Meditation for St. John’s Eve

Meditation for St. John's Eve:

Now, as Vespers sings itself

to dusk’s silent sitting,

the beacons begin to burn.

Men watching for the moment

of Moon’s waning,

in twilight midsummer sky

lit by a Sun too lazy to truly set,

so to kindle flame for the Forerunner;

John.

He whose element is fire.

Both lamps now hanging

in cloth of such deep blue

that the world seems enfolded

in the mantle of one

who midwifed his birth,

even as she joined her magnificat

to old Elizabeth’s pangs,

and doubting Zechariah’s silence,

beneath the shining stars of desert sky.

Now, as Matins touches midnight

of Monks long vigilling,

the herbs are gathered.

Women seeking

the helpers and the healers

in wood, and dell, and garden bed,

where, blessed by dew and moonlight

and the long warmth of Sun’s summer,

the Yarrow and the Bracken,

the Fennel and the Rue,

the Rosemary and the Foxglove,

always the Elder and

the great yellow flower of the Forerunner

willingly give up

their essence on the night

that marks the first whisper

of the Word’s healing breath,

breathed through the one

who is His herald Voice;

John.

Dried, and hung,

and laid upon the Lady Altar

to become more than they are

they will bestow divine healing.

Twice gifted and graced

by Summer’s picking

and Autumn’s

Assumption blessing,

they reveal the medicine

present always, beneath.

Now, as Lauds’ psalms sun skywards

the pots and pans

and ancient drums are beaten.

The children sing the old songs

and the rhymes long lost to meaning,

as young men and women, harelike,

leap heedless across the

dying flames together.

Recalling he who leapt with joy,

filled with fire, even in womb’s waters,

so near was the One who first kindled flame,

rendered the rivers holy and made the wells

vessels of new birth.

Now, as Mass bell tolls dawn’s daily resurrection

monks and men,

and women, and children all

hear the summons of the Sanctifier

and His herald

loud upon morning’s breeze

as embers die down, and herbs are hung up.

Beneath the vaulted stone they gather

to join their voices to praise

that vastness veiled

in simple bread and wine,

and hear again the word first spoken by

the herald,

the lamp,

the flame,

the leaper,

the prophet,

the angel,

the voice,

the Baptist,

whose birth they have

blessed anew,

cry across the ages

“Behold the Lamb of God!”

I wrote this in 2016 to illuminate so many of the customs we have lost that wove the wisdom of the wild and the faith together so beautifully. On St. John's Eve, (The Vigil of the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist), the last official day of the solstice, bonfires were set burning to commemorate the fire of the Baptist's faith and the facing into the waning of natural light after the longest day.

Couples leaping across the fire was an old betrothal custom. This was also the traditional night for gathering the herbs that would be used as medicine for the year to come. Gathered tonight and dried until Assumption Day they would then be blessed in the Monasteries at the first Mass at Our Lady's Altar... The songs and noise making around the boundaries of the hills and the fields was to frighten away evil and stagnancy so as to refresh the fields and prepare for the Harvest... Our faith was and is both holy and holistic and we must return to such deep knowing again... May the Baptist pray for us on this the feast of fire!

O King of the Friday; an ancient Irish Rune Prayer

O King of the Friday; 

   an ancient Irish Rune Prayer 

for Friday evening:

O King of the Friday

whose limbs were stretched on the cross,

O Lord who did suffer the bruises,

the wounds, the loss,

we stretch ourselves

beneath the shield of thy might,

some fruit from the tree of thy passion

fall on us this night!

St. Patrick, Pandemic, and the Divine Presence of God: Brooke Taylor wit...

An interview with Brooke Taylor for the Feast of St. Patrick covering all things Pandemic too.

May it bring you and yours blessings for the feast and let us all pray that St. Patrick may intercede for a quick cessation to the current viral pandemic.

