Accompanying me as I deal with the rough and unpredictable emotional weather of metastatic breast cancer has been three slim morning and evening prayer books by John Philip Newell: Celtic Benediction; Sounds of the Eternal: A Celtic Psalter; and Prayers with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace. 

Celtic spirituality celebrates that we and all that is have been created in the image of a loving God revealed through as well as beyond the five senses; human beings are integral to the goodness of creation. This Gaelic heritage is opposed to the Mediterranean tradition which focuses on our original sinfulness: only our spiritual nature can redeem us from our condemned physicality. This sin comes through Eve/women; thus the abusive treatment of women and of this fragile Mother Earth our island home is justified as is violence, both aggressive and passive-aggressive. In Celtic spirituality body-mind-spirit are one we all are one with every other aspect of creation.

Reading these Celtic prayers which include brief passages from the Biblical Wisdom tradition has stilled my racing thoughts. These prayers have drawn me into an expansive vision of the pervasive presence of the Sacred “within and all around.” As I have literally rested into the prayers, I have sensed the immense mystery of this universe contained within other universes. Infinite. Imagined but not understood. Words inaccessible. Breaking open our finite, constrained, unimaginative images of and words for “God.”

“God” for whom I have sought meaning beyond the traditions suddenly sang out to me once again. The traditional narrow understanding and imaging of God as male, patriarchal and hierarchical had haunted me for decades. Now I know viscerally, in my body, and mystically, in my soul, that this mystery of which we all partake is infinitely beyond our ken as well as the lived reality in which we live and move and have our being.

From “Sounds of the Eternal,” Sunday Morning Opening Prayer