Lynne Baab

Celtic Christianity: the earth and art

Wednesday April 29 2015

It’s no accident that there are rabbits, mice, lizards and fish drawn between the lines and around the edges of the pages of the Book of Kells. The profound connection that the Celts felt between their lives and God’s creation spilled over into their art.

Sister John Miriam Jones, in her book With an Eagle’s Eye, writes that their sense of God’s presence and love led the Celts

to artistic expressions using metal, wood, stone, paint, words, and music. These wholehearted art lovers found countless ways to utilize the arts in expressing their beliefs and their love. The monastic era coincides with the production of the best of Celtic metalwork, manuscripts and sculpture – all of which attest to their awareness of and yearning for God’s immanent presence. [1]

She believes that all of this creativity and artistry comes from the truth that “deeply felt love requires expression.” [2]

The Celts saw in the creation the deep love of the Creator, and they felt moved to create also. Their art was deeply symbolic. The Celtic knots that have become so popular in jewelry and art and symbolic of the love of God, which has no beginning or end.

The Celtic cross, which has also become popular in recent years, is a cross with a circle behind it. The circle probably represents the earth or the sun, and the cross represents Jesus dying to conquer the forces of evil. To the Celts, the cross as a shape in art would never be separated from the strong meaning of Jesus’ death.

Many of the ancient high crosses in Ireland and Britain, large stone works of art with a worn frieze decorating the surface of each cross, show the story of our God who rescues, saves and feeds us. Often both the crucified Christ and the risen Christ are depicted. On many of the crosses Christ is shown with outstretched, wounded hands to bless the world as both Creator and Redeemer.

Part of the appeal of Celtic Christianity in our time is this connection between the creation, artistic expression and our faith in God. As we experience God’s handiwork in nature, we may identify with the Celts who lived among the trees and hills and woodland animals, and who saw all of nature as an expression of God’s creativity and as a true gift from God.

As we engage in any artistic expression, whether it’s quilting or drawing or baking or making music or woodworking or writing poetry, we receive deep encouragement from the Celts who seamlessly integrated their faith and their art. They created art for the love of Christ. They experienced themselves as connected to their Creator as they pursued artistic expression, and they expressed their understanding of God in symbols that were full of meaning for them. We can do the same.

These symbols and images can play a role when we want to break free of the pervasive, materialistic images bombarding us in the media. They may help us deepen our connection to the eternal and the holy. Celtic knots and scampering mice can become anchors for us, connecting us to God in a nonverbal but profound way. Esther de Waal, herself descended from Celts, writes in her wonderful book, The Celtic Way of Prayer:

Above all the Celtic tradition has reminded me of the importance of images, those foundational images whose depths and universal character have always brought such riches to Christian understanding. Most people today are being constantly battered by the succession of superficial images that meet us in the world of consumerism, in television and in advertising, where there is no chance to spend time testing their true meaning. Therefore, it now becomes vital, more than ever, to recover the fundamental images of fire, wind, bread, water, of light and dark, of the heart. These are the great impersonal symbols that are universal, understood by Christian and non-Christian alike. An Indian Christian priest once said that they were like a great bridge that Christ has thrown across the world and across history so that men and women may walk to meet each other and be completed in him. [3]

(This post is excerpted from A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife by Lynne M. Baab. Copyright © Lynne M. Baab. If you’d like to receive an email whenever I post on this blog, sign up in the right hand column under “subscribe.”)

[1] Sister John Miriam Jones, S.C., With an Eagle’s Eye (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1998), 65.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 27.

Celtic Christianity: pilgrimage and the Celtic sense of place

Wednesday April 22 2015

Celtic Christians found God everywhere, in the smallest, mundane household activity, in nature, and in sites where something special had happened to a saint. They saw every good thing as a gift from God, and they saw difficult experiences as a different kind of gift, a way to learn or a call to repentence.

The fire that warmed the hearth and lightened the darkness spoke clearly that God is light. The bread that filled the hungry belly spoke of God’s provision. The trees and animals spoke of God’s artistry and care for creation.

The Celts saw God clearly in nature. By no means were they pantheists, equating the creation with God. Instead, they understood that the supernatural realm is very close to the physical world; in fact they believed and experienced the spiritual world touching our world in certain places. They had a name for the places and times when the spiritual world was most near: “thin places.” Water, oak forests and mountains were considered to be “thin places,” as were saints’ birthplaces and sites of past miracles and extraordinary events.

The significance of “thin places” drew the Celtic Christians into frequent pilgrimages. Celts valued travelling for a spiritual purpose, to visit a place or places where God might be close by. In Discovering Celtic Christianity, Bruce Reed Pullen describes five characteristics of Celtic pilgrimages. [1] These principles apply to pilgrimages today.