You can access the interview at this link:

interview on St. Patrick, the pandemic and the Divine Presence

Homily for the Easter Vigil 2019

Homily for the Easter Vigil 2019

It begins with fire… a spark is struck and an explosion of light transfigures darkness…

It begins with a flame… courageous, strong, held aloft and carried into a dark and empty space

It begins with light… a point of luminescence that is shared and spreads without ever dimming or becoming less…

A light that is the light of all but kindled in the heart of each and every person…

A light that the darkness now discovers it can never overcome…

It begins with a cry an invocation of light called with hope into a darkness that seems to be the death of all things

Lumen Christi we cry and we hold our flame aloft…

Lumen Christi we cry before the forces of sin, and darkness and death…

Lumen Christi we cry and we watch in awe as sin is forgiven, darkness is swallowed by light and death touches life itself and so becomes no more…

This is our faith and this is why we gather all over this world on this holiest of nights to vigil from darkness to light, from dusk to dawn, from death to life

Keeping our watch as a vast flaming tide of faith catches fire and flows across the face of the earth as the people of God sing the song of resurrection…

Tonight, we exult with joy over a victory, not just promised but already given, as we see the ancient enemy thrown down and the cosmos healed and renewed in the light of the Risen One stepping from His tomb; his wounded and glorified feet gentle upon the soft grass of the garden as Mother Earth thrills to know that the seed buried within her not three days hence held within itself the gift of a new and eternal spring for all creation.

A new beginning for all that was, and all that is and all that will be…

For from this moment all is new and the One before whom the first seven days of creation unfolded in power and majesty is now become the eighth day Himself, the beginning and the ending, the alpha and the omega the origin and the completion of all things…

Now the great cry of resurrection is heard as the call of the Good Shepherd to all of creation to come home to the house of the Father!

The doors and gates of sin that we erected in our error and pride have been knocked down and the empty Cross stands as the key that gains us entry into Love for all eternity…

Now the lord Adam and the lady Eve and all their generations are loosed from the limbo of the ages and hear their Son and Lord call them home at last…

Now Peter is called from his tears to look into the eyes of love and become the rock the foundation stone of faith…

Now the Apostles will be woken from their grief and fear to become sparks of the flame of love that will over run the whole world…

Now even Judas is looked upon in love if only he can open his pride sealed eyes…

Now the mourning of the women will become the joy of the comforted…

Now the faith of the Mother is fulfilled at last and the Son embraces her in a moment so sacred so profound that even angels are rendered silent before the sight…

And down the ages the flame comes….

The light born by saints and sinners alike for only sinners can became saints…

The fire of Easter borne through days of joy and days of sorrow, through days of peace and days of persecution, through great and glad gatherings and lonely lives lived in isolation and pain…  

In every succeeding age the great of this world proclaim it quenched, the so called wise proclaim it stifled and lost, and yet always, always, it rises again, renews itself again, and from the long banked hearth it flames forth from One who can never die and whose five fiery coals kindle the Church as the harvest of the world eternally governed not by earthly power or wisdom but by the weakness and folly of the Cross…

The fire comes to us too who gather here this night on the holy land of Ards…

It crackles beneath our feet and drums in the heart of our being, gifted to us by Ancestors who saw their own story assume meaning in His greater story, who found hope in His fire and love in His light…

It comes to us pure even of those who along the way corrupted its cry of compassion and peace and hurt so many… and it comes to us to use us to purify the past by becoming fire ourselves… by becoming places of resurrection, tombs that become gardens liberating the Christ life to love through us, with us, and in us the whole of creation and so reach out to the wounded, the poor, the downtrodden, the abused that they might hear their own hope sound anew in our Alleluias!

    

We saw this fire work its wonders this past week when in a country where so many thought the faith dying if not dead already, a burning building brought blessing… not in the flames that consumed a mere building but in the sparks suddenly kindled by that sight that gathered a people and brought them to their knees before their mother singing the hymns of their ancestors and resolving to find again the faith that would raise to the Mother of God such a tribute… The same fiery faith that sent a priest into the burning nave to rescue the Blessed Sacrament and the ancient relics, remembrances of His love for us and give a benediction to the city that burned hotter than any earthly flame…

So do not doubt the power of this resurrection flame… in every age it has burned and we are still dazzled by the light of Easter dawn when even Brother Sun

dances with joy!

