in its presence. You walk softly, but without fear, your words are few but chosen carefully as though there are a thousand ears listening, counting, weighing up the veracity of your heart and ensuring there is no vanity in your speech. A divine screening system whose purpose is to keep you honest in your prayerful discourse.
The Shrine of St Columbanus
I had taken in a few of St Columban’s sermons that he had written in the last years of his life in Bobbio. Reciting them out loud brought the words to transcendent sharpness. I could hear the old mans voice, deep and lyrical, strong and clear, encouraging me to disavow a world so encumbered with material things, so burdened with false responsibility and so disjointed from its original condition of grace. The simple truths of normal discipleship, to love God with all your heart, renounce the world and to enter into the solitude of the beloved’s desire to be fully known. He, like the St Francis I would encounter later that week, prayed ‘wound our souls with your love’.
For two hours I sat, contemplating Christ, sometimes in silence, other times conversing with St Columbanus and musing over the state of the British Church. I cannot confess to have had any grand words of wisdom or insight on the state of the British church scene, but I was deeply struck by the essential simplicity of the Celtic Abbots spirituality and I found myself weeping tears of gratitude for the exemplary nature of his faith. Equally I had to accept my anger at the sense of loss we in Britain have suffered through allowing the fire of men like Columbanus to die out. That dynamic spirituality, now commonly called Celtic, that found in ascetic practice, contemplative prayer, communal practice and creational encounter a fire that I have often likened to the coal from the throne of heaven that touched the lips of Isaiah. In our post Christian UK landscape how we need to rediscover ancient fires like these.
My peace was broken by a bus load of tourists who arrived with flashing camera’s and cans of Coke. Time to leave and head towards Assisi…
Posted in Celtic Christianity, Pilgrimage
Tagged Assisi, Bobbio, Mont Blanc, PIlgrimage, St Columbanus, St Francis
‘Let your vigils be constant from eve to eve, under the direction of another person’
The Rule of Columba
This year I have begun exploring the practice of vigils. For clarity’s sake my efforts have been a toe in the water, yet as I have continued to explore Columban spirituality and the broader Celtic spirituality in which St. Columba was a leading figure, I have not been able to ignore his expectation that those who seek the heart and mystery of God will take part in vigils.
A vigil is a conscious journey towards GOD set within a specific time frame. It usually takes place at night when people would normally be sleeping. Just as fasting is a deliberate deprivation of food in order to suppress the natural appetite and focus on one’s dependency upon God for sustenance. So a vigil is a deliberate denial of sleep in order to be nourished by God through prayer and mediation.
On 9 June three of us gathered at my tipi retreat space on the South Downs to explore a half night vigil and to explore two practices that were used as disciplines by the early British and Irish church.
Our setting was outside, within the cradle of creation. John Scottus Eriugena contends ‘Creation is the theophany of God’. Here, exposed to the elements of our landscape, where we can hear the evening birdsong, feel the breath of the wind, the dance of the trees, the warmth of fire, we are drawn into the natural rhythm of creations conversation with the Creator. And to this we can add our voice, our name and our prayerful imagination.
What is your mystical name?
Your name in God is both hidden and revealed. For Columba he had a name Colum cille that means ‘The Dove of the Church’. Yet his name hidden in the spirit was ‘Cul ri Erin’, meaning ‘back turned to Ireland’ as recorded in the poem Columcille fecit. For Columba, a spiritual exile for Christ from his homeland of Ireland, this was his daily reality as a peregrinus. Equally Elijah, which means ‘Yahweh is my God’ was also known as ‘the troubler of Israel’ (1 Kings 18 v18) a mandate he carried exceptional well.
Your mystical name is the name you hold that describes your identity in God. It is the name that best describes you in the intersection between heaven and earth. A name that you carry in your hidden prayers and draws you closest to your intimate relationship with God. Meditating on this fact allowed us to begin the journey towards understanding our true selves, a journey that takes a lifetime that can for those who stop to listen be caught in name.
