Great piece today about St. Patrick's Day, Sylvia. I have many intertangled feelings about what this day means, what the founding of Christianity in Ireland meant and means today, and how it reflects on what religious experience is across the spectrum. And for me, as somebody who became Baptized a Christian after a long religious journey, in the Episcopal Church a little over a year ago.
I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was lucky enough last autumn to go to a neighboring Episcopal parish where the renowned writer John Philip Newell, who lives in Scotland and writes about Celtic Christianity, had a whole weekend centered around the Celtic vision of the Christian path- much more attuned to the cycles of nature, non-imperial and much less hierarchical, much more accepting of the feminine. He has spent decades doing scholarship about how there is real evidence that for many centuries there was a kind of "truce" between the Pagan paths and the Christian path in Ireland, and how this Creation centric and feminine friendly version of the church is the one that modern global Christianity can and must learn from if it is to continue. He's a man (with a great wife as a partner and family) but was more brutally critical of organized Christianity than a lot of atheists or non-believers, a real radical pastor- he said that we are raping the Earth, and the church has almost always been the handmaiden to this destruction.
He is talking specifically about the first handful of centuries after Christianity came to Ireland, up until perhaps the middle ages when the Catholic Church (which was really the only kind of Christianity there was) solidified its imperial power structure and made sure the same cookie cutter form of Christianity existed everywhere, even in the relative hinterland of a place like Ireland. But before that happened, Newell writes that there were quite a few priests and nuns as well as regular Christian followers who did create a form of Christianity that now would look quite "New Agey"- but honestly most of the New Testament is very New Agey. Of course the pretty imbalanced, sex phobic and patriarchal men who claimed to represent the Jesus road wanted nothing to do with this, and they brutally suppressed much of this Celtic Christian path including with the reality and threat of violence, not just towards the wise women who may have wanted something different, but towards the many men who loved them and also wanted a gentler, humbler religion. A lot of beauty and truth can be destroyed in just a century or two of violent persecution- look at the legacy we're dealing with in the United States of slavery and lynching and violence against African-Americans, it haunts us still a real blood at the root. Serve not evil, be not loyal to wickedness in high places, it is written in the scriptures- and men using violence and the threat of it to persecute the women and the vulnerable and the gentle is a very, very old story.
So, my own Christian path is a long and winding one, but I do shorten my beliefs into a simple phrase I said at my Baptism day, with my priest, our local Bishop, and many smiling church ladies present: "Closer to Earth, Closer to People, and Closer to God". That summarized my entire spiritual philosophy, and it took me a long time to get there, but I'm quite comfortable housing it in the Christian tradition. Not to toot our own horn too much, but I love the Episcopal Church and how we're approaching this ancient tradition, I think though we be flawed and are still changing, we are one of the best houses of God in the business. One giant leap we made that I'm not quiet about is that we give sexually active women leading full lives in the world the priest's collar- this summer we are about to celebrate half a century since we did so. We also opened up big time to LGBT people, we would rather bring them in and welcome them to follow the Jesus road then leave them out in the cold and the dark like many do. My official story behind my Baptism is that I was inspired by the Sacred Divine Feminine and magic and mysticism, all very "woo woo", and it so happens that since last spring I have been blessed to be dating quite the medicine woman in her own right. If I be a medicine man of any kind, my relationship with her is teaching me much, she was very church raised and is one of the most Christ like souls I know, but got fed up with the patriarchal stuff and the over structured reality of too much of the church.
So, gotta give non-celibate women real religious power. It comes down to that I think. Bring back not just good "Druids" (priests) but good "Druidesses" (priestesses). In recent years the Episcopal Church had as their head Bishop a lady, one of the few denominations to do that, she was a former ocean biologist turned priest. Now around 1 out of 3 of of our ordained ministers are women or are about to be, and I think we have a good Zen Middle Way approach to positive sexuality. We also have a lot of John Muir like deep green folks who have a Creation centric theology- if we can't live well here on Earth, how can we hope to bring a Heavenly way of living into our reality? We are a transcendent religion, similar to Buddhism in many ways, but the Jesus road should be something that feels like a lifeforce, not a death force, and certainly should liberate people not oppress them.
