366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore. Carl McColman
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their inability to feed themselves, since an arm that won’t bend cannot bring food up to the mouth. But in heaven, this same physical circumstance is no problem: for you see, everyone feeds someone else. And no one gets left out.
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Celtic folks love to talk of “the thin places,” those places where the veil separating the physical world from the otherworld are even thinner than normal. Examples of thin places include churches, holy wells, sacred sites like stone circles or old monasteries, and places of great natural beauty and power. I first heard of this concept from a priest in Glendalough (a thin place if ever there was one). But I’ve come to think that the thinness of a thin place doesn’t just provide access to an unseen inner world. Perhaps more important, it provides access to neart. Call it energy, call it hope, call it a fuel of miracles. For those who choose to see, it’s as plain as the noses on our faces. Thin places are places of nourishment and rejuvenation—for they provide us with ready access to that energy that keeps us connected to blessings. The energy is more than just the bringer of blessing—it is blessing itself.
Ireland has been called “the island of saints and scholars.” But the other Celtic lands have produced their share of holy people as well. The coming of Christianity to the Celtic world was revolutionary on more than one level: not only did it forever change the way that the Celts viewed spirituality and the cosmos, but perhaps even more importantly, the Celtic tradition influenced how Christianity was practiced, giving birth to a unique expression of that faith, marked by optimism, mysticism, and deep love for nature.
Saint Patrick is probably the only Celtic “super-saint,” which is to say a saint whose fame and popularity extends well beyond the Celtic world. But other saints, like Brigid, Columcille (Columba), Brendan (called “the Navigator” because of the legend that he and his companion monks sailed from Ireland to North America—in the sixth century!) and Columbanus all have enjoyed their own measure of fame. And what’s truly lovely about the Celtic world is the abundance of lesser known (and in some cases only regionally venerated) “saints.” Many of these folks have never been officially canonized, but that never stopped their small-scale cults from flourishing. In a way, the Celtic veneration of saints echoes the older veneration of pagan deities—the emphasis was not on the big names that everyone knew, but on the local figure, who may never have been famous but who gave a particular place its own unique sanctity.
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The monk and evangelist Mungo, also known as Kentigern, lived in the sixth century. Of noble British birth, he became a missionary in northwest England and Scotland, and is today perhaps best known as the founder and patron saint of Glasgow. The city’s Coat of Arms indudes four symbols associated with Mungo: a bird, a fish, a bell, and a tree. The bell commemorates a legend in which the saint received a bell as a gift from the pope, while the three symbols from nature each correspond to a miracle associated with Mungo: the bird symbolizes a robin that Mungo raised from the dead; the tree represents a miraculous fire he kindled with frozen wood; while the fish depicts a salmon he caught which had the queen’s lost ring in its belly, thereby saving her from her husband’s wrath.
The nature symbols correspond to the three great realms of nature: the fish represents the lower regions of water (sea, river, lake, well); the bird represents the upper regions of the atmosphere (the sky), while the tree symbolizes the land herself. Land, sea, and sky: one of many sacred Celtic trinities.
Mungo spent time in Wales but eventually returned to Glasgow and was buried at the site of Glasgow Cathedral, where today the crypt is still said to house his remains.
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Ita is a lesser-known Celtic saint, remembered today mainly through her pupil: Brendan the Navigator, one of Ireland’s most colorful and renowned of early saints. Ita was the abbess (the leader of a monastery) of a community located in County Limerick. She was often described in early biographies as the “Brigid of Munster,” suggesting that she played a role in the south of Ireland similar to that held in the east by her more famous contemporary. It’s a marketing trick that is as dangerous today as it was a thousand years ago: compare yourself to someone more famous, and you’re at risk for never getting out of their shadow. Even so, Ita remained a popular saint in the south of Ireland and has been immortalized for her role as Brendan’s first teacher. The Navigator continued to seek her counsel long after leaving her fosterage. Unlike the many Celtic saints who were famed for their travels, Ita apparently loved the place where she first put down roots, and remained in Limerick until her death in the year 570.
It is said that one of the most important things any of us can do is raise or teach a child well. Perhaps Ita should be the patron saint of those who nurture greatness among those of the next generation.
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Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall and of tin miners (the tin trade being particularly important in Cornwall); he is possibly the same figure as the Irish saint Ciaran, the founder of the monastery at Clonmacnoise. Legend holds that Piran once escaped from captivity in Ireland and sailed to Cornwall using a millstone for a raft! Apparently the good saint had quite the capacity to work miracles—after all, sailing a stone boat makes even walking on water seem, well, easy. Today, scholars question just how historical a figure he is, wondering if, like other Celtic figures such as Brigid and even Patrick, his story may actuatlly reflect more myth than fact. Well, maybe it does. But in the Celtic world, myth matters. Celtic spirituality envisions a world where anything is possible: where saints can cause a millstone to float or perform all sorts of other miracles. Why believe in such impossible tales? What good can possibly come out of crazy tales of miracles and floating rocks? We know that the human mind is an amazing instrument, and that often the key to miracles such as healing serious diseases, or summoning superhuman strength at a moment of crisis, begins with the power to believe. When we consider how a saint could make a millstone float, it opens up just a glimmer of possibility—Pearce’s “the crack in the cosmic egg”—that allows miracles to really happen. Just because we believe.
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If Ireland had produced Saint Francis, he probably would have been named Kevin. The reclusive founder of Glendalough has numerous legends and stories associated with him that underscore his reputation as a friend of nature and a lover of animals.
One tale recounts how the saint was praying by one of the lakes near his hermitage, but his prayer book slipped and fell into the water. Even today such a turn of events would be an annoyance, but consider how valuable books were in ancient times; this would have been quite a problem. But before Kevin could even jump in after the book, an otter, sensing the sanctity and compassion of the man, grasped the book and returned it to its owner. Other stories tell of bears seeking refuge from hunters in the cave Kevin used as his hermitage, and of birds coming to perch on his shoulders or his head while the saint stood quietly at prayer. One day while praying, Kevin discovered that a blackbird had begun to build a nest on his outstretched hand. Filled with compassion, he could not bear to disturb her motherly work, and so stood still as she completed her nest, laid her eggs, and eventually hatched and raised her young. Finally, when the babies were old enough to fly, Kevin at long last allowed his arms to rest.
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March I is the feast day of the patron saint of Wales, Dewi (or David), who died on that day in 588. Known for his austerity and simplicity, Dewi founded a monastery where no wine was drunk