The Prophets Bed
The Prophets Bed is a derivative of an ancient practice undertaken by Celtic bards and poets to ‘find their poem or story’. Here we used it to listen for our prayer. Prayer takes shape in words, sound, physical motion, posture and expression that facilitate you to be open and transparent before the Creator. This prayer can linked to your name and takes the shape of a blessings, a Lorica or protection prayer; the most famous being Patrick’s Breastplate, and is rooted in your authentic voice before God. God always hears our authentic voice.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you (John 15 v7).
In the darkness we allowed our minds to focus on God alone. By relaxing in the arms of creation, you are relaxing in the arms of the Father creator. Doing this in the darkness is important as God dwells in original darkness , the uncreated light of God, and from this darkness the great conversation of creation and Word of Light emerged (Gen 1 v1-2). In the stillness we allowed our prayer to emerge in feeling, expectation and the presence of God. It is here we begin to travel along the edges of time. It is here the eternal voice of the Father and our voice find unity in prayer and conversation. As this conversation emerged we wrote it down or acted it out. We did this in isolation, with no pressure to feedback or explain the encounter. These moments are sacred prophetic times and need maturing and distillation, not instant regurgitation.
The Bards and Poets of Ireland would often lie down and fast during this time. To avoid falling asleep they would place a stone under their heads or on their chest. Columba was trained as a bard by the aged Master Bard Gemman from Leinster. Indeed it seems Columba kept this practice up throughout his life as he reputedly slept on a stone pillow throughout his life.
I finish with a quote from one of us,
“The isolated location was great and certainly helped. In addition I
was surprised at how helpful the darkness and isolation was to the
second meditation, connecting with the environment and Gods essence
within. I did have to fight falling asleep, but that I guess is part
of the process”.
To review the short film clip of our prayer-scape, please click onto the The Contemplative Network Facebook page.
A cold north wind blows across Chanctonbury Ring. Her breath driving banks of white clouds across the crystal clear vista of the South Downs. Their shadows chasing the edges of light across the chalk landscape. Chanctonbury, an ancient iron and bronze age site, encircled now by banks of beech tree, is our host for our fourth Celtic Easter celebration. Thirty of us gather from across the country to meet on the date that the early British Church had celebrated Easter and to encounter Christ in the Cathedral of Creation.
Chanctonbury Ring
I am struck by God’s ability to communicate beyond the use of language. In fact my journey with the rediscovery of the British Easter celebration has become a journey of discovering theology and spirituality as drama and narrative, rather than the dominant view as history and orthodoxy. Much of our life in Christ is channeled through predetermined pathways, set out for us by the experts of cultural orthodoxy. Yet what captures most devotees of Jesus is not his orthodoxy, but his unorthodoxy. His desire to haunt the margins of society, the wild places of the mountains and valleys and to respond to the cries of the poor and the yearnings of creation.
The drama of Christ and the power of his resurrection is a story to be told and reenacted throughout life, not just a story to be confined to the pages of a book and a place in history. To my mind, confining resurrection to a ritual and to history is to deny its very veracity. If Christ is resurrected, then history has been framed as a daily encounter with the eternal. It moves from ritual to encounter, from history to future opportunity.
Therefore, celebrating Easter on the Celtic dating is not a reactionary political two-fingered gesture to the established religious institutions that benefited from the Easter Controversy and in recent times have presided over the demise of the message of Christ in these Islands, it is a vital symbolic enactment of the drama of God in our lives and an invitation to all of creation to take part in this drama. I call this a prayer-scape as it is more than just a meeting in the open air, it is the prayerful encounter of all of Creation with its Creator.
At Chanctonbury we weaved a prayer-scape of pilgrimage, ascending to the top of the highest peak in the area, the land meeting the coastland to the south, the Sussex plain the recipient of our prayers, the warmth of fire in the brazier, the procession through the points of the compass, voices intoning “be Thou My Vision” to the nation as we sung to the north, the mournful north wind chilling our bones as we listened to Uilleann pipes playing behind a recitation of the Psalms and watching Buzzards display in the open sky. In the breaking of bread and wine, Christ was in our midst, was in creation and our prayers for one another affirmed our desire to be transformed into the Likeness of Christ.