That's not to say that everybody or anybody else needs to become a Christian, or join my particular outfit, but it is important to say that there are growing slivers and parts of the world's largest cult (2.3. billion people) who are doing these big shifts, around bringing women back, around giving up an imperial path, about becoming stewards of the Earth instead of destroyers. What you see Trump and Putin and these sorts of false prophets doing is the worst of the ancient road of Christ, but have hope and keep faith, like Yoda there are many of us quietly behind the scenes playing the long game. On God's good time, and with love and joy and peace and patience. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, still a very radical document, that "Blessed are the Meek, for they Shall Inherit the Earth". That one line turns the whole concept of "Power" around, which means that nobody seeking political or economic power are quite at the heart of the Kingdom of God- the women doing sharing circles and the men planting trees and the children playing in the back alley and the mosses and the flowers and crickets singing at night- THEY are at the heart of the Kingdom. Folks at the "top" are actually pretty powerless, especially if they have to use a lot of guns and coercion to keep their power. Jesus could have "fought" Herod and Caesar and done the Russian Revolution thing, but He took the more radical move of not fighting back with violence, and Ascended with Love, as Buddha achieved Nirvana through compassion. Our Way of Love should offer both justice and peace, in this Heaven here on Earth. And I am glad to be part of one organization in a society where so many people seem to be getting better at hating than loving that is taking that seriously. Love the Creator, Love the Creation, Love your Neighbor, Love Yourself. It still works, it is still a Way worth following.
Beautiful, the Blessing of the Boats 💚 And, "uneasy" is a good way to describe the feelings that often come up for me on this day. I have Irish ancestry, along with a mix of other British Isle, Eastern European, and Ashkenazi Jewish. Growing up in the Boston area, with such a large Irish population, St. Patrick's day was always a big day, mostly for food and beverages dyed with green and screaming, drunken people. Not really my thing. And, indeed, now, there is a different cause for uneasiness on this day as so many untruths swirl around both in the Christian and neo-pagan communities. You've piqued my interest about Hilda of Whitby, I'm off on a quest!
Great piece today about St. Patrick's Day, Sylvia. I have many intertangled feelings about what this day means, what the founding of Christianity in Ireland meant and means today, and how it reflects on what religious experience is across the spectrum. And for me, as somebody who became Baptized a Christian after a long religious journey, in the Episcopal Church a little over a year ago.
I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was lucky enough last autumn to go to a neighboring Episcopal parish where the renowned writer John Philip Newell, who lives in Scotland and writes about Celtic Christianity, had a whole weekend centered around the Celtic vision of the Christian path- much more attuned to the cycles of nature, non-imperial and much less hierarchical, much more accepting of the feminine. He has spent decades doing scholarship about how there is real evidence that for many centuries there was a kind of "truce" between the Pagan paths and the Christian path in Ireland, and how this Creation centric and feminine friendly version of the church is the one that modern global Christianity can and must learn from if it is to continue. He's a man (with a great wife as a partner and family) but was more brutally critical of organized Christianity than a lot of atheists or non-believers, a real radical pastor- he said that we are raping the Earth, and the church has almost always been the handmaiden to this destruction.
He is talking specifically about the first handful of centuries after Christianity came to Ireland, up until perhaps the middle ages when the Catholic Church (which was really the only kind of Christianity there was) solidified its imperial power structure and made sure the same cookie cutter form of Christianity existed everywhere, even in the relative hinterland of a place like Ireland. But before that happened, Newell writes that there were quite a few priests and nuns as well as regular Christian followers who did create a form of Christianity that now would look quite "New Agey"- but honestly most of the New Testament is very New Agey. Of course the pretty imbalanced, sex phobic and patriarchal men who claimed to represent the Jesus road wanted nothing to do with this, and they brutally suppressed much of this Celtic Christian path including with the reality and threat of violence, not just towards the wise women who may have wanted something different, but towards the many men who loved them and also wanted a gentler, humbler religion. A lot of beauty and truth can be destroyed in just a century or two of violent persecution- look at the legacy we're dealing with in the United States of slavery and lynching and violence against African-Americans, it haunts us still a real blood at the root. Serve not evil, be not loyal to wickedness in high places, it is written in the scriptures- and men using violence and the threat of it to persecute the women and the vulnerable and the gentle is a very, very old story.
