| On emerald holy ground Celtic spirituality appeals to seekers who long for a holistic faith 03/17/2001 By Steve Rabey / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News For many Americans – particularly the tens of millions with at least a trace of Irish blood in their veins – St. Patrick's Day provides a chance for the "wearin' of the green" and plentiful opportunities for parades, parties and pints.
Vernon Bryant / DMN
Master blacksmith Tom Smith's iron Celtic cross is on display in Gallery O at Fair Park.
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But growing numbers of Catholics, Protestants and spiritual seekers believe these annual celebrations only divert people's attention from Patrick's deep devotion and the mystical allure of Celtic spirituality, which some herald as more holistic and healing than other spiritual alternatives.
"Celtic spirituality is a very simple tradition that isn't all cluttered up with doctrine and dogma and long lists of do's and don'ts," said the Rev. Andrew Scott Dennis, an Austin high school teacher who serves as a bishop in the Anamchara Celtic Church.
This fellowship of churches, founded five years ago, has four congregations in Texas, including St. Patrick's church in Farmersville, and others elsewhere in the United States, Canada and New Zealand.
Father Dennis was raised in Pentecostal churches before setting out on a pilgrimage that took him through Anglicanism and Russian Orthodoxy to Celtic Christianity.
Like many other devotees of Celtic spirituality, he says principles such as honoring creation and seeing the sacred in every moment contribute to a contemplative, prayerful and holistic faith that attracts all kinds of spiritual seekers. He says it also provides an urgently needed antidote to fast-paced lives and fast-food faiths.
Mark M. Hancock / DMN
St. Patrick, depicted in stained glass at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Dallas, bridges Ireland's pagan and Christian past.
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"Celtic spirituality reveres nature as a part of God's creation," Father Dennis says. "It teaches that everything can be a sacrament or sacred act, even our work. And it says we are all God's creatures – men and women, dogs and cats. We're not necessarily equal, but God likes us all."
In the post-Riverdance era, Americans have demonstrated a growing interest in all things Irish. They praise books by Frank McCourt and Nuala O'Faolin. They cheer movies like Waking Ned Divine and American Women. And they hang out in Americanized versions of the Emerald Isle's pubs – drifting away on the haunting strains of Celtic music while quaffing pints of dark, rich Guinness.
Anne Ovard and her husband, Blake, operate Gallery O, a Fair Park gallery that specializes in Celtic art.
"It touches my soul somehow," says Ms. Ovard, who is of Scottish descent. "I don't know if it's because of a genetic link, but I have been drawn to early Celtic artwork, with its interlacing knotwork, along with all the old Celtic legends."
Celtic spirituality is increasingly popular, inspiring cover stories in magazines ranging from U.S Catholic and the evangelical Christianity Today while generating extensive coverage in New Age and alternative spirituality publications.
There's little unanimity about precisely what Celtic spirituality is, but everyone agrees it originated with the pagan Celts, an ancient Asian people who once held control over much of Europe and migrated to the British Isles in the centuries before Christ.
(And by the way, everyone but Boston Celtic fans pronounces the words "Celt" and "Celtic" with a hard "k" sound.)
With the rise of Roman power and influence, the Celts' culture was largely snuffed out in Europe and Britain. But it survived and thrived in a region known as the "Celtic fringe," which included Wales, areas of England and all of Scotland north of Emperor Hadrian's wall.
As for Ireland itself, it was so remote and unremarkable that conquerors didn't consider invasion worth the while. Today, one can still hear the island's western natives speaking in Gaelic, a linguistic remnant of much earlier days.
"Ireland is the only country in Western Europe that still has contact with its archaic origins," writes best-selling author and priest Andrew Greeley.
Throughout the Celtic fringe, a strong and vigorous culture flourished, creating beautiful works of art, fearsome weapons, a wealth of myths and legends featuring otherworldly superheroes and a vibrant spirituality.
Today visitors to Ireland can examine a wealth of archeological remains that attest to the importance the Celts placed on their spiritual values, including hundreds of stone shrines and standing stone circles, altars, and caves for the dead.
As scholar and historian Anne Ross put it, "A capacity for worship, a passionate feeling for the supernatural, for the gods, or, later, God, is, I believe, the truest and most binding cultural element throughout the entire Celtic world."
