What is your deepest desire or yearning? This was the question answered by those gathered Wednesday evening as we continued our exploration of Celtic Spirituality. Some of the answers were: all people could be safe, a connection to something bigger than myself, acceptance, reunion, harmony, love that transcends boundaries, contentment, a sense of well-being, a more even playing field for all, unity. Not surprisingly, we realized that our deepest desires are also what we imagine God’s deepest desires to be. This notion of the connectedness of our deepest desires with God’s is consistent with the understanding in Celtic (and some Western) Spirituality that we are made in the image of God, therefore, our deepest desires are of God, therefore we are made from a place of goodness, not sinfulness, and therefore our work as humans is to return to (be remembered with) the place of union with God.
In John Philip Newell’s book, Christ among the Celts: The Healing of Creation, Newell makes the statement: “Christ is the memory of what we’ve forgotten”. This is consistent with the writings of Joan Chittister (a Roman Catholic nun) who speaks that “Prayer is the memory of the Beloved, the filter, the scrim, through which we begin to see all reality, all life, all decisions, all purposes and all goals.” We had an insightful conversation around the role of the Eucharist, of the gospel and of grace in drawing us back into the remembrance of what we’ve forgotten, of Christ.
We left the evening pondering how the Church, how Christ, and how our spiritual practices support our return to Christ and to the deepest desires within us, which are of God.
We closed with this prayer from John Philip Newell’s book, Sounds of the Eternal: A Celtic Psalter:
We seek your presence, O God, not because we have managed to see clearly or been true in all things this day, not because we have succeeded in loving or in reverencing those around us, but because we want to see with clarity, because we long to be true, because we desire to love as we have been loved. Renew our inner sight, make fresh our longings to be true and grant us the grace of loving this night that we may end this day as we had hoped to live it, that we may end this day restored to our deepest yearnings, that we may end this day as we intend to live tomorrow, as we intend to live tomorrow. Amen.
Our next session is on Wednesday, February 7th beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Mother Barbara’s home. All are welcome.