So, my own Christian path is a long and winding one, but I do shorten my beliefs into a simple phrase I said at my Baptism day, with my priest, our local Bishop, and many smiling church ladies present: "Closer to Earth, Closer to People, and Closer to God". That summarized my entire spiritual philosophy, and it took me a long time to get there, but I'm quite comfortable housing it in the Christian tradition. Not to toot our own horn too much, but I love the Episcopal Church and how we're approaching this ancient tradition, I think though we be flawed and are still changing, we are one of the best houses of God in the business. One giant leap we made that I'm not quiet about is that we give sexually active women leading full lives in the world the priest's collar- this summer we are about to celebrate half a century since we did so. We also opened up big time to LGBT people, we would rather bring them in and welcome them to follow the Jesus road then leave them out in the cold and the dark like many do. My official story behind my Baptism is that I was inspired by the Sacred Divine Feminine and magic and mysticism, all very "woo woo", and it so happens that since last spring I have been blessed to be dating quite the medicine woman in her own right. If I be a medicine man of any kind, my relationship with her is teaching me much, she was very church raised and is one of the most Christ like souls I know, but got fed up with the patriarchal stuff and the over structured reality of too much of the church.
So, gotta give non-celibate women real religious power. It comes down to that I think. Bring back not just good "Druids" (priests) but good "Druidesses" (priestesses). In recent years the Episcopal Church had as their head Bishop a lady, one of the few denominations to do that, she was a former ocean biologist turned priest. Now around 1 out of 3 of of our ordained ministers are women or are about to be, and I think we have a good Zen Middle Way approach to positive sexuality. We also have a lot of John Muir like deep green folks who have a Creation centric theology- if we can't live well here on Earth, how can we hope to bring a Heavenly way of living into our reality? We are a transcendent religion, similar to Buddhism in many ways, but the Jesus road should be something that feels like a lifeforce, not a death force, and certainly should liberate people not oppress them.
That's not to say that everybody or anybody else needs to become a Christian, or join my particular outfit, but it is important to say that there are growing slivers and parts of the world's largest cult (2.3. billion people) who are doing these big shifts, around bringing women back, around giving up an imperial path, about becoming stewards of the Earth instead of destroyers. What you see Trump and Putin and these sorts of false prophets doing is the worst of the ancient road of Christ, but have hope and keep faith, like Yoda there are many of us quietly behind the scenes playing the long game. On God's good time, and with love and joy and peace and patience. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, still a very radical document, that "Blessed are the Meek, for they Shall Inherit the Earth". That one line turns the whole concept of "Power" around, which means that nobody seeking political or economic power are quite at the heart of the Kingdom of God- the women doing sharing circles and the men planting trees and the children playing in the back alley and the mosses and the flowers and crickets singing at night- THEY are at the heart of the Kingdom. Folks at the "top" are actually pretty powerless, especially if they have to use a lot of guns and coercion to keep their power. Jesus could have "fought" Herod and Caesar and done the Russian Revolution thing, but He took the more radical move of not fighting back with violence, and Ascended with Love, as Buddha achieved Nirvana through compassion. Our Way of Love should offer both justice and peace, in this Heaven here on Earth. And I am glad to be part of one organization in a society where so many people seem to be getting better at hating than loving that is taking that seriously. Love the Creator, Love the Creation, Love your Neighbor, Love Yourself. It still works, it is still a Way worth following.
" ...a tongue is both a wave and the whole ocean"
Thank you again for your heartfelt sharing dear Sylvia.
Ah, lovely Sylvia -- so refreshingly *other* than the usual elsewhere, which is of course the way you are. Very grounded, cleansing. Thanks for this.
Beautiful, the Blessing of the Boats 💚 And, "uneasy" is a good way to describe the feelings that often come up for me on this day. I have Irish ancestry, along with a mix of other British Isle, Eastern European, and Ashkenazi Jewish. Growing up in the Boston area, with such a large Irish population, St. Patrick's day was always a big day, mostly for food and beverages dyed with green and screaming, drunken people. Not really my thing. And, indeed, now, there is a different cause for uneasiness on this day as so many untruths swirl around both in the Christian and neo-pagan communities. You've piqued my interest about Hilda of Whitby, I'm off on a quest!