A Christian fears no doubt, no danger, no darkness!

For all is aflame with love this night, and fire dances over our heads as we sing our Alleluias to the Rising Son!

Assumption Eve Medicine

 

 

Assumption Eve Medicine

 

For two months turning

the old women,

they who have the knowing,

have watched their charges carefully.

Picked at the height of their power

on the short night, after the long day;

the feast of fire,

that vigils the Baptist’s coming,

when lads and ladies leap

like hares over flames

and look with longing for love,

as children sing the old songs

filled with mystic meaning;

that night they were gathered

as grace and gift

beneath the light of sister Moon,

the Lady’s lamp and plucked

from garden and from forest glade,

by woman’s hands alone.

Now, they, the herbs for healing,

hang in blessed bunches

over the hearth of home,

or kept in kitchens

above the range,

or bound in byres

where the warming breath

of the queen kine keeps them

charmed and waiting

to release their medicine,

the healing pulse

of sister Mother Earth

and Brother Sun’s distilled light

mixed, and married, and greened,

in root, and shoot,

and leaf, and flower.

So they, the healing herbs,

have rested until tonight

when as dusk comes on

and begins to breathe her

autumnal quickening,

these wise ones take them down

and bring them now

to the old places of prayer

to the abbeys and chapels,

to the candled shrines

of the sainted ones,

who themselves bore

the fruit of blessing

and were heaven’s healing,

the salve of souls,

upon the earth.

There they find

the Lady’s chapel,

and lay their leafy burdens

beneath the linen cloths

upon the Altar, there to await

Assumption’s dawn,

and as the Mass bells ring

to have the holy words

said over them that render

them thrice blessed again,

and ready to release their

gentle healing gifts,

blessed once in very being

from first beginning’s breathing,

blessed twice in the burning

touch of Love’s own resurrection light

when all was made anew,

blessed thrice by the Lady’s prayers,

she who is the stock from which

all healing blooms,

and in her gathering home raised all

that grows green upon this good earth

to become heaven’s healing help again;

Eden’s elixir restored in her

and birthed anew as grace,

just as these sainted herbs

ground upon the mortar’s stone

will give their essence up,

and become the holy way

by which their medicine

blesses bodies and anoints

our souls to ready us

in our own time,

for Heaven’s

homing.

Vigil of the Assumption 14th August 2018.

In many places it was the ancient custom for women to gather herbs around the feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer) and then bring them to the Churches for blessing on the feast of the Assumption before they were made into medicine for the Winter ahead. The herbs were placed beneath the Altar Cloths and around the Sanctuary before the dawn Mass there to be offered to the Lord, through Mary’s hands, she who is the “first fruits” of His saving love, so as to receive her special prayers of healing and be blessed in their medicinal use in the year ahead.

The Ritual of the Church still provides for such blessings should they be requested.

 

(Pics in this post found as random uncredited images on the web)

 

 

Meditation for St. John's Eve

Meditation for St. John's Eve:

Now, as Vespers sings itself
to dusk’s silent sitting,
the beacons begin to burn.
Men watching for the moment
of Moon’s waning,
in twilight midsummer sky lit
by a Sun too lazy to truly set,
so to kindle flame for the Forerunner;
John.
He whose element is fire.
Both lamps now hanging
in cloth of such deep blue
that the world seems enfolded
in the mantle of one
who midwifed his birth,
even as she joined her magnificat
to old Elizabeth’s pangs,
and doubting Zechariah’s silence,
beneath the shining stars of desert sky.

