We had our Irish Stew Supper on Sunday night. It was a great success. The tables were full and the music was abundant, with two fiddlers and five on guitar, there were lots of Irish songs and jigs too. Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s day and it’s influence this week has had me happily enjoying memories of our time in Ireland last September.
When we were in Ireland we spent a lot of time considering Celtic Spirituality. Because Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire, early Irish Christianity was always a little distant from the mainstream Christianity. Greek philosophy and Roman law were very important to the central church, but neither had taken deep root in Ireland. Celtic Christianity’s approach to Sacred Living was more rooted in the cycles of the natural world and the Celtic spirituality that grew within Christianity tended to work more out of a theology of immanence, rather than transcendence. The underlying assumption for this sacred way of living was that all of life was full of the Divine.
The Celtic Christians would have woven together all of life – the natural world and the spirit world intertwined. The Celts speak of ‘thin places’ those places where heaven and earth are very close. Those places that are spiritually rich and the Holy is almost tangible. The thin places open us to the divine and in such moments we feel the very presence of the one who ignited the spirit of life within us.
Today, as the persistent rain washes away the grime of winter, it feels like a holy day, a day of immanence as the Divine One feels very close.
Have you experienced a thin place? How did it feel?
Do you see God as immanent or transcendent … or both?
