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Celtic Christianity: Paradoxes

Lynne Baab • Thursday June 11 2015

Celtic Christianity: Paradoxes

As we journey through life, we are increasingly drawn to integrate the various parts of our lives. The Celtic worldview was beautifully integrated, with all aspects of life a part of a greater whole. This integration was possible because the Celtic Christians were comfortable with paradox and mystery. With each passing year of life, most people become more comfortable with mystery and paradox, so the Celts can guide us as we move in that direction.

Some of the paradoxes embraced by the Celtic Christians are:

  • God is present in nature and everyday life through his spirit, yet God is also the exalted Creator and Redeemer. God is in all but also above all – both immanent and transcendent.
  • God is one God, yet God is three persons in community with one another.
  • We can experience God through our emotions, and we can also experience God through our minds.
  • God is at home with us in our daily life, yet God also calls us to pilgrimages where we will learn new things about him and experience him in new ways.
  • Nature is good, it is beautiful, and it displays the artistry of the Creator, yet evil is present in nature and in human nature.
  • The spiritual realm is close by and frequently touches our physical world, yet the spiritual realm is most fulfilled in heaven, which is a totally separate place.
  • God gives us great and wonderful blessings, and God is present when we experience good things, yet God is also present through our sufferings, which teach us and shape us.

Anyone who has lived a few years of life with God has experienced some of these paradoxes. The Celtic Christian acceptance of paradox without the need to explain everything can bring a wonderful perspective of lightness and joy.

To conclude this series on Celtic Christianity, for the next two weeks I’ll post testimonies about the impact of Celtic Christianity in the lives of two individuals. That means this is the last post presenting teaching about this wonderful tradition. Here’s a good summary from Sister John Miriam Jones’s book, With an Eagle’s Eye:

For the Celtic Christians, God was at hand, and their relationship with God was an intimate one.     . . . These were men and women who grasped the full significance of the incarnation, the full reality of a God who became human, like us in all things but sin. . . . So because the Celts understood God’s presence in and through the created world, for them there was no dualism. Nothing was seen as secular. All was holy, or potentially so. Thus, if all of life is holy, all the pieces which make up the mystery of each of our lives are sacred pieces. Patching them together yields the holy.

 

Some questions to ponder, write about, or talk about with friends:

1. Where are the “thin places” in your life – times and places where God seems particularly present? Spend some time thanking God for those places.

2. Pick one of the Celtic prayers in this series of blog posts and copy it into your daily calendar or onto a slip of paper. Look at the poem several times a day and pray the words, in anticipation of a greater sense of God’s presence with you throughout the day.

3. Which of the paradoxes embraced by the Celtic Christians feels most comfortable to you? Which seems most uncomfortable? Why? Spend some time reflecting on and praying about the role of paradox in your life.

(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.”)

Other posts on Celtic Christianity:



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