BUHL — A Methodist for more than 50 years, Flo Frost has also attended Catholic, Presbyterian, Mormon and other Christian services over the years. But she found nothing at church like the meaning she discovered in an unbroken circle.
“In the Celtic tradition, everything is interconnected — life, death, the earth, the sky,” said Frost, who is teaching a weekend Methodist women’s retreat here about Celtic spirituality. “It has spoken to me more than anything I’ve experienced in my whole life.”
The Celtic way of worship is a hot topic in the world of religion right now. It appeals to a growing number of American Catholics, who hearken to what they see as a more authentic spiritualism, and to some Protestant evangelicals, who appreciate the way Celtic spirituality suffuses every aspect of life.
And for those who do not profess faith in God, there’s an emerging neopagan movement that celebrates Celtic veneration of the earth and the cycle of life and death.
An exploration of Celtic spirituality is the centerpiece of what the Buhl United Methodist Church’s Prayer Partners plan to be an annual event, the Spiritual Paths of Transformation Retreat. It began Friday and concludes today.
“It’s for all adults of all religious denominations,’’ said Penny Hodges, who is hosting the event. “The purpose will be to explore Celtic Christian spirituality, but there will also be a labyrinth walk and nature meditations as well as music and prayer.”
The weekend will be devoted mostly to meditation and prayer, Frost said in a telephone interview from her Pocatello home, as well as discussion of the relevance of Celtic spirituality to contemporary Christianity.
“The labyrinth has nothing to do with the Celts,” she explained, but it’s long been seen as a tool for meditation and getting in touch with an individual’s spirituality.
Frost first learned about Celtic faith from “A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Celtic Wisdom,” by Carl McColman, part of the 500-title Complete Idiots Guide series published by Indianapolis-based Alpha Books.
“I was intrigued by what I read about Celtic spirituality, and I decided I wanted to learn more,” she said.
Her search became a passion, and Frost began teaching others — at first, sixth-graders at a Methodist summer camp — about the subject.
“Celtic spirituality reveres the earth, and even without the gods and the spirits that were part of the Celtic pagan tradition, it has relevance today. It teaches that we should take care of the earth and revere the cycles of nature.”
It’s a completely non-denominational philosophy, Frost says.
“A lot of the Celtic beliefs are compatible with Christian beliefs,” she said.
Frost hopes participants will come away with tools to look at themselves, God, life and the universe in a much different way.
“It’s such a down-to-earth way of looking at spirituality.”
Times-News writer Steve Crump can be reached at 735-3223, or write to him at
scrump@magicvalley.com Faith and the Celts
When the pagan Celts of Ireland were converted to Christianity by St. Patrick in the fifth century, they brought with them their love of nature and friendship and their awareness of the sacred in the most ordinary parts of life. Today, Celtic spirituality is resonating with more and more Americans.
A nomadic tribe that first appeared in Eastern Europe hundreds of years before Christ, the Celts migrated westward, finally settling in Ireland as well as Scotland, Wales and parts of what’s now England. They were fierce warriors, but when they weren’t at war they lived simple, agrarian lives. The Celts found meaning in the most routine tasks of life, sacredness in the nature around them, and spiritual sustenance in the close ties of friendship, but they also valued solitude and silence.
To the Celts, the circle symbolized the interconnectedness of everything: suffering and redemption, death and resurrection. There were no hierarchies. Life was an unending cycle with no beginning and no end.
St. Patrick found the Celts receptive to Christianity, which shared their view of the sacredness of nature and of friendship. In his attempts to convert the Celts, Patrick highlighted the many similarities between their beliefs and those of the Christian faith, such as the existence of an afterlife.
Their conversion brought to Christianity a perspective unlike that of the Romans, who dominated most of the first five centuries of Christianity. For Celtic Christians, God was a key part of all things natural and beautiful. Whereas the ancient Celts worshiped pagan gods for nearly every natural setting, Celtic Christians praised God’s design and creation of all things natural.
For a century and a half Ireland was isolated from the chaos of the collapsing Roman world. During those years it became the center — and the preserver — of much of European Christian culture, according to Thomas Cahill in his 1995 book “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” Rooted in these years of Celtic Christian culture’s isolation is its uniqueness, its mystery, and its apparently endless appeal to citizens of another chaotic civilization, a millennium and a half later.
The Celts’ link to a purer and more authentic Christianity resonates with many contemporary American Catholics, and a substantial and rapidly growing Celtic Christian movement exists within the evangelical Protestant community as well. It offers a rich worship tradition; fosters prayer in everyday language; is “green” in its stewardship of the earth; affirms women and men equally; is committed to living in community; nurtures radical discipleship; is passionate about peace and justice; has no divide between sacred and secular, and engages critically with contemporary culture.
But many historians doubt the significance of Celtic spirituality, citing a dearth of historical evidence and pointing out that myth suffuses the history of Ireland in the Early Middle Ages. St. Patrick has been “spun” into a far more important figure than he actually was, they argue, and many of the characteristics attributed to Celtic Christianity are either legends or attributes borrowed from other spiritual traditions.
— Sources: Christianity Today,
St. Anthony Messenger, PBS, WNET-TV |
