This Sacred Life

By Pastor Bruce

 

 

Perhaps the greatest loss in the consignment of Celtic spirituality to the dustbins of our Anglo-Saxon past is that we no longer view each hour and activity of life as a sacred gift from God to be received with thanksgiving and praise.

 

When Susan and I heard Cambridge graduate, Esther de Waal, author of Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition, speak at Oxford, we were very taken by her non-academic grandmotherly manner, that of an ancient sage rather than the pre-eminent authority on our Celtic heritage.

 

 

We learned that awareness that every part of our daily lives is a sacred gift from above, and each act throughout our busy days a sacred offering to the God of all life, was what she was seeking to preserve and restore to our modern world where life has turned so flat and secular.

 

She said her favorite method of research was to travel her native Wales (as well as Ireland and Scotland) visiting with elderly women who still remember the songs their grandmothers had sung as they went about their daily tasks.

 

And song for the start of day by splashing a handful of water on your face three times:

 

A palmful of the God of Life

A palmful of the Christ of Love

A palmful of the Spirit of Peace

Oh, Triune God of Grace.

 

Then a prayer for making the bed:

 

I make this bed

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,

In the name of the night we were conceived,

In the name of the night that we were born,

In the name of the day we were baptized,

In the name of each night, each day,

Each angel that is in the heavens.

 

Followed by a prayer as the fire is kindled in the hearth:

 

I will kindle my fire this morning

In the presence of the holy angels of heaven...

God kindle Thou in my heart within

A flame of love to my neighbor,

To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all...

To the brave, to the knave, to the slave,

O Son of the loveliest Mary,

O Son of the loveliest Mary,

From the lowliest thing that liveth

To the Name that is highest of all.

 

And then as the family cow was milked for that day’s sustenance:

 

Bless O God my little cow,

Bless O God my desire;

Bless Thou my partnership

And the milking of my hands, O God.

 

Bless O God each teat,

Bless O God each finger;

Bless Thou each drop

That goes into my pitcher, O God.

 

And then for brewing the ale which was a staple of their diet, this poem of profound faith and hope de Waal learned from “an old Kerry woman in the south-west of Ireland who still recites words which may well be in origin as old as the tenth or eleventh century.”

 

I would like to have the men of Heaven

In my own house;

With vats of good cheer

Laid out for them.

 

I would like to have the three Marys,

Their fame is so great.

I would like people

From every corner of Heaven.

 

I would like them to be cheerful

In their drinking,

I would like to have Jesus too

Here amongst them.

 

I would like a great lake of beer

For the King of Kings,

I would like to be watching Heaven’s family

Drinking it through all eternity.

 

And finally at the end of day:

 

The sacred Three

To save

To shield

To surround

The hearth

The house

The household

This eve

This night

And every night

Each single night. Amen.

 

“For the men and women who recited them,” de Waal explained, “prayer was not a formal exercise; it was a state of mind. Life was lived under the shadow of God’s outstretched arm; his protection was constantly sought. They have in them something of the breadth and depth of the Hebrew psalms.”

 

Our friend Richard Foster explains it this way, “This sacramental way of living addresses the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.”

 

This worldview may seem so quaint and distant, but it is a world I far prefer to live in than a world without a sense of the divine. As Thomas Kelly wrote in A Testament of Devotion:

 

Life is meant to be lived from a Center, a divine Center… Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done, we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.