Now, as Matins touches midnight
of Monks long vigilling,
the herbs are gathered.
Women seeking
the helpers and the healers
in wood, and dell, and garden bed,
where, blessed by dew and moonlight
and the long warmth of Sun’s summer,
the Yarrow and the Bracken,
the Fennel and the Rue,
the Rosemary and the Foxglove,
always the Elder and
the great yellow flower of the Forerunner
willingly give up
their essence on the night
that marks the first whisper
of the Word’s healing breath,
breathed through the one
who is His herald Voice;
John.
Dried, and hung,
and laid upon the Lady Altar
to become more than they are
they will bestow divine healing.
Twice gifted and graced
by Summer’s picking
and Autumn’s
Assumption blessing,
they reveal the medicine
present always, beneath.

Now, as Lauds’ psalms sun skywards
the pots and pans
and ancient drums are beaten.
The children sing the old songs
and the rhymes long lost to meaning,
as young men and women, harelike,
leap heedless across the
dying flames together.
Recalling he who leapt with joy,
filled with fire, even in womb’s waters,
so near was the One who first kindled flame,
rendered the rivers holy and made the wells
vessels of new birth.

Now, as Mass bell tolls dawn’s daily resurrection
monks and men,
and women, and children all
hear the summons of the Sanctifier
and His herald
loud upon morning’s breeze
as embers die down, and herbs are hung up.
Beneath the vaulted stone they gather
to join their voices to praise
that vastness veiled
in simple bread and wine,
and hear again the word first spoken by
the herald,
the lamp,
the flame,
the leaper,
the prophet,
the angel,
the voice,
the Baptist,
whose birth they have
blessed anew,
cry across the ages
“Behold the Lamb of God!”

I wrote this in 2016 to illuminate so many of the customs we have lost that wove the wisdom of the wild and the faith together so beautifully. On St. John's Eve, (The Vigil of the Feast of the Birth of St. John the Baptist), the last official day of the solstice, bonfires were set burning to commemorate the fire of the Baptist's faith and the facing into the waning of natural light after the longest day.
Couples leaping across the fire was an old betrothal custom. This was also the traditional night for gathering the herbs that would be used as medicine for the year to come. Gathered tonight and dried until Assumption Day they would then be blessed in the Monasteries at the first Mass at Our Lady's Altar... The songs and noise making around the boundaries of the hills and the fields was to frighten away evil and stagnancy so as to refresh the fields and prepare for the Harvest... Our faith was and is both holy and holistic and we must return to such deep knowing again... May the Baptist pray for us on this the feast of fire!

Our Lady of the Solstice

Lady of the Solstice

At the moment
of
the
deepest dark
and,
at
the sharp point
of the
longest night,
at such distance from
dawn
that we groan
beneath
the burden of
being,
and touch within
ourselves
only
the winds of winter
and the
wild longing
where
light
is only a memory
long lost
and left behind in
summer sun;
then we,
suddenly,
and just for
the merest of moments,
are hushed
into silence,
as the turning
of the
ancient
wheels of wonder
stop,
and sun and stars
all,
still their divinely
directed dance
and take their
yearly yearned for
deep remembering
rest,
like lovers suddenly
still,
when struck
by desire's reverie;
or dancers,
pulsing with passion,
awaiting the next
beat
of beauty's music
to liberate life within.
They,
our elder siblings
of the sky,
recall in
their
sacred stillness
that moment
when
once,
just once,
their fiery song,
sung since
first
divine kindling,
was
paused,
hushed,
stilled,
stopped;
just
once,
long ago,
so as
to
listen to
a new note
joined to
the
great hymn of gratitude
that all
offer
simply by their very being.
For in that
moment
of their listening
was revealed
she who is
our true solstice.

The Woman,
that moment of
perfect stillness
between
divine in-breathing
and creation's
exhalation of excelsis.
So they watched,
as she who is the
stillpoint
of
the dance of story,
and the sanctuary
where
myth becomes flesh,
then,
before angelic emissary,
dropped the pebble of her
yes,
in its utter simplicity,
longed for through the countless
ages of agony,
into the pool of our pain.