I am constantly challenged in my faith to find external ways of dramatising the internal journey of contemplative encounter. The resurrection of celebrating Easter on the calendar of the original British church is just one of those symbolic ways of doing so.
Glastonbury Tor
An evocative sight greeted me when I reached the top of the winding path that led up the hillside with its tall trees and winding thick roots. As I looked to the right I saw Chanctonbury Ring and about thirty people gathered there. Standing in front of them was my beautiful friend, Juliet, who had wrapped herself in a white blanket and was carrying a large stick on which she had attached a big white flag with a gold cross on it.
Take not food until you are hungry
The Rule of Columba
Elitism is a destructive force and I am mindful of it as I write on fasting. The early British monk and historian St Gildas writing in the early 6th century was openly critical of what he saw as elitist monks who spent more time fasting than working and in doing so had made fasting and aestheticism an idol, rather than a practice through which to draw close to God.
Yet fasting has never been optional extra for those that follow Christ, it is clearly an expectation,
‘When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full‘ (Matthew vi, 15).
As my exploration of Columban spirituality has developed, I have been mindful and challenged by the simply put ‘take not food until you are hungry‘. Although not an explicit reference to fasting, it is pertinent challenge to the overweight consumption of our fast food culture. A direct addressing of our relationship with food of which every living creature naturally has a vested interest in. For many in the monastic churches of Britain and Ireland, food was taken only as required.
“When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting” St Jerome (340?-420)
Equally it has begun to sensitize me to the issue of appetite and the role food plays in suppressing and controlling the development of personality and culture. If I agree with the basic supposition that my life is dysfunctional, my character out of alignment with Gods, then I, like others am faced with stark choices as to how to respond. Food has become, I would suggest, more than meal, a shared table of hospitality, a means by which we are able to demonstrate Gods compassion for the hungry, or our daily link to the health and inherent goodness and provision of creation. The cult of food and the fulfilling of immediate appetites has become a curse to great to bear for the west, as the obesity epidemic gripping our societies indicates, as the food miles of the supermarkets cripples the environment and impoverishes poor farmers through unfair terms of trade on supply contracts and commodity exchanges. The unequal distribution of food and the millions globally malnourished as a result, is the disgrace of our scandalous selfishness that we seemingly wear with pride as we tuck into a 99 cent plastic burger in the name of ‘good value’. Are the golden arches the gateway to spiritual oblivion? These external manifestations of greed linked to appetite only exist because the internal world of the souls goodness, mingled with the grace of God has become polluted and the self substitutes this with an idol; in our case a wrong relationship with food.
As I prepare for what has become for me an annual fast leading up to the celebration of the Celtic Easter date of 15 April, one of my aims this year will be to explore fasting in a more proactive intentional way of calling out the ‘Monastic Churches of Britain and Ireland’ (as I will blog separately on this over the next few weeks of Lent I won’t explore this further in this post) This may sound counter-intuitive given that fasting is an intentional activity by definition, but I do believe for many fasting, especially in the protestant tradition has become something we do, a bit like a sanctified diet, if at all, and to a minimal impact. I hear of television fasts, chocolate fasts, my favorite computer game, Indian take away (one my wife consistently encourages). My fasting becomes the removal of a small part of the edge of my lifestyle, which may act as a reminder of Christ, but will not radically alter that trajectory of my lifestyle that may in turn move the very ground on which my relationship with God is built.
Another aspect of fasting, alongside the external political implications it can have on publicly standing against over consumption, is that it actively addresses the internal imbalance and our over reliance on sustenance that does not reflect the incarnation of God. It is only in Christ that the moral paradox of the incarnation of God as a poor man born into poverty and simplicity whom we are called to imitate, as opposed to what Julius Nyerere the first President of Tanzania once said in regards to the plight of his nation, ‘that God created humanity in his own image. I refuse to believe in a God who is poor, starving and illiterate’ can be reconciled. Fasting therefore catapults us towards being rooted in a symbolic re-imagining and imitation of the life of Christ. That life rooted in truth and the search for veracity in the earth and dust of my life.
