One of the things that has so caught my attention recently as I investigate the spirituality of the ancient Celtic followers of Christ is their belief that the experience of God's presence and nature is not limited to the ecclesiastical setting, but can be found in all of life and all of creation.
I've always kind of known this. Even before I was a follower of Christ, Romans 1:20 was true for me.
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made..."
I've always held an awe of creation. As a child I was fascinated with space and had books and posters about astronomy that I would read over and over again. Growing up I used to love to get on my bike, or motorcycle and ride far out into the country where I would be surrounded by woods, open fields, and pastures filled with lazily wandering cows. There was an unexplainable peace that would come over me while in those settings.
When I was pastoring I planned an annual 3-day retreat which I would spend at a place called "The Hermitage" in Rushville, Illinois. It was a house owned by the church and surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods. Between praying the morning and evening prayers in the small chapel my days were spent fasting, reading, silence, and journeying through the woods. I always experienced life-shaping communion with God during those journeys. One of my first sermons in our newly planted church emerged from this time and was entitled, "Two Creeks Converged in the Woods." God used a walk through the woods to provide a prophetic word to our church that turned out to be incredibly profound over the years we were there.
The rain forests, mountains, Altiplano, and pampas lands of Bolivia have for the past six years of short-term trips communicated to me a divine presence that far outweighs the misery so many there experience in day-to-day life. In those settings I can see, in Pelagius' words, the "narrow shafts of divine light piercing the thin veil that separates Heaven from Earth."
In his book, "Listening for the Heartbeat of God," J. Philip Newell has much to say about the Celtic experience of God's presence in creation and through the power of imagination. I'll share some of the quotes with you.
"This may be difficult for most of us to comprehend today, but within the major traditions of Western Christianity we have been influenced by aspects of this Calvinist and Augustinian stream of spirituality that denies an essential goodness at the heart of every person. 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."
"Alexander John Scott (also considered by the Reformers to be heretic) described the believers of Scotland as listening for God in all things, 'in the growth of the tree, in the rising of the morning sun, in the stars at night, and in the moon.' In their 'inmost being,' he said, they knew of a type of communion with the uncreated at the heart of creation. It was of supreme importance to perceive the interweaving of the spiritual and the material, of heaven and earth, time and eternity 'from year to year, from month to month, from hour to hour.'"
"Always, said Scott, 'there is the greatness that lies within and beneath the common.' Everywhere, therefore, we can glimpse signs of the presence of God's life in and among us, for God, he believe, is 'the Being on which all being rests.'"
"The Spirit of God, Scott said, is 'impregnated' throughout the whole of creation. Where there is life and goodness, there is God. God exists wherever there is love and creativity. Scott was critical of the Church's Sabbatarianism, because it taught that only one day of the week is holy, instead of seeing that the whole of life is sacred, every day, every hour, every moment."
"Just as an infant comes to know his mother through form and color, scent and sound, so we come to a knowledge of God through the universe (Romans 1)."
"The gift of the 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."
"Creation is essentially a theophany, a showing or revealing of God's Soul to our souls."
"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."
"Again, the emphasis that comes across in Celtic spirituality and in this particular expression of it is that spirituality is not about looking away from life but more deeply into it, not about denying the human but about releasing our truest selves, and that the life of our truest self partakes of the very substance of God's life, the One Self that is at the heart of all selves. In Christ, the perfect image of God, we see our truest self."
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