Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
May 4, 2003
Vol. 48, No. 18

A Celtic Blessing
There's a wonderful little book that was introduced to me by my wife--she picks up on and shares with me lots of Christian literature that I wouldn't otherwise know about at all. My own interest and approach to readings about the Faith tends to be pretty pragmatic. What commends itself to me is a set of principles and insights that have the capacity to "make a difference," by which I mean the power to change lives and circumstances, transforming people and communities from the status of objects into subjects; enabling people to grasp hold of life and move forward toward satisfaction and fulfillment. I respond to a Faith that is oriented toward shaping and changing reality. Dale, on the other hand, is more typically attracted to those aspects of Christian Faith that help us to see existing beauty and make us appreciate the blessings of God that are already in-place all around us.

Anyway, the book is Celtic Blessings, a collection of prayers for everyday life that has been compiled by Ray Simpson, a member of the Lindisfarne Community in Northern England. He has written several volumes about the Celtic tradition of spirituality and prayer.

Celtic spirituality, as distinguished from Latin or Western Christianity, begins with a
view that God's Creation is essentially good and that everything in Creation is a potential source of knowledge and relationship with its Maker. Unlike our own mainstream Christian theology-which tends to focus on the "fallen" aspects of Creation because of the sinfulness of human beings and which is concerned with "getting us right with God"--the Celtic approach assumes that God is patiently, lovingly at work in and through all things, abiding all around us until the time that we wake from a soul of sleep into a joyous awareness of God's incredible love for each one of us.

One of the basic "So whats" of that rather different perspective is that we need to open our eyes to God's presence in everyday, ordinary things, events, and relationships because at every moment God is on-hand to bless us-if we just notice. Celtic Blessings suggests some words of response, prayers and affirmations by which we can indicate that we have gotten the message.

All this background is so that I can share with you some opening lines of a longer Celtic blessing that rises out of the beauty and wonder of what it means to be part of a family. The family, in this case, is the one with mother, father, and children. In my mind, however, it extends to more than just my immediate family. I tell you all this because I want you to understand what it means to me to offer this blessing: What it says, how I first heard it, and why it's now on my lips daily.

May God help us to listen to loved ones,
play with loved ones,
laugh with loved ones,
weep with loved ones,
forgive loved ones,
take responsibility for loved ones,
and be faithful to loved ones-Forever.

Bob Hansel

(Return to Top)