I know Jesus fasted, and I am always drawn to the relationship between fasting and the desert. The desert a place of being alone with self, stripped of all props that crowd our life and distract us from our core being. The desert a silent place where only the cries of wildlife act as partners in our prayers. The desert a place were you are alone to battle the demons of your own self and the phantoms of your own perverted appetites. Fasting and the desert are Gods chosen partners in stripping us down to bare essentials and testing our resolve to put God before everything.
My personal practice, and one I have been developing since 2008, is to eat one meal a day after sundown. As I have repeated this each year I have built in new facets, like no alcohol, no take away food, or eating out. Each year growing in confidence that I can take another step in exploring the benefits of fasting. Last year I made the fatal mistake of externalising my fast to include greater levels of transparency and honesty in the gold trade. By the end of this fast the Christian company I was working with had defaulted on a project in Sierra Leone, been exposed as deceitful in intent, spiritually manipulative in saying because this was in the name of the Kingdom it was ok not to pay bills and left my household without an income for most of the year. This month I discover they have gone down for $2.8 million, leaving thousands without hope in the DRC and elsewhere in Africa. God honoured my fast last year, and I was totally unprepared for the consequences. A salient lesson in be careful what you ask for.
Fasting I have found creates the space both internally and externally for God to move more freely. It creates an environment of light in our lives that reveals the content of who we are and what surrounds us and hopefully will move us in such a way that as we emerge on the other side, we are more conscious of our need of grace so we may not only dream of truth, but may find the will to live with it.
Posted in Celtic Christianity, Celtic Easter, St Columba, The Rule of Columba
Tagged Celtic Easter, Columba, fasting, food culture, Rule of Columba, st gildas
Borderlands define movement and place. They act as signposts and landmarks that help the pilgrim who is journeying to locate where in their journey they are. The ancients understood borders as places of change, as moments of transition, places of great instability and in many cases areas of warfare and contesting.
A borderland is a point of crossing that is marked not only in the geography of the land, such as a river crossing, a mountain range or a forest, they can for the ‘peregrinus‘ also be defined by moments and movements of the soul. Moments where God breaks in or out and we find ourselves crossing over from one landscape to another.
This is certainly my testimony. For some months I have been sensing that my time in the fair trade jewellery world I have predominantly inhabited these last 15 years has been drawing to a conclusion. Equally since 2008 I have been smelling fresh pastures and my walk with God has been increasingly defined by hunting out the smell and following the scent. To mix my metaphors I have felt I was on a railway track, one of the twin tracks of my journey being Fair Trade jewellery and the other being ‘contemplative spirituality’ and investment into what I have given the loose working title ‘Celtic Spirituality’. I found myself in the delusional notion that I had to hop from one track to another in order to maintain momentum. The tragedy being that as in the case of twin parallel tracks, they may always point in the same direction, but will never converge. I was living in the curse of dualism and justifying it through the hubris of apparent success.
This dynamic journey towards the Trinity is often authenticated in locations. My great fortune has been the wonderful opportunity God has afforded me to travel in different lands and cultures. On my recent trip to Kenya I found myself in the heart of what I believed to be a routine exploration in Fairtrade Gold that turned out to be anything but.
As I sat in the front room of my friends in Mwanza Tanzania, having had to get out of Kenya for security reasons (the Asian gold mafia were unhappy that we were wanting to introduce a fair trade transparent and traceable system to the local gold market), I suddenly realised I was at another borderland in my journey with God and in fact had now reached the crossing point. In my journal I had written the following extract prior to my trip.
My journey with God is a ‘peregrination’ through different landscapes and the transition that is now upon me is more like coming to the end of one landscape ‘Fair Trade Jewellery’ and moving into a new landscape called ____________ (name unknown at the present time). I still walk in the landscape of FT Jewellery. As I write this in Migori Kenya, the suffering of the poor is acute and obvious and it seems on one level such a futile exercise to offer hope without the certainty of change. This journey of mine has been tempestuous, full of battles fought, many of them won, some lost, but I am weary and I bear the scars of the battles I have been through. Yet as I walk I can smell the fresh air of change blowing from the landscape that is before me. I have not reached it yet and the challenge I see now is to identify the final rivers I must cross before I enter the new land. Equally as the the new horizon comes into clearer view, what are the markers that will signal the border crossing?
