Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Bono

Here's a quote from Dubliner Bono for St Patrick's Day:

Great music is written by people who are either running toward or away from God.

Here, from St Patrick's Breastplate, an example of the former:

In Circles

There is on ancient Celtic poem which reads;

He drew a ring which shut me out

Heretic, rebel, things to flout.

But Love and I had wit to win.

We drew a circle that took him in.

I might be misinterpreting the signs of the times here, but I think that as we move further into the 21st Century and the Information Age we are developing a new taste for drawing circles that shut people out.  It is true that in this country at present we cannot publicly lynch people but we can rapidly turn people into Public Enemy Number One.

That's been difficult in the past week with Jimmy Savile and Jihadi John who cannot both have top/bottom spot at once.  The one being dead and the other distant attention has turned to anybody who may have been in their 'circle'.  So cameras are camped outside a random kind of house in London where Jihadi John once lived and Stoke Mandeville Hospital as if to capture the entrails of guilt that might not have been gathered up with their departure.

To understand Jesus we have to understand that he became as despised and rejected as this.  The circle was drawn with him outside, and by the super-righteous authorities and, eventually, the democratic shout of the crowd.  It is not comfortable.

Yet what is more amazing is the way that God draws circles.  Without any touch of irony or hypocrisy God could comfortably and justifiably draw a circle of holiness that leaves not just Mr Savile and JJ outside but their fellow-humans one and all too.  Heaven had never had a human in it, let alone a former sinful being, and had been rocking along fine.

The story of Easter is that He drew a Circle of Love that included humans - sinful ones - in.

March 17th as seen during our morning service . . .

Duilisc before Carcair

Activist Christianity struggles to grasp this but, honestly, the work and worship of God transcends filled diaries. Look at this section from a wonderful old Celtic prayer-poem, attributed (possibly correctly in this case) to Columba;

At times kneeling to beloved Heaven -

At times psalm singing;

At times contemplating the King of Heaven

Holy the chief;

At times at work without compulsion

This would be delightful.

At times plucking duilisc from the rocks

At times at fishing;

At times giving food to the poor;

At times in a carcair:

The poem pictures a life devoted to God in which formal worship is offered at times to the Chief of Heaven. But there are also times to pluck duilisc.

Although beaches often feature in today's commercials the people on the beach are almost always running or jumping (or surfing, or horse-riding, or driving).  Even the sea edge has become a busy place in our society.

Columba, in common with all Celtic saints, knew that God would not be neglected by taking time to enjoy his handiwork. Thus we imagine the breezy summer Atlantic shoreline and a man in a habit plucking juicy seaweed (duilisc) from the rocks just because he can, and it's free, and God is there. Duilisc washes in on the tides from June to September; you won't get to pluck any in January even if you can stand upright on the windswept, gloomy, wave-lashed shore. Get plucking because there are also times in a carcair.

We don't know exactly what carcair meant for Columba. A carcair was a prison - it may have meant the enclosed hermitage or imprisonment by hostile communities. But either way it was a great loss of the freedom that the seaweed-plucker enjoys!

We are wise to remember how, a little further inland, the Lord said in his greatest discourse, 'Consider the lilies of the field how they grow'. He credited us with the intelligence to realise that such consideration would only happen by taking the opportunity while it blooms and before the carcair, or in his case the cross, at a time yet to be.

Lindisfarne

I wanted to be somewhere special at Easter. For me, Holy Island (also known as Lindisfarne) was a place that was just right combining contemplation with inspiration.

This tidal island is forever associated with Cuthbert, one of the more remarkable Celtic Christian leaders of the first millennium. He was for a while, Abbot of the monastery though his preference was to be alone with God. At one time he lived on a tiny island offshore from Lindisfarne, but although he preferred the company of God to that of people he was prevailed upon to be Bishop at Durham because the people so loved him.

It is hard not to be moved by the depth of spirituality in such a man, the like of which is embarrassingly rare in Western Christianity today. Bede wrote of him,

He often spent whole nights in prayer, and sometimes, to resist sleep, worked or walked about the island whilst he prayed. If he heard others complain that they had been disturbed in their sleep, he used to say that he should think himself obliged to anyone that awaked him out of his sleep, that he might sing the praises of his Creator, and labour for his honour. His very countenance excited those who saw him to a love of virtue. He was so ...inflamed with heavenly desires, that he could never say mass without tears. He often moved penitents, who confessed to him their sins, to abundant tears by the torrents of his own, which he shed for them.

It is one thing to point out someone's sins. It is quite another to weep toward God over them.