Celtic Spirituality: A Relevant Refreshment for Today’s World

20 convictions that define Celtic Spirituality. One or more might grab your heart.

While looking for a new space to call home, and visiting many available listings, I walked through the door of one dwelling and instantly felt it. My qualifying criteria were satisfied, and my inner knowing just perked up…. This is it! This is where I want to live!

Well, that’s what happened when I read John Philip Newell’s book, Sacred Earth-Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World.

In fact, I read the book twice, marked it all up, and typed a 15-page outline. Then I bought other books, original source material, researched online, and talked with friends about my realization. The deeper I went, the more I fell in love with my new home.

Evangelical Christianity has been my old home for decades, but no longer. It became rather stale and is now, frankly, an embarrassing mess. I simply outgrew the confines of my solid Christian, Protestant, Calvinistic, Evangelical, and Socially Progressive upbringing.

In Celtic Spirituality I have found a more relevant home for my evolved beliefs and practices.

Here are the 20 convictions that define Celtic Spirituality.

Listen to your soul as you read and notice if you are drawn to any of these convictions.

1. Deep within each of us is an inner wisdom — and it is trustworthy. While you read on, notice those moments when you say to yourself… “I know this is true.”
2. A central conviction is in having a deep reverence for nature. Creation is revelation. God’s presence permeates all of creation. Every single piece of it. Celtic Spirituality holds that the Divine is incarnate in all of creation.
3. You can see this depicted in the Celtic Cross with its circle and interwoven designs. Everything is interwoven with everything else. There is a Oneness that threads through it all.
4. Staying grounded in our Original Blessing. Rather than succumbing to a dualistic good/bad perspective, the emphasis in Celtic Spirituality is on the interconnectedness of all beings, including humans, with the natural world and the Divine.
5. The lines between sacred and secular are blurred. The Divine presence that permeates everything does truly and deeply integrate it all.
6. Worship happens in nature, not just in a church building.
7. Centers for contemplation and learning are common. There are places where solitude can be experienced, within community or outside of it.
8. Personal and communal practices are meant to deepen one’s experiences of the presence of the Divine in all of life.
9. Art, poetry, and music are highly valued as expressions of one’s deep experiences with the Holy.
10. Sexuality is celebrated as a natural part of life and living.
11. A focus on the Trinity, on the relationship between all things, is uplifted. It is not just the pieces of creation, but their relationship with one another that is uplifted.
12. Actual pilgrimages exemplify the journey of life. In this tradition, getting up and going to a sacred place to experience the movement of the spirit is a common practice.
13. We stray while on the pilgrimage of life, and straying marks the path. Life, in all its varied colors, is to be robustly experienced. Errors are called out, noted, and corrected as one calmly carries on.
14. Soul friendships, spiritual friendships, are honored as necessary for the journey of life. One travels furthest with an accountable, soulful companion with whom everything is shared.
15. Liminal space is attractive. Thresholds are noticed. There, in the thin places, on the shore between this and that, ambiguity is embraced as would be a Zen koan. Paradoxes and polarities and dilemmas are fertile sources for growth.
16. What is being sought is the integration of everything in the Divine. Home, Source, Essence, the Creator… God by whatever name. Stretching beyond dualism, beyond black and white, what is sought is an integration of all that is into One.
17. Male and female, in their various forms, are integrated and given equal status. Gender equality is acknowledged.
18. We can experience God’s presence through sacred scriptures, and through the natural world. Both are valued as sources of revelation.
19. It is one’s mission to love the natural world as a natural consequence of a natural faith.
20. Hospitality is extended generously to all beings, for all are incarnations of the Divine.

There you have it. Admittedly, an incomplete list of 20 convictions that are associated with Celtic Spirituality.

I’ll be writing on each of the 20, and more. If you are so inclined, Follow Me or Subscribe to my Medium articles. My thesis is that Celtic Spirituality provides a path and a practice that is especially relevant to the changing environment in which we are presently living.

ABOUT ME? I am a Christian by heritage, and yet an emerging human being who is now embracing Celtic Spirituality. Further, I am an environmentally concerned citizen, a semi-retired psychotherapist, and an ordained clergyman who continues as a Pastoral Counselor. I am also a friend. Our family tends 120 acres of forest in Michigan.

My articles on Medium reflect my appreciation for organized common sense.

Follow me — and share these articles freely.

You know the truth. We are all in this together.

www.andyatwood.com