Confused and deflated I was rethinking my course of action and going over in my mind what my next steps might be, now the purpose of the trip to Kenya had fallen through. I was mindful of the twin tracks in my life. I felt I had come to the end of the track. I had indeed reached the borderlands of my soul. But the confusion over my next step was intense.
As I rested in the safety of an armchair with a cup of decent tea, in through the door flew an Eastern violet backed Sunbird. My little friend flew over to my armchair and perched upon the end of my middle finger and remained there staring at me intently. His curiosity got the better of him after 30 seconds or so and he flew down on to the side table and inspected the tea lights. His seeming curiosity sated, he returned to the end of my finger, changed his vantage point again by sitting on top of my head, then the curtain rail, before returning to the end of my finger and watched me for what seemed like an age.
Eastern violet-backed Sunbird.
My friend was the prefect message from my Creator at the time. No words, no heavy intense prayer, no noise or alter-states of consciousness, just the simple kiss of creation and the tender voice of the Creator saying ‘look its alright’. I thanked the little bird and blessed him for his sensitivity to Gods call, and away he flew, through the open door and into the sunshine of the Son.
It seems to me that one of the most important aspects of the Christian experience is that it should take place primarily in the context of a journey and not the experience of altered states of consciousness. This was an understandable misconception I believed in my early charismatic Christian days, as I moved from one altered state of consciousness to another, defining God’s presence as a mind or emotionally altering moment. The domestication of the Church of God in the houses of institutional religion has in my opinion caged our ability to enter into the wildness of the Spirit and diminished our encounter with God to altered states of being and behaviour we call ‘manifestations of the Spirit’ or the intellectual boxes we create and arrogantly call orthodoxy. The Holy Spirit has always been the Spirit of freedom and creation the cathedral of the Divine presence.
In the opening chapters of Genesis, creations journey begins with a defining of horizons; light and darkness, earth, sea and air. The Creator moves from boundaries and horizons to populating this with relationships; plants, animals of the land, sea and air and of course human beings. Humanity becomes the unique blend of the soil and the Spirit and the living being/soul is born (Genesis ii v 7). Can it be that my very being is the borderland of heaven and earth? This heady mix of dirt and Spirit is crucial to my understanding of the creation I live in. My very soul and being is the fruit of the breath of God on the dirt of my origination.
My little Sunbird is made of the same dirt I am. We share a common desire, to walk, or fly in his case, faithfully with the Creator. The in breaking of creation into the borderland of my soul, was the sign I needed to know I had now reached the new landscape I had been smelling for some months. The journey is not twin tracks that never meet, it is the continual and faithful walk through the landscape of God’s creation.
Posted in Celtic Christianity
Tagged Celtic Spirituality, Charismatic Christianity, Genesis, Holy Spirit
St Columbanus referred to life as ‘the great peregrinatio‘, yet what strikes me as so powerful about the Celtic saints, such as Columbanus, was that their story was not just about extraordinary travels and exploits and their mastery of the seas and the mountains, but also their rigorous personal spiritual disciplines that measured the quality of the internal journey. This axis of internal and external journey, although in no way unique to Celtic Spirituality, did manifest itself in a quite remarkable fashion through those who were indigenous to the British Isles.
In my personal journey with and towards Christ, this very axis has become the biggest point of contention and opportunity in my walk with God. There is no doubt in my mind that the current state of Christianity in the British Isles is out of sync with the heartbeat of God. The heart of the British church is beating certainly, but not in its natural rhythm. I also recognise that in my own life I suffer from an irregular spiritual heartbeat, my condition a perplexing mix of my own shortcomings as a person and the pollution that exists in the atmosphere around me. How does a fish define water?