1. “Pilgrimage is purposeful; it has a destination.” Sometimes we undertake a pilgrimage to return to a place of memories; sometimes we go somewhere new, where we anticipate a deeper connection with God. Wherever we go, we expect a significant, integrated connection between our inner journey of faith and this outer journey. The Celts undertook pilgrimages not because an abbot or priest suggested it, but because of an inner prompting. They undertook their journeys “for the love of Christ.” [2]

2. “Pilgrimage is renewing.” We might not know why we are drawn to a place, but we expect that our inner being will be renewed and revitalized because of what we experience.

3. “Pilgrimage is a time for reflection.” A pilgrim may resemble a tourist for part of the day, looking at interesting sites and absorbing the historical aspects of a certain place. But a pilgrim always draws on Jesus’ pattern of prayerful reflection, taking time to be alone with God as a part of the journey.

4. “When a pilgrimage includes other pilgrims, the excitement of the journey is shared.” The Celtic experience of community spilled over to pilgrimages. Certainly some Celts went on pilgrimages alone, but others shared the experience with a partner or small group of fellow travelers.

5. “Pilgrimage transforms us.” A pilgrimage is a journey taken in search of the holy, and the Celts understood that it is impossible to encounter our Holy God without being changed in some way, perhaps as expected, or more likely, in a very unexpected way. In fact, the very nature of a pilgrimage enables us to expect the unexpected. Pilgrims give up their commitment to planning and control, and they allow God to lead and guide.

I recently visited the town in Virginia where I lived in junior high. We left Virginia when I was 14, and I had never been back. We found the houses I lived in, the schools I attended, the church where I went to Sunday school, and the beach and pool where I swam. My husband said he had never seen me so happy. I didn’t set out to find these places with a spirit of pilgrimage, but as I look back on that visit, I definitely feel that I found something holy, a piece of my childhood stamped with the presence of God in those formative years of my life.

We may take a pilgrimage to a place of significance from our childhood or our parents’ lives. How many people have visited the Normandy beaches or the Nazi concentration camps with a sense of pilgrimage?

When I was a pastor in a congregation in Seattle, I took a group of women from our church to a monastery in Idaho every year, and that journey felt like a pilgrimage. As we drove across the eastern part of Washington State, a broad, wind-tossed landscape, we felt the stresses and irritations of city life dropping away. The trip prepared us for the profound silence and warm hospitality we found at the monastery, which enabled us to look at our lives afresh with God’s eyes.

The Celts were not people full of plans, organization and the need to control. They expected God’s guidance on every step of their pilgrimage journeys, and they had an amazing ability to expect God to work through the events of daily life. As I undertake pilgrimages, where I give up some sense of control, I can feel myself practicing the kind of responsiveness they had toward God.

(This coming Saturday, April 25, 2015, is the 100^th anniversary of the landing of the Australia and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli, the site of huge loss of life. So many New Zealanders are talking these days about their pilgrimages to Gallipoli, either in the past or hoped for in the future. So I was happy that the section of my book that I wanted to post for this week focuses on pilgrimage. This post is excerpted from A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife by Lynne M. Baab. Copyright © Lynne M. Baab. If you’d like to receive an email whenever I post on this blog, sign up in the right hand column under “subscribe.”)

[1] Bruce Reed Pullen, Discovering Celtic Christianity (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1999), 10-12.
[2] Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 2-3.

Celtic Christianity: the first post of a series

Thursday April 16 2015

A few years ago a friend from Ireland gave me a book full of pictures from the Book of Kells. I was astonished at the beauty and complexity of the illustrations. It was my first introduction to Celtic Christianity.

The Book of Kells is a lavishly illustrated version of the four Gospels, produced in Ireland between the seventh and ninth centuries. Capital letters are colorful figures of people or animals, intertwined with Celtic knots, those crossed lines with no beginning or end that we see so often today in Celtic jewelry.

There are animals everywhere in the Book of Kells. Fish swim between lines of text; rabbits and mice scamper between the lines. The artists clearly had a deep fondness for God’s creatures. A lightness and exuberance characterize every page of the Book of Kells, along with a joy in nature and artistry. These are typical characteristics of Celtic Christianity.

Who were the Celts? The Celts were tribal people who can be traced as early as 500 B.C. in France and Germany. The Roman Empire pushed some of the tribes north and west to Great Britain. Within Britain, the Romans pushed them yet further north and west.

Christianity began to come to the British Isles in the second and third centuries after Christ. In the fifth century, St. Patrick was one of many people who brought the Christian faith to Ireland. Because the Christian faith flourished within the already existing Celtic culture, and because the Celtic lands were so far from Rome, Celtic Christianity has a unique flavor and emphasis.

What we call “Celtic Christianity” flourished from about the fifth to ninth centuries throughout the British Isles, but particularly concentrated in the west and north: Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. There were also Celts in Brittany in France. Today these lands often host Celtic festivals, both Christian and pre-Christian. In this blog post and the posts over the next few weeks, we will look specifically at the unique flavor of Christianity as we believe it was practiced in Celtic lands from the middle to the end of the first millennium.