We don't know exactly what the Celts believed because they didn't leave any written records. That's where St. Patrick comes in.
Patrick represents the transition from pagan beliefs to Christianity, an utterly unique transition author Thomas Cahill described in his best-selling book How the Irish Saved Civilization.
"Ireland is unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed," he writes.
Patrick also stands at the dividing line between Ireland's mystery-shrouded prehistory and the beginning of its written history.
Still, not everything one hears about Patrick is based on fact. There are plenty of tall tales told about how he supposedly chased the snakes out of Ireland, or how he illustrated the concept of the trinity with a three-leaf clover.
"We need to separate the mythical Patrick from the real one," says David Bercot, a corporate attorney living in Tyler and the author of Let Me Die in Ireland: The True Story of Patrick (published in 1999 by Tyler-based Scroll Publishing).
Mr. Bercot, a Protestant who attends the independent Good Shepherd Early Christian Church north of downtown Dallas, argues that Patrick wasn't even remotely Roman Catholic.
Such a statement would draw snickers in the overwhelmingly Catholic Republic of Ireland, where Patrick is honored as a patron saint. But it does contain at least a kernel of truth: Patrick and other early Irish Christians did develop a uniquely Celtic form of faith and worship that later generations of leaders in England and Rome sought to bring under tighter control.
Still, he hails the saint as "the most outstanding Christian missionary of all time, after the Apostle Paul."
Most historians agree that Patrick lived more than 1,500 years ago. And while there is much we will never know about him – including the precise dates of his birth and death – there's plenty we do know about his life and work, thanks largely to his autobiographical Confession, one of two surviving works written by his own hand.
Born in Roman Britain around 390 to a Christian family, Patrick wasn't much interested in religion during his youth. When he was about 16 years old, he was kidnapped by a band of Irish pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave.
For the next six years, he toiled on the property of a pagan chieftain in an area many believe to be near the Slemish Mountains of modern-day Northern Ireland.
Patrick's troubles forced him to rely upon divine mercies. "In a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many at night," he wrote.
During one of these times of prayer, God came to him in a vision, directing him to flee his Irish captors and return to Britain.
The story could have ended with Patrick safe and snug back at home, but things were about to get really interesting.
Patrick experienced another vision. This time he saw the Irish people crying out to him, pleading with the former slave to return to Ireland as a servant: "We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more," writes Patrick in his Confession.
Around 432 Patrick began preaching and teaching in Ireland, and he didn't stop until his death nearly three decades later.
In the centuries after Patrick's death, there was a flowering of Celtic Christianity, which flourished throughout Ireland and spread across Europe during the centuries that Western civilization was in decline.
Today visitors to Ireland can follow the saint's footsteps all across the island.
In Dublin, St. Patrick's Cathedral is a massive 12th-century church where writer Jonathan Swift once served as dean. In the church is a stone slab formerly covering a well where Patrick allegedly baptized one of the many new converts he brought to the faith.
In central Ireland's County Tipperary, the Rock of Cashel (or St. Patrick's Rock) is a popular tourist destination which marks the spot where Patrick baptized Munster's King Aengus. (According to legend, Patrick accidentally stabbed the king's foot with a sword, but the king believed this to be a part of the baptismal ritual.)
And in the rugged west of County Mayo, Croagh Patrick is a beautiful but rocky mountain where Patrick allegedly prayed and fasted for 40 days. Every July, on the last Sunday of the month, more than 20,000 pilgrims scale the mountain – many of them barefoot – to honor the island's patron saint.
Ironically, the town of Armagh, where Patrick served as bishop, is in a battle-scarred area of Northern Ireland. The town's competing Cathedrals of St. Patrick – one Catholic and one Anglican – symbolize the Troubles that have long divided pro-nationalist Catholics from British loyalists and Protestants.
But the fact that both factions honor Patrick symbolizes the powerful allure of Celtic spirituality, which continues to attract followers around the world more than 15 centuries later.
Steve Rabey and his wife, Lois, are the authors of Celtic Journeys: A Traveler's Guide to Ireland's Spiritual Legacy, due out in June from Citadel Press. They live in Colorado and lead annual trips to Ireland.
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