With so little attention paid in modern life to the internal journey, the feeding of the soul and the formation of Christ in the internal world has become a priority for me. The words of St Paul, ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Romans vii, 16) has taken on new meaning as I explore the question ‘what is a regular healthy spiritual heartbeat?’
This question disturbs me as I find myself engaging in a process of ‘apophatic thinking‘, or ‘negative thinking’ to find my way forward. I know what I do not want to do, I know how I do not want to behave, I know what in society I do not like, yet I remain at the mercy of the very atmosphere I despise. I know for example that the pervasive religion of ‘material capitalism’ impregnates every aspect of our lives and its destructive and ungodly forces shape our behaviour and are being felt across the world, creating untold misery for millions on every continent, yet I also know I am not free of the disease and the problem is internal as well as external. Therefore Christs’ salvation in my life is incomplete.
It is to the Celtic saints and their spiritual practices, I find myself turning more and more as I seek a daily rhythm, perhaps cure is a better word, for my liberation. More specifically to the Rule of Columba, and an exploration of his contemporary meaning and application. This is for me no mere intellectual exercise. If it was I would have failed at the first hurdle on the journey, as intellectual rationalism and the disconnect it creates between thought and practice is one of the very foundation stones of the amorality that exists within the very fabric of our society.
The ascetic disciplines and practices of the Celts are very foreign to our modern culture, yet I believe they offer us a route towards a new future. The current rise of ‘post-modern monastic’ expressions of lifestyle and community give testimony to the fact that the ancient ways are no longer ancient, but are in fact timeless and eternal and are attempting to find a way of breaking into our prison cells of individualism and materialism and setting us free.
Having settled in the indigenous British spirituality of the Celtic Church, I discover a vast panorama of potential right outside my doorstep and the challenge before me now is to allow The Holy Trinity – the perfect community – to harness me to that potential and help me move away from ‘negative thinking’ towards positive practice.
The Columban rule outlines a daily rhythm of ‘prayers, work and reading’ (rule 15), of ‘regular vigils from eve to eve’ (rule 14), offers direction on silence and solitude (rules 1, 5, 21), in fact covers a multitude of disciplines that engage not only the internal world of devotion and intimacy with Christ, but also the external world of ‘alms giving & work’ (rule 18 & 16) and how in simple ways to interact with others (rules 5, 6, 21). In the few years I have been working with this rule I have found its true wisdom rests in its power to re-orientate the inner life in a direction that is contrary to the course of the world. It echoes St Paul again when he cries;
all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are Children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Romans viii, 14-17a)
These rules act as guide to lifestyle and behaviour that in turn assist in attuning me to the course of the flow of the Spirit in life. Rather like a river that flows through the landscape of our lives. If the virtue of following an external rule is building those rules into your life and this very act in turn builds discipline that brings stillness and receptivity to the presence of God, then the building of the river banks is a sacred pursuit. On reflection the only form that the Spirit of Christ desires to dwell in and upon is the natural one that was created by God in the first place. The skin I am in and the land I walk on is the only home I have that God can dwell in naturally so I must become the vessel we journey together in.
What I am enjoying about the exploration of the Rule of Columba, is it takes place in the land from which it was born. In this world of homogenous global culture, of which Britain, as a historical empire and an eminent financial and military power has helped to shape, I am rediscovering the indigenous Spirit of the Creator in the beauty of this land that is being liberated into a new and emerging story. I know it to be a story that began with the ‘believing diaspora’ who fled the Roman Caesar’s persecution of the ‘followers of the way’ as they landed on these shores seeking safety. A story that blended and filled out the native culture that in the words of the Welsh bard Taliessin ‘we always new Christ as Creator, but never knew his name’.
It will again be a story that in the pagan barbarianism of unfettered materialism that is now the dominant culture, can find its voice, a discipline and a power to connect the Christ of all creation ‘to all who would receive him‘ (John i, v12).