The Celts were described briefly in Greek literature in the centuries before and after Jesus, but very little is known about the pre-Christian Celts. We do know that in the Roman Empire the Celts were renowned for their ability to learn very long stories and poems from memory. Much of what we know about Celtic Christianity we have learned through the poems, prayers, blessings and ballads that have been passed down through the generations in Celtic lands. For centuries, probably ever since the time of Patrick, Celtic children learned about God from the words of their mothers and fathers as they sang softly while cooking, sewing, farming and caring for animals.

In the early twentieth century, travelling salesman Alexander Carmichael visited the highlands and islands of Scotland. He wrote down and published six volumes of Celtic “hymns and incantations” in the collection entitled Carmina Gadelica.

I can imagine myself as a woman living in Ireland or Scotland 1,200 or 1,500 years ago. As I set off on a short journey to visit my parents in a neighboring village, I sing to myself a blessing for my journey:

The guarding of the God of life be upon me,
The guarding of loving Christ be upon me,
The guarding of the Holy Spirit be upon me,
Every step of the way,
To aid me and enfold me,
Every day and night of my life. [1]

I can also picture myself as a mother or grandmother of young children in Celtic times. As I mend clothes by the firelight in the evening, I sing a soft song that the children can hear as they fall asleep close by. I sing it every night, and the children know it as well as I do. One of them sings along with me:

Christ with me sleeping,
Christ with me waking,
Christ with me watching,
Every day and night.[2]

Celtic Christian had a vivid sense of the supernatural, and they cultivated places and times of year when the supernatural world seemed most close to our world. They Celts loved pilgrimages to places where God felt close. They were comfortable with experiencing mystery and awe in the face of a transcendent God. They loved the Trinity: three in one, one in three. These are some of the themes we’ll look at in blog posts in the coming weeks.

(This is the first post in a series on Cletic Christianity. If you’d like to receive an email whenever I post on this blog, sign up in the right hand column under “subscribe.” This post excerpted from A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife by Lynne M. Baab. Copyright © Lynne M. Baab.)

[1] Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 27.
[2] Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gaedelica 1 (Scottish Academic Press, 1900), 3.

Receptivity and listening

Thursday April 9 2015

A term that helps summarize many of the themes in my book on listening is “receptivity,” my latest favorite word. In the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to grow in being more receptive to what God is doing all around me. I’ve been trying to notice the gifts God is offering me through my work, my home, my body, and the people in my life. I’ve been trying to control my life less and instead receive the gifts of my life with open hands. A key component of a receptive life is listening to God and to others, thus the concept of receptivity summarizes many of the themes of this book.

When two people have an honest discussion about where God seems present in daily life, those individuals are trying to be receptive to each other’s perceptions as well as to God. When someone has a conversation with a work mate who holds totally different political convictions, with the goal of trying to understand how he arrived at those convictions, the listener is trying to be receptive to another person’s reality. When members of a congregation listen to the wider community in order to try to figure out where they can make a difference, they are trying to be receptive to the actual needs and concerns in the community.

Around the year 2000 I read Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl, which immediately joined my short list of books that have changed my life. Pohl nudged me to see not just the significance of acts of hospitality involving food and lodging, but also to see hospitality as a paradigm for all relationships and all ministry. I began to try to be hospitable in every interaction with people. I’m sure this shift toward being hospitable played a role in my growing interest in listening skills. And I know my commitment to trying to be hospitable in every conversation brought into focus this posture of receptivity that has been so significant in my life in recent years.

Sitting around a table eating a meal together breaks down barriers. When I’m eating with someone who has political views that are different from mine and that person starts talking about those views, I try to listen. In fact, I have to listen, at least to some extent, because I can’t get up and walk away like I can in so many other settings. One of my interviewees talked about shared hospitality promoting a “different kind of listening.” When I eat with people, I am somehow more open to hearing their viewpoint. Food breaks down barriers and often brings a kind of magic to conversations. Pohl’s book encouraged me to bring that attitude, that magic, into all of life. Of course I don’t always succeed, but I’m trying to be more receptive to whatever people bring into a conversation. I’m trying to be hospitable in all settings, and listening skills are essential to that stance.

In our time, practicing that attitude of hospitality and receptivity requires us to make some careful and intentional choices. Slowing down in the midst of a busy schedule is usually required, and that is not easy to do. Multitasking, which divides our attention, must be set aside for period of time. Also necessary is ignoring the ringtone of the cell phone, the music on the iPod, or the lure of the Internet at our fingertips on the smart phone. One of my interviewees pointed out that technology points us to the next thing, which takes us out of the present and turns our focus onto our selves and nurtures narcissism. An attitude of receptivity requires abandoning that future focus and narcissism in order to be present to this moment and this person.

