Celtic Spirituality: A Lens on Suffering

To become acquainted with the history of Ireland is to find a people familiar with pain and suffering. Two millennia of invasions and domination have had a tremendous formative effect on that country. But what is remarkable throughout is that themes such as hope, faith, and endurance continually seem to shine through her story.

Despite growing up in Ireland for most of our lives (as Church Musicians!), it is only recently that we began to investigate the phenomenon known as "Celtic Spirituality." We had often been put off by its aura of commercial exploitation and its tinges of New Age secular mysticism. Yet, we found upon exploration that it was for us less a journey of discovery, and more one of recognition of things already known through experience. So much of what comprises Celtic spirituality, especially as regards attitudes and beliefs about God, has always been there for us, passed on unconsciously through the veil of generations.

Celtic spirituality is best understood not as a religion, cult, or belief system, which it never has been, but as an outlook, attitude, or mode of thinking about faith, formed by many disparate influences over many centuries. For us personally, it has served as a means of crystallizing the tenets of Catholicism, reconciling our culture and the Roman Church much as a lens might clarify one's blurry vision.

We offer you seven general characteristics of Celtic spirituality in the hope that they might aid an understanding of grief and suffering in today's society. Reflecting on these characteristics, so congruent with what we are called to live out as people of faith, can give all of us pause in this busy and often thoughtless world that otherwise leaves so many feeling left behind and forgotten.

A profound sense of the immanence of God, closeness to the spiritual world, and the sacredness of Creation

The ancient pagan Celts believed that the spiritual world dwelled concretely within the trees, the streams, the earth, the sky, the sun, and the moon a type of belief common to many tribal religions. This belief persisted into the recent past, co-existing with Christianity in the form of belief in "faeries", and the many customs and folk rituals surrounding those beliefs. Today we might interpret this view of creation with the realization that God the Creator is through all and in all. God breathes creative power through all the cycles of life and death. How can we not become more aware of God within creation, of which death is such a natural part?

An appreciation of ordinary life as holy

The tendency of the Irish has always been toward a personal familiarity with things spiritual. Fr. John J. O'Riordan tells a story of entering an elderly woman's house. "So you're living alone?" he says as he enters. "Alone?" she responds in astonishment. "Not at all!" She raises her hand to the gallery of religious pictures on the wall. "Sure haven't I himself (the Sacred Heart) and herself (Our Lady of Perpetual Help) and all of these (her favorite saints)!" Such stories are common in Ireland. Another woman had a picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall. When a priest visited, he noticed it was removed. When he asked her why, she responded that they had had a "lover's quarrel" and were no longer on speaking terms! What a wonderfully human sense of relationship with God, unadorned by the exaggerated touchy-feeliness that sometimes pervades modern American religion. Sometimes it is OK to be angry with God. No doubt the woman soon made up with the Good Lord, just as lovers do. Can we overcome our anger as we draw ever closer to the One with whom we will eventually become as one?

An understanding of time as being unified past, present, and future existing in the now

Theologians speak of two sorts of time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the ordered, measured time of the modern world. Kairos is God's time, where past, present, and future are one. In the liturgy we encounter this in the reality of Christ's death, and resurrection celebrated in the present, holding all that it promises for the future. All of it is real at once that is the mystery.

So it can be for those who suffer: what was lost is always present in the mind. The modern American myth of "closure" does not exist in the Celtic universe. We are always just one step removed from the other world. The dead (the saints of God) are always with us on some level. Have you ever visited a church, a grave, or heard a song or story, that increased your awareness of realities beyond the immediate?

An innate yearning to explore the unknown a pilgrimage on the Way of Truth

The Celts saw death itself as a kind of ultimate pilgrimage. The pagan god of the underworld was Donn Firrine, the God of Truth. Even today, the Catholic liturgy in the Gaelic language describes the dead as having gone ar shl’ na firinne on the way of truth. Once travel was a test of true endurance, and a metaphor for the hardships of life as we journeyed into the unknown. Death itself is the most mysterious and intriguing pilgrimage of all ... the way of truth where all artifice falls away and we are reborn fresh and new in God!