I must be the only person I know who can be thrown out of an empty room for doing nothing more than praying in silence and encountering the Divine. Such was my lot as I sat in the Chapel of The Virgin Mary inside St Davids Cathedral on the far west coast of Wales. I was apparently not allowed to be there due to health and safety reasons as Choral Even Song was taking place. I must confess I found the episode all rather ‘pythonesque’ as the overly zealous Verger and I had a cryptic conversation about the unfortunate eventuality of the Cathedral burning down whilst I was praying alone in a Chapel designated for prayer.
How would he explain this to the police when my charred remains were pulled out of the incinerated building? Couple this to his perceived need of me to join in with everyone else in the main religious ceremony designed by others to meet my needs, I guess I was operating outside of his worldview. I did suggest that he would be forgiven in the unlikely event of an ecclesiastical inferno and that in truth I would be much happier on the other side of a fire anyway, but I am not sure he really grasped the metaphysical point I was making. I explained that I was praying, which seemed to catch him off guard as clearly he was more used to dealing with tourists than the small minority who were on a long desired, if short, pilgrimage to discuss with St David a need to shed unhealthy appetites in pursuit of ‘the deep silence and union with God’.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and over the last few years as my journey into the mists of Celtic Christianity has progressed, I have come to discover that ‘the great company of heaven’ that has proceeded us are not dead, they are very much alive. Logically when one thinks about it, to call the saints of our eternal family dead is to deny the resurrection and to deny the resurrection is to deny the core of the Christian faith, that holds resurrection as the explosive centre. Yet my initial exploration has turned up no easy solutions to the imitation of our aboriginal apostles of faith in the British Isles. Men like David were highly disciplined aesthetics, more akin to modern Zen masters, than our jolly rolling monk image of popular devotion. The idea of following in their footsteps thrills me from the comfort of my arm-chair, but the rigour of practice, I confess, I am currently too weak of spirit to fully enter into.
I wanted to visit David to talk. To discuss his world, perhaps to encounter him in the same way I did Cuthbert at Durham Cathedral as I prostrated myself on his tomb and felt the tangible warmth of his heart soak into my then tired skin. I wanted to understand David in context. The David who prayed, who battled, who lived a hermetical life. The David whose simplicity of faith was a profound weapon in winning over so many followers to Christ. A David who walked in the footsteps of the eastern monastic fathers and whose diet of bread and water would have daunted even the most hardened vegan. All of these parts of his life I know from books. The little knowledge I have gleaned has created an image in my mind I needed to test in context and conversation.
Yet the silence offered no response to me that evening. David did not set my heart racing in the confines of his Cathedral building. Instead as I was unceremoniously shoved out of a side door, I laughed at the absurdity of the encounter and set off to find St Non’s Chapel, the birth place of St David. I hoped to find her more hospitable than the newer institutional manifestation in her sons name that was so clearly concerned for my health and safety.
St Non's Chapel - the Birthplace of St David
Over the last few years I have taken to learning sections of scripture by heart. I have found the process very meditative as well as uplifting. Motivated by the early Celtic saints love of scripture and their aesthetic devotion to prayer, the internalising of scriptures as prayer has become a goal for me. No longer are the words purely an external two-dimensional intellectual exercise, digested from a book. They are becoming a living breath, welling up from inside and taking flight in voice as it carries on the air. As I stood within the walls of St Non’s and began reciting the prologue of Johns Gospel (v 1-18), the Word emerged from within my breath and a Whinchat flew up onto the fence post not five yards from my vantage point, over looking St Non’s Bay, cocked it head to one side and stared intently at me. We watched each other closely and I found myself no longer reciting with the land, but to the bird. This tender little creature sat motionless until I got to the end of the prologue and as John the Baptist entered (v19), my little friend broke out of his apparent trance like state and flew on his way.
Away to the left the newer Chapel of St Non stands in the grounds of a Catholic retreat centre. Walking into this tiny space I am greeted by burning votive candles and an intensely blue stained glass window of St Non. The chapel is small, intimate and welcoming. As I walk over the threshold, from behind I hear the flutter of tiny wings and look to see a Wren fly in behind me. For a number of minutes my tiny friend flew round the chapel singing a song of such intensity I was amazed that such a sound could fit into so small a frame. My intention was to pray Psalm 63, but his voice was captivating and melodious and beautifully distracting. We were in such close proximity and seemingly shared the same intention, to give our voice of thanks to our Creator.