Behold the Solstice of the Lord…
Be it done unto me according to His Word…

Looking deep they
saw its
ripples now run to the
edges of existence
trembling them with
the promise
of a new
Spring.

And the Story became flesh…
And dwelt amongst us…

This young girl,
this Lady of light.
who is our solstice.
She,
the perfect place
of stillness,
so attuned
to the coming of the Light
that in her
all
creation stills,
the old cycle of sin
is broken
and,
even the deep dark
of despair
must yield
to glow of dawn.

She,
the light that glows before
the rising Sun,
heralded by Robin
and Wren
and fluting Blackbird,
She, like that blessed moment
when Sun and Moon
both
hang in the deep blue together
and bow as they pass
gentling our hearts
and
drawing us from dreams
to welcome
the advent of the One
who
IS
Love's Light
and eternal Word both,
spoken now into time’s renewed turning
by the Yes of one who
holds
within her heart
the perfect emptiness of Love.

Treasuring in
the holy dark of
her womb the hearth
where Spring's spark is
kindled
and brightens with beauty
as a
first place of
promised Easter exhalation
the cave of
rebirth;
in which
eternity and time
are married,
and infinity will wed itself
forever
to clay's embrace.

Here, in this
sacred solstice place,
Eve's aching
is healed,
and
here,
Adam's sin
undone,
as from the dry root
of the
sundering tree
a new shoot rises
at the word of
one
whose whole being
is Yes
whose whole being
is
Love,

And so,
yearly
we sit,
rooting ourselves
once again
in Mother Earth's embrace,
and while looking ever upwards
we find the still point
of the skies
and yet
inwardly gaze
into
the light of story
long-kindled
against the cold of winter,
and so become
re-minded,
re-hearted,
re-souled,
by she who is our solstice,
whose self-forgetting
Yes
brought to us
the turning of the light
and blessed us
all
like barren trees
brought to beauty
by a sudden
anointing
of
new snow.

O Key of David: A meditation on the fourth of the Great O Antiphons of Advent

O Key of David!

Opener of the way between the worlds
Come and open our tight locked hearts!
O you who make of your very self
both the door and the key
make straight our path to you this night
and from the long winding of the ages
order us aright and
set our feet upon the way of peace
who long since left the path,
and stumble blind in darkness
of our own making!

O Key of David!

You who unlock the ancient temple treasury of Israel
come and liberate its golden light
to illumine the darkness of the whole world!
Open the minds
of all who seek truth and beauty
to find their source and summit
in your mangered birth.
Temper our being,
O Sceptered smith
of the heavens
by the hammer
of your divinity
until we are fit vessels for your sacred meal,
tabernacles of your spirit,
alloys rendered pure again
and fit for the King’s own
birthday feast.

O Key of David!

Open the long barred doors of Heaven as you descend!
Claim again the authority of divinity over humanity,
and humanity in divinity over creation.
Release the locks of longing
holding the doors of limbo shut
and quicken again the hearts
of patriarchs and prophets,
of the ancient fathers and mothers
of all times and places
who have kept faith with the promise
of a freedom scarce imagined,
yet desired of all the ages.

O Key of David!

Unlock in us the song of heaven
that sin strangled into silence
so long ago!
Let ours be the song
of the Woman
whose faith drew you down
upon the earth
she, the thrice holy one,
in whom the gift of grace
shone so bright
that even the shadow of
death
was put to flight,
and you who are
life unbounded
and eternal,
key and door both,
dwelt sealed in her
three seasons long,
so as to unlock for all
and forever
the way to
the eternal
Spring.

"O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death!"

Celtic Christianity: a brief essay

Celtic Christianity:

For the Feast of the All Saints of Ireland here is an essay on Celtic Christianity!
I was invited to write this by Sr. Stan Kennedy for inclusion in her 2015 Book: To Live from the Heart.

