(This month I have written about some reflections and insights that I have gained as a result of attending a conference on Celtic Spirituality in Durham)
 

 Monday - September 20th

The first thing I heard this morning was John Humphries on the TODAY programme issuing a dire warning about gales in the North of England. As happens so often the forecasters got it wrong and the sky was a beautiful cloudless blue.

 An early morning walk along the sandy beach of my home town of Seaham made me think of Cuthbert who used to spend whole nights in the North Sea reciting the psalms. A spiritual exercise which, no doubt, did the soul the power of good.

Durham with its wonderful cathedral - as ever looked magnificent - if heaven is anything like this then I won't be disappointed.

When we think about Celtic Spirituality one of the first things that comes to mind is man's closeness to nature and the goodness of creation. There is "no division between the natural and the supernatural - the two flow together into one" - almost as inextricably woven together as the amazing labyrinthine patterns to be found in many Celtic manuscripts.  Those same manuscripts are highly zoomorphic with birds and animals to be found in every nook and cranny.

Now we do St. Francis an injustice if we simply think of him as being "nice to animals" - yet, like Francis, many of the Celtic saints are indeed strongly associated with the animal kingdom.  Cuthbert after he had spent the night in prayer in the North Sea emerged from the brine and otters came and dried his feet.  St. Kevin of Glendalough in Ireland prayed with his arms outstretched through the windows of his tiny monastic cell and a blackbird came down and laid her eggs in the palm of his hand.  He stayed in that position throughout the 40 days of Lent until the eggs had hatched and the birds had flown.

Well these are not just stories, which show how close the saints were to creation but show how close the saints were in their imitation of Christ.  The Venerable Bede says that monks spied upon Cuthbert at prayer in the sea but they were forbidden to say anything of what happened until Cuthbert had died.  Here we have inferences and echoes of the Transfiguration - when Jesus told the disciples - Peter, James and John to say nothing of what they had seen on the Holy Mount.  Cuthbert, like Christ, was transfigured by his night of prayer in the sea.  Likewise, Kevin stood for forty days in a cruciform manner - he was not so much being kind to animals but reflecting Christ's Cross and the Redemption He brought to the world through his Passion.  Those who wrote the Lives of the Celtic saints were overlaying them with the Gospels.  The most beautiful thing about the Lindisfarne Gospels is not its glorious illustrations, but its content - the Gospel - the Good News of Jesus Christ.  The hagiographers were concerned to link the saints, about whom they wrote, with the biblical tradition of sanctity and the Life of Jesus - whose praises are sung therein.
 

 Tuesday - 21st September

"Celtic Spirituality" - are two very slippery words.  But surely this much used phrase has something to do with "the way we live out what we believe about God".  We have a set of beliefs -The Creed - you can't live out what you believe in a vacuum - it must have a context and be rooted in a place.  The Celtic Saints were greatly inspired by the Desert Fathers - but there aren't any deserts in Britain - instead we have lots of sea and lots of little islands - lonely places on the very edge of things in which to engage in spiritual warfare.  Central to Celtic Spirituality is the Psalter.  Benson of Cowley once referred to the Book of Psalms as "the war songs of the Prince of Peace".  Today we must never neglect the psalms for they were the prayer book which Christ Himself used and they contain much which is of great spiritual value.  The Celtic Saints lived lives of great austerity and unworldliness - yet they had discovered what so many seek today - that is, "spiritual happiness".  People revered the Celtic Saints because they thought that in them the Kingdom of God had come closer.

At the Synod of Whitby in 664 there was a kind of spiritual battle between the Roman way of "doing" religion and the Celtic way - the Roman way was victorious.  Yet the Roman way can at times seem very authoritarian - too logical, too ready to define, too dogmatic and emphatic.  It needs to be softened by the Celtic.  The Celtic saints at Whitby claimed to be descendants of St. John - who wrote what many regard to be the most "spiritual" gospel.  The Roman Christians claimed to be descendents of St. Peter who was the most impetuous and forthright of the twelve disciples of Jesus.  Here we see two kinds of temperament - our differences within the church are often temperamental.  Yet - to be true to Christ we need both John (the beloved disciple) and Peter - the one to whom Christ entrusted the keys of the kingdom.

In the seventh century the Venerable Bede was a monk at the twin monasteries of Jarrow and Bishopwearmouth - the former on the south bank of the Tyne and the latter on the north bank of the Wear.  On visiting them today I got the impression that there was rivalry between the two with Sunderland's Bishopwearmouth being somewhat jealous of its Jarrow neighbour.  Here in our "united Benefice" we similarly have two churches with one priest.  In Bede's day - they were indeed twin monasteries - two halves of a whole.  A new, footpath called "Bede's Way" has just been opened connecting the two monasteries.

 We must never forget that in Kelvedon and Feering we don't have a wall dividing the two parishes of the one benefice but a bridge - whose function is to connect and unite.  Benedict Biscop founded St. Peter's, Bishopwearmouth in 674  (10 years after the Synod of Whitby) and its twin house of St. Paul's, Jarrow was begun eight years later, the two sites were regarded as one.  Bede himself described them as "one monastery in two places" and writes that St. Paul's was "built on the understanding that the two houses should be bound together by the one spirit of peace and harmony".  We should endeavour to follow Bede's way.
 

 Wednesday - 22nd September

There are certain place names which are full of mystery - Samarkand, Blencathra, Lindisfarne.  In going as a pilgrim to Lindisfarne you encounter a thin place - a place where heaven meets earth and the past meets the future.  Anyone who reads the history of Lindisfarne or Holy Island and the saints associated with it will very soon come to realise that after the Romans departed from these shores we were not in the Dark Ages but in a Golden Age of the Faith.  At the present time it seems that the Institutional Church has lost its vision - in the seventh century we encounter a Church which is intoxicated with God.  Lindisfarne has been called the Cradle of English Christianity, we need to see once more the importance of cradling places - wild places - places on the edge.  Jesus Himself wasn't born in the religious centre of his time - Jerusalem - but in an insignificant place right on the very edge - Bethlehem - where he was cradled in a manger.  It seems that the Church that is emerging will be more like an oasis in the desert - a cradle of the faith.  We need to look for what has been called - "The Dual-Economy Church".  Yes, we cherish what we inherit from the past but we must also look for and encourage fresh expressions of the Church in the power of the inexhaustible Holy Spirit of God.  Not everything can be reduced to words and definitions: some things can only be expressed in silence and adoration.
 

Thursday, 23rd September

An inspiring conference comes to its conclusion with a lecture which includes a section on the significance of the Celtic Cross.  Today there seems to be a growing gulf between Creation and Redemption which was not the case in the seventh century.  A separation seems to have occurred at the Reformation.  Cranmer gives a lower profile to Creation than he does to Redemption.  Sometimes it seems as though we have almost a contempt for the natural world in the way in which we use and abuse it.  At times we seek to dominate and subdue creation.  We have almost contempt for human bodiliness and human sexuality.  Yet the Celtic Cross with its head surrounded by the circle symbolises the holding together in one image the doctrines of Creation and Redemption - it reminds us that Nature is:- "red and scarred as well as lush and green" Christ is both the instrument of Creation and the instrument of Redemption -it is the same God who is creating and redeeming.  So a truly stimulating conference comes to an end.  John Humphries was wrong about the gales in the north but the conference at St. John's College Durham has certainly stirred up in me many thoughts about a fascinating Golden Age in the history of Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

The love and affection of God's holy angels be to you,

The love and affection of the saints be to you,

The love and affection of heaven be to you,

To guard you and to cherish you.  Amen.
 

                                                 Every Blessing,

                                                 FATHER DAVID