Receptivity includes being open to God’s guidance, and in any conversation, God may guide me to speak up about something. Receptivity does not mean being silent all the time. Some of us need encouragement to speak up more often, and some of us need encouragement to listen more, and in every conversation all of us need God’s guidance regarding both listening and speaking.

Listening is not an end in itself. Listening skills are tools that put us in a receptive, hospitable posture so we can appreciate, learn from, encourage, and speak wisely to the people in our lives. Listening skills help us learn how and where to serve individuals and local communities. Listening skills facilitate the kinds of conversations where we can talk about the overlap of our faith and our daily lives, and the ability to talk about and recognize that intersection shapes us into people who can participate in ministry and mission with energy, enthusiasm, wisdom, and love. In a follow-up email, one of my interviewees wrote, “Many of us may not choose to share information about ourselves unless asked by someone we know to be a good and interested listener.” I long for our congregations to be places where good and interested listeners are nurtured.

Some additional resources on listening:

an article on listening past inner noise
an article on letting go of agendas as we listen to others and to God
a variety of blog posts on listening
two YouTube videos with similar titles but different content: Listening for Mission and Ministry and Why Listening Matters for Mission and Ministry

(During Lent and for this first week after Easter, I've been posting excerpts from my book on listening. This is the last week! Next week I'm starting a series on Celtic Christianity. If you’d like to receive an email when I put a post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. Book excerpt from The Power of Listening by Lynne M. Baab. Copyright © Rowman & Littlefield. Used by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or printed without permission in writing from the publisher.)

Jesus: freeing us from bondage

Saturday April 4 2015

I have always loved Easter. As a child, it meant a new dress. Most years my mother and I pored over a clothing catalog, and I got to make the final decision. Easter meant a special meal including the pineapple/orange/coconut salad that tasted so good with ham. My beloved grandmother was born on Easter, and I often thought about how her caring personality fit with the mood of this amazing day of joy, celebration and love.

Later I learned about the deeper meaning of Easter. Jesus destroyed the power of death by dying and being raised from the dead, which gives us hope for heaven. For our life on earth, Jesus has freed “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:15). This is very good news for those who chase here and there pursuing all sorts of diversions to avoid facing a deep-rooted fear of death.

The bondage I experienced – from which I needed Jesus to free me – relates not to fear of death but to the expectations I had for my life. I always say I am a late bloomer. I worked on a seminary degree between ages 28 and 38, while my kids were young. I didn’t pursue ordination as a Presbyterian minister until I was 45. I started a PhD at 52, and got my first teaching job, here at Otago, when I was 55. I was raised to believe that a woman’s primary role is to be a good housewife and mother. It took a long time for Jesus’ resurrection power to free me from that belief, which may work fine for other women. For me, it was a form of bondage.

I love my husband and kids, and they are enormous gifts in my life. My gifts of analysis, thinking clearly and teaching were used in mothering, no doubt about it, but to be whole and to be my true self, I needed somewhere to use those gifts beyond the home. Now, late in life, I have arrived at the right place. Jesus, whose resurrection broke the power of every sort of bondage, has been bringing his resurrection power into my life over many years, and I can see such wonderful fruit of it now.

This Easter season, I have been thinking about the accounts of the resurrection in the four Gospels. They all vary somewhat, but they have a lot in common, including the fact that the women play a key role. A few of the women who followed Jesus came to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with oils and spices. They saw that the tomb was empty. They were first to receive the news of his resurrection, and they were entrusted with the message to take back to the other disciples. Women were asked to be witnesses to this life-changing event.

In Jesus’ time, only men could be witnesses in court. It takes some imagination to perceive the significance that these women were entrusted with a message to tell the disciples. In Jesus’ life on earth, he honoured everyone he came across: men, women, lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, synagogue officials, Romans, and many others. At his resurrection, it is no accident that women – marginalized people in his culture – were entrusted with this powerful message. He longs to set us free from all the bondage that enslaves and marginalizes us, and his death and resurrection made that possible.

For me, a major form of bondage was my limited expectation of what I could do with my life. What forms of bondage limit your life? Jesus longs to bring his resurrection power into our lives to set us free from all bondage and enable us to use all our gifts to love the people around us and to meet the needs of our hurting world. Jesus wants to give us the joy of the abundant life we were created for, as the unique and beloved people God made us to be.

(These words appeared as a guest editorial in the Otago Daily Times. If you'd like to receive an email when I post something on this blog, please sign up in the right hand column under "subscribe.")

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Lynne Baab

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Lynne Baab

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Celtic Christianity: the earth and art

Celtic Christianity: pilgrimage and the Celtic sense of place

Celtic Christianity: the first post of a series

Receptivity and listening

Jesus: freeing us from bondage