Celtic Christianity

The interplay of culture and faith has always produced unique ways of being Christian,

(or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim), When a faith encounters a new culture there are two possibilities – domination, which leads to resistance, fear or even violence; or fusion, which leads to a comfortable inter-being in which the best of what was is nourished by the best of what is. In the Christian tradition, this second way of being has over the centuries led to the beauty of the various Rites of the Church. Each is distinct in language, history and ritual yet all are one Church in confessing one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Unity in diversity is the very mark of the Church in its

catholicity, in its universality.

In the faith communities that grew up in Europe at its westernmost edge between the fourth and tenth centuries this accommodation to native culture, and yet illumination and completion of it by the Christian message, was undertaken in a way never seen before in the history of the Church. A faith community emerged, which though seeing itself as part of the larger Christian Church nevertheless had a unique way of being and a distinctive vision of itself, of the world and of God; a vision that is characterized today as ‘Celtic’. Much of this has been lost in successive waves of invasion and ideology but the traces that remain whisper to the sacred places in many people’s hearts and offer a glimpse of a way of relating to faith and to the Church that seems to ground them in this world and the next in a way both fully human and fully in communion with creation.

The ‘Celtic Christians’ in essence inherited an older form of Christianity from the deserts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and perhaps even as far away as Ethiopia. Theirs was a monastic Church, founded by monk missionaries who carried the disciplines and teachings of a contemplative form of life that both completed and transformed beautifully the ‘pagan’ understandings of the pre-Christian Celts. Perhaps it was this origin in a monastic and contemplative way of being that led to the ready fusion of old and new, for the Christianization of the Celtic tribes and lands, particularly Ireland,

happened quickly, and largely without violence or persecution.

To a people who worshipped a pantheon of deities and saw the presence of the divine in every aspect of nature, the revelation of Christ and the Trinity offered a Hero and a High King as well as a God who was, at one and the same time, utterly transcendent of and gloriously immanent in his creation, so it took little to bring the pantheistic pre-Christian Celts to a more subtle understanding of a pan-en-theistic faith, especially when the transition nourished their longing and hope for an afterlife that could be gained without the sacrifice of lives in war, one open to all genders and classes of people regardless of their rank or tribe. Awareness of the presence of the divine in and through the beauty of nature is a mark of this particular expression of Christianity: to such adegree that whilst it is present, and always has been, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it had never been so poetically and beautifully expressed before, and would not be again until the Franciscan School in the 1200's.

So what were these ways of being Christian that were manifested in such a unique way in the Celtic forms of Christianity? The early Celtic Church often built on the foundations of monastic communities, each led by an elder known for their holiness and wisdom. The parallel of this structure to the tribal/clan system of the indigenous peoples under a chief meant that there was an immediate understanding, as the two systems seemed to share a common way of life despite their different origins. Loyalty to Clan and to Chief and through him to the High King beautifully paralleled the monks’ obedience to the Elder and above all to Christ, the High King of High Kings. A people raised on the sagas of the Fianna and the Red Branch Knights saw the sacrifice of one’s life to an ideal, and especially to the service of a king, as noble and to be admired. Leaving home and family to serve the Gospel became attractive, even to those of royal and noble blood. This can be seen in the stories of

Colm Cille (Columba) and Brigid. The so-called ‘green martyrdom’ of trusting in the providence of God called forth great missionaries like Brendan and Columbanus, who brought the Celtic expression of the Christian faith to parts of northern Europe and perhaps, in the case of Brendan, a good deal further! Rowing out from land into the ocean currents, they simply went wherever wind and wave, fellow servants of the High King of Heaven, brought them and there lived their life of prayer and praise.

