Celtic Christianity fascinates me. I know it’s not March, but today we remember St. Patrick’s Day as a day to drink beer, wear green, carry around four leaf clovers and change the color of the Chicago River, but few know who he was or what he did that was so important. A 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 is 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, the cairn stones. 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.
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.
Once I began looking for those moments, I began seeing more and more all around me. It wasn’t that the events were different, but maybe my ability to see them became more focused. Before I started writing this tonight, I got back from a visit to see a friend an hour away who is heading off to Africa for six months. On the way I shared the car trip with two people I had never met, yet we didn’t run out of things to talk about, and one of the guys was from Kenya. I learned a lot about the political history of Kenya, Uganda, and Swaziland, and I wouldn’t have known it if we hadn’t traveled together. The man I met and his wife just had a baby four weeks ago. A week ago I saw another friend. The visit was far too short, but the time we did have was wonderful, and we spent a lot of time with good food, good conversation, and plenty of laughter.
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.
Here’s six months when I didn’t know how I was going to pay the bills, and at the end of the month the bills were paid. *stone drops*
Here’s moving to Michigan without knowing anyone and without a job, and not getting one job but two, not knowing anyone but making some wonderful friendships. *plink*
Here’s losing my job in 1996, and in 24-hours making plans to move to Boise for six months. *stones drop*
Here’s struggling with suicide the first six months in Michigan and friends who called at the right time or the nights I went to sleep after taking sleeping pills and still waking up the next morning. *stones drop*
Here’s the conversations with students about their lives and the things they taught me, the healing and forgiveness I’ve found in my relationship with my stepmom, going overseas, the countless conversations with close friends, the relationships with women I’ve learned from, my friends’ children . . .