A love of learning and the expressive arts

Grief rarely went unexpressed in Ireland, nor were the Irish of old reserved about mourning. Most notable was the ancient practice of hiring professional "keeners" (from the Gaelic caoineadh, meaning "crying"). This survived into recent times despite the disapproval of the church, which regarded them as pagan and unworthy of a baptized Catholic! The keening women would come to the wake and stand about the deceased, wailing in a highly ritualistic manner. As they would lament the loss on behalf of the community, the people would recount the life of the deceased to one another, imbibing, so it is said, copious amounts of alcoholic libations! Despite the occasional excesses, it was a wonderfully supportive and communal way to mourn the dead. How can we use our faculties and talents to support, uplift, and interpret the suffering of others?

An appreciation of the value of relationships familial and spiritual

Kinship was of incredible importance in the Celtic world. One could always depend on family. Today, families can be increasingly fragmented by unrealistic expectations of marriage, career, and love. But there was also the concept of the anam cara "soul friend" having a relationship with another who supported one in faith, learning, growth, and spirituality. How can we find soul friends today, especially in times of suffering and grief? We are so in need of this antidote in a society that denies and isolates the suffering ones. Who are our soul friends, who share the burden?

A pragmatic acceptance of death and loss

Peig Sayers was a remarkable woman who lived in a remote corner of Ireland. In the 1950's, she dictated her memoirs of life on the Blasket Islands in the first half of the 20th century to younger relations. These memoirs, which reflect the natural flow of her Gaelic storytelling, are a classic of Irish literature and a fascinating glimpse into a way of life on the verge of disappearing forever. She gives a harrowing account of her son, who died by falling from a high cliff. With her own hands, she manipulated the bones of his shattered head so that he might look presentable to others an incredible act of motherly love in the midst of profound loss. Her whole life is a tale of suffering, hardship, and bereavement. Yet, evidenced throughout is an amazing humor, strength, and unwavering faith in the provenance of God.

Peig also described herself at the end of her life as having one foot in the grave and the other on the ground above. She thought of herself as living between life and death, neither of which was a stranger. It was a reality she accepted.

Our world is set up to keep us yearning for more excitement, adrenaline, and novelty, to want what we have not got, and to be other than what we are. This is one of the most spiritually damaging aspects of modern media culture. We deny suffering, trivialize death, and underestimate grief. As such, they become extraordinary experiences. We who are accustomed to comfort deny that they are normally expected from life, and that makes them even harder to bear. Celtic spirituality can teach us to accept that suffering and grief are as much a part of life as joy or pleasure. That is not to diminish or deny them, but to recognize and integrate them perhaps to find a way to live with them. Is that not our search?

The history of Ireland (and of the Celts in general) is one of war, invasion, massacre, famine, political and cultural oppression, and violent conflict between different Christian communities. The set of laws known as the Penal Code was no less effective than the Cultural Revolution of China in breaking down Irish society. The massacre of whole towns by Oliver Cromwell was no different than what has happened in countries such as Rwanda or Sierra Leone. The Great Famine of the 1840's was, like so many famines today, caused by commercial greed and indifference. Yet always, there has been a will to resist and protest, a germ of hope against all apparent odds.

We can learn much from this history. As Christians, the center of our faith is the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. Whenever we gather to celebrate this Eucharist, we too can make that act of protest against death, of affirmation of life, so that we might go on living in hope. God is closer than death, more real than suffering. When we cry, so does God. When we are in pain, so is God. And when we find joy, God laughs with us, too.
 

• O'Duinn OSB, Sean, Where Three Streams Meet: Celtic Spirituality, The Columbia Press 2000
• Sellner, Edward C., Wisdom of the Celtic Saints, Ave Maria Press 1993
• O'Riordain C.Ss.R, John J., The Music of What Happens, Saint Mary's Press 1997
• Sayers, Peig, An Old Woman's Reflections, Oxford University Press 1962

Feargal and Breda King, immigrants from Ireland, are musicians and liturgists in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Their recent CD, Sacred Gateways, is available from their website, www.kingsfold.com.