Despite the lush greenness of much of the Celtic territories the spirituality of their monastics was influenced greatly by the fathers and mothers of Christian monasticism who had flourished in the deserts of Egypt and the Lebanon; large monastic complexes – often called ‘Disearts’ for the perceived extremity of the observance – often vied with each other in their pride in the monks and nuns who fasted the most or kept the most vigils, or whose elders worked the most miracles. This ‘boasting in God’ was not meant as a source of vainglory or pride: it came from the bardic culture that esteemed its heroes and heroines and commemorated their deeds to inspire the spiritual practice of others. The bardic culture of long epic poems and sagas created an educated class who,

along with the druids, were among the first Christian converts; they aided in the exchange of ideas, links between cultures and cultivation of wisdom that led to the Celtic monasteries’ reputation as bastions of learning and contemplative practice when the rest of Europe was falling into the chaos of the so-called “Dark Ages”. In Celtic monasticism the fusion of desert spirituality with a holistic understanding of creation and humanity’s place in it saw redemption as bringing

about such a healing of the person that a new and holy unity with creation was the result. Through the ancient remedies of prayer, meditation, fasting, vigils and charity, the monastic began to experience that oneness with nature that Adamic humanity first knew. We have many stories of the Celtic saints and their animal companions: Kevin and the otter, Colm Cille and his horse, Gobnait and her bees, among so many others, show a marvellous intimacy with our fellow creatures in which we all serve the Lord of Creation according to our capacity and gifts.

The visible creation can be a door to the unseen world too. For the Celts, a liminal and animistic people, the nearness of the supernatural, the world of angels, demons and elemental powers carried over from pre-Christian days, was actively completed by the sacramental view of nature that is at the very heart of the Christian contemplative tradition in which all that exists is a word from the Word of God, and creation itself the universal testament to all peoples of all times of Divine Beauty and its nearness to us in every breath.

In the Celtic, domestic form of spirituality every household act, no matter how small, could be performed mindfully in the presence of the divine and

thus assume a cosmological and redemptive purpose and meaning. The blessing prayers and poems that come down to us from places like Donegal and Kerry

and especially from the Hebrides hold an immense lexicon of benedictions for every activity and task of the day and important moment in life. The making of bread, the laying of the fire, the opening of the hall door, the kindling of the evening lights all had their blessing prayer and ritual (usually performed by women in the home and by men on the land), and each had its patron saint or angel. The domestic scene, an expression of the Church in its own right, mirrored and deepened the life of the larger Church, nurturing the sense of belonging and being part of the redemptive mission of Christ through his Church.

With the turning of the year the old festivals found their fulfilment in the liturgical calendar. For example, the honouring of the ancestors at Samhain has its counterpart in the feasts of All Souls and All Saints in which the ancestors were no longer to be feared or placated but to be assisted by the prayers of the living. The old grave offerings became the blessed salt and bread left in the hearth overnight and consumed the next day. The Fires of Lughnasa became the bonfires of St John’s Eve and the dancing around them continued, as did pilgrimages to holy wells and trees and mountains, places now sanctified by the observances of the saints and the miracles they wrought. “Cuimhnionn an tir na Manach,” the people would say ever after: “the land remembers the monks”. So the people would gather to celebrate the goings in and goings out of life; the births, the marriages and the deaths, sanctifying them by their association with the saints of old in ruins and caves

soaked in centuries of prayer.

Today, this unique spirituality and way of being Christian appeals to a generation that achingly feels its distance from the earth and her seasons, that is stressed and distressed by the pace of life and by separation from its inner rhythms. In the wave of mindfulness and meditation programmes and classes that has swept across the Western world we can detect a hunger for the wisdom of the old ways and old paths. Perhaps we need to return to the pace of the ancestors who lived with a foot in both worlds, and in domestic familiar intimacy with God; to return to a pace slow enough for us to discern the language of praise and beauty that issues from every tree and rock and rivulet of water, to realign humanity with its ancient purpose and meaning as the Celtic Christian understood it.

It would be no small thing if this wisdom was recovered and renewed for the next generation. A humble affinity with nature and a sense of our place in the cosmic context of creation and redemption would allow us to recover ourselves as pilgrims

passing reverently through this world with one eye always on eternity and a heart and soul on fire for the High King of Heaven who blesses every place, every moment and every breath.