This subtle entrance into the presence of the creator on the Welsh coast was both sublimely beautiful and wholesome, yet revealed a layer of tension and disconnect within my own being. If the landscape we call St Davids was teaching me anything, it was that in simplicity we find the highest, purest form of originality. I had intellectually gone looking for God and without noticing, my soul had walked in the presence of God and been held by creation. Perhaps the greatest service a follower of Christ can give to the fractured world we live in would be to establish that most ancient of friendships again between heaven and earth.
It would seem to me that the disconnect we all live with will not be solved in the analysis of the problem, the objectifying of that problem into a ’cause and effect’ and the articulation of a solution through political activity whether secular or religious. This profound sense of disconnect our current society feels with itself and its neighbours, whether consciously or intuitively needs the ‘active contemplative’ to bring the warring parties to peace in their own body.
As I open my soul to the presence of Christ in creation, I recognise the heart beat of Christ in the rhythms of the seasons, the lungs of Christ in the tides of the Oceans. My co-joining and participation in Christ means I am co-present with creation in Christ. How can I therefore act against the very nature of that which gives me life, for to do so is to destroy life and in the process destroy myself.
David taught me a lot on my brief visit. I have glimpsed that ‘the landscape’ is a primary source of revelation and a mediator of peace and wholeness. This glimpse can only serve to whet the appetite for more. A generation later Columba would write, ‘be alone in a separate place’, clearly St David and St Columba understood that a well-chosen location could accelerate God’s grace in our lives.
Posted in Celtic Christianity
Tagged St Columba, St David, St Davids Cathedral, St Nons Chapel
Over the last decade I have been making a local pilgrimage to a wonderful location in the West Sussex South Downs called St Michael’s and All Angels in Up Marden. There are many reasons why I migrate weekly to visit Michael but the principle one has been the ‘quality of the conversation’.
As an aspirant of the Rule of Columba, the primary requirement is;
‘To be alone in a separate place’
This old Celtic rule, so rooted in the pastoral and rural life of 6th century Iona, recognises the primacy of solitude before activity. This aloneness with Christ before the busyness of the day, or the business of God, requires a location that can embody, nurture and externally express the deepest yearning of the disciple to ‘abide in Christ’.
St Michael's and All Angels Church.
St Micheal’s and All Angels is such a location. It has over the years become the cradle and the wide embrace of the invitation to encounter the Divine. It is what I have come to know as a ‘thin place‘. Here the air is very thin and the veil that clouds my perception of the work of the Spirit is drawn back to enable heaven and earth to truly become friends again.
The stillness is alive, Heaven’s presence punctures the worlds pugnacious self and the logic to make myself present in the early morning kiss of the sun of the Son, is to be washed by the Holy Spirit in meaning and fulfillment.
This stillness is fullness, the fullness of friends. Over the years I have found the voice of John the Baptist, the light and truth of The Apostle John and the courage and strength of Michael himself. I have found my voice joining their voices in worship of Christ the Creator ‘through whom all things were made’ (John 1v3).
Basil the Great said;
‘All of life is a season of prayer’
St Michael’s has become a harbour where the life of prayer is amplified and magnified beyond chit-chat. The deep silence becomes deafening as the random voices in my head reluctantly retreat to the scrap heap of irrelevancy and the song birds become the chorus of heaven. The chill of winter breath, the incense of life.
These moments of divine conversation are a reminder to me of the purpose of life. The quality of the encounter is the core, the heat, the fire of my soul. Perhaps it is this very act of being ‘alone with Christ’, that we in the western tradition have forgotten, yet our world so desperately craves we rediscover. And perhaps it in this rediscovery that such locations as St Michael’s fulfill their true purpose. They capture the centuries of prayer and enfold them in the moment of our openness to God.
St Michael’s is a portal to the Company of the Saints where true conversation can take place. It is not a forgotten place, it is alive with the hospitality of Heaven.
Posted in Celtic Christianity, The Rule of Columba
