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lot of historians talk about the time when Patrick and the early
Irish monastics lived as the Dark Ages. In the 5th
century, Rome had fallen to invasions by Germanic tribes and later
Vandals, signaling the end of classical culture and civilization.
What replaced it may have seemed a bit barbaric by comparison.
Buildings were burned, books were lost, and in many sections of the
former Roman empire the world fell into silence. Not that the world
was silent, but in times of political unrest and social
upheaval, people think less about writing and more about how they’re
going to keep their head on their shoulders or food in their
bellies.
Enter Patrick, or Patricius, who lived six
years as a slave in Ireland tending sheep, mostly in solitude,
living a much different, more dangerous, and lonelier life than he
might have imagined back in post-Roman Britain. In the midst of
this he finds God, ends up walking 200 miles across Ireland to the
coast, boards a ship, and finds freedom, only to return to Ireland
years later, the home of his former masters, to tell them about
Christianity in such a way that resonates with the things they had
known to be true about the world. He didn’t ask them to become
Roman Christians, but to be Irishmen and women who would know and
love the one who created them.
Some of the things about Celtic Christianity
I’m really drawn to are their ideas about hospitality and
community. A good man or woman was a generous one, and laws of
hospitality and generosity were not just valued, but made up the
fabric of their culture. Men and women were seen more as equals,
valued. If women could fight in battle then they could also be
queens, or later abbesses (Brigid). The Irish loved nature, and saw
beauty in all of creation, whether on the moors, the rocky
coastlines, the crashing sea, the green hills, the deep forests, or
the sparkling lakes and wells. Life was passionate, both in the
bedroom and on the battlefield, and there was a frank honesty about
sexuality and a thirst for knowledge. The spiritual and physical
were closely intertwined, and the thin places were where the seen
and the unseen came closest together, this world and the next, and
it was evident that they had stepped over into something bigger than
just what lay before them.
But one of the things especially I like about
Celtic Christianity are the ways they would remember these thin
places and God moments in the world and in their lives: by placing
cairn stones in places of spiritual significance. The cairn stones
served as markers, a pile of rocks formed into a mound. Sometimes
they represented the end of a journey or pilgrimage. Sometimes they
marked a place where God had “shown up” or had shown His beauty
through creation in such a way that you had to stop and reflect on
it (worship). I’ve never been to Ireland, but from what I hear,
there are many places to stop and just soak in the beauty of it.
Sometimes it was to remember that people had been there before, and
adding one more stone to the pile was a way of being part of
something shared, something bigger. For whatever reason, they
served as a way to remember. Why? Because we forget.
As I began reading about the stones, I thought
about Jacob in the book of Genesis, who had just stolen the blessing
of the firstborn from his brother Esau, and now was fleeing for his
life to his uncle, (and future father-in-law) Laban (close family).
On the way he stopped for the night and found a rock for a pillow
and fell asleep, and had strange dreams. He saw angels ascending
and descending a staircase into heaven. Some would say the moral of
this is that you should never go to sleep with a rock as a pillow,
but when Jacob woke up he realized he had encountered something.
“This is God’s house,” he said, “and I had no idea.” He renames the
place Bethel (God’s house), though it had formerly been called Luz
(not very memorable) and sets up a stone marker, a memorial. He
doesn’t want to forget this moment. It’s a reminder that God showed
up.
Later, when Moses had died and Joshua was
leading the Israelites--a nation of former slaves and wandering
nomads who had been stripped down during forty years in the
desert--Joshua leads the people through the Jordan River (much like
the crossing through the Red Sea) and they grab twelve stones from
the middle of the river for the twelve tribes, and set them up as a
marker on the other side. Don’t forget this day, God is trying to
tell them. Remember where you’ve been, remember where you came
from, remember that I showed up and I’m taking care of you.
That generation does remember, but the next one
does not. The book of Judges talks about the cycle of people
remembering and forgetting, remembering and forgetting. When they
forget, other nations enslave them again, then God steps in, rescues
them, they remember for a while and then they forget again. Over
and over this happens, and reading this sometimes we think, “When
will these people learn? Why do they keep forgetting?” And then we
realize that their story is our story. We all forget. We all need
to be reminded of the moments when God showed up. We all have
spiritual Alzheimer’s.
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In Deuteronomy 6, God talks about teaching these things to your
children and your children’s children. Put them on the doorframes
of your houses, on your heads, your hands. Talk about them when you
lie down and when you get up, when you’re eating and when you’re on
the road. Everywhere. Don’t forget. What
things? What’s he talking about? He’s saying, remember the
signposts in our lives, the moments when God showed up. Some of the
Jews read these passages and took God literally, creating wooden
boxes and attaching them to their foreheads, and making long flowing
tassels called phyllacteries on their clothing that would go swish
swish, but what God’s really talking about is that we need to burn
these moments down deep, into our hearts, the way we think, the way
we act, the way we live. He’s saying, “Let it become so much a part
of you that it becomes the air you breathe, the food you eat, the
water you drink.” The good things, the moments, the days, the
freedom from slavery, the stepping in and rescuing moments, the ends
of armies and chariots, the times when water came from nowhere and
food that wasn’t there the night before shows up on the doorstep,
enough to fill stomachs and give energy, hold onto these moments.
Don’t forget.
My cousin and her husband have a plaque in
their house, and on it are different things that have happened in
the course of their marriage. Whenever something big happens they
get another metal tag engraved, add it to the plaque, until it’s
become quite a list. There’s the day John started his teaching
job. There’s the birth of their firstborn. The day they paid off
their car. The day they bought their house. The day their daughter
was born. When I first saw the plaque I asked John what it was
about, and he said, “It’s so we can remember all the times God took
care of us.”
Shortly after that my aunt and I were having a
conversation. “Nothing good ever happens to me,” I said, running
down a list of personal failures and disappointments.
“That’s not true,” she said, stopping until
there was an uncomfortable silence between us. She wasn’t going to
let me off with this one. She ran down a list of her own. “There
was the fact that you were born when your mom wasn’t even supposed
to be able to conceive. The fact you weren’t aborted. There was
the day you came to live with us. There was the day you came back.
There were the years of protection, the planting of seeds that made
you believe there was something more than what you were living in.
These are the signposts in your life. These are the things you have
to hold onto when you’re in the desert and things haven’t happened
in a while and you’re wondering and questioning whether your life
has any meaning. These are the things you have to remember.”
After that, I started seeing that all of those
things were there, I just hadn’t been looking for them. There are
times when I wonder if life is mostly good (the signposts), and the
deserts and dark places are in between times that we don’t
understand, but they can still shape us and be used for good. There
are other times when I think that life is meaningless, absurd, one
progression of pain and loss after another, where the good moments
are the cruelties that give us enough hope that when it gets
snatched and pulled away from us leaves us hurting even more. In
those times we need the signposts, we need the markers more than
ever, the stones we carry to pile up, one on top of another, until
we realize that the reality of God moments in our lives are actually
a growing mound.
These mounds don’t grow in isolation. We add
our rocks, our God moments to the pile, then someone adds theirs,
and someone else adds theirs, and another, and another, until the
mound in front of us bears witness that God is not dead, but doing
something, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes right in front of
our eyes if we have the ability to see, to remember, to not become
distracted or sidetracked by all the other things that make us try
to discount the moments. We live in thin places all around us,
where heaven is trying to break through into our lives, not just
through a church service or in ways we expect, but into our moments
where we find ourselves.
[Cliff Wheeler - LCCS Faculty]
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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